Do Rahu & Ketu Own Any Signs?

Question: What about Rahu and Ketu – being imaginary points they should not own any houses but there has been different school of thoughts regarding this. What is your view?

 

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“Everyone is a doctor and astrologer.” Therefore there are millions of opinions about health and astrology. We don’t concern ourselves with millions of opinions, because the masses are shudra and their opinions are not clear or sharp or accurate. We care for what carefully makes sense and is best supported by the historically recognized experts.

Rahu and Ketu do not own any signs, and that’s that. They are not even planets, they are points derived from the relative positions of two other planets: sun and moon. They did not even exist when the zodiac was formed. They only came to exist later, after the universe was formed, during the churning of the milk ocean. Furthermore they are not devas.

Since they are not real planets they do not have the same privelages of owning property in the heavens as the real planets do.

Since they did not exist as heavenly bodies when the zodiac was formed, all of the zodiac property was divided up and taken charge of by the planets which did exist at the time. By the time Rahu and Ketu came to exist there was no free zodiac space left to take ownership of.

Since they are not devas, they will not be given any property in the heavens by the deva kings, the Sun and Moon. They are enemies of the devas and thus the Sun and Moon do not lend or lease or put in their charge any of their domain in the heavens.

The great respected experts of Indian astrology through history don’t ever treat Rahu and Ketu like planets. They are two extra points with very significant meaning in a birth chart, and an important role to play in the unfolding of the human condition and the timing of events – but they are not planets. Some texts, questionable as interpolations perhaps, allude to Rahu being given shelter in Aquarius and and Ketu in Aries. However in my opinion all of the talk of Rahu and Ketu having dignity and owning signs is a whole lot of “barking up the wrong tree.”

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Vic DiCara

www.vicdicara.com

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Happy New Year, Astrologically!

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People like U2 can say, “nothing changes on new years day” but still, a year is an extremely important and significant unit of time.

The Sun, you see, is by far the brightest, most powerful and most important heavenly body for us human beings here on earth. A “year” is a measurement of one complete cycle of the Sun. Time itself cannot be measured except in relation to motion and change. The biggest, brightest, most powerful thing moving through the sky above our heads is the Sun. That movement and the changes it brings to our seasons is the most significant and important way to measure time – and the perfect unit of that movement is a “year.”

Time, really, is God. Of course God is not just time, but time is one manifestation of a facet of God because it is the main way we experience the all-powerful in our daily lives. Therefore to measure time is a way of communing with God. A year is therefore a significant cycle in the divine energy.

But what is a year? When does it “start” and “end”?

Well, a year is a cycle, a circle. Circles have no true start or end, they are continuous – like time itself. But we select a reference point on the cycle of time and call it the “start.” Our modern calendar, unfortunately, has fallen – like our modern world – completely out of touch with the natural world. We arbitrarily change days in the middle of the night, have months that start and last all willy nilly, and a year that is close to a reasonable starting point, but about a week and a half late to the party.

First, let’s get to know the different types of “years.” There are a few different definitions of what a year is, and they all have to co-exist. The great astronomical treatise of India, Surya Siddhanta, identifies four types of years: 1) stellar / sidereal, 2) solar / tropical, 3) lunar and 4) common.

A stellar or “sidereal” year is the amount of time it takes the Sun to move from a zodiac star, through the entire circle of the zodiac, and back to the same star it started at. This comes out to be about 365.25 days.

A solar or “topical” year is the amount of time it takes the Sun to move from one key seasonal point (such as a solstice or equinox), through the entire cycle of seasons and back again to the same key point it started at. This comes out to be about 365.24 days.

If you look carefully you will see that the sidereal year is 0.01 days (about 20 minutes) longer than the tropical year. This is why, over tens of thousands of years the seasonal / tropical zodiac goes cyclically in and out of alignment with the stellar / sidereal zodiac.

Our modern calendar is a distorted version of a tropical calendar with the winter solstice (December 21st) roughly selected as the “start” and “end” of each year.

A lunar year is the amount of time it takes the Moon to complete 12 cycles (“months”) from “new” through “full” and back to “new” (or visa versa). Most cultures, including India, use this calendar for spiritual and religious timings. It comes out to be about 354.37 days.

The difference between the lunar year and the other years is quite a lot, about 11 days! So every 3 years the discrepancy between the lunar year and the varieties of solar years becomes about 30 days – which equals one month. So every 3 years lunar calendars get an extra month, called “adhika maasa” in India, to help keep them in sync with the solar years.

A common year is simply a collection of 360 sunrises. This year is not accurate for anything of long duration, but is very accurate for dealing with the length of days – which is exactly the length of one sunrise to the next. So it is simply used for short spans of time in most folk ritualistic contexts.

Keeping aware of nature’s true time cycles is an ideal way to keep in communion with the divine Godhead. I hope this short article will help us do just that.

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- Vic DiCara

www.vicdicara.com

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Eclipse Mythology of India

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At the time of the Ksirodaka-lila (churning the cosmic “ocean of milk”) there was not yet any being named Rahu or Ketu. There was however an asura (“demon”) named Svarbhanu. When the amrita (“nectar of immortality”) was finally produced from the ocean, the devas (“gods”) managed to get it from the asuras by trickery via Mohini Avatar (an incarnation of the Supreme Godhead). Svarbhanu, however, was the most intelligent among the asuras, and was not convinced that things would be fair. Therefore he assumed the appearance of a deva and sat accross from Surya and Candra (gods of the Sun and Moon) as Mohini was distributing the amrta. Svarbhanu thought that if all the demigods drank they would overpower him, even if he too drank, so he wanted to drink first and kill everyone or steal all their nectar. But Surya and Candra saw his body language in moving to lift the cup of amrita in time that they could call out to Mohini and she could decapitate Svarbhanu with her discus before he could swallow the nectar.

However two conditions arose: 1) the amrita of immortality touched the lips of Svarbhanu, 2) the purifying discus of Vishnu touched his body as well. Therefore neither the head of Svarbhanu nor the decapitated trunk was able or fit to be killed and done away with. Therefore Mohini had them cast to opposite ends of the sky – as far as possible apart from one another and never able to move closer. We came to call the head Rahu and the trunk Ketu. Both of them were entrusted with demigod-like positions by Mohini / Vishnu: invested with power to be among the planetary gods – who now with their addition came to number nine.

Svarbhanu, however, at least apparently seems to retain his hatred of Surya (the Sun) and Candra (the Moon), thus the two opposite locations in the sky that his head (Rahu) and body (Ketu) occupy affect our astronomical reality as the point in the ecliptic path where solar and lunar eclipses take place. It is as if Rahu and Ketu have their revenge during an eclipse.

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- Vic Dicara

http://www.vicdicara.com

The accounts are told in several very old Indian books called Puran, including the Bhagavata Purana

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Zodiac, Clocks, and Why There are “12 Signs” and 12 Hours.

A lot of things about the zodiac can be more easily grasped by looking at a regular analog clock. The short, hour hand is the Sun. The long, minute hand is the Moon. whole clock is the zodiac. The Sun (short, hour hand) goes around the zodiac once, meanwhile in that time the Moon (long, minute hand) goes around 12 times. We put a tickmark at the hour hands position each time the minute hand completes a loop, and thus we have 12 hours. Similarly we put a tick mark in the zodiac each time the moon completes a loop and these tick marks define the boundaries of the 12 signs of the zodiac.