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Vedic astrology (Jyotish)
What it is
Vedic astrology, or Jyotish (Sanskrit jyotiṣa, "the science of light"), is the astrological tradition of India. It began as one of the Vedāṅgas, the auxiliary studies of the Vedas, where it served the calendar and the timing of ritual. Horoscopic astrology — charts for individual births — developed in India in the early centuries CE, partly through contact with Hellenistic astrology: the Yavanajātaka, "the horoscopy of the Greeks", is a Sanskrit version of a Greek text. From there Indian astrologers built a vast and distinctive system of their own, set out by authors such as Varāhamihira (sixth century) and in the Bṛhat Parāśara Horā Śāstra, attributed to the sage Parāśara.
The name "Vedic astrology" became common in English in the 1980s; many practitioners simply say Jyotish, or Hindu or Indian astrology.
A different zodiac
The most visible difference from Western astrology is the zodiac itself. Jyotish uses the sidereal zodiac, measured against the fixed stars, while most Western astrology uses the tropical zodiac, which starts from the spring equinox. Because of the slow precession of the equinoxes the two have drifted apart by about 24° today, the exact figure depending on the ayanamsa chosen; the Lahiri ayanamsa is the one most widely used and is the official standard in India. As a result most planets in a Vedic chart sit one sign earlier than in a Western one. Neither is "wrong" — they are two frames of reference, and each tradition's techniques are tuned to its own.
The pieces of a chart
- Nine grahas. The Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn, plus Rahu and Ketu, the North Node and South Node of the Moon. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are not part of the classical system.
- The rāśi chart — the birth chart — drawn as a square, in a North Indian style (the houses fixed) or a South Indian style (the signs fixed). Houses (bhāvas) are most often counted sign by sign from the rising sign, the lagna, much like whole-sign houses.
- Divisional charts (vargas), which divide each sign into smaller parts and read each division for one area of life; the best known is the navāṁśa, a ninefold division read especially for marriage and for the strength of planets.
- Nakshatras, the 27 lunar mansions, which give the Moon's position a much finer grain than its sign.
- Aspects by sign (dṛṣṭi). Every planet aspects the sign opposite; Mars also aspects the fourth and eighth signs from itself, Jupiter the fifth and ninth, Saturn the third and tenth.
- Yogas, named combinations of planets, of which hundreds are catalogued.
Timing: the dasas
Jyotish is known for its dasas (daśā, "period"): systems that divide a life into chapters, each ruled by a planet. The most widely used, Vimśottarī, runs a 120-year cycle of nine periods — Ketu 7 years, Venus 20, Sun 6, Moon 10, Mars 7, Rahu 18, Jupiter 16, Saturn 19, Mercury 17. Where it starts is set by the nakshatra the Moon occupied at birth, and each period is divided into sub-periods in the same order. A planet's period is read as the time when the matters it rules in the chart come forward — a close cousin of the Western time-lord techniques.
Two kinds of dosha
The word dosha (doṣa) is met in two different senses.
- In Ayurveda, India's traditional system of wellbeing, the three doshas — Vata, Pitta and Kapha — are styles of constitution, and Jyotish links each planet with one of them. This is read as temperament and heritage, not as medical advice.
- In chart-matching for marriage, a dosha is a flaw to be checked for. The best known, Maṅgal (or Kuja) dosha, concerns Mars in certain houses. Many astrologers point out how many exceptions and cancellations the texts allow, and caution against letting it weigh heavily on real people's lives.
In a reading here
The Ayurvedic balance reading here works in the Jyotish frame: it turns the chart's positions to sidereal ones with the Lahiri ayanamsa, names the nakshatras of the Ascendant and the Moon, and reads the dosha balance as energy style and cultural heritage — never as health advice. The other readings here use the tropical zodiac.