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September 2001
The Bridge of Skies
I am happy to announce that in the latest issue of The Mountain Astrologer (October/November 2001), I have published my first non-software astrology article.
This article -- called Bridge of Skies -- shows you how to use Vedic insights and techniques in your Western chart readings. Years of learning has gone into the article, and I hope you enjoy it.
A Gentler Approach to Chart Readings
Let the chart hold your hand and guide you to the person.
We are very inclined to analyze charts, and to some extent that is necessary. But after we've discovered the predominant themes and patterns, it helps greatly to mentally step back and let the chart speak to us.
In other words, to stop efforting and trying to squeeze meaning out of the patterns, and instead allow our intuition and deeper mind share their insights with us.
Pattern recognition may be built upon confluence, upon the repetition of themes throughout the chart, but to really imbue our readings and our understandings with life, and with real significance, we need to allow the artist within us to emerge.
It is the marriage of a very deep understanding of the facts & techniques of astrology with the agility and creativity of the unbounded mind that makes astrology sacred, beautiful, and magical.
May we all "lose our minds" after exploring each chart, and allow the chart to gently, yet firmly, lead us to the truth.
Shri Pati Paddhati
I just completed Hart de Fouw's advanced Vedic astrology course in Shri Pati and Iyer methodologies.
The course was incredibly valuable on many, many levels.
For one, it showed me the rationale for "diurnal" house systems more clearly than ever, and how external events may indeed be more linked to these systems.
The Shri Pati house system is unique. It is not simply Sidereal Porphyry. The Sidereal Porphyry house cusps are at the "middle" (as at most powerful point, not the mathematical center) of each house and are called Bhava Madhyas, with the beginnings and ends of each house calculated by trisecting the arcs between the M.C./I.C. axis and the Ascendant/Decendant axis. In other words, by this method no longer does one sign = one house.
But the mathematics of this method is not the real focus of this piece, but instead the interpretive benefits of this system. Here are a few:
1. Transits to the Bhava Madhyas, i.e. Sidereal Porphyry cusps, are considered important events. Times when the transiting planet will most affect a specific house.
2. There many be -- via a concept called in Western astrology intercepted houses -- more than one Bhava Madhya in a single sign. If so, then a planet may rule more than one or two houses, or even none. E.g. in a chart with Gemini rising, the Madhya for the 1st and 2nd houses may both be in the sign Gemini, and therefore Mercury would rule both of these houses.
3. All issues that are assessed by house position, such as dig bala, kendra bala, temporal friendships, and yogas based on house and not sign positions (e.g. Maha Purusha yogas, which depend upon a planet being in its own or exalted sign in a kendra), should be assessed from the Bhava chart and not the Rasi (sign=house) chart.
4. On the other hand, aspects and associations are reckoned by Rasi, as are many yogas. If a pattern shows up in the Rasi chart but not in the Bhava chart, it will manifest internally and describe personality qualities. If the opposite is true, the pattern will manifest as external events. Permanent chart features, like karakas, again describe personality and inner qualities, while temporal chart features, such as lordships (of Bhava Madhyas) and Bhava placement will indicate visible, external life events.
5. Each Bhava Madhya actually has two lords. The lord of the sign occupied by the Bhava Madhya, called its stoola lord. And the planet that rules the nakshatra occupied by the Bhava Madhya, called its sookshma lord. Both lords are of equal importance, and can help understand chart patterns otherwise unexplainable.
6. The primary use of this system is in dynamic (Dasha and transit) analysis, as opposed to static natal chart interpretation. In other words, in order to delineate a Dasha period accurately, it is valuable to examine both the Permanent (Rasi based) and Temporal (Bhava based) factors pertaining to the planet who's period is running.
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