How to use Astrological Cycles (Dasha & Sub-Dasha)

At any given point in my life, I am experiencing a moment within a minute within an hour within a day within a week within a month within a year within a decade within a century. Vedic astrology reflects this reality by deliniating 5 levels of cycles within cycles within cycles, and refering to the effects of ongoing daily transits in that context as well. To be an astrologer who can actually use this tool, you have to not only be able to evaluate the effects of a cycle or transit – you will have to be able to evaluate 2 or 3 or more planetary cycles at the same time. That is to say, we will have to consider two or three or more cycles simultaneously: The major cycle (daśa) the subcycle (antardaśa) and the sub-subcycle (praty antardaśa), and perhaps finer cycles and transits.

How?

I’ve already written a reasonable introduction to how to interpret an individual planetary cycle. In this post, I want to focus instead on how to interpret several cycles simultaneously – as one would need to do to understand the specific effects at any specific point in a person’s life.

A Harmonium

There is an instrument called a Harmonium which illustrates how. The harmonium is a reed instrument, where air is blown through reeds by a bellows, and the path through specific reeds is opened or closed by pressing keys on a piano-style keyboard. Most harmoniums also have knobs on the front of them, which you can pull out to permanently open a reed path. Thus when you pull out such a knob, you get a note that constantly sounds out, regardless of what keys on the keyboard you press. The themes of your main cycle are like this constant note. The shorter subcycles within it are like the notes that sound when you press different keys on the keyboard. Sometimes you press the key of a note that sounds bad, very dissonant against the constant background note. At other times, pressing other keys creates sounds that are harmonious with the background note – they link together and form a unified, powerful sound. In the same way, the subcycles have their own themes – but what we are most interested in discovering is how the themes of the subcycles interact with the themes of their parent cycles. The themes that have commonalities and harmony with one another will be the actual events that occur in your life during that period of time. The themes in a cycle that find no harmonic support from the themes of the subcycles will not occur during this period – or perhaps will only occur in thoughts or dreams.

- Vic DiCara

www.vicdicara.com

New Video: The 12 Houses

I just completed this video yesterday. It attempts to share with you a very simple, yet profoundly deep way to understand the 12 houses of astrology. Please enjoy and share it!

- Vic DiCara

www.vicdicara.com

When your Horoscope Contradicts Itself

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Oftentimes a single horoscope will have some placements that indicate one outcome, and some placements that indicate an opposite outcome. For example, a single horoscope may have several factors in it indicating poverty, while several other factors indicate wealth. How do you read this?

Some think that opposites “cancel each other out.” So that if you have 4 indications of wealth and 3 of poverty, well… the 3 poverty indications cancel out the 3 wealth indications, so the 1 remaining wealth indication wins. Congratulations, you will be wealthy. This is a completely bogus idea of how to read astrological charts.

Although it is a bogus method, it does have some merit. The merit is the idea that the stronger and more predominant indications in a horoscope will win out over the weaker ones. So for example if you have very strong indications of wealth and very weak indications of poverty, your experience of wealth will be much more prominent than you experience of poverty. How do you assess “strength”? Well, you need to learn astrology, but I can summarize that you defer to the shadbala of the planets involved, the confluence in theme between the involved houses, planets, and signs, and the quantity of other placements in the horoscope indicating similar outcomes.

This is a reasonably good approach to reading charts, but it remains ignorant to a very important fundamental point. The point is that people live for a long time. We don’t live our whole life in one moment. We may be wealthy, for example, at some stage of our lives and poor at other stages. This is why one horoscope almost always shows contradictory conditions. During the cycles and transits of the planets involved in the indications of poverty, for example, one experiences poverty – but during the cycles and transits of the planets involved in the indications of wealth, the same person experiences a change of fortune and enjoys wealth.

Vic DiCara

www.vicdicara.com

Thoughts About the Earthquake Disaster in Japan

I would like to open this discussion to other astrologers, so I will enable comments and welcome input.

I am looking at a chart of Miyagi, Japan on March 11, 2011 at 14:41. I am not really looking much at houses, so if there is a better time it wont make much difference to the initial observations I have to make.

I notice an ominous formation here:

(A) All the planets are hemmed between the lunar nodes, Rahu and Ketu.

(B) Saturn is the only planet outside the hem, and is therefore the focus of all the energy of most of these planets aspects. (near perfect aspects from Mars, Mercury and Jupiter and a somewhat significant aspect from the Sun)

(C) Saturn disperses the brunt of its own aspect upon the two nodes and Jupiter (54/60 to Rahu, 43/60 to Ketu, 49/60 to Jupiter)

(D) Saturn was with phenomenal shad-bala strength (196%) and low vimshopaka dignity (9/20)

(E) An undignified Mars (9/20) puts a nearly full aspect (57/60) to Saturn.

(F) Rahu in Moola (Ketu’s nakshatra). Mars in Satabhishaka (Rahu’s Nakshatra).

The Navamsha of this event is also asking to be observed. In that Chart the axis of the lunar nodes lines up with the Sun and Jupiter. Saturn perfectly aspects Mercury, and Saturn and the Moon exchange houses.

I would appreciate your comments and additional observations.

- Vic DiCara

www.vicdicara.com