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

The Abysmal Chasm – House 8

aayoo raNaM ripuM caapi

durgaM mRita-dhanaM tathaa

gatyanukaadikaM sarvaM

pashyed-randhraa vicakShaNaH

aayoo – life force, longevity; raNaM - gratifications, pleasures (as in the spoils enjoyed after a battle); ripuM - deceitful, cheats, mysterious, treacherous; ca-api – and even; durgaM - in inaccessible; mRita-dhanaM - “dead wealth”; tathaa - thus; gati-anuka-adikaM – ability to connect the past and future; sarvaM - all; pashyet – to see, behold; randhraa – the chasm, the void, abyss; vi-cakShaNaH – makes especially clear.

TRANSLATION

The “House of Abyss” [the Eighth House] makes the following things particularly clear: ones life-force, sense gratification, everything mysterious and difficult to know the truth about, even including ones own contact with lies and cheats. It shows one’s capacity to behold all the connections between the past and the future, and to enter into the impenetrable mysteries of life. It also reveals “dead wealth.”

COMMENTARY

We find in the western sky an identical situation to what we have discovered in the eastern sky. In the East we found the First House, the House of Self – supported from below by the 2^nd, the House of Wealth, and eroded from above by the 12^th, the House of Dissolution. Here now, in the Western sky, we find the Seventh House, the House of Others – supported below by the 6^th, the House of Enemies, and eroded from above by the 8^th, the House of Abyss.

Life Force (Aayoo)

The Seventh House is where the Sun sets and all the stars and planets disappear and die. Above it is the Eighth House – which erodes and dissolves the power of death. Therefore from the unknown abyss of the Eighth House springs the power of life itself. Our very life force and vitality emanates from this house. Therefore we focus on this house to understand our longevity.

The Inaccessible (Durgam)

The Eighth House, portrayed by Parashara as a gaping abysmal chasm, signifies things which are “impossible” to know and impossible to possess. For example, no human being can create life except from things which are already alive. The life-force is inaccessible to humanity, we can not penetrate it’s mysteries. Similarly, the ability to see into that which is unknown to human beings is held within the Eighth House. This house gives us the ability to access knowledge and powers which our peers probably do not even know exist at all. For example, the Eighth House can grant us the power of divination – the ability to behold everything about how the past and the future are connected. Therefore the eighth house is by far the most essential source of the genius in a truly gifted astrologer or psychic.

The author expresses this in Sanskrit as pashyet (to behold) sarvam (everything regarding) gati (where things are going) and anu (where things came from) and adi (to make all connections and interpretations therefrom).

This is good and powerful and useful. But since the Eighth House is an abysmal chasm, it is not a rosy and warm place. It is dangerous, dark, and full of tricks and traps. The planets entering this house must be capable to deal with such an environment, or else they find themselves falling into an abyss from which escape is impossible (durgam).

Falsehoolds (Ripum)

As I mentioned just now. The dark hole that is the Eighth House is beset with slippery paths, false floors, and dangerous traps. Power in this house gives one mastery over such things – one can not be tricked and one is in mastery of the urge to be deceitful. But planets which do not have sure footing in a horoscope fall prey to the trickery in this house and a person becomes surrounded by cheaters, liars and treachery, and perpetrates the same.

The words chosen by the author, Parashara, highlight the ability to see and clearly behold. He uses the word pashyet and then again the intensified word vi-chakshana. In so doing he gives very strong direction that the Eighth House holds the power of “vision.” Not physical vision, but “spiritual” or “psychic” vision. Those persons with power in the Eighth House of the chart has clear vision to see through all lies and deceits. They can see things that others do not even dream of. They cannot be tricked. But those with weakness in the Eighth house are mentally blind. They live in the abyss of ignorance and lies.

Gratifications (RaNam)

This word has been mistranslated popularly as “battles.” The Eighth House does not signify battles so much as it signifies the spoils of war! Anyone who cares to look the word up in a Sanskrit dictionary will clearly see the same. The Eighth House reveals our attitude towards material sense gratification. Most people are in a battle with the universe to obtain as much selfish gratification as they can at the expense of all others. This is the “battle” that the Eighth House refers to. It shows how materialistic we are in the sense of how eager we are to try to conquer the material world and enjoy it’s spoils in the form of sense gratification.

The primary form of sense gratification is sex. In fact, medically speaking, the 8^th House pertains to the external genitalia – the penis and clitoris. (This is another way of looking at the houses which adds to the understanding given here. But Parashara has previously defined it in an earlier chapter of this book). So the Eighth House shows us a persons attitudes about sex and sexuality and other forms of sense pleasure.

This is a part of the Eighth House’s “great chasm” because such pleasures are not only the source of our very material life and thus essential to our longevity – they are also the source of our descent into the abysmal darkness of ignorance and illusion.

Dead Wealth (Mritu-dhanam)

This is a fascinating term: “dead wealth” or “the wealth of the dead.” It has been interpreted by those with a fairly pronounced lack of imagination as merely pertaining to money which comes about as a result of death – i.e. inheritances. This is certainly true. We can see the role of inheritance or ancestral wealth by examining the Eighth House. But this is not the whole story.

The Eighth House is like the Second House indirectly. The Second House generates wealth to support us because it is below us, below the First House, acting as a supportive foundation. The Eighth House generates wealth in a different way, not directly by supporting us, but by eroding others. Thus by the misfortune of others we gain wealth through the Eighth House. This is consonant with it being the home of the “spoils of war.”

The Eighth House is, first and foremost – you must never overlook – a pre-eminently spiritual location! It is the source of life itself and grants access to the impenetrable mysteries of life. Thus it is a house of enlightenment (moksha) and therefore represents the death of wealth (artha). Because the 8^th House promotes interest in occult and transcendental mysteries (or “obscure facts” at the very least) it demotes ones interest in accumulating money. Significant placements in the eighth house therefore bring about poverty and connections of the Eighth House and Lord to the Second and Eleventh Houses and Lords is a strong indication of financial destitution – the death of wealth.

- Vic DiCara

www.vicdicara.com

©2010 Vic DiCara – All Rights Reserved.