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Not Your Newspaper Horoscope: Vedic Astrology is More Than Your Sun Sign · Magic Thread Media

• 0:01
  Vish Chatterji: Welcome to Bending the Light. I'm Vish Chatterji, car engineer turned karma mechanic. Are you ready to explore karma, dharma, mantra, ritual, and yoga philosophy to help navigate life, but all grounded in our modern world reality, along with a dose of healthy skepticism, I mean, after all, I am a trained engineer. Join me as we navigate the timeless wisdom of my ancestors, the ancient sages of India, from yoga to meditation to Ayurveda and Vedic philosophy, and Jyotish, the science of light, to help make sense of yourself, your life, your karma, and the world around you.
• 0:41
  Come with me on this journey to learn the power of bending the light.
• 0:48
  Welcome to another full episode of Bending the Light. Before I get started today, I just want to thank all of you listeners for tuning in, for listening to this podcast, for writing reviews, for letting your friends know about it. The growth has been incredible. I'm just so excited to see how all of this is going. You're motivating me. This is a partnership. You listen, I get inspired. I talk about inspiring subjects, and it helps us all. Thank you to listeners from all over the world. I'm looking at the map here of where people are. Obviously, a lot of Americans, but a lot of people from
• 1:22
  the UK, Australia, Canada, folks in Japan, Singapore, New Zealand, all of my friends in Ireland. Thank you for tuning in. I loved visiting Ireland last year. My friends in Sweden, Germany, Belgium, Bangladesh as well. Must be some distant family and their friends. Portugal, France, China, Finland, oh my gosh, Mexico, and folks that are in India. I'm so excited and heartwarmed to see that, and then even folks in Russia, Austria, Brazil, Hungary, and Hong Kong, my birthplace. So thank you to the few listeners that are tuning in from Hong Kong. That is my hometown, and also from Poland and
• 2:04
  Ukraine. So, just very exciting to just see that and recognize all of you amazing listeners. So, my last full-length episode, we talked about karma, and that was sort of the precursor platform to then talk about Vedic astrology, and you know my journey with Vedic astrology is quite interesting. I've told this story several times in different formats and different podcasts. But I was trained as an engineer, so I have a very data-driven, skeptical view of things like astrology. In fact, if I heard the word astrology, I would have said, "Okay, that's hocus pocus. I don't really trust that. I
• 2:39
  don't believe that. I'm not into newspaper horoscopes, and you know, as a kid, especially in India, actually, we would get these old school British style newspaper, and there was a horoscope, and I would read the horoscope for different signs: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer. I would find something in every single sign that related to me. So I thought, you know what? This seems like a a bunch of hogwash. How come every sign relates to me? And now I've discovered that we are actually a product of all the signs, and I'll explain that in this episode. So what happened was I I was in the
• 3:11
  corporate world. I was an executive. I quit that journey. Ended up going down the startup path. Started a tech startup, and then when I finally exited the tech startup, I decided to go into coaching, and my unique approach to coaching was combining East meets West coaching. So, sort of yoga philosophy, the Vedic system, the the Indian tradition, my ancestors, combining that wisdom with my Western MBA training and you know business expertise and experience, and I found that everything the yoga tradition, the yoga philosophy specifically, was very aligned with modern management thinking and
• 3:46
  leadership training. So, any senior management executive training that I went to in my corporate career, I found parallels with the yoga world. So, I started bringing in yoga philosophy as a partner with my MBA thinking. And along that journey, if you go deep into yoga studies, you're going to learn and discover about Ayurveda, the mind-body medicine system of ancient India, and Ayurveda is this brilliant system that understands each individual as a unique being with unique what they call prakriti, a unique mind-body constitution that then determines what type of disease you're susceptible
• 4:23
  to. So I trained under Dr. Suhashira Sagar.
• 4:27
  He was the chief medical officer at the Chopra Center at the time, and Dr. Suhas taught us Ayurveda, and one of the fundamentals of it was to identify your unique dosha. I wrote about this extensively in the business casual yogi, my my first book, where you take a quiz, and from a quiz you would determine if you're more of an airy type of personality, more of a fiery type of personality, more of an earthy grounded personality, and from that personality type, if you did not balance your life in the right way, you could end up as too fiery. Too airy, too earthy, and end up with diseases that fall
• 5:04
  into those categories. Maybe one of these days I'll do an episode on on Ayurveda specifically. So what I did though was I took that quiz that is usually used to understand your disease progression, and I leveraged it or shifted it to use for understanding the type of leader that you are, and you know, in the corporate world, like people love Myers-Briggs type indicator, disc profile, strength finder, all these different systems of understanding the type of person you are, the type of leader you are. And what I thought was, why don't I use Ayurveda so I could figure out what type of a
• 5:37
  leader you are in terms of fiery, airy, or earthy, and then suggest lifestyle shifts to improve your leadership at work. So, if you're too fiery a type of leader, then you have to reduce the amount of quote unquote fire in your diet or fire activities in your life. If you're an airy leader, then you need more grounding in your lifestyle to ground that sort of airy creative nature. And what I found, though, challenge with this questionnaire or quiz, is that I would give a quiz to my clients, and I say, "Okay, take this quiz. And in the corporate world, in the U.S. especially, people were almost
• 6:15
  like cheating on the quiz. Whatever they filled out, they would come up as a fiery type, and I was kind of confused. Like, why is it in front of me? I see a person who looks like an airy type of person. They're speaking in an airy type of way, but they're taking the quiz and sort of the results are showing fire, right? And it's not like these sophisticated MBTI Myers Briggs tests where there's test questions embedded in to see if you're being honest, right? And the reason for that is in in the executive world and in corporations, type A personalities are usually rewarded. If you're
• 6:49
  a direct, precise type of speaker, if you're aggressive, go getter, kind of the the traits that I actually have is called pitta in Ayurveda. You tend to get promoted. You tend to get recognized, and so people sort of self-select those traits in themselves because they know that intrinsically that's what gets them to move in the corporate hierarchy. So, needless to say, instead of an even split of personalities, I was getting all these fire types, even though what I seen before me wasn't fire. So I went to Dr. Suhas, my my mentor, my teacher Ayurveda, and I said, Doctor Suhas, my clients are
• 7:23
  cheating on the quiz. What do I do? I have them fill out this quiz, and I developed the quiz with him. In fact, in the Business Casual Yogi, there's a quiz in that book that you can identify your own mind-body constitution, your your Ayurvedic type, and he helped me develop that quiz. And I said, Look, they all seem to be cheating. Everyone's coming up as a as a pitta, as the fire type. What do I do? And he said, "Vish is very simple. Just look at their birth chart. And I thought, "Birth chart? What are you talking about? He said, "Their astrology chart. Look at their astrology chart, and
• 7:57
  you'll know the truth of their mind-body constitution. And I thought, but Suhas, you're a medical doctor. Like you believe in this astrology stuff. That's that's woo. I don't believe in that hocus pocus stuff. I'm trained as an engineer. I was a business executive. I mean, I like Ayurveda, mind body medicine, because it's kind of a science, and there's a questionnaire and a form. He's like, no, no, look at the Vedic astrology system. I was like, "What is Vedic? What does that mean?
• 8:23
  He's like the astrology system of India, the system that is the sister science to yoga and Ayurveda. And I thought, "Oh, I'd never really understood what that was. I'd kind of discounted all of astrology. He said, "No, no, look at the Indian system, and you will start to really understand your clients at a much deeper level. So I said, "All right. So I started taking some courses from him. I trained under him, and with a little bit of knowledge, I went to my clients, clients that I trust, and I said, "Hey, you know, Judy, would you mind sharing with me when you were born? I'm trying this
• 8:55
  experiment with this Indian astrology thing. And Judy was like, "Yeah, sure. Here's my birth info. And so I would pull up a Vedic horoscope, a Vedic birth chart for a client, and I would start noticing things, and I would start asking them questions, and I would start to hone in on who they really were, and the results were remarkable. Client after client would say, "Oh my gosh, Vish, how do you know that about me? How did you figure me out at my core? And I was getting accurate results of what I was seeing before me was correlating with what I would see in the chart, which wasn't
• 9:26
  correlating with that Ayurvedic questionnaire that I was doing. And after you know multiple clients, I started to realize like, wow, there's some reliability to the system. Every time I pull up a birth chart of somebody, I'm really understanding who they are, and I'm understanding their leadership style, and I'm able to coach them in a much more honest way for their honesty and my understanding of them in terms of what type of a leader they are. And then I started to think, well, if I can figure out what type of a leader someone is with their astrology chart, what else can I do
• 9:57
  with this? And before I knew it, I was down this huge. Huge wormhole of understanding Vedic astrology, and now I'm actually a practicing Vedic astrologer. I've written a book on Vedic astrology, and I use Vedic astrology as an integral part of my coaching practice. And some people know me particularly as a as a Vedic astrologer. So how did that happen? The skeptic engineer turns into astrologer, and why did it happen? How did it happen? Is because Vedic astrology is actually very accurate, and Western astrology, to me, is a system to understand your psychology, your overall sort of where you
• 10:32
  are as a psychological ego-driven being at the moment. And Vedic astrology is really understanding the deeper soul and what your soul is trying to manifest. So, with that sort of introduction of me as a skeptical astrologer, I want to start to share with you what is Vedic astrology, and the word astrology for some of you, and definitely for me, arouses a lot of skepticism. I'm thinking newspaper horoscopes. What month were you born? Oh, you're a July born. Does that mean you're a Cancer or a Leo, right? And I actually don't know that Western system that well. So if you told me what one month
• 11:04
  you were born, I actually don't know your sign off the top of my head. So Vedic astrology, the word for it is actually Jyotish. The Sanskrit word is Jyotish, combination of two words: Jyotir, which means light, and Isha, which means consciousness, the soul, God, the divine, the beyond. So you could say that Jyotisha, Jyotish, is the light of consciousness, the light of your soul. And the system was developed by the ancient yogis, the ancient rishis, the ancient seers of India, some five to 7000 years ago. These these enlightened beings in deep stead states of meditation, they literally sat
• 11:42
  for hours on end, days on end, years on end, generations on end in deep states of meditation, and they literally downloaded into their mind, their mind's eye, the secrets of the universe, the meaning of the universe, and part of those insights came to be known as the yoga tradition, the Ayurveda tradition, the Gandharva Veda, the music tradition of India, all the astronomical thinking, mathematics, the whole concept of math and numbering systems, and of course, Vedic astrology is one of those systems that came to their deep inner vision.
• 12:19
  And what they did was they developed a system to try to understand our soul's journey. So Vedic astrology or Jyotish is really not about, you know, necessarily predicting or personality types. It's really about understanding at the root of you what is your soul trying to do, and what is the karma you're dealing with. So my last episode, I talked about karma. At the end of the day, Vedic astrology is a study of your karma. What is your karma? What karma is due to you, and when is it due? And the way that it is calculated is very different to Western astrology. Western astrology uses
• 12:54
  what's called a tropical zodiac, and that means that the the signs shift over time, so a sign like if somebody says I'm a you know Gemini sign, that's because the the Gemini is symbolically in the sky in a certain location, but it's actually not observable with your eyes. The reference of Western astrology is to the seasons, the zodiac shifts based on the season. So in a way, it gives you a snapshot of where you are this season. You could say, Vedic astrology uses the observable sky. That means if I tell you there is a you know Mars, a planet in your birth chart that is in Aquarius, that
• 13:36
  means if I looked up in the sky, I would see Mars, and behind Mars, I would actually see the constellation of Aquarius, so it's a star-based system based on fixed star positions that never change. So a Vedic astrologer pulling a chart up 2000 years ago, developing you know hand drawing a chart, would end up with the same calculations that somebody modern times would have. It's consistent; it hasn't changed. The Western system drifts about a degree of space every 72 years. So over 2000 years, it's drifted about 23 or 24 degrees. The zodiac has literally shifted. So in the Vedic system, in
• 14:14
  Vedic astrology, we sometimes say we're using the truth of the sky. We're using observable what I see in the sky. I'm observing an actual energy. If those stars are there, that I can see it with my eye, those stars can see me, and therefore we see it as an energetic exchange between that star constellation and you. So, whereas in Western you won't really call it a constellation, it's more of a sign because it's it's not observable. It's shifted, okay, and that difference accounts for a lot. It's about a 2324, degree difference. So what that means is often your sign changes in Vedic
• 14:49
  astrology, your sun sign, your moon sign, your rising sign, your Mars sign. All of them change. Now in Western astrology and colloquial culture, you're really focused on. What is your month you are born? And so, in a given month, from you know a certain day in the month, everybody born in that 30-day period, no matter where they are on Earth, has the same sun sign. So, for instance, I think in in the month of June, it might be that your sun is in Gemini. So, people born in early June, they say, "Oh, we're Gemini's. That's because if you looked at a Western chart, it would say the sign where
• 15:25
  the sun is in Gemini. However, if you look at a Vedic chart, that sun may shift. It may be in a different location because 24 degree difference could be almost a sign over. But in Vedic astrology, what we fix on is the rising sign? The rising sign means what constellation was rising on the eastern horizon at the exact moment you were born. So, at the moment you're born, if somebody were to stand in front of the hospital where you're born and would their eyes look to the eastern horizon, we want to see what actual constellation was there on the east, and that determines the rising sign
• 16:00
  or the first house of a birth chart, and then the birth chart is cast based on that rising sign. That's the fixed location in Sanskrit called a lagna, a fixed point. So a birth chart, often called a horoscope, right? A scope of time.
• 16:14
  A horoscope means that this moment of time, here's where all the planets were, here's where all the stars were, relative to that exact spot on Earth where you're born, relative to that exact time of birth, and so now we're talking about a much more accurate system. It's the rising sign based, which means what was exactly on the eastern horizon when you were born at the time of birth, and using math that is astronomically aligned to what you actually see in the sky, because at the end of the day, we're trying to get to the truth of your soul. So we have this snapshot of the heavens, and we
• 16:48
  we divide the sky into these 12 sections. And and by the way, if you're really interested in this and you want to geek out and you want to get more detail on it, my book covers it, Astrology Decoded. I also have a YouTube channel where I describe you know small short videos, 10 to 15 minutes, that I go into more detail of the technical mechanics of all this. But for podcast episode, in a in a general sense, the sky is divided into 12 sections. The first section being that sign on the eastern horizon when you were born, and what astrologer does is cast this map of the sky. You know, you're
• 17:20
  using computer software these days, in the old days, hand drawn, you would basically create a map of the heavens, a snapshot of the sky at the moment you were born, and we use the 12 zodiac constellations, and we use the nine planets of Vedic astrology, and that's the sun, moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, and then of course the two shadow planets, the two eclipse points called Rahu and Ketu. As I explained in previous drops of light, the nine planets correspond to the nine numbers, the nine numbering system. If you take nine times 12, there's 12 signs, nine planets.
• 17:55
  Nine times 12 is 108. 108 is a very powerful number in all spiritual traditions, and we then put all that together to create this snapshot of the chart, and the chart then helps us understand in what areas of life are there active energies, because each of these 12 sections of sky have a different zodiac sign, and each of the 12 sections of sky is like a window into a different aspect of your soul. So, for instance, from the moment you're born, the eastern horizon determines your personality. The western horizon determines the types of partners you'll be attracted to. What's directly
• 18:36
  overhead is an area of sky we'd call it the 10th house, which shows how you show up in the world, what kind of career you'll be drawn to, what's directly underground, hidden from view from the spot of your birth, is your hidden mind, how your psychology works. So we can use each section of sky to understand the energy, the star energy, the zodiac star energy, influencing different areas of your life. And now, if a planet is located there, that planet's personality then pushes its energy into that place as well. Like Mars, the very aggressive type of planet. If Mars is overhead, you might be
• 19:10
  very aggressive when it comes to your career. We also have the signs, right? Pisces is a very spiritual, expansive sign, sometimes all over the place. If Pisces is the star constellation directly overhead, which is the house of career. Then you'll have a career that may be all over the place, and you have a hard time sort of locking into one particular career path. If Gemini, the star constellation of the the twins, sometimes called in Western astrology, but a man and a woman, two different polarities, is on the eastern horizon when you're born, you may have a Gemini personality,
• 19:41
  and Gemini is a personality that is can be indecisive, have lots of ideas, lots of creativity, see both points of view of everything. So, what a Vedic astrologer does is put together what is the area of life that we're talking about, what is the star constellation there, what is the planet there, and adding all that together to make some kind of interpretation about the person. So, for instance, for me, because I was working with leaders, I would zoom in on the 10th house and the first house, which is their personality.
• 20:08
  So we start to understand what are your natural intrinsic personality traits, what are your tendencies, what are your natural strengths, what are your vulnerabilities, what are your motivations, what drives you. The moon sign, where the moon is located, determines a lot of how your mind works. If your moon is in Aries, headstrong ram is the symbol of Aries. If your moon is in Aries, you are going to have a mind that is very headstrong and wants to push through things, right? If your mind is in Pisces, you might be very spiritual oriented and kind of feel different things. You may feel other
• 20:39
  energies of other people. You may feel spiritual energies. You may commune with the divine. If your, let's say, your your moon is in Cancer, Cancer is a very emotional sign, so you may have a very emotional mind, and you think about the world through your emotions, right? So I'll do some episodes on on getting into each of the planets and each of the signs, but generally that's what a Vedic astrology chart does: map of the heavens mapping different constellations and different planets. So then it gets interesting because now we can then see what are the underlying behavioral tendencies
• 21:13
  that you have. What are the different energies in different areas? So, for instance, with children, do you have challenges when it comes to having children, or does it go easily for you? Do you have challenges in your education? Do you have challenges with mom, with dad, with the way you relate to coworkers? Do you have challenges in your spiritual evolution? Are you more materially oriented, more spiritually oriented? All of those kind of things. Now, in Western astrology, if you look at a birth chart, which can also be pulled as a rising sign. They may tell you here's the energies that
• 21:43
  play. Here are the personality traits at play, but there's nothing you can really do about it. In Western astrology, there isn't a whole what we call a remedial system. There isn't a system of remedies, but Vedic astrology is full of remedies. They're called upayas. They are cures for different conditions in the chart, so Vedic astrologer can see in the chart what are areas of life where you actually have some free will and agency to make a change in, and the remedies draw from all these sister sciences like Ayurveda mind body medicine system, the yoga system, the mantra chanting
• 22:19
  system, the ritual and worship system, the deities, all these different sort of energetic beings that you can pray to and worship for guidance and help in certain areas of life. So, for instance, if somebody has a lot of violence in their life, usually that's related to Mars. Mars is quite a violent planet, and so we start to see where is Mars positioned, and based on where is in the chart they'll have some violent issues in that area of life, and we have some very fierce, violent deities in the Vedic tradition. That if you propitiate, you work with those fierce energies. You start to
• 22:52
  then calm those energies in your own life, and so you can balance things out. So that is probably the job of the Vedic astrologer is more of a karma manager. So what you what happens is you approach a Vedic astrologer and say, "Hey, I have a challenge in this area of my life. I notice that every time I find a teacher of spiritual practices or spiritual traditions, they seem to be cheats. They seem to be charlatans. I'm noticing that every time I find a teacher. I call them a guru. I call them a spiritual mentor teacher. They let me down. They don't give me good guidance. They give me bad
• 23:26
  advice. Or every time I go see a therapist, I get bad advice, bad counsel, and it doesn't work out very well. I'm really struggling with finding good counsel, good teachers, good gurus in my life. So this probably is going to hear that and say, "Oh, Jupiter is the planet of counselors, teachers, and gurus. So, how is this person's Jupiter doing? The ninth house of the birth chart is the house that's connected to teachers, counselors, and gurus. How is the ninth house doing? So, we'll evaluate the ninth house, the sign constellation that's there. We'll evaluate Jupiter and how it's doing?
• 24:00
  Perhaps this person has Jupiter in a very difficult location in the chart, so that person is having trouble with Jupiter energy. Jupiter, in Sanskrit, known as Guru, is not able to give all of his full grace and energy to this particular individual, and is showing up in these challenges with teachers, therapists, and counselors, or even bad lawyers. Like I have clients that come to me and say, "Look, I'm in a lawsuit, and I have a very difficult lawyer, and they're not actually helping me out. And I'll notice, "Wow, there Jupiter is afflicted. There's challenges with Jupiter. So how do we
• 24:30
  improve Jupiter? And so this is where the remedies come in. I'll probably have to do a full episode on remedies, but what a remedy does is how do we now shift that Jupiterian energy? So Jupiter's color is yellow, orange, and yellow. And like for instance, today I'm wearing yellow and orange, right? Why did I choose to wear yellow and orange today? Well, I didn't really think about it, but now I'm going to think about it. Why did I pick this color? Well, today I happen to be teaching about Vedic astrology. Jupiter is the teacher. If I. Want to harmonize and connect and commune with
• 25:03
  Jupiter's teaching energy? If I wear Jupiter's color, I automatically get some of that energy coming to me. So one of the remedies to improve Jupiter energy is to wear more yellow and orange. Another remedy is to do rituals. Jupiter, as a planet in its mythology, loves to do rituals. So do some daily kind of ritual, Jupiter loves to read books on spiritualities, spiritual texts, scriptures. Right, so you can pick any book from any tradition, and just by reading that spiritual book, you're improving Jupiter's energy. So I might tell a client start reading the Bible every morning, even though I'm
• 25:37
  not Christian. If they're Christian, I'm going to give them a remedy in line with their particular tradition. So somebody has a problem with their lawyer. There's things we can do on the mental level to say, okay, here's the boundaries to set with the lawyer. Here's instructions to give the lawyer. Here's how to manage your lawyer. We can work on all of that. But on energetic level, if the lawyer is difficult, we know there's some challenge with Jupiter. Start reading a scriptural text every day. You're going to change that Jupiter energy in your life, and therefore the right type of energy
• 26:09
  will show up in lawyers, counselors, teachers, therapists, all that kind of stuff. So that's how we start to manage things on a karmic level. So I believe when you have a challenge in life, you can tackle it from your body level, right? So let's say somebody has a health challenge; they're suffering with some health challenge. Well, you could treat it at the body level, right? You can take a medication, you can have a surgery, you can have a body physical treatment for that particular area of life. You can apply a cream, or sometimes, as we know, disease in the body manifests through the
• 26:40
  mind. So you can take and tackle it at the mental level. So, at the mental level, work on the emotions, work on unresolved mental challenges, emotional challenges, unresolved traumas. And as you heal the mind, the body gets healed. What a Vedic astrologer does takes it even further and says, "Wait a minute, let's tackle it from the karmic level. What is the karma that is at the root of this particular physical imbalance? And let's work on the energy that shifts that particular karma. So now, if you have a problem in life and you tackle it from a physical level, an emotional, mental
• 27:16
  level, and a karmic, spiritual level, then this is super. This is where things really change. In fact, I just hit the 10-year anniversary of my coaching practice, Head and Heart Insights, this last week on on Monday, and I sent out an email, and I took the day off. Right, so I don't normally take days off for 10 years. I've been working, working, working. I love my work, but you know, I take time off for family events, for federal holidays, those kind of things, family vacations, but never for myself. So I took a day off for myself, and of course I started to reflect and think.
• 27:48
  I thought, you know what? Let me share my reflection. And what I realized in 10 years of executive coaching, spiritual coaching, Vedic astrology, karmic coaching, that every business problem usually has a human problem underneath it. If you get to the root of a business problem, it's usually a human problem. That's why in corporations we have human resources. How does a company function? It's the human resource of the company. So behind every business problem is a human problem. Behind every human problem is usually some kind of emotional, mental, psycho-emotional problem. That's what I
• 28:27
  believe, and underneath that is usually some kind of spiritual problem. So there's the human problem, there's the business problem, then the human problem, then usually some kind of spiritual problem underneath it. You really have to get the spiritual layer, and what I believe is behind every spiritual problem is a karmic problem. So we're usually getting to the root cause of anything in Vedic astrology. So when a client approaches me with a business challenge, we understand the human situation going on. Then we understand the spiritual and emotional situation going on. Then we understand
• 29:00
  the karmic challenge in their very birth chart, and if we tackle the root at the karma, it usually shifts the spiritual thing, which then shifts the mental emotional thing, which then shifts the people, which then shifts the business problem. So Jyotish is not a newspaper horoscope. It is not like oh, this is the month you're born, this is your sign, and here's your personality. In fact, we are all signs, and this is a hard concept for people because in in the Western world, we want to get behind a team. When I told my sister, "Hey, you're actually Scorpio, she's like, "No, I'm not. I'm
• 29:35
  whatever she was. She's like, "I'm. I don't remember her sign, but she's like, 'I'm a Leo. I'm a Leo. I've always been a Leo, and she's like, "That's the team that I root for. I've rooted for that team of Leo my whole life, and now you're telling me I'm not a Leo. I don't like that. So, and in fact, I wrote by that my book that my sister was one of the people that helped me understand why people are so attached to their sign. It's it's almost like a sports team. This is the team that I'm behind. I don't care if they're winning or losing. That's my team. This is my. Political party. I
• 30:00
  don't care if they're doing good or doing bad. That's my political party. So same thing. This is the sign that I was told I was since I was a kid, and that's my sign. And as soon as you look at the Vedic astrology, you're like, wait a minute. There's we're not looking at my sun sign anymore, and my sun sign was not calculated the right way, and I'm looking at my rising sign. Oh my gosh, everything, all circuits blown. Right in India, we say, "Oh, Western people-they have an identity crisis. They don't really know who they are. And usually, when somebody comes to me for a Vedic
• 30:27
  astrology reading, they have a bit of an identity crisis because everything changes. But the thing is, all of the signs are somewhere in the sky when you're born, which means every single sign influences some part of your life. If you're born as an Aries rising, that means Aries was on the eastern horizon, but that means if you go below the horizon, there was the sign Taurus ruling your house of income. The next sign over is Gemini ruling your house of communication. Next sign over is Cancer ruling the fourth house of your psychology and your early childhood. So every sign has its
• 31:01
  energy influence in your life in some way, so even though you may show up as an Aries in your personality, in your career you may show up as a Capricorn, in your daily worship you may show up as a Virgo, in your relationships and marriage you may show up as a Libra, so you show up as all the signs in different ways. So never reject any sign. Don't start saying this is my team. This is my sign.
• 31:23
  All signs make sense, which is why when I read a newspaper horoscope and I read all the signs, all the signs seem to apply because they're all a part of you some way somehow, right? The other thing with Jyotish is it is not 100% deterministic, right? If I look at a birth chart and I flip it around and I turn it on its head and I turn it upside down, I look at a moon chart, look at a sun chart, look at the rising chart, look at sub charts. There's a bunch of sub charts, and everything points the same thing. Then I know that is a fixed karma. That person will probably not be able to avoid
• 31:56
  that circumstance. The only way to avoid that particular thing is through the grace of God or the help of a guru, but there's other karma that is not fixed. It's somewhat fixed, or it's easy to change. Those are the types of karmas we can do something about. So it's almost like we're looking at a weather forecast. We're saying, okay, there's a storm coming. It's going to rain, but here's a raincoat you can put on and avoid getting drenched by the karma, or this storm is so severe. Even if you put a raincoat on, you're going to get soaked through. There's no really way to avoid it. Find
• 32:29
  some grace. So, what a Vedic astrology chart helps you understand is where in your life do you say, you know what? I need to let go. I need to have grace. I can't do much about it. Let me just find a way to gracefully go through this karma. Other areas of karma, let me change it. Like I said, heyam dukam anagatam. Let us avoid the suffering that is yet to come. If there is a way to avoid it, let's avoid it. Right, and that was kind of that dishwasher analogy I gave in the in the long episode. Let's come up with a remedy that if you do enough of this remedy, enough of this work, you will find a
• 33:07
  way to get through that karma. And like I said, one of the best remedies you can do is meditate. If you daily meditate, people meditate to reduce stress. Fine, but actual meditation. If you're doing a serious meditation practice, you're actually refining and purifying karma, daily worship. It doesn't matter what the tradition you spend every morning some amount of time worshiping the divine, communing and connecting the divine. The divine is helping you refine karma. And if you want to get more technical, more specific, I'm an engineer. I like to problem solve. I'd like to find exactly
• 33:39
  the issue at stake. If you can root cause the issue to a planet, you can work on that planet's energy. Suppose the challenge at the root of it all is Saturn. Saturn is a slow-moving planet. Saturn is also connected to legs and feet. So one of the classic remedies for Saturn is to take a slow walk on a Saturday, Saturn's day, right? And so, what I did in my book was, for each planet, helped you understand each planet's energy, and to propitiate that planet, you do some activity that brings you into that energetic domain, energetic field of that planet, and you start to harmonize that energy
• 34:21
  through that work. So a slow walk on Saturn's Saturn's day is honoring Saturn's domain and energy. Now, if you then also chant a mantra to Saturn, that's where it gets next level. You get into very specific Vedic astrology where we have mantras for each planet to propitiate that planet's energy. We have certain rituals that we can do for those particular planets, and as you do those rituals, you start to change that particular energy. There are gemstones for each planet that you can then use to propitiate the energy of that planet. Now, why do I keep talking about remedying planets versus
• 34:58
  signs? So this is very. Important concept in Vedic astrology: every sign is actually an expression of a planet's energy. So Aries, as a sign, is ruled by Mars. That means the Lord of Aries is Mars. Mars expresses energy through Aries. Taurus is an expression of Venus's energy. Gemini is an expression of Mercury's energy. Cancer is an expression of the Moon's energy.
• 35:27
  So, if there's a challenge in your chart and it's ruled by Cancer, you would actually tackle the Moon's energy to improve that particular area of life. Leo is ruled by the Sun itself. Virgo is ruled by Mercury. Libra is ruled by Venus. If there's a problem in Libra, so let's say you're an Aries rising, that means if you count over the seventh house, the seventh location in the birth chart, that is the area of relationships. And let's say your relationships are completely unbalanced, or you're having trouble relationships, that area of the birth chart is ruled by Libra. Libra is ruled by
• 36:04
  Venus. If you do some kind of work for Venus, Venus loves music, art, and singing. If you start a regular singing practice, you'll improve Venus's energy. By nature, you improve Libra's energy, and because of that, you'll improve the area of energy related to your relationships, and you'll improve relationship energy. So after Libra comes Scorpio. Scorpio is ruled by Mars. So Mars has two signs: an Aries sign and a Scorpio sign. Mars shows in Aries in a very direct, forceful way, and Mars shows through Scorpio in a less direct, more secretive way. Aries is a fire sign. Aries is the fireside
• 36:44
  of Mars. Scorpio is a water sign. Scorpio is the water side of Mars. Both intense, but in different ways. Then we get to Sagittarius, which is ruled by Jupiter. So Sagittarius is an expression of Jupiter's energy. Then we get to Capricorn, which is a Saturn energy, and Aquarius, which is also Saturn energy, and finally we get to Pisces, which is a Jupiter's energy. So, whatever sign you are, whatever your rising sign is, you should work on the planet that is behind your rising sign. So, if you're a Capricorn rising, work on Saturn's energy, and everything shifts in your chart. So the
• 37:25
  theory that I posed in Astrology Decoded is just figure out your rising sign, and if you know what your rising sign is, figure out the planet behind it, and just work on that planet's energy. And if you work on propitiating that planet's energy, especially on the day of that planet, remember the seven days of the week correlate to the seven visible planets in Vedic astrology. I did a short episode on that. You can look it up. Work on that particular day on that particular planet's energy. Now, your question is, how do I calculate my Vedic birth chart? Well, you can get an astrologer,
• 37:57
  obviously, but on my website vishchchchchter.com, there's a free chart calculator. I don't charge anything for it. I pay the backend development fees for it, but it's free for you to use. And I don't take your email address or your birth date or anything like that. It's just free for you to use. Go to VishChattergy.com, enter your birth info, the time, the date, the location, and it will spit out a Vedic astrology birth chart for you, and it will spit out. This is your rising sign, and this is the planet that rules your birth chart. This is the planet that rules your rising sign. And once you
• 38:29
  know what that planet is, do an activity connected to that planet. Okay, if the planet happens to be the sun, follow the sun's circadian rhythm. Simple remedy. If the planet happens to be the moon, then work on your emotions. Work on balancing your emotions. Work on a meditation practice. If the planet happens to be Mars, do some physical exercise. These are all the natures or energies of those planets. If it happens to be Mercury, do some journaling, do some writing, do some mantra chanting. If the planet happens to be Jupiter, wear yellow. One one thing: read scriptures, read spiritual
• 39:07
  books, read spiritual books written by spiritual teachers, attend lectures of spiritual teachers. If it happens to be Venus, then sing, learn to sing, learn some music, start playing an instrument, start singing on a regular basis. If it's Saturn, get organized. Saturn loves organization. Get your house organized. Get rid of clutter. That's a great Saturn remedy. Okay, so those are the seven main planets. I followed the seven planets as they as they go through the work days. Each of those planets is a simple remedy for. If you want more detail, obviously you can look up my YouTube videos
• 39:37
  or look up Astrology Decoded, the book.
• 39:39
  I give very specific remedies for each plan for each rising sign. So, Jyotish, as you now know, is not a newspaper-based horoscope. It is not absolutely deterministic. It is not a prediction predicting this was what will happen to you. It actually gives you free will and agency and empowers you to do something about the energy. That are latent in your soul. It is not a fear-based system. If you have an astrologer that is striking fear in your heart, leave them. Don't do that. It's not good to be frightened. This is a system for your soul's evolution, not for your soul to be in fear.
• 40:14
  And you have agency. This is not something you let go and say, "This is my chart. I'm stuck with it. How many people complain? Oh my God! My Saturn's so difficult. I'm doomed. No, do something about it. Right? Have agency. So now you understand how I went from a skeptic to now understanding a very sophisticated system that requires a lot of problem solving, a lot of thinking. You'll find in India many astrologers, well known astrologists, are actually engineers and doctors by training. That sort of logical scientific mind is very suitable for Vedic astrology because at the end day, it is a
• 40:46
  science that you're trying to discover what is at the root of my problem. It's a problem-solving system. Understanding that Jyotish is a science of karma, understanding what is the karmic map or syllabus you're born into, and how do you then address that karma, and it requires you to be active and to do something about it, right? And yes, we can look ahead. The Vedic astrology birth chart is a snapshot of time in heavens, but you go through different planetary periods, and there's also transits that take place. So depending on the planetary period you're in, what planet is dominant at the
• 41:17
  moment in your energetic life, and then what transit is happening? Activating certain things in your life can then create certain things to happen. So, one of the things I love to do is somebody tells me about an event that happened in their life, and I can back calculate and say, "Okay, here's the transit, here's the planet, here's the root cause of it. So, if they tell me, for instance, I had a client recently where they had a Venus period in their life, and Venus is a great planet. It usually gives good results, but they told me about some difficulty that happened in the Venus period. I
• 41:45
  thought, oh, let me look at the chart again. I thought, oh, Venus is actually acting in a negative way in this person's chart. So therefore, whenever Venus's periods pop up, they will have some challenge with Venus in their life. And sure enough, they had another Venus period popping up. If you're listening, you know who you are, and so we said, "Well, this period may not be as good as what we thought it was because the last time you had Venus, it was difficult. This time, Venus is going to be difficult as well for your particular birth chart, right? This very individualized system. It's
• 42:14
  not like Venus is bad for everybody; it's bad for this particular person, their chart. And so we need to now take some Venus steps, and Venus is connected to the goddess. So, doing any kind of worship of a goddess type of energy will improve Venus's energy. And it just so happens that in a week we're coming into actually when this episode airs, we will be in the middle of a very powerful Indian festival celebrating the nine nights of the Goddess. So, if anybody has issues with women or relationships or Venus or money, because these are all Venus domains. Venus itself is its own domain. Venus
• 42:50
  rules money. Venus rules relationships. Venus rules harmony. Venus rules sexuality. Venus rules music, art. If you're an artist and you're trying to improve your art sales, Venus is the planet to work on, and one of the ways we work on Venus is through goddess worship. And we're coming into a portal. Nine nights out of the whole year, these nine nights in October celebrate the goddess. So what the ancient Vedic people did is they knew certain timings were portals to access that energy in a very powerful way.
• 43:21
  So if you do a goddess worship ritual or a goddess mantra any time of year, it has power. But when you do it during the specific festival of the goddess, it has 100 times the power. So this is why we find portals to do specific work in. So what a Vedic astrologer can tell you is: here's the planetary energy that you need to work on, and here's the portal within a week, within a month, within the year, that portal is very active. That you can do specific remedy work. So all of this is to say, don't just sit there saying this is my chart, I'm doomed. Don't sit there saying this is my sign, I'm
• 43:56
  stuck with it. You are all 12 signs, and all nine planets are working through you in different ways in different eras of your life. You have agency. You can do something about it. And as you start to understand the different festivals that are celebrated in India in the Hindu tradition, remember the Hindu tradition comes from the Vedic tradition. The Vedic tradition might be 70,000 years old. The Hindu tradition derived from it 4000 years ago, so the Hindus kind of maintain a lot of things in alignment with the original Vedic system. In fact, the you know billion or so Hindus in the world all
• 44:31
  still use Vedic astrology to figure out their festival timing. Right, so when you see an Indian festival, it is usually connected to a particular Vedic astrology portal, where if you work on that particular energy in that time, you have remedy of those challenges in your life, right? So think about in your life what are areas of challenge you have, and if you can then correlate that area of challenge to a particular planet, you can then understand what are the ways. Propitiate and honor that planet, whether right timings in the week, in the day, in the month, in the year, to then work on
• 45:08
  that energy. And like I said, Sunday is a great day to work on Sun's energy. Saturday a great day to work on Saturn's energy. Friday a great day for Venus's energy. So if you have a challenge with Venus, it's a goddess issue. If you have want to do something, do it on a Friday. That's the portal for Venus Day, and if you happen to do it on a Friday during these nine nights of the goddess, it becomes even more potent. So, with that, I hope you got a little taste of this incredible system of Vedic astrology. I hope this episode prompts you to research a little bit more, understand a little
• 45:43
  bit more. Like I said, go check out my YouTube videos, go check Astrology Decoded, and as I do future episodes, I'm going to do them a little bit more frequently now. I'm going to try and do two long episodes a month and two short episodes a month. I will start to get more and more detailed into these different planets, these different signs, and how they show up and what we can do about them, so that you can create the exact life that you want to create for yourself. Thank you, everyone.