Astro Vedica

Catalog # SKU0419

Publisher TGS Publishing

Weight 1.50 lbs

Author Name Dean Dominic de Lucia

ISBN 10: 1610330609

ISBN 13: 9781610330602

$19.95

Quantity

Ask a question about this product

Description

Astro Vedica

A Treatise on the
Predictive Astrology
of Rishi Parashara

by Dean Dominic de Lucia

There are many " how to " books which have been recently produced for the Vedic ( Hindu ) astrology market, and one may question the necessity for another one. There are several reasons for this. For one thing, it does not seem that the modern astrological writers in India who have presented the science in English anticipated exactly how it would be accepted. It is all right enough to write in English for an Indian audience. Hindus are accustomed to receiving information about their own culture without changing it all around or grafting it on to something else; they are quite comfortable with their culture and they are very traditional to begin with. But in the West a more challenging and experimental approach is the norm. Thus, even though the Hindus writers, by and large, have done a reasonable job of making a presentation of the science of astrology to the English-reading public, they have presented it to a public lacking perpective on it.

In this sense, the present effort is truly unique. The beginning chapters practically play the role of a book on esoteric astrology. Some very unique philosophical perspectives and mindsets are presented.

Excerpt:

Part II: Component Factors
Chapter Six: The Zodiac

The zodiac is called in Sanskrit the Kala-purusha, or time personified. It is also referred to as the Kala-chakra, the wheel of time. Who and what is the Kala-puruasha exactly, and what are its functions? To begin with, let us consider the following dialogue from The Bhagavad Gita.

In the eleventh chapter of Gita, ( verse 31 ), Arjuna inquires of Shree Krishna " Oh Lord of Lords, so fierce of form, please tell me who You are. I offer my obeisances to You; please be gracious unto me. You are the primal Lord. I want to know about You, for I do not know what Your mission is." The reader will recall from a previous chapter that the Supreme Person, Shree Krishna, answered:

Kalo 'smi loka-kshaya-krit pravriddho lokan

"Time I am, the great destroyer of the worlds, and I have come to engage all people."

So to begin with, this is how we can understand the zodiac. It is an aspect of the universal form of God. In other words, it has to do with time, and time is an agency of God. So understanding the zodiac will help us to understand God, his will and his plans for us. Again, the zodiac measures time and astrology is principally a study of time.

There are twelve divisions of the zodiac: three signs are fiery, three are earthy, three are airy and three are watery. The fiery signs tend to impart a brave and energetic nature, the earthy signs are more practical and mundane. The main thrust of airy signs is intellectual, calculating and changeable, while the watery signs give one an emotional and caring nature. These are, of course, basic tendencies. One's actual nature will be determined by the many different permutations and combinations of planetary and zodiacal arrangements. The following is a list of the different signs and their corresponding elements:

Fiery signs: Aries, Leo and Sagittarius
Earthy signs: Taurus, Virgo, and Capricorn
Airy signs: Gemini, Libra and Aquarius
Watery signs: Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces

These twelve different divisions of the zodiac, are representative of different parts of the body of the Kala-purusha, " time personified." Aries, for example, represents the head of the form of time. Taurus is his mouth and facial area. Gemini stands for his throat and shoulders while Cancer is representative of his heart and chest. Leo is the stomach of time personified, Virgo represents the area of the intestines, Libra the external genitalia, Scorpio the large intestine and anus, Sagittarius represents the thighs, Capricorn the knees, Aquarius stands for the calves while Pisces has reference to the feet of the form of time ( the zodiac ).

An important thing to realise is that the coordinates of the Vedic zodiac are different from the Western zodiac with which the reader is familiar. It is called a sidereal zodiac. This means that its coordinates are measured in relation to certain fixed stars. The Vedic star Revati is the principle indicator.

This is different from the Western zodiac which is called a tropical zodiac. The coordinates of the tropical zodiac are measured by the movements of the Sun. The position of the Sun at the moment of the Spring solstice marks the beginning of the Western zodiac. The difference between the two amounts to about 24 degrees. This means that, for example, if one has one's Sun at 23 degrees Taurus by the Western, tropical calulations, it will end up at near 29 degrees of Aries in the Vedic, sidereal zodiac. It is beyond our scope to examine the astronomical technicalites of the matter, just know that the difference does exist. The point is that the whole horoscope becomes plotted differently than in the Western system and one's sign changes. So a person has to become accustomed to seeing himself in a different way, as corresponding to a different sign.

This task of seeing things differently is complicated for the reader by the fact that Vedic astrology emphasizes the rising sign and even the Moon sign instead of the Sun sign ( see the fifth paragraph of the chapter entitled " The Planets " ). It is easy to know what our Western Sun sign is just by knowing our date of birth. But to know our Vedic sign, we have to perform the Vedic calculations for the rising sign at our moment of birth. It is not a matter of what month in which a person was born, because all of the signs of the zodiac rise on the horizon and make a complete rotation on any given day. And in order to make good use of this book, one should have the Vedic calculations in front of him or her.

The method of erecting the Vedic horoscope has been given step by step in the appendix at the end of this book. If one is already knows how to erect the Western horoscope, it will be easy to make the conversion to the Vedic scheme, although calculating the planetary periods is a different matter. Our course, it is difficult to master the calculations if one has no previous experience at all. A tutor who already knows how to do the Vedic calculation would be helpful. But there is so much Vedic astrology software on the market nowadays that there is hardly any necessity of doing the calculations by hand.

Now that some basic definitions have been covered, let us delve into the actual nature of the different signs of the zodiac. To a great degree, these descriptions will be similar to the typical descriptions of Western writers. But remember that the Vedic version is being described such that some differences might be noted.

Aries is a fiery sign. It indicates the male sex. It is represented by two rams butting heads against each other. Among its themes are striking and hitting. Even the word " krura " or fierceness is used to describe this sign. The idea is that birth under this sign imparts a challenging and resistent nature. This is important to know- this challenging nature is probably the most outstanding trait of Aries. It is not a passive sign, nor a particularly patient sign, nor a maternal sign, nor the sign of an introverted personality. And things like appeasement and weakness go against the grain of the Aries personality- remember that Aries people challenge. It is interesting in this regard that the lord of this sign, Mars, was considered by the Romans to be the god of war. Aries does belong to the warrior caste. Courage is denoted by Aries.

[End Excerpt]