Latest / Bending The Light: Vedic Wisdom for a Brighter World / Stop Saying “I’m a Leo” — Why You Are Actually All Twelve Signs

Transcript

Stop Saying “I’m a Leo” — Why You Are Actually All Twelve Signs · Bending The Light: Vedic Wisdom for a Brighter World

• 0:02
  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 all of you to another episode of Bending the Light, and I would like to welcome all of you from all corners of the globe. I am delighted to see so many listeners from so many corners of planet Earth, and so many parts of the U.S. But I'm especially delighted to report to you tonight that this podcast, in its fourth month here, has hit top 5% globally. I'm just amazed. Thank you, all of you who have been listening, following, liking, sharing, reviewing the reviews clearly helped, and letting your friends know about this podcast. I'm just so overjoyed. I'm so happy in my heart. It gives
• 1:24
  me so much motivation to keep doing this. And so here I am with another episode, feeling literally on top of the world and connecting with all of you across the world. So I am recording here in Redondo Beach, California, a suburb, a little little part of LA, about a mile from the beach, and it is nighttime here after a long day. And so, I usually like to record during the day, but today was quite a long day. I'm sure all of you have felt that. Um, in fact, it's been a long week. So the first reason I couldn't record during the day was there's a massive amount of construction going on,
• 1:58
  literally at the lot next door. There's a developer who's come in and bulldoze the house next door to the ground and is building this monstrous structure, and in the process is doing a lot of excavating, loud excavators, saws, hammers, drills, and it was so loud the ground was literally rumbling, and so I couldn't record in the middle of all that. It might have been interesting for all of you for a couple of minutes, but after a while, it would have gone exhausting. So I had to wait till the evening, but this evening was also busy. So all day I work, I coach, I do one-on-one executive
• 2:33
  coaching, I teach, and then at the end of the day, this whole week I've been helping my daughter with her college applications, and here in the U.S., college applications is a huge thing. It is a lot of work. There are essays and questions, and there's a lot of soul searching. And since I'm a coach, I'm helping my daughter as a coach would. I'm not giving her the answers, so I'm really asking her, "Well, what do you really think about that? And what do you mean by that statement, and that sounds very general. Tell me more about that. It's trying to dig behind the generalistic statements that
• 3:09
  she sometimes makes to really find the heart meaning, and from that heart meaning, then getting that in onto paper for her. She's doing the writing, but I'm really helping her position and think through what is the deeper motivation and her heart level behind what she's saying. So they've been long days, and yesterday, actually two days ago, I had a client here in my office in the middle of all that construction. So I want to share a little bit about what that construction noise and all meant for a reading for a client here in my office, and I also want to share with you a very
• 3:43
  interesting lecture I went to yesterday. So where do I begin? Let's see. Let's start with the lecture.
• 3:50
  So the first thing about the lecture was it was at Loyola Marymount University (LMU) , which is just just up the street from me, and it was a visiting professor from San Diego State University, who was the chair of the Department of Religious Studies, and he gave a lecture on Venus is an archetype was kind of the title, and he actually gave a lecture on Vedic astrology. So I was really intrigued to go attend a lecture on Vedic astrology at a university, Loyola Marymount University, and it turns out this professor is actually a student of mine. He studied Vedic astrology with me, so I was
• 4:25
  curious what he would say. And I entered the lecture room thinking, "I wonder if me as the teacher is going to intimidate this, you know, professor giving a talk on Vedic astrology, not his area of expertise. His area of expertise is understanding Indian traditions, Indian culture, and Indian religion, and how it's manifested in the modern world, specifically in the yoga, Vedic astrology, Ayurveda worlds. So, as he started speaking, it turned out the lecture was actually about me. So that was the first sort of surprise of the day, and he literally put up slides. On the screen that were
• 5:01
  from the class that I taught, and he described what I was doing as a modern sort of embodiment of this ancient tradition. And so I was a research subject, and I guess when he normally gives this lecture, he uses a pseudonym. But he was since I was in the room, he said, "This is Vish. This is the guy who who I'm talking about." And I, even though he's my student, I became his student in this hour and a half, and I ended up taking 12345 pages of notes because there was just so much to learn, especially from an academic perspective. And one of the most amazing things I learned was that
• 5:37
  there was a gentleman. He's a British guy. He lived from 1860 to 1917. He had a name, but it wasn't a name that worked for what he was trying to do. So he changed his name to Alan Leo because his sign was Leo. He made his name Alan Leo, and he wrote a book called The Astrology of All way back in in the early 1900s. And one of the stories that I heard from this professor was that mr. Alan Leo was tired of all these people coming to him for readings all the time. He was an astrologer, a Western astrologer. People were coming to him for readings, and you know, in those days he had to sort of
• 6:14
  hand calculate. They weren't computers, so he was hand calculating all these charts, and he was getting tired of all the requests. He says, "You know what? Let me come up with a shortcut. Why don't we just look at the sun sign because it's consistent for a month period for everybody. So if somebody just tells me their birth date, I can tell them right off the bat, here's the sign that you are. And sometimes Alan Leo is called the father of modern astrology, but really what this professor argued is he's the father of modern sun sign astrology. So what I learned was Western astrology actually
• 6:46
  used a rising sign as a focal point, but thanks to Alan Leo and trying to cater to lots of people, the masses at one time sun sign astrology was born. And so what's happened in the Western world is most people are identified to their sign. What month were you born? That's my sign, and they're fixated on that. And I never understood that. I didn't really subscribe to Western astrology until you know more recently I got into Vedic astrology, and I looked at what is this Western astrology about? What are people talking about? And your sun sign is basically a blanket sort of assessment of one
• 7:21
  energy was in the sky for a 30-day period when you were born, all over the world. And as you know from my last episode, Vedic astrology, we zoom in on the rising sign, which is what was rising, what zodiac sign was rising on the eastern horizon at the moment you were born, and that influences you in a lot deeper way.
• 7:41
  And obviously, it requires a calculation to generate, which Alan Leo felt a little intimidated to do for so many people. And then, of course, Vedic astrology, as I mentioned last time, the calculations are very different. The math is different. The math is about 23 degrees off of the what is observable in the sky. So Vedic astrology uses what's called the sidereal zodiac, and that means that we calculate based on fixed star positions. So stars that don't move based on their fixed positions, we calculate where constellations are, where planets are, where signs are. In Western
• 8:14
  astrology, it's a tropical zodiac which shifts with the seasons. You could call it a seasonal zodiac, and it keeps shifting every. In fact, it shifts every 72 years. It shifts by one degree. So over the 2000 years that Western astrology has existed, it's drifted 23 degrees back from a zero degrees of Aries back into Pisces, and eventually 1000s years from now, it'll move into Aquarius, which we're calling the Age of Aquarius. You've heard that before. So my one criticism with Western astrology is it's too sun sign based, which is really not specific or customized to you. And then the
• 8:50
  other is that it is not observable positions of the stars in the sky. They're not accurate to what you would actually see with a telescope. But the other thing that I've noticed with Western astrology is people get fixated on their sign. They're like, "Oh, I'm a Gemini. Oh, I'm a Leo. Oh, I'm a Pisces," and they're sort of stuck on that, and they forget that we are actually all of the signs, and all of the signs show up in our life, because the moment you're born, the entire 360-degree circle of the sky has every sign in it. So there's one sign that is your rising sign that influences your
• 9:27
  personality, but there's another sign that is in the location of the sky connected to your career that influences the energy in your career. So if you're an Aries rising, you may be Aries in your personality, but if you count over to the 10th house of career, the energy of Capricorn is there, and you become a Capricorn energy in your career, right? So you cannot fixate on a sign. So I think the first thing I want you to think about is you are all the signs, which is why, like I mentioned my last episode, if you read all the. Newspaper horoscopesome way, but the most important thing to
• 10:05
  understand is that behind every sign is a planet, and this is very important. Don't just think about the sign; think about the sign as an expression of a planet's energy. So the way we think about it in Vedic astrology is, you have a sign, but you have a planet behind the sign, and then of course you have a house, which is an area of sky related to a particular area of life. And the Sanskrit words are really interesting here. The Sanskrit word for a planet is a graha. Graha means one who grasps. So a planet has this grasping energy, a grasping of your consciousness. You could say it's very
• 10:44
  active. The sign in Sanskrit is called a rashi. Rashi means a heap of energy, a field of energy, right? So the planet acts through a field of energy of the sign. You could say, and then finally, a house is called a bhava, which is an area, an area of life. You could say bhava is a house, is the way we translate it. So you could almost think of the planet as the activator. It activates and acts according to its natural character. The sign is the clothing the planet takes on the energy the planet takes on as it goes through that sign, and then the house is the stage on which the scene of your
• 11:29
  life is taking place. So at the moment you're born, let's say the 10th house of career is a section of sky that is 10 sections away from the first house, and that section has to do with career. The fifth house, five sections away, is the section to do with children. And in all of those, there's a certain sign. And depending on your rising sign, the sign that rules the house of children will be different.
• 11:53
  For an Aries, the sign that rules the house of children is Leo. For a Taurus, the sign that rules the house of children would be Virgo. It all shifts one over. So even though you may be of Aries headstrong in personality, when it comes to children, the field of energy acting in children is Leo, and either you or your children will have some kind of Leo energy, and that's how astrologers make their assessments. So it's very important then to understand what does actually Leo mean. What does that sign mean? The signs are expressions of energy of the planet, right? And I remember I've talked
• 12:28
  about the seven days of the week. We in one of my drops of light episode, I did the seven days of the week. So that's the order we use for the planets. We start with Sunday. The sun is the king, the king. So the sun as a planet is all about kingly energy, royal energy, your deeper soul, your deeper will, your willpower manifesting, ruling, courage, self-confidence, shining bright. Those are all the sun's qualities. So wherever the sun is in your chart, if it's in the 10th house of career, you'll shine bright in career. If it's in the ninth house of father, maybe your father is very famous,
• 13:02
  well-known, shining person. If it's in the fourth house of mother, maybe you have a mother who is shining and bright, right? The sun rules the sign of Leo, so wherever Leo is, Leo in your chart is an expression of the sun's energy. So, if you have the sun in the 10th house of career, you may be a leader. If you have Leo in this 10th house of career, you may have a Leo-like leadership energy in your career. Now, let's say Leo is in your first house, then you would have a king-like energy in your chart. So, I'll give you a good example. The president here in the United States is Donald Trump,
• 13:39
  and what people protest about him is he's acting like a king, and there's all these no kings protests. He has in put gold everywhere, like turning the White House into kind of a palace-like feeling. And you know he was proud of of having rulership and ownership over the country. His rising sign is Leo. Leo is the energy of the sun. The sun is the king. Leo is the sign that the sun rules. Leo is king-like its energy because the sun rules it. Therefore, somebody with a rising sign, Leo, is like a king. If you put him into Western sun sign astrology, he would be a Gemini, and Gemini would be an
• 14:22
  indecisive, lots of ideas, lots of thinking, lots of creativity, and it just doesn't quite show. The Leo is just so strongly fitting of him because that's his rising sign, directly the sign that was visible on the eastern horizon when he was born. I found that clients that I have who are Leo, they also have beautiful hair. Why? Well, a lion has a mane of hair. Leo people tend to have that mane of hair as well. Now, that doesn't mean that everybody who's a Leo shows up as a Leo. So that's another subtlety here, and this is what I wrote about in astrology. Is you can have a strong expression of
• 15:02
  sign or a weak expression of a sign. Okay, so this is what brings me to my concrete story here. So I had a client this week who, and you know who you are, they had an Aries rising, and so Aries is ruled by the planet Mars. Mars is a warrior. Mars is the general in command of the army. If the sun was the king, the moon might be the queen. Mars, the commander in chief, the general. And I know in America the commander in chief becomes president, but in in ancient society the commander in chief of the armed forces, so the senior general. Mars is a planet of aggression and war. When I did my
• 15:40
  drop of light of debilitated Mars in Cancer, you know, I said, "Hey, Mars is covered in armor and blood and swords and knives and wants to sit on a wooden bench and get ready for battle." Mars is a battle type of planet, and Mars shows its energy through two signs, Aries and Scorpio.
• 15:58
  So, if you identify as Aries or identify as Scorpio, either through your rising sign or if you draw into Western astrology, it's your sun sign. Mars is behind it. Mars is the energy that expresses through Aries and Scorpio. Aries is a fire sign. Scorpio is a water sign. So Mars shows up in a watery way in one way and a fiery way in the other, so Aries is kind of like the Mars warrior who's on horseback, riding, galloping, charging straight into the into the enemy. Swords drawn, lance drawn, shield ready. Go go go! Charge your head. That's Aries, and in fact, the symbol of Aries is a ram. A
• 16:37
  ram's like this creature that bangs his head through walls. It hard charging. So Aries is an energy of hard charging. Wherever Aries is in your chart, you will be hard charging in that area of life, or you will face hard charging energy in that area of life. Scorpio is the water sign. Scorpio is the warrior, but more secretive, more under the surface, under the water. So spies, intelligence officers, people in the Secret Service. These are all Mars warriors. They're trained in in warfare, in attack and battle, but they're hidden. They're quiet. Scorpions stay under the surface. Scorpio's
• 17:12
  symbol is a scorpion. It sort of hides under rocks. So you can see how Mars is the same same charge charging planet. That's the activation, but the clothing it wears, the sign, the field of energy it's in, is either Aries, which is hard charging, or Scorpio, which is more intense, mysterious, secretive, and you know hidden behind the scenes. So Aries person might want to be up front in battle or in in life, and a Scorpio person might want to remain behind the scenes. But if you upset a Scorpio person, they will attack you. They'll sting you just like a scorpion does, right? So, I had this
• 17:48
  client come who is an Aries rising, who is suffering with not being confident enough, not being brave enough, not being courageous, not standing up for themselves. But they're an Aries rising, so what? What gives? Does that mean it's the wrong sign, wrong calculation? What is it? How can I be an Aries and not stand up for myself? Well, this is where it gets interesting because you have to see how strong is that planet. If you don't understand that there's a planet behind a sign, you can't really evaluate how much that sign shows up in the person's life. If somebody is Aries ruled, Aries
• 18:26
  sun sign, Aries moon sign, Aries rising sign, and Mars is strong, they will show up as a strong Aries, courageous, confident, ready for battle. But if Mars is weak, then they struggle for that energy to show through, even though the clothing or the field of energy is there for the sign, the activator is not not able to perform. And this person's chart, I knew there was an issue because when the person was arriving at my office for the reading, the construction behind that wall started, and I'm talking about a construction site about eight feet outside of that wall, and there were 10 big
• 19:02
  burly construction guys with hammers and saws and drills, and there was a cement truck that showed up, and the cement started pouring. And there were, I mean, it was just crazy amount of construction. And in Vedic astrology, everything that you see in the natural world relates to, or is governed by one of these planets, and Mars rules construction, tools, saws, hammers, cutting implements. These are all Mars domain construction. Mars domain, big burly, tough guys that are about to battle the the Earth and the wood and the lumber; these are Martian people. These are Mars energy, strong, right?
• 19:45
  Very manly. That's a Mars energy. So the moment that construction started, I realized Mars is making himself known to me, right? So the concept is that we look at a birth chart. To say, oh, when you were born, this planet was in this location, the space. Here was the rising sign. That's 1000s of miles away. And what we forget is sometimes these planets are showing up right in front of our face, like literally next door. So when that construction started, I thought, oh, this person must have something going on with Mars.
• 20:22
  Mars is telling me the person needs to do something, and of course they were laying foundation. They were laying foundation. They were literally had cement truck parked behind this wall of my office with a huge loud pump, an engine, and engines are also Mars energy. They got Mars energy, the engine behind me. Mars energy is construction workers, and they're pouring foundation, concrete and foundation, the basic base structure, and the planet that rules structure, that governs structure is Saturn. Saturn is a slow-moving planet that slowly builds a foundation. Saturn is a planet of
• 20:58
  stability, organization, foundations. Saturn rules Capricorn and rules Aquarius. Capricorn is the logical side of Saturn, so Capricorn people are very logical. It's Earth signs; they're all very practical, almost coldly logical and practical. Aquarius is more an air sign, so it's kind of the how do I uplift humanity? How do I take care of workers? How do I take care of people? So the aspect of people that are working for you becomes Saturn, the Aquarius side of Saturn. Saturn also rules innovation and you know creative thinking. But I thought, wow, Mars and Saturn are communicating to me
• 21:37
  with these construction workers, the tools and the foundation being laid, and so of course I had to think about the client and what may be their issues, and sure enough, the issue was with how do I stand up for myself, how do I more courage, and what do I stand on? What is the platform I stand on? What do I need to create in my life to take care of my own foundational needs? And of course, because of Saturn, Saturn rules Capricorn, and this person is an Aries rising. So if I count from Aries over 10 houses away, which was the 10th house of career, I end up in Capricorn. And so of course
• 22:13
  I have to say, well, Saturn is speaking to me from next door. Capricorn is the sign that it rules. Tell me what's going on with your career? And it turned out that was the frustration the client was having. Was I'm struggling because I have not had my career. I've been sort of away from my career for a long time, and it's been very difficult for me. And I don't feel like I have a sense of identity. My foundation is sort of broken. So all these things started coming together, and I started realizing that look, astrology is a framework to understand the archetypes of the planets and
• 22:45
  archetypes of the signs. You can see them as archetypes from a Jungian psychology point of view. You can see them from the Hindu point of view as actual deities that can be worshiped, and we can chant mantras to and pray and propitiate. Or you can just think of them as, from Western astrology, as signs and planets that can be influencing your psychology, or as I do it, they are planets and energies that grasp you at some level of your consciousness, and you can shift the way they grasp you based on your choices and actions. Right. So we've covered so far the sun, we've covered Mars, we've
• 23:19
  covered Saturn, and we've covered the signs that they rule. And with this person, what was very interesting was because of the construction, I was able to get that message from the universe. You know, I don't need to pull a tarot card here. I can literally look what's going happening outside my office, and from that, give a very good a prioritization of what is in the chart, because there's all these plants and all these signs to look at, and what was interesting is partway through the reading, I had my usual like, what am I saying? Is this real? Am I connecting a dot that isn't there just
• 23:53
  because there's construction today? Is that just a coincidence? You know, you start. I'm a skeptical engineer, so I started to doubt that. And sure enough, when the reading got done, I said thank you. It was a pleasure to meet you. They thanked me. We said goodbye. I opened the door, and literally as I opened the door, the construction stopped. It just stopped. They were done. They cut the pump for the concrete cement mover. The cement truck drove away, and the workers just literally left on lunch break. I couldn't believe it.
• 24:24
  I mean, to the minute, right? It started when the person arrived and ended when the person left. I mean, that is one of those we call in Sanskrit nimitta. Nimitta means omen. It is a sign from the universe. You can't ignore it. It is really the universe communicating with you. So let's see. Let's get to some other planets. The moon, one of my favorite ones. I'm a Cancer rising. The sign of Cancer is ruled by the Moon. Like I said, the King is the is represented by the Sun. The Moon is the Queen. The Moon and the Queen are more about like let me understand other people. So the King is
• 24:55
  like let me understand myself. I'm the ruler. I'm the boss. Whereas the Moon says, wait a minute, I'm. Getting the reflection of the sun, I'm getting the reflection from outside. So I'm sensitive to what other people think and say and do. As a life coach, as an executive coach, a spiritual coach is amazing because for me in this profession, I can be sensitive to how other people are feeling. I can feel other people. I can sense their energies. I can feel emotionally how they feel. I'm sensitive to people. The moon is sensitive to people. The queen is sensitive to the people of her kingdom.
• 25:26
  Right? The king is saying we're going to do this, and the queen says, "Wait a minute. Let's understand what the people really want." And the moon is connected to intuition, nurturing, and care. Of course, the sign of Cancer is a sign of nurturing intuition and care. So you may say, "Well, I'm not a cancer," but in that area of life, you will be. You will show up as a cancer, right? So I had a client who, it was actually a student. This is another interesting thing that happened. This student said to me, "I don't buy this Vedic astrology stuff. I don't believe it. I'm a Leo, and I'm a Leo,
• 26:00
  and that's who I am. And I'm not willing to walk away from that. I am very confident. I know who I am, and I'm that's who I am. And it turned out that was her sun sign. And I said, "Well, what about your rising sign?" She's like, "I don't know what that is, but I'm Leo." And then I explained to her that you know your rising sign is actually Cancer. And she says, "No, there's nothing Cancer about me. I'm not a cancer. I'm a Leo. There's nothing cancer about me, and I was like, yeah, but that was in the sky when you were born, and no matter if you don't identify with cancer, it is somewhere in
• 26:30
  your life. So let's say you take your sun sign. Let's put where cancer falls and see if if you show up as cancer in that area of life. And I asked her, do you like to have people over at your home? She said yes. Do you like to cook for people and entertain them at home? She said yes. Do you like to maintain your home and does it feel like a nurturing nest to you? She said yes. I said, well, that's a cancer. It literally explained it. Are you sensitive to the way other people feel? Yes, I am. Do you like to be nurtured and cared for? She said yes. I'm like, well, that's it. But then she
• 26:57
  said, no, I'm a Leo. So sometimes we get so stubbornly tied to the sign, we have to kind of let go of that. Say, wait a minute! I am all 12 signs, so it doesn't matter what astrology I'm using. Doesn't matter what sign somebody says I am. Just learn something because every sign has something to teach you, and every sign is showing up in your life. And let me guarantee you, every planet is showing up in your life one way or another. If somebody comes to you with a lot of aggression, that is literally Mars speaking to you. If somebody is pouring a concrete foundation next door to you,
• 27:33
  that is Saturn speaking to you. If somebody comes and and shows you a lot of affection and nurturing and care, Moon is showing up. If you have an intuitive person show up, or a mother, a motherly figure show up, that's the moon's energy, right?
• 27:47
  So we talked about sun, we talked about moon, we talked about Mars, we talked about Saturn. Let's talk about Mercury. I'm speaking right now. Mercury is a planet of expression. Mercury is all about expression, speaking, talking, learning. If there was the sun and the moon as the king and the queen, Mercury is the young prince, the young sun, and he is really excited to learn lots of things. So Mercury people love information. You meet a Mercury person, they want to learn, they want to activate. You know, I taught this yoga of relationships workshop a couple weekends ago in San Diego, and
• 28:19
  asked somebody, "Hey, how do you know Mercury has shown up on a date? You go on a date. How do you know Mercury's there? Well, Mercury's plan of expression and speaking. That person talks a lot, right? You're in a date, and the person talking talking a lot. That's Mercury. What am I doing right now? I'm talking, talking. In fact, as I talk, I notice this meter on my on my computer go up and down with how loud my voice is, and how it's modulating with the microphone. And sure enough, it's green in color. So whoever did that, smart job, good job, software programmer at Riverside. Green is
• 28:49
  the right color for voice and expression. So if I'm doing a lot of voice and expression, it must be Mercury, right? And so Mercury rules two signs: the sign of Gemini and the sign of Virgo. So Gemini people and Virgo people they think a lot, lots of information, lots of thinking, lots of trivia and information. You'll find they're good at trivia, they're good at all sorts of facts, but they don't always have the wisdom. They don't have the wisdom. They have more of the the everyday practical knowledge that Mercury likes. They're good at languages. The young prince loves to study different
• 29:25
  languages. The young prince is always playful and and trying to have fun. And so Mercury people are always trying to have fun. They're trying to be playful, right? Now, if I am doing a podcast and just in a few months it's hitting top 5% global status, there must be something going on with Mercury because Mercury is a planet of expression and voice and communication. So there must be something to do with Mercury in my chart. It turns out the 11th house. So if you have your rising sign, that's the eastern horizon. That's house number one. You count two, three. You go all the way around the
• 29:58
  sky. You actually count downwards. So, eastern horizon is house number one. Then you go below the earth, house number two, number three, number four, directly below your place of birth. 567. You come up. Top of the sky is 10, and just past the topmost point of the sky, the zenith, zenith they call it, is the 11th house. And that section of sky, whatever sign is there or whatever planet is there, will be connected to the area of life connected to public recognition, right? So any kind of award, any kind of recognition, any kind of public-facing work where you're, you know, teaching on mass,
• 30:35
  whether it's podcasting or published books, that is usually 11th House, okay. In my 11th house, I have the planet Mercury, and it is in the sign. We won't get in sign; that'll complicate things. But Mercury is there, so Mercury being there means it's something to do with writing, expression, speaking, is what I'll be recognized for. And of course, I'm a published author of two books. Today, coincidentally, I had a long conversation with my publisher about some other projects, and of course, Mercury is active. Mercury. If I'm talking to publisher, Mercury and my 11th house are active.
• 31:13
  Now, some of you that are really nerdy about astrology may argue and say, "Wait a minute! Wait a minute, Vish! I thought the third house is the house of communication? That's correct, right? If you go to the first house on the eastern horizon, you count the second and the third just below the earth. The third house is a house of your speech and communication. Speech and communication. Do I have anything to do with Mercury there? Well, I have the sign of Virgo, right?
• 31:38
  So even though Mercury isn't sitting there, I have the sign of Virgo, which means I would set a high standard for myself in the way I speak. I'm not a Virgo, but when it comes to speaking, I behave like a Virgo. I want to be precise. I want to be exact. I want to tell the right thing. I want to do my research. I want to say the right information. You see me maybe looking at the screen, checking my notes. I want to make sure I got it right, calculated. That's a Virgo. That's in my third house of communication, but being recognized for my communication, that would be the 11th house, and that
• 32:07
  happens to have Mercury. So now you're getting a taste of how an astrologer works. They're saying, what is this area of sky? What area of life is it related to? What is the sign energy expressing through it? And is there a planet there that's taking over, or is there a planet behind the sign that's influencing that area of life? And based on the sign and the planet and that area of life, we can make a determination of the energy there. And of course, the hardest thing for beginner astrologers is how does the energy show up? How does that energy show up? So let's say for me, I'm using my
• 32:44
  chart because it's the one I know very well, right? So my fifth house has Scorpio energy. Fifth house, like I said, is the house of children. So there has to be something to do with Scorpio energy and my children. Like I said, Scorpio hides. It's secretive. It's connected to the spies and the hidden things. So there has to be something hidden in the fifth house of children. The question is: Is it that I am hiding and keeping secrets from my children, or are my children hiding and keeping secrets from me? That becomes a hard thing for an astrologer to interpret, right, and that's where the
• 33:23
  questioning comes in to ask. I always ask question: Hey, there's a Scorpio energy in your fifth house. Who's keeping secrets? You or your kids, right? And I'll tell you very clearly that we discovered lately. My kids have been keeping secrets. They got a lot of trouble lately. Scorpio activated. We had debilitated Mars, as I mentioned in the last podcast. The drop of light debilitate Mars means Mars is going to create some problems, but that means wherever Mars in your chart will create a problem. But also the signs that Mars rules Aries and Scorpio can also create problems. And so I had a
• 33:55
  problem in Scorpio with my kids keeping secrets. So that was kind of interesting. We discovered everything, and of course it became a big blowup and to get all sorted out and things are good now. Thank you for asking. And also my son himself is thinking of going into law enforcement. He wants to be a spy, so that also explains it, right? Scorpio energy is in the fifth house, so it showed up there. Now, if an astrologer asks me, "Hey, are your children keeping secrets from you. No. Do any of your kids want to go in law enforcement? No. The reason astrologers ask the question is to figure
• 34:28
  out that energy has to show up in your life somehow, somewhere. So they're going to keep asking until we pinpoint where it actually shows up, right? So that's how, for instance, if I see Scorpio energy in the house of marriage, oftentimes I'll ask the client, I'll say, "Who's keeping secrets in the marriage? Are you?" And if they say, "No, I'm not," I say, "Well, maybe your spouse is. Go find out." And then I don't hear anything. And then a month or two later, I get a frantic call saying, "Oh my God, I discovered so and so is doing all this stuff behind my back." So that's the kind of.
• 35:00
  Energy. If you have Scorpio, that seventh house marriage, that can be quite challenging. There's a secret thing there. So let's go to another planet. Let's go to Jupiter. So we've covered Sun, Moon. We've covered Mars. We've covered Mercury. We're into Jupiter. Who in the planetary court is the advisor? The advisor. The the Guru.
• 35:19
  The you know in Sanskrit, Jupiter is called guru, the advisor, the statesman, the one who sort of determines the the sort of advising to the king and the queen. So the advisor, right? If I'm an advisor or a coach or a therapist or a teacher or a guru, then that's Jupiter energy activating. In order to be a teacher, you have to have some strong Jupiter energy, so Jupiter is ruling Sagittarius and Pisces, and Jupiter is kind of the the priest, the religious leader, the counselor. He shows up in two different ways, and Sagittarius in a much more moral high ground kind of a way, moral high
• 35:59
  ground, conventional. This is my way. This my way is the right way. So when you come across a religious preacher who says my religion is the only religion, my way is the right way. You know, I come across. I have a place up in the mountains. I come across fundamentalist evangelists that start telling me this is the only way. And you know, what is this? You know, weird elephant-headed god that you worship. There's only one. There's only Christ, and Christ is God, and that's it. That my way or no other way is a Sagittarius kind of an energy. Literally, that's Jupiter speaking to me through
• 36:28
  that person. Sagittarius is also the symbol; is a centaur. It's kind of like half man, half horse with an arrow. So Sagittarius people tend to be very athletic, like a horse, they can hit their target if they have a target they're aiming for. They can usually hit that target, and they have this Jupiterian sort of high moral approach to everything. They usually follow very ethical approach to hitting their targets. Meanwhile, Pisces is a water sign. Sagittarius the fiery sign, so you know when the preacher says fire and brimstone, that's Sagittarius Jupiter. Pisces is a water sign, and
• 37:03
  it's water that flows everywhere. So it's like the expansive nature of Jupiter. Wherever Jupiter shows up in Pisces, that area of your life is very expansive and just flows and flows almost with no boundaries. So imagine if your house of income, the part of the sky related income in your life, is ruled by the Pisces sign with Jupiter behind it and is a strong Jupiter, that means water will flow in that area of life, flow and expansive, and Jupiter is happy, expansive, and gives like good benefic results. You will be very wealthy if you have that in your house of Wealth. If Jupiter is well
• 37:41
  placed, if Jupiter is affected, afflicted, disturbed, then that second house you don't get that same kind of wealth because Jupiter is not able to command its energy through the sign properly because it's weak, right? With Pisces, wherever it shows up in your life is an area where there'll be struggles with boundaries. When it comes to money, and you got lots of money, great. You don't want boundaries there, right? But let's say it comes to your children. If you have Pisces in the fifth house of children, then you start to have boundary issues with your kids. You're not setting good
• 38:13
  boundaries. They're you know not having good boundaries themselves. Let's say you have Pisces ruling in your house of career. You look at the house of career. There's Pisces showing up. You're all over the place with your career. You can't make a decision. You can't decide which way to go. You sort of feel like everything's all over the place, or your work seems to have no boundaries. There's no deadlines. It's free flowing, right? If you have Pisces, let's say in the ninth house of spirituality, well, the ninth house is considered a house of Religion, and also your higher spiritual
• 38:43
  practices, higher spiritual path. Pisces is there. You're not going to be drawn to religion. You're going to be drawn more to spirituality. You know, some people say I'm religious. Some people say I'm not religious. I'm spiritual. That distinction between religious and spiritual is really a distinction between Sagittarius and Pisces. They're both getting the same higher wisdom of Jupiter. It's just different ways to get there. There's a religious way to get there. There's a spiritual way to get there. No one path is better than the other. As far as Vedic astrology goes, it's agnostic to
• 39:13
  everything. Everything goes right.
• 39:16
  So then we can move to Venus. Look, I'm wearing the color pink today. Why am I wearing pink? Today is Friday, and if you remember, Friday is Venus's day. I'm wearing the color to honor the planet of the day. And why do we wear color to honor the planet of the day, or why do we do something that the planet likes? We're trying to enter the domain of energy of that planet, right? So Venus is a planet of love, relationships, money, art, music. So somebody says, "Hey, I'm having trouble in relationships. I'm not finding good relationship." I said, "Well, let me look at your chart, and I see,
• 39:51
  oh, Venus is you know getting affected in the chart. It's it's not in a good position, or it's weak in its energy. The person needs to.". Strengthen Venus. Well, how do you do that? Do some art. Do some music. As you do those activities, you're entering the domain and field of energy of Venus, which then helps Venus in your chart, which then helps the energy of that area of your life to improve. And Venus rules Taurus and Libra, and so Taurus. It's a it's an Earth signs. In fact, it's so interesting because the the natural second house would be the second sign, Taurus. Taurus ruled by Venus
• 40:27
  and money. Taurus's sign is the bull. What is the symbol of the stock market? It's literally a bull. Everyone wants a bull market. Today, the stock market dropped. It was not a bull market. It was a bear market. But a bull market is when things are going right. So even wearing the color pink for me today, the stock market still went down. Right, so I don't have control over everything. None of us do, but Venus ruling Taurus means Taurus is connected to wealth and accumulation. So I find Taurus people in general they can accumulate, they can build wealth in the long term. They're attracted to
• 40:58
  music and art. They're sensual people. They feel sensuality, and they're also very good with financial prosperity because Taurus is all about the bull and the bull market. So they understand how markets work. They're usually good at business. The other side of is Libra, which is an air sign. Libra is more of like the Venetian sort of Venus way of having harmony and balance all the time. Libra symbols actually the scales, so it's all about like how do I balance everything? How do I have harmony? How do I create beauty through harmony? So Libra people tend to be always looking for balance. I
• 41:30
  find Libra people make very good executives because they always understand the give and take. They have this idea that everybody should benefit, and that's kind of a Venus people prosper when everybody benefits. So that's a Libra kind of a tendency. Now I do want to make a point that when I said this person I was talking about Mars and this person had Aries rising, they weren't showing up as Aries. I said even though Aries is their rising sign, they weren't showing up as an Aries because Mars in their chart was weak. Well, how was it weak? So in that chart, Mars was in the sign of
• 42:02
  Cancer, so remember what I talked about in the drop of light just recently. And Mars is this warrior in his weaponry, and he's sitting in this house of Cancer with soft, poofy couches and silks and spa music. He's kind of sinking. He's like, ah, I'm trying to get out of the couch and fight, but I'm I'm sort of sunk and stuck in this thing, right? So Mars doesn't get to express his energy when he's in Cancer. So that's one issue with Mars. The other issue was this person had Mars retrograde. So retrograde means the energy isn't expressing in a forward way; it's going in a backwards way.
• 42:34
  That has a simple understanding of retrograde. And furthermore, Mars was only 20 minutes, 20 minutes into the sign. So what does that mean? The whole sky is 360 degrees. If you divide into 12 signs, each sign is a 30 degree span. If the planet hasn't fully moved into that 30 degree sign, or it's almost moving out, it's like the planet hasn't quite arrived. It hasn't settled. In Sanskrit, we call this sandhi, where it's just in between. It's not quite there.
• 43:06
  It's like I don't know where I am. I've left my home. I'm entering my home. I'm not quite sure where I am. So any planet that's less than a degree into a sign or greater than 29 degrees in a sign, it gets very, very unstable. So that low degrees debilitation and retrograde affected that Mars, and therefore the Aries energy wasn't able to fully show through. So what I want you to take away from this episode is, first of all, don't fixate yourself on one sign. You are all of the signs. Understand that behind every sign is a planet. Aries is ruled by Mars. Taurus ruled by Venus. Gemini ruled
• 43:48
  by Mercury. Cancer ruled by the Moon. Leo ruled by the Sun. Virgo ruled by Mercury. Libra ruled by Venus. Scorpio ruled by Mars. Sagittarius ruled by Jupiter. Capricorn by Saturn, Aquarius by Saturn, and Pisces by Jupiter. So whatever sign you think you are, doesn't matter what system you use. Just figure out the planet that's behind it, and if you want to improve the way that sign functions, improve the planet that is the energy behind it, the actor behind it by stepping the domain of energy. So if it's the sun, follow the sun's rhythms. If it's the moon, start to be more nurturing and
• 44:30
  emotionally aware. Work on your emotions. If it's Mars, do some exercise. Train like a soldier. If it's Mercury, experiment with technology. Journal. Write. Chant. Do mantras. If it's Jupiter, do rituals, do worship, do devotion. Be like the priest. Be an advisor. Seek the advice of an advisor or counselor or coach. You go to a coach, you're activating Sagittarius and Pisces energy through Jupiter. If it's Saturn, have discipline, have organization, have focus. Take things slow, build a foundation, right? And that's if you're Capricorn, Aquarius, and finally, yeah, those the seven main
• 45:07
  planets that we use in the Vedic system. Rahu Ketu, we'll we'll talk about another time. I do not give them rulership of signs, though some astrologers do connect them to rulership of signs. So that's the next point is remember: there's a planet behind the sign. Then, if you want to get geeky, you can always go to vishchattergy.com and for free generate your birth chart on the site, and it will tell you what is your rising sign. I have written it out on that printout. It'll say here is your rising sign, and it says here is the planet that rules your rising sign number one thing to do in life
• 45:42
  is do something that steps into the domain of energy of that rising sign. If you want more detail, that's what I wrote about in *Astrology Decoded*, the best-selling book on astrology. Beat out all the Western astrology books because it explains: here's the sign, here's the planet, and here's how you attenuate the energy of that planet. Now, if you want to go another step, you're going to notice when you print out your chart. There's a bunch of numbers. Those numbers are sign numbers that go throughout the sheet. I might do a YouTube video to explain this in more detail. So take a look at my
• 46:14
  YouTube channel. You can look at each of the numbers and figure out what number is in what area of life. That is what sign is in that area of life, and then you can start to understand. Oh, I have Sagittarius energy in my house of marriage. I have Virgo energy in my fourth house, connected to my the way my mind and psychology works. So that's how we start to understand, and then also understand that the planets. And maybe this is the most important thing. Here I am, an astrologer sitting and measuring 100,000, gazillion 1000 miles away, planets, but they're right in front of us all the time.
• 46:47
  The wall behind me is orange. Why did I paint it orange? Well, that's to cultivate Jupiter energy, counseling, teaching, and wisdom energy. Right, that's how I step in that domain of energy. There's construction going outside. There's Mars. There's a loud wraith car goes by. That's Mars energy. The trash truck comes by and cleans trash out. Saturn's connected to garbage and you know things that we don't want in our life. Somebody comes who's a pregnant mother. Well, that's Moon energy. Moon is the mother.
• 47:14
  A young person comes with a tech challenge and says, "Look, I'm really struggling with technology," or my child is sort of taken up by tech. Well, I'm going to look at Mercury and say that's Mercury energy. Somebody loses their head with their smartphone. That's Rahu. We'll get into Rahu and Ketu. So everything happening around your life is literally an expression of the planetary energy. If you're single and you go on a date, as you're talking to that person, figure out what kind of energy is coming through. Is guy talking a lot? This woman talking a lot. That's Mercury. Is the person
• 47:42
  sharing a lot of wisdom? That's Jupiter. Is the person really down on themselves and they feel beneath everybody? That's Saturn. Are they too bright and too shy? They don't even notice you. They're so caught up in their narcissism. That's Sun energy, right? They're nurturing and kind and caring. Oh, there's Moon energy showing up. So think about everything in your life and what how these energies are communicating with you, and if you really get into it, every single thing happening around you becomes literally an expression of these divine nine planets. After all, it is called Jyotish, the
• 48:18
  study of the light of the divine, and that divine is around us everywhere, all the time.