Planets that Break Your Face

This is my blood.

Two days ago, at about 3:30 in the afternoon – I broke my face. Well, not really, but that’s a figure of speech I grew up using and which is quite appropriate to what actually happened. See, my 5th grade son wanted me to play this complex version of “tag” with him and about 20 other 5th and 6th graders. I could only catch 1 or 2 of ‘em. They were just too fast for me. So I decided to get on my bike and chase ‘em down.

You see, I’m really good on a bike. I used to be a semi-pro freestyle trickster. But these Japanese bikes are different, they are bigger and, this is the really import part, they get the brakes backwards. Yeah – they put the front brake on the right-hand side. So, I am fully absorbed in irresponsible kid-mode, chasing these 10-11 year olds at super-high speed around turns when, after reaching out to tag one, I suddenly need to stop right away before hitting a wall.

So, I do what instinct tells me – get ready to fishtail the back tire out to the right, and turn left, while “skidding out”. So, of course, I slam on the brakes to start the skid… the right-hand brake.

Oppps…

In about a half a second my face hit the road. I had sunglasses on, to look like this character the kids wanted me to look like. The right side smashed against the street just before my skull. My son was kneeling at my side in about 3 seconds (divine arrangement), “Are you OK dad?”

“I don’t know, am I OK?” I asked and showed him the right side of my face.

“No. You’re not OK at all. It’s really bad. There is blood everywhere.”

As it turns out, it wasn’t really that bad. Just two gashes, no damage to my eye or skull. Tons of blood. More blood than I ever spilled out of a wound before. But it turned out to be fun, and a good way to show my son how dangerous a bike can be, and stuff like that. But anyway, now for the astrology. Let’s see if we can figure out what planets “caused” me to break my face.

Basic Data

I’m:

Vic DiCara

July 27, 1970 at 7:38 pm

Bay Shore, New York, USA

I’m doing this chart as I do with all charts: whole-sign houses, tropical signs, sidereal (lahiri) nakṣatra, degree-specific Indian aspects, and basic viṁśottarī daśā using nakṣatra year-length (359.017 days)

Bear In Mind

Before you jump off explaining how my birth chart is prone to face-breaking, please bear in mind that I don’t usually break my face. In fact in my whole life I never broke a bone – despite being a BMXer, skateboarder, and spending my youth and twenties in really dangerous situations.

Also bear in mind a few other things about this same day.

• It was my janma-tithi (the same lunar phase as the day I was born) – well not exactly it was the same phase, but in the opposite fortnight. I was born on kṛṣṇa-ekādaśī and this face-breaking event happened on gaura-ekādaśī.
• I met my son’s new 5th grade teacher earlier that day for the first time. It was pleasant and she gave a very positive review for him
• A court case was held that I am connected with as the plaintiff.
• Later in the day I received a large parcel from Vṛṇdāvana, India with a super-excellent new mṛdāṅga drum to replace my old one that had broken.

Initial Theories

Where does one look for a physical injury? Well certainly it would be ludicrous to give an explanation that doesn’t involve the first house and lord – since that is the house of physical things like the body. My first house is Capricorn (Asc at 25 degrees), so my first lord is Saturn, who at my birth was at 21 degrees of Taurus.

Besides this there is more standard, fundamental theory: accidents and pain comes from natural malefics and painful, detrimental house lords. Those lords for me might be Mercury (6th lord), Sun (8th lord), and Jupiter (12th lord).

Daśā

My usual astro software malfunctioned and still isn’t fixed, but it appears from my calculations that my face-breaking ceremony happened in the Jupiter / Venus / Rahu / Mercury Daśā. All the natural benefics are involved here, but we can also take note that Jupiter is the 12th lord and Mercury the 6th. Meanwhile Venus is my 5th lord – and the accident did involve children (a 5th house topic).

Transits

Four planets have congregated in Taurus – which is my 5th house (children) and the home of my 1st lord (Body / Physical). Two of them are Malefics: Mars and the Sun. The sun also happens to be my 8th lord. The two of them, Mars and Sun, are nearly 180 degrees away from my natal Jupiter, and thus cast a strong aspect upon it. Jupiter is my daśā lord, and the 12th lord (detraction from physical) and the 3rd lord too (sports, like riding a bike). On that note, Mars is the lord of the 11th house (games, like playing tag).

So the daśā lord has something inherently disposing it towards allowing events that involve detraction from/to the physical being, and can also have to do with sports – and it was at the time influenced both by the 8th lord (unforeseen events) who is also a malefic, and Mars (injury) who is also the 11th lord (games). So it does facilitate the event of getting a sudden physical injury while playing a game involving athletics.

Further, Saturn was in transit of my natal Sun/Mars combo in my eighth house. Additionally, the transiting Sun/Mars previously mentioned are also under the aspect of transiting Saturn.

We’ve seen how the daśā planet, Jupiter was involved (being aspected by Sun/Mars, who themselves are aspected by Saturn). Now, the inner-daśā planet, Venus, is also involved because it is the closest transiting planet to the Sun/Mars transit pair – and also conjoins transiting Ketu. This means transiting Venus was with two malefics (Sun/Mars) and Ketu (a planet who can really amplify and exacerbate malefics in it’s vicinity).  Furthermore transiting Venus and Ketu are not outside the significant influence of transiting Saturn’s 180 degree aspect.

The inner-inner daśā planet, Rahu is also involved, transit-Rahu being conjoined transit Saturn while transit Ketu is conjoined Sun/Mars/Venus.

My first lord and house are also involved. Transiting Saturn has a strong 60 degree aspect to my ascendant, while it’s 270 degree aspect falls upon my Sun/Mars combo in the 8th house, and it’s 180 degree aspect falls upon my natal 1st lord. As mentioned before, the congregation of Sun/Mars/Venus/Ketu also occupies the same sign as my natal 1st lord.

It’s also curious that the ascendant at the time was almost exactly opposite my natal ascendant.

Conclusion

No doubt we can see that there is considerable transiting malefic influence on my natal 1st lord and all the daśā planets, not excluding my 8th house factors and 1st house itself. Therefore we can accept that a physical injury happened at this point. We also see that much of the action in the transit chart focuses on the 5th and 11th houses, so we can accept that an event can arise involving playing games with children. So the event – breaking my face while playing with kids – is quite acceptable from the astrological point of view.

In final conclusion, this is the sort of thing that gives confidence that astrology is a substantial science; yet at the same time demonstrates that the complexity of the science is quite off-putting and daunting. While it is not impossible to reverse engineer the astrological significance after the event occurs, it still seems nearly impossible to look through the nearly infinite possibilities of transits for a given period of time, find this one as being particularly significant, and then correctly predict that an injury will occur while playing with children. It’s not impossible, but it’s similar to finding a needle or two thrown into a haystack.

And that, my friends, is just a fact of how astrology works, and the complexity of life, destiny and karma.

Riding home from soccer practice the next night with my son, he said to me, “Dad, I think Krishna wanted you to pull the wrong break. I mean, when you get a boo-boo like that it’s supposed to hurt a lot. But it didn’t hurt you at all. So Krishna must be doing something. And I think he wanted me to see you fall so I can see how bad I could get hurt if I don’t wear a helmet.”

I love that boy.

- Vic DiCara

www.vicdicara.com

Real Estate and Astrological Planets

Modern Real Estate is about commerce

A student recently asked:

Mars and Saturn are connected with real estate.If these are in the 4th then it is not good for emotional happiness but could be good for real estate. Is this right?

Everyone commonly says that Mars conjoined Saturn is a symbol pertinent to real estate. I think this concept may be at least a bit out of cultural context, however. Mars is the planet that has ambitious goals and goes after what it wants bravely. Saturn is the planet that has no resources of its own and therefore knows how to take resources from elsewhere. So the combination of Mars and Saturn lends itself well to military conquest: setting sights on someone else’s property and then bravely going and conquering it.

I think that is really the context in which Saturn+Mars = Land (increased territory). I think it is a bit of a stretch to apply this to the modern-day acquisition of real estate. Modern aquisition of real estate is conducted squarely within the realm of business and finance, and therefore strikes me as a predominantly Mercurial affair. Perhaps the combination of Moon (a domestic force) and Mercury (a business force) is a better planetary symbol for modern real estate.

Everything you need to know about Sade Sati

Natural color view of Saturn, composed from a series of pictures taken by the Cassini spacecraft. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Sade Sati (“Seven and a Half”) is the Hindi term for Saturn’s transit over the Moon and it’s neighboring signs. “Much ado” is constantly made of it, and I think it is “too-much ado.” Sade Sati is just one of many, many factors causing the rhythms and fluctuations in your personal time-flow.

Basically, Sade Sati sets up a cosmic rhythm that divides human life into three segments: youth, adulthood, oldage. Each segment lasts about 27 years (because it takes Saturn that much time to return to the position of your Moon). There is almost always a “fourth era” in life too, caused by the extra years not very fully in one of these complete cycles.

The reason this transit is called “Seven and a Half” (“sade sati”) is because that’s how many years it usually takes Saturn to traverse the whole neighborhood surrounding your Moon (technically defined as your Moon-sign and the sign before and after it). So, the transition period between each of life’s segments is generally about seven and a half years.

• There is about a 7.5 year transition between being a youth and being an adult. Usually this transition is centered somewhere around your 27th year of life.
• Another 7.5 year transition between adulthood and old age usually centers around being 54 years old.
• The third 7.5 year transition, from old age into death (or preparation for it, or focusing on it) usually centers around being 81 years old.
  

The main effect of Sade Sati is to establish this general template of rhythm for human life. Transitions are periods of change. Change has significant potential to be upsetting and challenging. So the seven and a half year transition period (“sade sati”) has inherent potential to be a time of challenges and difficulties which cause us to evolve and change.

Thus Sade Sati earns a reputation as being something to dread. Actually, I really think most people are just looking for something to focus their huge collection of subconscious fears on. So people tend to love stuff like “Sade Sati” and they really love to make a big scarey monster out of it. In truth, however, change does not always have to come from difficulties and challenges. Sometimes change comes as the result of new opportunities and epiphanies.

So, I do not support the idea that Sade Sati is inherently a “bad” transit. A capable astrologer needs to judge the relevant factors carefully to try to foresee or understand what the impetuses for transformation and change will be during a Sade Sati. It is different for each individual.

I hope this sheds some light on what Sade Sati is, and what it isn’t.

- Vic DiCara

www.vicdicara.com

What you can learn from just words

What do these words have in common?

• Soulful
• Lunatic
• Mercantile
• Venereal
• Martial
• Jovial
• Stern

They are adjectives formed from the proper Latin-based names of the seven main astrological planets: Sol, Luna, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn!

The Sun’s proper name is Sol. It represents the Soul, the singular center of all things, the core of our identity or “ego.” So the it is soulful. The word “sole” could also apply because the Sun / soul is of singlular importance and centrality.

The Moon’s proper name is Luna. And from this we get the words lunacy, lunatic, looney and all that. The Moon represents the subjective mind, the repository of all our emotions and opinions… the stuff that makes us crazy.

The Moon also has many interesting adjectives from it’s title, “Moon.” My favorite is mood. The mind controls our moods and moodiness.

Mercury is the planet of intellect. Intellect is the mother of communication, and communication enables exchange. Therefore we have the word mercantile indicating trade, exchange, barter, etc.

Venus is the planet of senses. When you hear the word venereal you immediately think of VD (unless you are from the new generation where they renamed the stuff STD for some weird reason, maybe Venus protested?). VD, venereal disease, is a “disease of the sense organs.” Especially the reproductive ones. And the implication is that it results from overuse of sensuality.

Martial is among the more familiar of this group of adjectives, sadly. Mars is the planet of energy, which means ambition, which leads to competition, which becomes war. So anything competitive or warlike we call martial.

Jupiter’s older name is Jove, source of the word jovial. Jupiter makes things positive and happy… but why? Well Jupiter is actually the planet of wisdom. Wisdom leads to morality (doing what is best for everyone). Morality creates lasting happiness and joviality more fully than anything else.

Saturn gives us “st” adjectives – all with meaning matching the hard, cold sound of those letters: stoic and stern especially come to mind. Saturn is the planet of reality, which buldozes through our masquerades with hard and fast limitations, and restrictions that we fools tend to perceive as “misery.” Saturn is stern and when you don’t run away from Saturn you become more stoic.

The Sanskrit name for Saturn, shuni also seems to have had an effect on the English word “shun.” We all try to shun Saturn, and Saturn represents the shunned. And if we become very serious and stoic like Saturn, the shallow people of the world may start to shun us a bit.

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Vic DiCara

www.vicdicara.com

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Looney! =)