spirituality

Libra ascendant, Bound to Balance

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A Libra Ascendant has an essential requirement to balance everything. (Do read this post on Libra ascendant to understand the logic). Represented by the ‘Scales’, you, Libra ascendant, are very vulnerable to hits from events and people who can push you off balance. If anything has disturbed your internal balance, you will seem disorganised and unstable in all ways till you find your balance again.

Libra ascendant, Bound to Balance

‘Scales and the Sword’, this is the complete image of Libra. This here is the Adjustment card from the Thoth Tarot deck, which to me is the perfect representation of Libra. The secret strength and weakness of Libra is that you are bound to balance. You, with Libra rising, stand just like this, balanced on the the tip of the sword, balancing so much and with such precision. You are hard at work, so that you can remain absolutely still. And see, it is so easy to put you off balance, you stand on the tip of a sword! So people might think you are easily irritated and moody as takes some time for you to regain your balance. In such off-balance situations you become the Sword.

Saturn is exalted in Libra and his father, the Sun is debilitated here. These are two important bits of information which allow us insights into this rashi and what we can expect when it lies in your 1st house. You are required to work for society and for the disadvantaged around you, who are labouring under unfairness. This work will be highly karmic, you will be required to balance out all imbalance that exists around you. You will be a crusader against everything that goes against your sense of inequality. This work will take its toll on your personal body/ mind and with time your internal ego will be ground out from your personality. You will be made to understand that there is a Higher Divine within you and you will ultimately strive to reach this Source within you. So as you work to restore balance in your environment so do you restore balance within your own self.

Venus owns Libra and this is his mool-trikon sign, ie Libra reflects the highest qualities of Venus, his most esoteric self can be glimpsed from here. You are the embodiment of harmony and wherever you go, you bring with you the higher intellectual, pleasurable, esoteric aspects. Refinement is you. Your very presence seems to smooth down the harshness of life and bring in beauty. Charming, attractive and easy-going, you pay attention to your looks and dress. Classy and elegant is how you present yourself and your environment. A smooth face and features, you are pleasing, there is no harshness in either your appearance or behaviour.

Generous and happy by nature, you are simple at heart. You are ready to help anyone and at any time, kind. You like it when people need you to do some work, ‘justify your existence’ is your watchword. You like being useful, lazing around is not your thing. Responsibility is something you take very seriously in your everyday life. You act for the benefit of  humanity as a whole, public service.

You do not like complications around you, lies, treachery, betrayal etc are not in your dictionary. Imbalance affects you more than anyone else. You dislike people who lie to you, hide things from you, betray your trust or break their word. You need fairness and justice in everything. You have a different sense of internal fairness which you follow rigorously. You can break accepted rules if they go against your typical personal ethics. You will not compromise here. You are convinced about your own principles and generally these are right for you.

If you feel that someone has done good by you, you will go all out to repay his kindness. You do not ask for favours and feel bad if you have to depend on anyone. You cannot bear to remain in anyone’s debt. Debt of any sort is ultimately an imbalance. So if you feel that someone has hurt you, then too you will go all out in returning that unkindness. You cannot tolerate this debt of negative emotions for long and you ensure that you get justice. Normally Scorpio is the most vindictive of all rashi-s, this is his general nature. But when the gentle Libra ‘nice guy’, smiling on the outside, burning on the inside, gets back at the one who has hurt him, it can be worse than a Scorpio in action.

Libra holds the Scales and the Sword, blindfolded. His innate sense of fairness in one hand and in the other hand the sword enforces it. Saturn, the principle of the thing, demands action. Sun, the personal ego is blindfolded, does not exist.

Libra ascendant, Bound to Balance

You are creative and have significant artistic talent, but you do not receive training or opportunities to develop them in life. This can become suffocating, so do try to do something creative at least as a hobby in your spare time. This is a good way of releasing your hidden emotions and hurts. Listen to music, or draw or write etc so that you have some outlet available.

People who meet you professionally either fear or respect you, eventually obey you. You have power and are not scared to wield it, this power may be spiritual or material depending on the rest of the horoscope. You are active and well-known in your social circle, the perfect host. Good people in high positions, in the government etc will be known to you. Your official, non-personal work will be done easily with their help. Possibly a part of a large organisation, bureaucracy or corporate structure, you are always engaged. Your interactions with others are generally positive and both gain. You are willing to change yourself and adapt to new situations, thoughts and challenges. Highly intelligent, your language and demeanour reflects this. Overall a powerful individual if the rest of your horoscope allows it.

But you have very few real friends on whom you can rely, ie with whom you can share your personal issues, bff types will not be very many. You do not allow anyone to see your inner emotional side unless you trust them implicitly. Then there will be opportunistic people in your social circle who will use your abilities for their selfish motives. And you are too kind to snap ties with them. Do be aware that there will be people around you who will ‘use and throw’ you, so sometimes do drop the ‘nice guy’ image and actively get rid of such people around you.

You have soft skills, persuasive, you can convince and bring others over you your way of thinking. You want be the ‘nice guy’ always, so you avoid overt conflicts and messy arguments. You dislike heated words and physical fights. If caught in such a situation you prefer to immediately exit. This tendency to avoid unpleasantness can later boomerang on you if you leave a lot of unfinished ends. But you are good at mediating, can resolve arguments between other people. And on personal levels, you are also rather accommodating, you listen to your loved one’s requirements and try to adjust as long as your core ethics are not disturbed. You understand others in a very deep way. In this respect you are adaptable if your overall objective of maintaining balance is satisfied.

You seem passive and obedient but internally you are not. You are observant, you see things which others try to hide from you. Exploring new ideas, you want to know why things happen they way they do. An insatiable thirst for knowledge and experience. You are born for greater things and a larger society is your target. You actually want to make the world a better place. You are ambitious but not selfish, strict on yourself and also on others. In the pursuit of your goals you can be egoistic or cruel at times, not kind or soft-hearted as you usually are. If you are convinced about something, you chase it with all you have got. Hardship does not hinder you, you are persistent and persevere till you achieve your goals. You might have to sacrifice your personal comforts or might create powerful opponents, but you are quite capable of handling all these incidental things.

Libra ascendant, Bound to Balance

Marriages can be very typical for Libra ascendants because the nature of the spouse is opposite to their basic nature and Libra is extraordinarily sensitive to loss of balance. Protracted arguments, negative emotions, guilt, grief, depression, blame games, heated words in marriage, relationships or even friendships, especially if they continue for a long time can destroy the Libra as well as the relationship.

You generally get married to an active, intelligent, pioneering type. You will gain in power and position in society because of him. Then you like physical intimacy, yours is a demonstrative nature, hugs, kisses and cuddles. So generally you have a good time together in the marriage. You are beautiful, a romantic in love. But both of you should not let your daily life’s issues enter your home, ie if you are upset in the office do not bring these issues home as this can trigger arguments. Your spouse will be more into his own things rather than paying attention to yours, unsympathetic. He will not be very interested in your emotional needs. If you pressurise him for emotional support, he might break with you or get into extra-marital affairs. And if you observe that you are being ignored or your spouse always says ‘no’ to you, it will hurt you deeply. As usual you will try to balance out issues in relationships, adjust yourself so that it all remains very pleasant, you rarely complain. You do not speak out when you get hurt because you do not want to hurt your loved one. You dislike being a burden on anyone. But remember that sometimes full out arguments are necessary to bring issues out so that they can be resolved. This lets off steam from time to time. If you put everything inside for years, do not express your hurt, there will come a day when you finally snap. You never get angry without a reason. But now that you are really angry, hurt and have snapped, you will speak out everything that you have been holding inside for so long. This snap can make you temporarily leave your spouse or even cause a final break up.

If you feel that you are not wanted, you leave. You always put a lot of yourself into any relationship and if you are hurt, you can take ages to recover. You seem very logical and intellectual on the outside but inside you are quite emotional. Such a deep emotional upheaval will numb you on the inside. You will then shut yourself down and try to recover your balance alone. You are a very private person. Your joys are for all to share but you can never share your hurt with anyone, because again you do not want to be a burden on anyone. So after this outburst, you suffer in silence and alone.

You have a tendency to keep your past negative experiences in your mind so that you do not repeat the same mistake again. You can remember hurts forever. Initially it is with the emotional context, later it becomes an intellectual exercise. You never forget or forgive others who hurt you, you will return the hurt or cut them off completely. Self-critical, you hold yourself to very high standards of behaviour and also thoughts/ feelings. If you feel that you have not lived upto your own standards, you can be very ruthless on yourself too.

Your health is average, not very many issues in life. Diseases related to the back, spine and the kidneys, ie organs located at the back of the body are possible. Physical death is generally sudden, ie there are no lingering diseases at the very end of life which is in fact a blessing.

Professions suited to your nature are all those which linked to harmony or beauty. So lawyers, fashion industry, cosmetics industry, interior decorators, models, beauticians, perfumes, film and music industry etc. You are rarely wrong as you are compelled to be fair, you can make a good judge, you cannot lie. You can be a good businessman, an efficient bureaucrat, a Seer, a poet or lose it all as your baser instincts lead you down.

Libra ascendant, Bound to Balance

Sometimes almost a mystic, you like dabbling in metaphysics. You are intuitive and have inner sources of information available. If you are an evolved soul then spiritual practice can elevate your consciousness. You are highly intelligent, logical and analytical and receive direction from unknown sources. And you follow this direction. You do not know why you do, but you intuitively know that this is the right thing. You are inspired by the highest spiritual but you do not experience this inner reality until later in life. You have significant social status and wealth, but you are not enamoured of the material. You want to collect human relationships initially and later you find your relationship with your own self. You are interested in intellectual and spiritual wealth. If you are such a Libra then, your way of speaking is compelling, profound, you can sway masses by the mysterious secrets your words hint at. You can draw people to you, magnetic.

So Libra ascendant, you are a very simple, honest, uncomplicated nature, essentially a peaceful and calm personality. At whatever level of existence you operate, you are very much capable of performing whatever task is assigned to you. You are aware of imbalance in all its forms and you try to balance everything always. This is your karmic duty. And if you can link this to spirituality then you will have an easier time. The Sign which Balances in all ways, at all cost, always.

 

 

Venus Jupiter in opposition or conjunction

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This is a rather thought-provoking and a lengthy post.

The two Guru-s of the zodiac, Devguru Bruhaspati and Daityaguru Shukracharya in opposition, mutual aspect, placed opposite each other ie in the 7/7 axis. This may seem like a nice placement but can be a subtly problematic element in the chart. Even for selecting a muhurt, ie auspicious timing for performing important works, Venus-Jupiter opposition in the skies is considered unfavourable.

Open your chart. Find out Venus’s degree position. Add 180deg to this. This is the exact opposite point. See if you have Jupiter placed within 15deg on either side of this point (This is a 7% probability). If you have a Venus-Jupiter mutual aspect in your birth chart then you are slightly different. The final results will depend on the signs/ houses involved and the rest of the horoscope but this causes typical deep issues related to the individual soul/ Jivatma. (If you have Venus-Jupiter conjunct, ie within 15deg of each other then too expect similar results, this is also a 7% probability.)

Venus and Jupiter in opposition

These two are permanent enemies and as they are placed in the 7/7 axis their immediate status for the chart also becomes inimical. So they become ‘greatest enemies’ for each other. Both are uncomfortable, sitting opposite each other, staring at each other. They are permanently and immediately inimical. eg I intensely dislike someone and he is sitting right in front of me, staring! makes the situation worse. Whatever they are supposed to give in that chart, they cannot do it properly. They are now deadly enemies, but their enmity is not your average swords drawn and baying for blood types, it is the sophisticated, refined upper class sort. Which, perhaps is worse. (Similarly for the conjunction)

The Venus-Jupiter mutual aspect or conjunction creates deep conflicts within the individual soul. Both these graha are Guru, so you desperately crave spiritual nourishment, but there is no clarity on which route to take. This causes internal anguish, a deep dissatisfaction with life. They do give all material stuff for the mind and the body, but the individual soul doesn’t find satisfaction in these and searches restlessly. You search for spiritual guidance, often going to one Guru then to another and you seem fickle in your protestations of religiosity/ spirituality.

On the outward levels, you love luxuries, are easy going, very motivated on what you really want to do, generous, affectionate, loyal, idealistic, intelligent, generally well off in life, in some suitable profession, inclined towards religious pursuits, etc. But on the inner levels there is a deep disconnect with the desires of the body/mind and the desire of the soul. The married life is generally problematic. The spouse has very different thought processes and expectations from life which in the long run causes serious differences. It can be unfair on the person you marry and generally ends up in a superficial marriage of convenience or a break. There are very real chances of not getting married at all, late marriage, separation, divorce, early death of the spouse etc depending on the entire chart. This combination does not promote marital happiness or companionship. As a parent you generally have limited children, the children can be gifted with occult abilities. Internally it can get quite messy, though superficially it all seems ok.

Venus and Jupiter in opposition

Let’s analyse. Both are spiritual teachers, one is the Guru of the Dev-s, the sons of Aditi, and the other is the Guru of the Daitya-s, the sons of Diti. They have an allegory/ history going back to when they were students at Rishi Angiras’s gurukul/ school. Venus was the brightest, the class-topper. And Jupiter, Angiras’s own son, was second. Campus interviews, the Dev-s wanted Angiras to suggest them a suitable guide, and he with a father’s selfishness wanted this cushy job for Jupiter. Venus justifiably felt very bad, so went and offered his guidance to the Daitya-s who disliked the Dev-s. They were grateful and welcomed him. The Dev and Danav factions constantly wage war with each other. As they fight it out on the gross levels, their Guru-s are also enemies but on the spiritual levels. In the story/ allegories they are called demi-gods and demons, but Dev represent your Rajasic-Satvic tendencies and the Daitya are your Rajasic-Tamasic tendencies. (Samkhya does pop up everywhere, but it is unavoidable, it is the prelude to Advaita.)

Jupiter is routinely considered to be the agent of benevolence, luck, divine blessings, the spiritual preceptor, protection, the help you receive from your peers/ patrons, your auspicious karmas from your past lives etc. His primary job is to connect you with the divine, to expand your consciousness. Jupiter prefers the external trappings of worship, pujas, going to temples, moorthi-puja, mantra and the rest of the showy stuff. He maintains order and tradition in spirituality too, he will not allow deviation. He generally does not allow esoteric, experimental stuff, and sticks to the standard path. And you cannot remain satisfied with indefinite external religion, you have to turn inwards to progress. And each one of us is different so a bit of experimentation and personal touch to the spiritual path is essential. Jupiter does not allow this to happen (hint: Jupiter’s mooltrikon is not Pisces but Sagittarius, why? work it out for yourself).

He is located at the Swadhishtan chakra. Bruhaspati means the ‘force which enters the expanded infinity and causes change’. One point to be always remembered with Jupiter is that he enhances and expands the results of the signs/ planets/ houses he touches rather than creating something on his own. He is responsible for regulating the satvic tendencies in you, a rather easy job, a routine SOP. He does not think out of the box, nor is adaptable or sociable, more like pompous, traditional and thinks himself to be higher than the rest. His students ie the Dev-s, are satvic-rajasic tendencies so he believes that if the material needs are satisfied, his students will naturally incline towards the spiritual, like there is no other option. A very hopeful teacher, but this is not very sensible expectation nor an effective approach especially in these modern times.

Jupiter cannot grant the deepest Illumination. He supports material+religious together. He can help you gather your material, mental, subtle etc forces.  He can grant you a solid foundation to make your attempt. He can sustain, strengthen, motivate you while you prepare for the jump from the ‘form’ to the ‘formless’. He will help you reach the springboard from which you will jump. He can stop you from falling. But Jupiter cannot make you jump towards your inner Self. This last is the exclusive speciality of Venus, the Shukracharya, only he knows how this final attempt is to be performed.

Venus and Jupiter in opposition

’Shukracharya’, means ‘the spiritual teacher who teaches the brightest brilliance’, a highly benefic planet capable of giving very auspicious results. Shukra operates from the Anahata chakra and your consciousness expands out from this chakra. Venus is ‘desire’, ‘kaam’. This ‘desire’ on the very gross levels is reflected in the desires of the body, sexual desires, physical relation with other humans, luxuries, money, wealth, sensual desires, passions, indulgence etc. But he is always sophistication not lust. He is an artist, a Kavi, he creates infinite beauty. One level up, he initiates intellectual desires, refinement, desires of the mind, ie creative art, poetry, classics, fine arts etc. And then deepest is the desire of the soul. For the rare few, if you pass his tests, he unveils to you your own deepest desire.

This is the real face of Venus, the Sat-Guru, who will make you aware of your deepest desire. The desire of the individual soul to experience its Reality. You are deeply attracted only to your own Reality and nothing else. The desires of the body and mind are illusions and ultimately irrelevant. This is the lesson that Venus is out to teach. He will give you the desires of the body/ mind but gradually make you aware of their illusory nature. He creates a subtle dissatisfaction with the physical/mental and waits to see if you realise the depth of your soul’s desire. If you don’t, you get a subtle kick from the material life. He will subtly rap your knuckles till you realise. His function is to regulate your tamasic qualities and ultimately bring your consciousness above these qualities. He refines your individual soul, removes the dross, till your pure Brilliance is unveiled to your own eyes.

The most difficult task has been assigned to the most competent Guru, the class-topper. Thus his teaching methods are practical, different, adaptable, creative and sure-shot successes. His students are the worst back-benchers, tamasic-rajasic, they will bunk classes if given half the chance. But he has accepted them as his students so he will do his job. He is pragmatic, he has seen the worst tendencies of the mind (he has seen his own Guru give preference to the second best student in a fit of paternal love). He has no illusions and no ego. Even when he offered his guidance to the Daitya-s, he knew the enormity of the task he was taking up but he is coolly capable and confident about his ability. So he does gives the material stuff but springs cryptic surprise tests on his students to ensure that they realise the illusory nature of it all. If they fail his tests, they have to repeat his lessons till they realise. He is a very thorough rigorous teacher who knows the secret of ‘Immortality’.

He has a job to do and he will do it perfectly, he will reveal to you your soul’s desire and also the perfect way to satisfy it. He is the supreme teacher of the most essential, high, secret, personal, esoteric face of spirituality. He is exalted in Pisces just for this reason. He has only one eye, ie his third eye is open. He allows the final merger of the individual soul into the infinite singularity. He is the ultimate desire to Unite and is Unity himself.

Venus and Jupiter in opposition

Thus there is an essential difference between Jupiter and Venus. Both Gurus, but both teaching very different types of disciples, with very different methods of teaching. One is brilliant, concentrated, practical. The other is expansive, hopeful, lucky?

As Jupiter and Venus fight it out face to face, their different natures become apparent. Jupiter expands Venus’s qualities and Venus appreciates Jupiter’s but both cannot come to a conclusion about what they want to do together. There is another very important story/ allegory of the Samudra manthan, where the Dev and Daitya factions stand opposite each other but in a rare spirit of cooperation churn the Ksheer-Samudra. This churning produces first a deadly poison but then final immortality is achieved. These two in mutual opposition in your chart is something like this. They churn the Three-gun, Satva-Raja-Tama relentlessly. The material life is subtly poisoned and only when all the planets mature, ie the late 40-s does the soul Realise what it desires.

The best solution for you is to do something on the spiritual front. Sometimes Jupiter will dominate, as per Dasha/transits, so you will do external pujas and stuff. In this stage you will gather your resources. And at other times Venus will dominate, so you will trash your pujas and do personal mediation, burning those resources to push your consciousness higher. This will be a cyclic pattern. Things start making sense in the 40-s. Now they cooperate, Jupiter provides the fuel for Venus to burn. And Venus will rocket you off to your own self. If the rest of the horoscope permits, you can achieve Moksh or at least high levels of spiritual progress in life. Choose your path well, this opposition is a very rare opportunity.

 

venus and jupiter in opposition

(Two charts from my own family have Jupiter-Venus exactly 180 deg opposite each other, to the degree. About 0.2% people have this rarest opportunity. In this complex inner torment, if Rahu-Ketu are involved, then the person goes through severe karmic events on the inner levels. Surprisingly both have Rahu/Ketu influencing the Venus/Jupiter. The rarest energies. And finally the third chart, my Sat-Guru, had an exact conjunction of Venus-Jupiter on the same degree and again they were heavily influenced by Rahu.)

 

 

 

The 12th House of Bridges

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The first house/ ascendant is the sign rising on the east horizon as you were born. But upto a couple of hours before you were born, the sign which occupies your 12th house was rising. The first day of your life, before you arrived as an independent person, the 12th house sign rose at the east preparing the environment for your to-be-born person/ environment. It was then the bridge between the Pitrulok and the Martyalok. 

The instant of birth is beautifully synchronised by the Moksh trikon. We are born (1st house) from the energies of our past lives (12th house) we settle into the security of our new destination Martyalok (4th house) and the umblical cord is cut (8th house) completing the birth process.

The 12th house rules the immediate past life. All the stuff from the immediate past life is the resource from which your new persona/environment is created. At the moment of death, the entire life passes before one’s consciousness, in a span of a second, infinitely fast. You watch your current life’s replay in a single glimpse. And you fix your consciousness on one incident from this life as you pass out of the body-shell. This impression decides your immediate next life. You have this choice at your point of exit. If you can choose consciously, you have control over your next life. Or if you can power your exit with a mantra like ‘Om’, Soham Hamsa you can propel yourself to a better energy state or even gain Videha Moksha. But most of us are quite scared at this point, so miss out on this literally once in a lifetime opportunity. 

Most astrologers are hesitant about deciphering the 12th house. Its traditional meanings of losses, reduction of the physical manifested, dreams, spirits, solitude, dream states, requirement of leaving the home and familiar environments, private prayers, contemplation, sleep, dream-states, past lives, imprisonment, insanity, sensitivity to the other dimensions and to astral cues, etc are quite unsettling. Your 12th house brings to you all the feelings, thoughts, images from your past lives which shape your present life. This information can be enabling or threatening to your present sense of self. Regrets from the past life and also its successes are stored here.

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Examine your 12th house, the sign, the occupant planets, the aspecting planets. Then the location of this sign’s ruler planet, which sign is he in, the planets with him and aspecting him. Use the keywords of the planets, signs and houses to get a general idea of what type of results you can expect. If you feel confident about reading your Navamsha, then check out all these planets you have identified. Do they gain power in the D9, will they give auspicious results or not. So now you have a reasonable idea of your 12th house and its power to give results. This is the baseline, more events and their timings will depend on the Dasha and the transits as always.

If there are several or significant planets connected to the 12th house, you have a lot of your conscious life connected to the affairs of the 12th house. There will be several issues from your past lives which you will be resolving, albeit unconsciously, in this life. If you have your ascendant sign ruler planet or the Moon or the Sun in the 12th house you need to take care as the personality will be, as a whole, more into the inner subconscious world. If any of the other planets are placed here, then you will focus on your inner side as per the keywords of that planet. eg Jupiter here will make you base your life’s philosophies on your experiences of the 12th house. If you have the biggest karmic boss Saturn here, you will be required to work your karma out in the astral dimensions.

If there are no planets placed in the 12th house, it is empty, then you do not have significant karma connected to this house. Then examine the owner planet to know how you use the mysterious energy of the 12th house in your life. One exception here will be the Aquarius ascendant sign. Here the ruler of the 1st and 12th houses will be the same taskmaster Saturn. The second exception will be Leo ascendent as the other luminary Moon rules the 12th house. Both these ascendant signs, the personality will be equally at home and equally active in the conscious and sub-conscious dimensions of existence.

The 12th house is the house of extreme results, let’s check its positive aspects in this post. If your 12th house is capable of giving auspicious results, then it can be a good sub-conscious foundation for the current life. The sign and planets placed here can be your secret helpers and your sub-conscious supports your conscious self in overall growth. You are able to use their energies in effectively managing your external world. These planets/ sign will indicate the positive karma from your past life which you are going to use to your advantage in this life. You were helpful, generous and kind to others in your past lives, worked on your spiritual growth and now in this life you are going to benefit and get a boost from all this.

You need more time alone as 12th is an intensely private house. You enjoy solitude, dislike noise, crowds and too many people around you. This isolation can be by choice or by necessity. You may live in the mountains, in an ashram or a spiritual retreat by choice, If not for a lifetime, then at least for a few significant years of your life. Or serve in such institutions by karmic necessity, eg in lunatic asylums, prisons, deep forests, mines. You either need to experience the isolation yourself or vicariously through others who are kept isolated. Solitude is often linked to self-introspection, delving into one’s own hidden depths to understand mysterious things about oneself. And you are very productive when you get this time alone. What you do now depends on the planets/ sign here. eg Mercury here can be a writer or Venus here can be an intense spiritual seeker. Your energies indicated by the 12th house are directed inwards so developing inner resources is very much possible.

You dislike crowds, dislike being in the public eye. You are very sensitive to the astral cues of other people, eg their aura affects you. If you become aware of someone seeing you, speaking to you, listening to you or around you, you feel conscious, shy and unable to perform normally. You feel vulnerable in a crowd. If you have major or several planets in the 12th house you tend to be an intensely private person. You go out in society, meet people, do your job etc but essentially you are not open to sharing things about yourself. Close friends will be limited and you cannot share your personal things even with them. Things of the 12th house desire to remain in the background. You are very protective of the things indicated by the 12th house as you are very deeply vulnerable to these. These things if affected adversely, do not remain on your conscious levels, they directly hit and are absorbed by your astral self.

Another interesting thing if you can observe is, in some families the 12th house of the all the members shows similar placements. This indicates that the family members are moving as a soul group, taking births in sync with each other and having deep subconscious links from their past lives together. The 12th house is the mirror of the 6th house. The house where you consciously repay the one-one personal karma v/s the house where you sub-consciously rebalance karma pending from past lives and linked to a large amorphous collective.

The 12th house can also indicate the situation in your earliest baby-hood and also the environment around your pregnant mother. You don’t remember all this stuff consciously. This is also the reason why sufferings of the childhood are considered highly karmic. These are linked to your earlier lives and leave a subtle impact on your entire current life.

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Our example horoscope, Aleister Crowley, the genius occultist of recent times, birth details 12th Oct 1875, 11:43 pm Leamington UK. His Birth chart, Navamsha chart and Ashtakvarga are as follows.

In his birth chart, the 12th house is Gemini, vacant. Its ruler, Mercury is placed in the 4th house, with Venus and Jupiter. Of these two, Jupiter is quite closely placed by Mercury, and Mercury considers him to be an enemy. Venus is more than 15deg away so there is limited influence of Venus on Mercury. Then Jupiter aspects the 12th house with his ninth house aspect. So we will consider Mercury and Jupiter to be linked to the affairs of the 12th house. In the Navamsha Jupiter moves to Saturn’s Aquarius, a neutral position. And Mercury goes to Mars’ Aries a neutral-to-uncomfortable position. So we can deduce Mercury is not comfortable with all this and Jupiter will give neutral results.

We can glean more information from the Ashtakvarga table for this horoscope. The house total for the 12th house is 25 (Gemini sign is number 3) so as a whole the house will give inauspicious results. In transit through this house, the planet Venus will give beneficial results. Sun, Jupiter, Saturn and Moon will give average results. Mars and Mercury will give unfavourable results as per the Ashtakvarga analysis. Similarly for their Mahadasha-s. So now we know our basic background on the 12th house for further analysis depending on the questions if there were any. 

Birth chart Aliester Crowley

Navamsha Aleister Crowley
Navamsha Aleister Crowley

Ashtakvarga, an easy way to analyse transitsThe 12th house is an important house. The natural 12th sign of the zodiac is Pisces ruled by Jupiter. It is not bad but here you are required to learn very deep lessons which are pending over from your past lives. It might get uncomfortable at times. It is a part of the Moksh trikon. It creates the 9/5 axis with the 4th and 8th houses. We leave the body in the environment of the 8th house, intelligently navigate the transition using the resources of the 12th house and settle into our new destination dimensions using the energy of the 4th house.

If we accept that we prepare our lives for the moment of exit this Moksh trikon becomes more comprehensible. We prepare our mind-set through out our life. We try to meet our targets of karma rebalance. We try to make the most of this life-time and bring positive energies in ourselves. All this so that when that moment of exit comes we can make the most of it and propel our souls to even higher energy states. This genius and creativity of the moment of death is the 12th house. When we leave the body-shell this 12th house again is the bridge which brings us from the Martyalok to the Pitr-lok.

The 1st house is a reflection of the sub-conscious energies of the 12th house brought out into the conscious realm. And the 12th in the same cycle is created by the breakdown of the energies of the 1st house. This is the extraordinary significance of this 12th house.

It is strangely fitting that the instant before we were born and the instant after we leave is governed by the 12th house, the House of Bridges.

 

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Analysis, Rahu in 5th, Ketu in 11th house

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Rahu and Ketu in the 5th/11th axis produce extraordinary individuals as these two houses are connected to the sense of self and the interactions that one has with the infinite others. I wrote about the personality described by Ketu in the 5th and Rahu in the 11th earlier. Rahu/Ketu in the 5th and 11th houses requires that the personality balance between the individual self-ego and the grouped resources/consciousness. There is a huge chunk of energy available in this axis which can be used by you positively or negatively depending on the other placements of the horoscope.

As we are dealing with Rahu/ Ketu, the influences of the planets conjoint or aspecting them, the signs in which they are placed, the power of these sign’s lords etc become very important and require careful analysis. Rahu is just karmic attraction, these others are the direction of the karmic attraction. Similarly Ketu is basically karmic apathy, these others give direction to the detachment. If you want to go into real details, analyse the character of the Lunar mansions/ Nakshatra in which Rahu/Ketu are placed in. And also check if any other planets are placed in the Nakshatra owned by Rahu/Ketu. This will add significant nuances to the reading.

Analysis, Rahu in 5th, Ketu in 11th house

Rahu in the 5th house

This 5th house is very sensitive as it defines your intelligence. There is infinite mental energy available here. How much energy you have with you. Your connect with your internal divinity. Rahu in the 5th means that the 5th house affairs are always in focus.

Creativity is unlimited, this can manifest as a large number of children, or a large number of students. Your children /students will be a bit odd, either very intelligent and very practical or linked to the occult. You can be a very good artist, especially a photographer or an actor where you explore the range of human experiences. A photographer who takes pictures of people or an actor who acts out different personalities are experiencing human nature. (The other combination, ie Rahu in 11th will also produce photographers but these people will prefer taking photos of nature, never people!)

You can write and publish books, you might blog. Expressions are your forte. Every human expression is familiar to you. You can be a good astrologer or someone who uses energy directly but connected in some way to the human experience. You love yourself, you are very aware of your personality, self-love comes easy and you are always confident and sure of yourself in every possible situation.

Education is erratic, there may be breaks in the normal classic style of school/college. But you will never be at a disadvantage here. You will end up with sufficient education to remain ahead in life. If you have a choice in this matter choose a vocation a business a hands-on-professional course in life so that the Rahu energy is more channelised into technical type of stuff. You have an aptitude for this. You can be a scientist, an eccentric inventors, a genius. You have an extraordinary intellect. You can make that leap from a common innovation to a true invention.

The karmic influences of the past lives are very active and you can access these memories very easily. Highly intuitive, you can re-live these without much effort. These are your assets so if you get flashes of events or feelings do not get scared, use the information you receive from them.

You are not really religious. Even if you do take up singing bhajans and indulge in outward show of religion this will be a temporary phase, as you are not really into religion or dogma. You will not follow a book. (Religions have a main book which they are required to follow. Hinduism/ Sanatan Dharm is not a religion, there is no main book. We follow our Conscience). You will want to find out for yourself, you will experiment with several faith systems till you find one which suits your nature. 

You have that rare intellectual appreciation in matters of faith, spirituality, religion and related stuff. When Rahu is in the 5th house and Ketu in the 11th you are attracted to the experience of the deepest self and detached from the extended others. The flow of experience is inward towards the individual self. Rahu, in the Samudra Manthan story-allegory, tried to imitate the Light. There is a desire to become the Light. This can be a highly spiritual placement as you dive inwards into yourself, searching, experiencing your own intelligence till you realise your Real Self. Just remember that the law of Karma operates always. Always follow your Conscience. You are highly intuitive and have access to energies which others normally do not. Rahu/Ketu are karma personified. If you try to cheat yourself / others or cause harm to others using your occult abilities, it will rebound on you very badly. This moral and spiritual wrong will manifest as illness of the body/mind.

If this Rahu is under the influence of malefics or debilitated, especially Sun or Mars it gives a very forceful personality, the person will behave as a mini-tyrant in the house/office. If Mercury with malefic influences or bereft of auspicious aspects sits with such a Rahu it will create a crook, a swindler, someone who does financial crimes.

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Ketu in the 11th house

Important tip : Do not let your friends and group members take advantage of you. (Read this line twice)

Gains of every sort, friends and like-minded groups are the domain of the 11th house. The natural lord of his house is Saturn as he rules the 11th sign Aquarius. True gains or friendships are a product of karma, effort, discipline and hard work. Ketu here is apathy, a product of your karma. You do not feel the need to work to keep your friends. You get along with everyone. Your ‘friends’ are more a product of circumstance, they come and vanish. You are unable to ‘connect’ on the material levels, so partying, going to movies, school/college/office friends are simply not possible. Very rarely will you find someone who will stick with you in the real sense. If there is some esoteric occult or spiritual connect then only your friendships will survive.

Your gains too will be significant but you are unable to retain them. You are unable to retain them. One tip is to never gamble with this combination. Find some professional financial adviser to help you manage your assets as you earn them. Bad advise from older brothers or friends can land you in trouble. There are possibilities of missed opportunities and undesirable people nagging you. You will be known in society as a powerful person, but very private. The 11th house is an upchaya house and Ketu is a natural malefic so results will improve with time. This horoscope will go on giving more and more auspicious results as you grow older.

An underlying sense of grief exists as you are detached from all fruits of your personality. Be aware of this else this will manifest in the body as a skin or nervous disease.

Ketu is highly intuitive, no analysis, so the things connected with the 11th house will be sensed, not analysed. You might get a streak of luck or be connected to the occult. A highly individual way of thinking often against the commonly accepted dogma. If such a Ketu is under auspicious influences, you will be involved in helping others, a humanitarian sort of nature. You can be an astrologer work with other divination systems, be a counsellor. But do not give away more of your assets /energy than what is appropriate. But if this Ketu is under malefics, there are very few friends, person does not socialise, does not even leave the house and the personality becomes very self-centered. There are often problems with elder siblings with this placement.

A conscious balance between the 5th and the 11th house energies is essential. If you think the natural 5th house is fiery Leo and the natural 11th house is the airy Aquarius. The nature of Rahu is fire and Ketu is airy. Double dose of these elements can create an explosive personality. Conscious management of the Rahu-Ketu energies is essential here, else their potential will not be manifested. Rahu-Ketu placements are the challenge of your life-time. This is a hard challenge but if overcome gives the highest possible gain.

The first half of the life is very active while the second half of life goes in relative quiet. It does not mean that you go into obscurity, it rather means that you are satisfied.

Ketu Mahdasha and Rahu Mahadasha as per the Vimshottari system, will be very active, you will actively use their gifts. Especially Rahu-Ketu, the Rahu-Rahu and Ketu-Rahu antardasha/ sub-peroids will be quite karmically heavy-duty. Be very very careful during the Ketu-Ketu subperiod, this brief period of a few months duration will hit very hard. Their sub-periods in the other planet’s Mahadasha-s also will bring in lots of movement.

Their transits are quite slow with 1.5yrs in each sign, (right now they are in Capricorn /Cancer) so keep a look out here too. Periods heavy with Rahu/ Ketu energy will grant profits and gains but after their periods are complete these gains too may erode. 

If you can do regular Dhyan the spiritual aspect of this combination will find its channel. This will allow the material benefits to manifest properly and you will be able to retain these too. Doing mantra -jaap of Rahu and Ketu on Tuesdays/Saturdays and especially during eclipses is very useful to regulate their energies. 

Rahu in the 5th (or 11th), is a dream come true placement. If you navigate the energies with a clear intention and a crystal-clear conscience you will attain the heights of the material as well as the spiritual. Obviously Ketu will support in his own indifferent way but he will support. Rahu-Ketu are together fire-air, Rahu provides the experience for Ketu to transform you. The 5th-11th is also fire-air, unlimited scope for movement and transformation.

This the magic of Rahu-Ketu the 5/11 axis. Experience and Transform.

 

air fireAnalysis, Rahu in 5th, Ketu in 11th house

Kundalini and the Shatchakra

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The human body is a source of extraordinary energies. These energies are spread all through the body structure but the most extraordinary ones are found in the spine and the head of the body. It is very important to protect the head and the spine for energy reasons as well as medical reasons. Let’s focus on the spine in this post. Words and that too in English are very inadequate to describe the magnificence of these energies, these have to be experienced.

Kundalini and the Shatchakra

Westerners think that that there are crores and crores of gods in Sanatan Dharma, 33 crores to be exact! Several Hindu’s believe this too. This belief is good enough for average people who not know the true meanings of Sanskrit words. But for those who understand Sanskrit (not just know Sanskrit) there are 33 ‘koti’ / classes of energies in Sanatan dharm. (Koti means excellence, class, point, end, top, edge, eminence, pitch of sound, etc. Can you see it now? there are basically 33 types of energies.)

Now these 33 koti deities, each ‘koti’ corresponds to one segment of your vertebral column. There are 33 vertebrae. The 33 classes of energies, i.e. the eight Vasu, twelve Aditya, eleven Rudra, Indra and Prajapati are located in your spine. Be very careful of your back and head (friends casually hit each other on the head/back, it can be damaging). Your backbone is the literal backbone of your spiritual practice. If your spine and head are physically deformed or damaged you cannot do Dhyan. For manipulating the pran in the delicate nadis of the spine the backbone needs to be in shape. That is why we have the entire system of doing Yog-asans. (Suryanamaskar is the very basic asan which everyone should practice at sunrise, it keeps every body part in shape. It is breath control, body control and mantra recited mentally together. Find a good teacher and start with 3 repeats a day and slowly increase by one count per week, max is 108 repeats).

(Sometimes I feel quite deeply for Libra ascendant people, if the ascendant sign/ruler is well placed then doing spiritual practice is a bit easier for them. But if there are problems here, the back, backbone, spine, vertebrae and the associated structures suffer.)

The Spine however is the basis of all energy work and the spinal cord protected within it is the physical side of the energy nadis. There are several of them along the spine, however the most important are the 3, Ida, Pingala and Sushumna. Sushumna contains Vajrini, inside this is the Chitrini, inside this is the Brahmanadi. The Sushumna is connected to the top of the head called Brahmarandhra and to the lower point at the base of the spine at the centre of the genital area.

The Brahmanadi at the lower end is locked in place within the human body with a complicated knot of 3 and half coils twisted and fixed around a hexagonal ‘kurma’ structure. This is not a physical organ, it is an energy structure, and is linked to the consciousness. If it ever gets detached from the kurma-shila, it is physical death. This interlocked area is called the Kundalini. Its energies in the resting locked state ‘look’, reddish-brown to darkish yellow. The Kundalini is where the pran from the Hiranyagarbha links to the human’s Brahmanadi. The locks of the Kundalini are highly intricate because they protect the most valuable thing conceivable, the door to the Brahmanadi. There are locks within locks, in all possible dimensions and energies. An average human cannot even dream of even accessing these locks, leave opening them! But if a deserving Yogi tries to access them, he will be allowed entry.

(The energy which helps access and then open these locks is the Vighnaharta, Ganapati. The first mantra that we begin with for any energy work is Ganapati’s. He is the ultimate Vighnesh, remover of obstacles, basically means that he removes the ultimate obstacle of the locks within locks and allows access to the Brahmanadi. As children we are first taught the Gayatri mantra and the second one is Ganapati’s.)

(Kurma means several things, a tortoise, one of the 49 types of vayu in the body, name of a Naag, the second Avtar of Vishnu, a figure made by intertwined ropes, the manifested reality swimming in the ‘water’ of ksheer samudra. This is the reason why Sanatan dharma is ridiculed by people who do not understand Sanskrit. The ‘earth’ is supported on the ‘tortoise’!, basically means that the Muladhar/prithvi tattva rests on the kurma-shila.)

Kundalini and the Shatchakra

Now after the initial protection/foundation at the kurma-shila and the Kundalini the Brahmanadi is protected in the spine by 6 more locks called the Shatchakras. Muladhar, Swadhisthana, Manipur, Anahata, Vishuddi and Ajnya. There are 5 tattvas, prithvi, aap, tej, vayu and akash. These tattvas are dominant in the various chakras and give rise to their typical colors, sounds, geometry, shapes and attributes. These attributes affect the movement of the pran in this area.

We visualise these chakras as ‘lotuses’ with varying number of ‘petals’. These shapes in the simplest 2 dimensions are seen as the yantras of that chakra. These represent the movement of the pran through the brahmanadi around the chakra, sometimes fast, slow, curved, sharp turns, triangular etc. (This may sound dull to read, but just think our ancient Rishis had the power and focus to ‘see’ the movement of vital energy/pran in their body. When you see a yantra of a chakra, you are actually seeing now pran moves in your body at this point.) These movement of the pran in the area around the chakra is correlated with the gait/movements of animals, slow, fast, jumping, etc so these animals are called the ‘vahan’/carrier of the energy of the chakras.

In an average human the movement of energy is unbalanced leading to several mental, emotional, psychological, physical etc problems. If you have ever visited a real Nadi Vaidya, he will just touch your pulse points at the wrist and tell you what is your health status on all levels. Such a Vaidya can access the movement of pran in the brahmanadi and diagnose you very very deeply.

The Sri Yantra/Mahameru is all the chakras of superimposed on each other in 2D/3D. When you focus on the central bindu you are forcing your own pran to move in its perfect route. You are giving it, its perfect energy diagram to follow, you are training it. You are doing the deepest possible healing on yourself.

The sounds that the pran makes as it moves through the chakra is the beej mantra of that chakra. This beej mantra is written in the center of the lotus geometry yantra of that chakra. And as the pran moves through the smaller segments of the chakras, through each individual ‘lotus petal’  it makes more sounds which are heard as even more beej mantras. In the yantra you must have seen these individual letters written on each segments.

Now the brahmanadi is entwined around the chakra. The chakra is a point, the brahmanadi forms its ‘lotus’ and its ‘petals’ around it. When the pran moves it describes every ‘letter’ of the Sanskrit alphabet, how it looks like, the alphabet. We have lost the actual original alphabet, though those who can see can just look within and write it again. It is so awesome that the script that we write Sanskrit in, is the actual movement of the pran within the brahmanadi as it makes the corresponding sound, moving around the chakra.

(The first person to write this alphabet was Brahmi, the daughter of Samrat Rishabhdev, who had his capital city at Ujjain, she was sister to Bharat, after whom our nation Bharat is named and Bahubali, who is known as the epitome of asceticism. This alphabet was named after her as ‘Brahmi’.)

This Brahmanadi then passes through the spine and at the top of the head expands and becomes the thousands petaled Sahastradala kamal. It is also described as the thousand headed Sheshnaag, the Naag on which Vishnu rests. This sahastradala kamal is like your energy antennae, these pick up the pran, the energy, the communications from other dimensions etc, everything from the Universes and also broadcasts your energy to the universes. Here also the myth is an allegory. Vishnu is the Universe and he sits on the Sheshnaag having thousands of heads, i.e your Brahmanadi. Can you reach up to Him within Yourself?

(Naag means fearsome, cloud, luminous, entwined, mountain, immense, seven, snake, tree, intelligent, one who creates, undefinable etc. )

We average humans are in search of the powers of matter, which is located at the bottom of the Brahmanadi, the Yogis search for the realisation of Vishnu and the beyond located at the top of the Brahmanadi. In an average human the Sahastradala kamal droops, its petals scattered without any order, but for a Yogi they are perfect, erect and energised.

Just remember you have the Universe within yourself. You are everything. You have such priceless extraordinary energies within you, if you could only focus on them. Nothing is lost and no one goes anywhere, if you decide that you want to experience or know something just put your intention and will behind it. You have the power within you to manifest it. Use it!

 

Kundalini and the Shatchakra