New Birth Chart Overview is now Available!!!

I just made available a fantastic, brand new Birth Chart Overview. It features:

• Beautiful, original artwork renditions of your birth chart!
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Here are a few images from a sample reading…

Please check it out and order yours here: http://vicdicara.com/readings.php

Thanks,
Vic

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

Review of “Vedic Origins of the Zodiac: The Hymns of Dirghatamas in the Rig Veda” By David Frawley

English: Vishnu sahasranama manuscript, ca 1690. Vishnu being worshipped in his five forms, including Rama and Lakshmana. Opaque watercolour on paper, Mewar, India. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In continuing response to my new video I’ve been asked to comment on  an article written by David Frawley entitled, Vedic Origins of the Zodiac: The Hymns of Dirghatamas in the Rig Veda.

I’ll quote relevant sections and then comment.

[In] the Rig Veda, the oldest Vedic text, there are clear references to a chakra or wheel of 360 spokes placed in the sky.

Mr. Frawley points out that the Rg Veda mentions a wheel in the sky with 360 spokes. The exact reference is Rg 1.164.11 and also 1.164.48. These state, “The wheel of time moves through the heavens with six spokes and 720 pegs grouped in pairs“

The immediately surrounding verses make it clear that this wheel belongs to the Sun, and that it’s circle through heavens is a year, which is also divided in other ways, including six seasons.

This clearly shows that ancient Indians divided the year into 12 months, 360 days, 720 days and nights, etc. Since the same lunisolar motion that creates 12 months of the year creates a zodiac of 12 equal signs it is not too far fetched to infer that the ancient Indian’s divided the Sun’s path over the course of the year (the ecliptic)  into 12 divisions.

This shows that the 12 Rg Vedic divisions of the ecliptic are sun-based, based on the movement of the Sun during the year – which is to say, they are tropical.

This doesn’t show

• that they used these 12 divisions for astrological prognostication
• that they symbolized them as we do, ram, bull, twins, etc.

The hymns of Dirghatamas speak clearly of a zodiac of 360 degrees, divided in various ways, including by three, six and twelve, as well as related numbers of five and seven. We must remember that the zodiac is first of all a mathematical division of the heavens such as this hymn outlines. This is defined mainly according to the elements, qualities and planetary rulerships of the twelve signs. The symbols we ascribe to these twelve divisions is a different factor that can vary to some degree.

Here, Mr. Frawley is admitting the points I made above. The 12 divisions of space/time in the Vedas…

• Are mathematical, not stellar
• Can not truly be called a “zodiac” because it is not invested with the mostly animal symbols that we ascribe to the 12 astrological divisions.

The actual stars making up the constellation that goes along with the sign is yet a third factor. For example, some constellations are less or more than thirty degrees, but the mathematical or harmonic division of each sign will only be thirty degrees. What is important about the hymns of Dirghatamas is that he shows the mathematical basis of such harmonic divisions of a zodiac of 360 degrees.

Thus, these references show that the twelve Vedic divisions of space/time are not  divisions of stars into constellations. In other words, the hymns show that they are not sidereal.

According to Dirghatamas Rig Veda I.155.6, “With four times ninety names (caturbhih sakam navatim ca namabhih), he (Vishnu) sets in motion moving forces like a turning wheel (cakra).” This suggests that even in Vedic times Vishnu had 360 names or forms, one for each degree of the zodiac. A fourfold division may correspond to the solstices and equinoxes.

This is brilliant. Vishnu causes time to turn on a wheel with 360 days/degrees, divided into four groups of ninty – and these four divisions are the solstices and equinoxes – further evidence that the Vedic 12-fold wheel is tropical.

The Surya Siddhanta gives a similar view of the zodiac originally divided in four parts.  My video explains this.

Elsewhere Dirghatamas states, I.164.36, “Seven half embryos form the seed of the world. They stand in the dharma by the direction of Vishnu.” This probably refers to the seven planets.

Very interesting, as is much of the article that immediately follows. Coming to…

Yet another verse (43) of this same hymn of Dirghatamas refers to the Vishuvat, the solstice or equinox, showing that such astronomical meanings are clearly possible.

Dr. Frawley, in my opinion, has made a brilliant presentation giving the most plausible demonstration I have ever heard that the ancient Vedic people of India conceived of the year (and thus the ecliptic) in 12 divisions, connected with seven planets. Perhaps unintentionally he has also brought to light that these divisions are relative to tropical anchors: solstices and equinoxes.

The zodiac in Vedic thought is the wheel of the Sun. It is the circle created by the Sun’s rays.

Indeed, the Vedic 12-fold division of space is tied to the Sun (tropical), not to stars (sidereal).

…in Astronomy Before the Telescope, C. Walker (ed.), St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1996, pps. 123-124, Pingree suggests that Mul. Apin, Babylonian tablets that date from 687 to 500 BC has “’an ideal calendar’ in which one year contains 12 months, each of which has 30 days, and consequently exactly 360 days; a late hymn of the Rgveda refers to the same ‘ideal calendar’. And Mul.Apin describes the oscillation of the rising-point of the sun along the eastern horizon between its extremities when it is at the solstices; the same oscillation is described in the Aitareya Brahmana.’” This ideal calendar is the basis for the zodiac and its twelve signs at a mathematical level. Clearly Pingree is referring to Rig Veda I.164 as his ‘late’ hymn of the Rig Veda.

This is exactly what I was saying about Mul.Apin in my video.

…a zodiac of 360 degrees and its twelvefold division are much older in India than any Greek or even Babylonian references…

This seems to be the main point of Mr. Frawley’s article, which is not really a debate that significantly thrills me. In my opinion the beautiful fundamental principles of astrology have a superhuman source and were comprehended by humans in the krta and treta yugas, well before any Greek, Babylonian or Rg Vedic culture existed.

Clearly the Vedas show the mathematics for an early date for the zodiac as well as the precessional points of these eras long before the Babylonians or the Greeks supposedly gave them the zodiac.

Mr. Frawley makes a significant point for the antiquity and indigenous status of 12 divisions of the ecliptic in Indian. He did not demonstrated that the 12-fold zodiac was used for prognostication (“foreknowledge”) prior to Babylonian and Greek influence. Nor is it really explicitly clear anywhere in the Veda, to my knowledge, that any form of astrology was used from prognostication. The records, so far as I have seen, only demonstrate calendrical usage. I would like to hear Mr. Frawley give evidence for the use of astrology as a means of prognostication in ancient India.

Please note that I am not embracing any side of the argument, merely asking for a discussion on the topic.

The Rig Veda has another cryptic verse that suggests its cosmic numerology. According to it the Cosmic Bull has four horns, three feet, two heads and seven hands (Rig Veda IV.58.3). This sounds like a symbolic way of presenting the great kalpa number of 4,320,000,000 years.

This is a very interesting note to end on, and raises a significant contention regarding the calculations of Swami Sri Yukteshwar.

- Vic DiCara

www.vicdicara.com

Reply to “Vedic Astrology?”

My article, “Vedic Astrology?” established that the excellent astrological system of modern India is a hybrid of Indian, Greek and Persian astrological culture. I got one interesting reply:

Only one critique I can make is that by dating written literature you are not considering how knowledge was passed down from teacher to the student in verbal form before it got written and codified. Simply by dating the written literature we cannot say that the concepts in that literature are not ancient and Vedic.

This is a good concept, but I think it is blown out of proportion and context very often. We find that knowledge is written down fairly close to whenever it originates. The exception to this is in extremely ancient times when human beings had excellent memories and did not much require writing. The truth of the matter is that the Purana’s explicitly tell us that at the end of the second age and beginning of the third, Vyasadeva took the one Veda and began expanding it. The Purana (I am particularly referring the the Bhagavat Purana) say that over the course of thousands of years he and the people he entrusted developed four schools with libraries (standard texts of the four Veda and their ancillaries). Thus all these works have valid dates. Then Vyasa also developed a fifth school for the Purana and Itihasa. And at the end of all this development he produced the final purana, Bhagavata Purana as the culmination of everything in the Vedas and their ancillaries (especially the Upanishads and Vedanta), the Puranas, and Mahabharata.

Thus all Vedic literature is documented and all of it is placed on a historical timeline. Yes, the concepts within this literature are timeless, but the literature which expressed and expanded those timeless ideas all have a particular place on a historical timeline.

The only writing on this timeline that is historically “ancient” and has to do with astrology is an appendix to the Rg and Yajur Veda called “Jyotisha.” This booklet has a few dozen texts. There is nothing else documented as having been written about astrology, therefore anything written in India on the subject must have been written after the completion of Srimad Bhagavatam.

Astrology itself allows us to accurately date everything, and by astrology we can tell the date at which a book describing the heavens was written. The Surya-Siddhanta that we currently have was written in post-ancient times. All the other books on astrology were written still later.This we know by astrologically dating the stellar observations recorded in the books, and by cross-referencing the historical information given in the books themselves.

Thus we know beyond any reasonable doubt that the astrology of ancient India was extremely different than the astrology of modern India. The astrology currently practiced in India involving planets, signs and houses is not the “Vedic” astrology of ancient India. It is not the science developed by the ancient sages. Rather it is a mixture of that ancient science with similar sciences imported into India during classical times from yavanas (Greeks) and tajjikas (persians).

Vedic astrology was one thing and modern Indian astrology is something else, still distantly related but now dominated by the planets, signs and houses of Greeks and Persians.

In Bṛhatsaṃhitā (2.32) Varāhamihira himself says so: mlecchā hi yavanās teṣu samyak śāstram idaṃ sthitam: “The Yavanas are foreigners. They are the best authority on this [astrology].”

~~~

- Vic DiCara

www.vicdicara.com