Vedic vs Western Astrology — Tripod of Life & Birth Time

Why Outer Planets Are Not Used

Uranus, Neptune and Pluto also go round the Sun, far beyond Saturn. Vedic astrology does not use them.

• The common view — all Western astrologers and, by the teacher's estimate, about half of Indian astrologers — is that the seers did not know these planets, so now that science has found them they should be added.
• That is a misconception. Read carefully, Vyāsa does mention planets beyond Saturn, under other names. The seers knew of them.
• They were left out of astrology because they are too far from Earth. Their impact on us is minimal.

"He was aware that there were other planets in the solar system. But he simply did not use them in astrology because their impact on us is very minimal, because of their distance from us."

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How Planets Influence Us

No text says how the grahas act on us. We do not know.

• Do not assume it is gravitation.
• Do not assume it is light. Planets influence us even when they are on the other side of the Earth, where we cannot see them.
• It may be no form of energy we know of. The world we perceive has four dimensions — three of space and one of time. String theory suggests there are many more. The Purāṇas speak of Sun and Moon as persons; that may have its meaning in those dimensions, where gods and demons exist. We see only material objects.
• A Maharṣi who can perceive those dimensions may understand how and why planets influence us. For us there is no answer, and probably will not be one in our lifetime.

"It's not light. It's probably not gravitation. It's something else that we don't understand."

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The Tripod of Life

Three references carry every horoscope:

"Soul, mind and body. This is the tripod of life. This is the base for our existence, these three references."

• The Sun takes a year round the zodiac, so a month per rāśi. The Moon takes a little under 30 days, so about 2½ days per rāśi. Lagna takes 24 hours, so 2 hours per rāśi.
• Reading the planets from the Sun is accepted in Indian astrology too — but it shows matters of the ātmā.
• Many Western astrologers use only the Sun sign. They stay at the level of the ātmā and never come down to mind and body, so they cannot predict well.

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Western vs. Vedic Astrology

A student asked how the accuracy of Indian, Greek and Chinese astrology compares. The teacher's answer: Indian astrology is far more accurate, and here is why.

Sun sign: a one-month window

• The Sun sign fixes only the month of birth. In the Western zodiac the Sun changes sign around the 21st (21 April – 21 May, and so on); in ours around the 15th (about 15 April – 15 May in Aries, 15 May – 15 June in Taurus).
• Either way, everyone born in that month gets the same reading. The teacher calls this very superficial.

Ascendant: a two-hour window

• Serious Western astrologers use the ascendant as well. Their chart is very like our rāśi chart, shifted by some degrees, because the starting point of their zodiac is not fixed to the stars and moves every year.
• That narrows a month down to two hours — much better, and still not enough. Everyone born in the same two hours has the same rāśi chart.

The Paradox of Twins

Twins born five minutes apart in the same place have exactly the same rāśi chart — Rāhu and Ketu included. Their lives are not the same. The teacher's examples from twins he knows: one very intelligent, the other not; one passed with distinction, the other with bare pass marks; one a manager, the other a peon in the same office; one with solid health, the other without.

"I call it the paradox of twins. No other system of astrology in the world… can explain how things can be different."

Divisional Charts Resolve This

Besides the rāśi chart there are divisional charts (varga chakras), computed by formula from the exact longitude of each planet.

• In them lagna changes rāśi not every two hours but, depending on the chart, about every 14 minutes, every 10 minutes, every 5 minutes, every 2 minutes.
• The rāśi chart is strictly for the physical level of existence — appearance, physical health. It is not the chart for job, education or intelligence.
• Other charts each take one area: one for career, one for learning and education, one for marriage and spouse.
• Twins share some charts and differ in others. Real twins are not totally different — there are similarities and there are differences — and the divisional charts explain both.

Ṣoḍaśavarga: how fine it goes

A student asked for the finest granularity in Vedic astrology.

• There are 16 divisional charts, the Ṣoḍaśavarga, counting the rāśi chart as one.
• Navāṁśa: each two-hour stay of lagna is cut into nine parts; lagna changes in each.
• Ṣaṣṭyāṁśa: the finest of the sixteen. The two hours are cut into 60 parts, so lagna changes about every 2 minutes.
• The divisions of the different charts do not line up. Taken together, one chart or another changes every few seconds on average; sometimes two moments 10 seconds apart differ in one chart.

Nāḍī Granthas (1/150 and 1/300 divisions)

• The sixteen charts are what the teacher and his paramparā use.
• The Nāḍī Granthas use the nāḍyāṁśa, a 1/150 division, and the ardha-nāḍī, 1/300. The narrowest window is then not 2 minutes but 24 seconds. Technically, people born 24 seconds apart can differ.
• The Maharṣis had that knowledge complete. We do not.
• The granthas give detailed readings for births in each nāḍī. The reader finds your page by a thumbprint or by asking your name and your father's name. When the right page is pulled, everything matches — names of father and mother, number of brothers.
• Some nāḍī collections are wrong, written for commercial exploitation. Authentic sources are very accurate.

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Birth Time Accuracy & Rectification

No one arrives with a 24-second window. Usually it is "9:15, give or take five minutes".

"Never believe in the time. I never believe in the time."

Even when someone says the grandfather was present and noted exactly 9:30, do not believe it:

• his watch may have been slightly off;
• there may have been a lapse in noting it down;
• he may have used the wrong definition of birth.

Definitions of the Birth Moment

Three candidates: śīrṣodaya (the head appearing), bhū-patana (the whole body out of the womb, falling to the ground), and the first cry. Scholars do not agree.

What the teacher and his gurus hold: the definition depends on the yuga, following the dharma of that yuga.

• Kṛta Yuga: sight of the head.
• Tretā Yuga: bhū-patana.
• Kali Yuga: the first breath and first cry. Dharma is low; a child can be taken out by cutting the stomach, so the appearance of the head can be controlled. The first breath cannot.

He adds that there is no agreement on this, and whoever gave you the time may not have used the right definition.

Rectification

• A time may be good enough for one chart and not for another. Say the birth is known to lie between 10:01 and 10:02. In the chart that shows parents, that whole minute may fall inside one division: lagna there is certain, and you can speak confidently about parents. In the chart for education a division may begin in the middle of that minute: there you cannot.
• So for each area of life, check the chart of that area. If the time is a border case in that chart, ask about past events and settle which lagna is right. This is birth time rectification.
• Use known facts — when the person came to the US, when they married — to reverse-engineer the time. Predict only when you are confident of it.

"Use those known facts to reverse-engineer the time, and then only when you are really confident about the time, then you can make predictions."

Vāk-bala

If you pray, keep vāk-śuddhi and do not abuse your speech, your word gains power: something said without looking at any chart can come true. A good power to have. But the class teaches the method of the Maharṣis as a science, and for that an accurate reading needs a very accurate time.

The one chart that needed no correction

• The teacher's paternal grandfather was born in 1902. An elder of the family — an astrologer and physician — was present at the birth.
• There was no watch. On hearing the first cry he measured the shadow of a stick of fixed length, worked out the time and the planets from it, and noted the time in ghaṭīs and vighaṭīs.
• Of all the charts the teacher has handled, this is the only one where the given time needed no investigation. Joining jobs, births of children, the wife's death, his own death — every event lined up.
• The lesson he draws: the more you lean on software, the more of your own skill you lose. Learn some of the working and calculate mentally now and then. It keeps you sharp.

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Sphuta (Longitude) of a Planet

• The zodiac is a two-dimensional plane with Earth at the centre, cut into 12 parts. Every planet is in one part, at a certain degree.
• That degree, measured from the start of the zodiac, is the planet's sphuṭa — in English, its longitude. The teacher's board example: Venus at 25° from the start of the zodiac has a sphuṭa of 25°.
• Software gives the longitudes and draws the chart. The teacher recommends his free Jagannatha Hora Lite to begin with; it computes positions from NASA's model of planetary motion.
• By hand it can be done with the formulas of the Sūrya Siddhānta — a lot of trigonometry, not simple, but doable. His grandfather's generation computed everything by hand; his father's used printed pañcāṅgas. An ephemeris gives positions at a fixed hour each day and you interpolate linearly.

Birthplace: planets do not change, lagna does

A student asked whether a birth abroad needs a correction to Indian time.

• Longitudes are measured from the centre of the Earth. Wherever on Earth you are born, a planet's longitude is the same. No correction for place.
• Lagna is the point on the eastern horizon, and that depends on where you stand. At the same moment, east for someone in Boston and east for someone in India point almost opposite ways, so the two lagnas are nearly 180° apart.
• So a pañcāṅga's lagna table made for one place cannot be used for another with a simple time correction. Give the software the place.

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Abhijit Muhurta

Where lagna is through the day

• Sunrise: lagna is exactly conjunct the Sun. Sun at 21° Aries means lagna at 21° Aries.
• After that lagna advances roughly one sign every two hours.
• Sunset: lagna is opposite the Sun.
• Next sunrise: lagna is back on the Sun.
• A student pointed out that near the poles the Sun may not rise at all. The teacher: true in a small area round the pole; what to do there is disputed among scholars and left aside.
• The time lagna spends in a rāśi is not constant. At the equator it is close to two hours. Away from it the spread grows: in Boston, at the height of summer or winter, lagna can cross one sign in an hour and take three hours over another. In India it stays between about 1¾ and 2¼ hours.

The midday muhūrta

If you have no good muhūrta for something, the śāstras say: do it in Abhijit Muhūrta, the midday muhūrta — regardless of Rāhu-kāla and the rest.

• Abhijit means, roughly, "great victory". It is a muhūrta that guarantees success.
• Houses are counted from lagna; each rāśi is one house. The 10th house is the karma-sthāna, the house of what you end up doing and of success.
• At midday lagna is three signs ahead of the Sun. That puts the Sun exactly in the 10th house.
• The Sun is an auspicious planet, the giver of success and of life. Sun in the karma-sthāna is good, whatever else is going on.

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Purpose of Astrology

Asked at the end of class: why predict at all?

1. It is a statement of likelihood, not fatalism. Nobody is a perfect astrologer. You may see a 99% chance of something; where influences contradict, 60–70%.

   "Astrology is a probabilistic understanding of what is likely to happen. It doesn't tell you what will happen for sure. So it doesn't imply fatalism."

2. Preparation. In a good time you can be ready to take a few risks. In a bad time, be extra careful. If you know a problem will last a year, you are prepared for it.
3. Knowing who you are. A man who has trouble with his wife, and learns that the fault is his and not hers, will handle it more sensibly.
4. Remedial measures — a concept Western astrology does not have.
   • Gemstones work only in the short run. It is like taking a loan to pay off another loan: the problem is put off by a few years, or to another life. It is not solved.
   • Bad karma from a past life is paid off through suffering, through sacrifice, through giving — "not through wearing some beautiful thing on your finger".
   • Prayer is very effective. The horoscope shows which deity to pray to, which mantra, and how many letters and words the mantra should have. The right pūjā settles a problem permanently and faster.

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