Last Updated on July 30, 2020 by astrologerbydefault

Each planet represents an aspect of your life. But ‘Life’ itself is a very complicated thing to define! What should I consider to be my ‘Life’, my physical material life, my emotional psychological life, my internal spiritual life or is it anything else beyond these?

We take birth to experience Everything, which concludes in the ultimate experience of our own Real Self. Every action that we have chosen in our horoscope finally leads us to this. Every joy, disappointment, every physical manifestation and every spiritual act is a step in this direction. So from a spiritual point of view there is nothing called ‘malefic’ or ‘benefic’. These terms are used only in reference to the physical material life.

“My Saturn is badly placed, so will he give me ‘bad results’ throughout his Mahadasha?”

A very valid question this, but it defeats the very purpose of Jyotish. This is the science of illumination, there is no room for superstition, self-doubt and self-criticisms here. If you fear your planetary positions you have missed the point of Jyotish enquiry.

We call planets ‘malefics‘ and houses as ‘dushamsthana‘. But you should understand that these terms mean that the activities indicated by this house/planet are going to cause you pain. The Karma associated with them is the negative sort. You are going to be made to work hard to restore your karmic balance. All the houses and planets are of use, have a purpose and are ultimately beneficial in the spiritual sense.

Your entire chart is active and influences you throughout your life. But the intensity of influence of the different planets varies at specific periods. The intensity is more during..

1. The mahadasha of the planet. And specially during the first /swa-antardasha and the last chida-antardasha.
2. And the transits which have to be analysed in details for every planet. All transits are important. Saturn sets the tone with 2.6yrs in one sign, then Rahu/Ketu with 1.6 yrs in one sign. Then Jupiter with 1 year per sign. Mars, Venus and Mercury stay in each sign for 2-3 months, Sun for 1 month and Moon for 2.25days.

Now everyone is scared of Shani because he makes you work hard, without rest, constricts resources, delays arrival of new things, causes emotional and physical stress, delays benefits, ensures discipline and is very strict. But he is fair. Use up what you have, only then will he allocate more resources. Not a penny more not a penny less. Shani’s gift to you is a fast-track to karma rebalance.

But if you want to be scared of the planets, why stop at just Saturn. All planets have their other faces which make their lessons tests of endurance in my opinion even worse than Saturn’s. Yes and these are ‘benefics’ too!

Do you know what Venus can do, if he really puts on his bad boy face? Destroy your relationships with others which will subtly impact your own relationship with yourself. You may have all the luxuries in the world but if you do not feel good about yourself, do not love yourself, your life is a subtle torture. If my wife whom I love very very deeply with my soul, always throws back the gifts I get for her, in my next life I will end up with something like Venus + Ketu. Can you even imagine how it is to be detached from all relationships including the one you have with yourself?

Jupiter breaking bad? Is this even possible? Yes. I have seen one chart where the Jupiter + Moon in the 12th house contributed to her death by internal haemorrhage, destroyed her physical body in the space of 1 week. Jupiter is the agent of expansion, but if he expands the wrong things it is a problem. Jupiter in the 6th, 8th, 12th houses will expand enemies, debts, servitude, diseases, arguments, accidents, surgeries, traumas, catastrophic changes, tantrik activities, even attract early physical death, destroy your physical stuff and thus pull you towards the astral. Jupiter can also confer pomposity, rigid religious views and even fanatically extreme philosophical ideas if he wants.

The pearly opalescent Moon? The agent of emotions, mind, comforts and astral self. If Moon decides to become a hard-taskmaster, he will literally pull the rug from under your feet. Your mother will be your jailer, those who are supposed to be your caregivers will be your enemies. You will get zero sense of comfort, no emotional support and sense of security. You may have been a great tantrik earlier, but in this life even tiny entities will trouble you. You will not have access to your own astral potential. Moon in 6th and your emotions become your enemies, a disease and a debt. A life of internal loneliness!

Mercury if turns ‘bad’ can distort your thinking machinery and your confidence. You are what you think you are. In your spiritual progress you need to have a razor-sharp intellect because there will be so many tests on your way. In normal life too, Mercury can create psychological problems from anxiety to depression to generic sadness, even insanity and pessimism. Just because his effects on the intellect are not as visible as Shani’s effects on the body does not mean that they are any less damaging. A faulty thinking process can ruin everything from personal relationships to business to profession and will trap you in very difficult situations.

And the Sun? It can turn into a scorching ball of Ego. So shiny that you are unaware of others around you. Selfish and self-referential you then hurt people around you. Since this is the Sun, you will end up neglecting a large chunk of ‘subjects’, maybe a large group of population, or members of a large family, or workers in a factory etc, people who are dependent on you. For your own personal glory you will put these many in pain. Then this becomes a huge backlog of karma which will be re-balanced in your next lives, you will be denied creativity and access to divine inspiration till you make up to all those you owe to. Imagine Sun in the 12th house, cut off from all support of the self-ego, blankness, no support from father neither from the divine intelligence and no real creativity in the physical world.

Mars is a bad boy everyone knows that, aggressive and belligerent. But his other face where he will deny his energies is equally bad, he can then sap your vitality and drain the pran/vital energies moving around in your body. If the drain is slow there will be illness, but if he does this fast enough then rapid death can be one of the results! Or on the other hand he can cause uncontrolled movements of energy in the naadis leading to those typical ‘stroke’ problems. And finally if he decides he can make you choose a low energy route when you leave your physical body and you will be stuck with a low energy body in your next life too.

Rahu is a malefic no doubt about that. Showing you attractive visions, even taking you upto them and then bringing you down with a crash. Rahu is the reason we desire. Now if you have a Rahu+Moon with no other planet to modify this result. Eternal craving for emotional satisfaction, with fulfilment perpetually denied. You will see it coming but at the edge of satisfaction, it will be denied. And Rahu/Ketu mature at the age of 48yrs. So this person will attain emotional maturity at 48yrs when more than half his life has gone by and his habits are set. A very huge challenge!

Ketu is the reason we detach from everything. He is super for a spiritual outlook but terrible for the physical life. Imagine Ketu with the ascendant lord with no other planets to help out. Cut off from the sense of self, no expressions, no real understanding of the own self, no head! for life. For such a person the only possible option is taking sanyas and questing for the spiritual, because he will never be able to relate to his own personality and neither to his environment ever!

Extreme results occur only with combinations of planets, one single placement can never never be used for predictions. Before scaring yourself with incomplete analysis, go over the chart again with a fresh mind. If you then again see any huge problems take corrective actions, using mantras, regular spiritual practice etc. 

Every placement has been chosen by yourself at the moment of your birth. You chose your chart. Your chart does not control you, it is the energy diagram of your karmic balance. You have come here to work off your karmic baggage, some tasks are easy and you complete them in a jiffy, but some require hard work and strain your body and mind. Never fear a house/planet! These are all different facets of your own self. If you say your Saturn is bad, or your Jupiter is not giving benefic results, you are saying your own efforts to resolve karma are not giving results. You are invalidating a part of your own self.

Your current life is not stand-alone one-off thing. It is just one episode in a long-running TV serial show. Accept the teachings that you are being given in your this sojourn on earth. You are the reason why things happen to you.

{This post is in response to this, “Malefic planets give bad results, but I cannot understand, how can a benefic planet can give bad result?” I received in the Comment form, I hope it has been of some use.}