Astrology Notes

1.Combinations for a good and sound knowledge in the field of astrology
To achieve knowledge in astrology or any related subject, one should have a natural inclination towards such subjects. A relation between the 1st and 8th houses or 10th and 8th houses indicates interest towards astrological related subjects. The lagna denotes the native himself while 10th denotes the profession or means of livelihood, success in life and honor from the society. The 8th house represents hidden energy, secrets, mysticism, astrology, occultism etc. The 8th house indicates initial path to spirituality too. The is a relation between 1st & 8th house as described below:

1.Lagna lord posited in the 8th house,
2.8th lord posited in the 1st house,
3.1st and 8th lords in conjunction, or
4.1st and 8th lords in mutual aspect to each other.

A relation between 1st, 8th & 10th house and its lords is the best situation in a horoscope for making an astrologer.

2.Neechbhanga yoga
There are some conditions under which there is a cancellation (bhang) of debility (neecha) of the planets that are in neecha state. Under these following conditions, the position of planet from Moon or lagna is important and is automatically implied unless stated otherwise. It would be best if the conditions are satisfied from both. The debility is canceled when -

1.the neecha planet is free from combustion or is retrograde and is not in any dusthana (6th, 8th or 12th),
2.the lord of the sign where this planet would get exalted is in kendra,
3.the lord of current house where the planet is debilitated and the lord of sign where this planet would be exalted are situated mutually in kendras,
4.the neecha planet is aspected by lord of exaltation sign of the planet - of course, there ought to be a good relationship between the planet and ruler of the sign where the planet is exalted,
5.the planet that becomes exalted in the current sign is in kendra from lagna or moon,
6.this debilitated planet is exalted in Navamsha chart.
Conditions 1, 2, 5, 6 are explicitly mentioned as a rajyogas in Dr B.V. Raman’s book “Three hundred important combinations”. Along with these, conditions 3 and 4 are additionally called as rajyogas by J.N. Bhasin.

To illustrate the point, consider a horoscope where Saturn is in Aries and hence debilitated. As per the rules, Saturn’s debilitation would be canceled when -

1.Saturn is in any house except 6th, 8th or 12th - e.g. this would happen for Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn lagna or rashi. However, this condition may not be true all the time and must be looked at in conjunction with other conditions as well. Per Dr. B.V. Raman, a retrograde Saturn, debilitated in 10th house can damage a person’s career beyond repair, unless there is some benefic aspect on 10th house. Saturn’s favourable placement in other divisional chart would also help in mitigating the effects.
2.Saturn gets exaltation in Libra, which is the sign ruled by Venus. According to rule number 2, Saturn’s exaltation gets canceled when Venus is in kendra.
3.Saturn is debilitated in Aries, which is rules by Mars. Thus, Saturn’s exaltation would be canceled if Mars and Venus are in mutual kendras.
4.Saturn’s debilitation would be canceled if Venus aspects it.
5.Aries is the exaltation sign of Sun. If Sun is in kendra, Saturn’s debilitation is canceled. This is not considered to be a one of the conditions causing neechabhanga by Dr. Raman, although it is mentioned in his book.
6.If Saturn is in Libra in Navamsha chart, its debilitation stands canceled.

3.Link to various yogas:
http://www.dirah.org/yogas.htm

4.EXALTATION SIGN PLANET
ARIES SUN
TAURUS MOON
CAPRICORN MARS
VIRGO MERCURY
CANCER JUPITER
PISCES VENUS
LIBRA SATURN
TAURUS RAHU
SCORPIO KETU

Do we need Moral Policing?

Indians by nature have a tendency to mix up religion, traditions, myths, superstitions and caste system under the common umbrella of country's rich culture. Its all right if you do it at your home but once it goes out becomes the root cause of many complex and apparently insolvable problems. One such problem is the issue of moral policing. "Moral Policing" means the voluntarily harassment done upon people by some individuals,social groups or organizations in the name of guarding their societies when anything like that even doesn't have existence. Each day we see the newspapers piled up with news of some xyz group committing atrocities on people in the name of God, religion etc. Latest being a women stripped on Patna road because she was caught with his boy friend and its against the wish of descent society. What happened in Mangalore pub last year is not hidden from anyone but no strong action was taken against these self defined social policemen by the govt., may be they are more busy in discussing "Sach ka Samna" in parliament when they actually are running away from the truth. Women and minorities offer the soft targets to these social contractors and are often at the receiving end of their misdeeds.In the times when we are talking about India developing into a super power and are getting bold enough to discuss gay rights this is extremely annoying that constitutionally adult unmarried couples still fear in going out in public only due to the social policemen like shiv sena, ram sena etc. but do they really want a prosperous India, do they really worry about Indian women, have they done anything for millions of under nourished people? I seriously doubt their intentions. Where were these fundamentalists who claim to believe in the fundamentals of religion when a women was raped by a mob on a new year night at a place like Gateway of India? Nobody dares to ask them because of the tremendous power and influence they bear on our innocent public. In Manglore case even after rigorous lobbing done by National Women Commission the main accused Pramod Muthalik head of Sri Ram Sena was granted bail within a week of the incident. Whatz our judiciary doing, where the hell are the constitution provisions? This whole incident revamped the arguments to at least re-energize the system if not re-invent it but to do anything like that legislature comes in between and in post independence era one thing India have witnessed is a Jai-Veeru chemistry between politics and crime, so finally we ended up exactly from where we started. Everything is still not over but the need of the hour is to take right steps quickly and efficiently. A new piece of govt. act won't do the trick, there is an extreme need to reorganize the police force, create rapid action forces especially in metros and big cities, strengthen the independent bodies like NCW, NHRC, decriminalize politics and most importantly arouse social consciousness. There is an extreme need to bring the perpetrators to justice. So, what India needs is Moral Police, police which offers quick justice to sufferers but certainly not the Moral Policing. Do we?

A Quantum of Racism?

Racism is one of the most important human right struggle of our times but like other much talked about issues this has also become a kind of "buzzword" prominently among the intellectuals, educationalists and media. They all are in the habit of creating an unnecessary hype over it, each time they smell such opportunity.One classic example is the unnecessary hype given to the recent attacks on people of Indian Origin in Oz.It doesn't mean whatever happened in that country is legitimate but were they really the part of dreadful neo-racism as claimed by Indian media and several NGOs, social groups etc., that need to be first verified.Aussies are well known for their kind hospitality all over the globe and Indians have a long history of being their kind guests . All went well for centuries then what happened now? The present economic meltdown combined with the growing number of unemployment among the local youth coupled with the speedily burgeoning Indian community explains a lot. I see these attacks as nothing but the sudden burst of years of anger that kept on accumulating which found its easy target in the form of brown foreigners. Instead of saying these were meant against a "race" I think its better to hold that these were meant against those people who invaded their land wearing white collars and carrying handful of certificates and took away their ways of earnings. Whatever it is but the fact is majority of the Australians didn't comply with this that includes their premiere Kelvin Rudd who shown extreme urgency and ordered the machinery to come harder on the anti social elements.
But before we expect any thing from others shouldn't we look into our own home first, are we clean enough to suggest vacuum cleaner for others. I do not think so. You don't have to turn many pages of history the recent attacks on non Marathis in Maharashtra, high rate of incidents including rape, robbery etc. with foreign tourists, massacre of Christians in Orissa, wide spread casteism in our society etc. are enough to remind us of our own deeds. Each year the number of "white" people attacked in India outnumber the attacks on our "brown" people abroad. Thus, over hyping the issue and putting continuous diplomatic pressure will only harm the nation in long term. We must convey our hard feelings to them but not in the way we are doing, just give their government, people and more importantly their economy more time while simultaneously looking after our own security.The solution lies in the socio cultural mass movement if any significant degree of success is to be achieved.

Where are we heading for????

This piece of writing is the result of my recent encounter with a presentation given by one of the Professors in our IIT which compels us to simply ask ourselves a rather seemingly stupid question “Would our children be able to drink water biologically necessary for them?”. I’m just extending the thought process ignited by that 8 powerpoint slides. I won’t go into the depth of craps and shits you all are used to of listening about global warming; depleting ozone layer etc etc. in fact I’m more interested in asking for even more bizarre and disturbing question “Where we are heading for???”…..”What next?” and let me make it very clear “next” here doesn’t mean tomorrow, next budgetary year or next 5 year plan infact by next here I mean next 100 yrs or even more than that…and why not? I personally believe if you can’t imagine your country for such a short longer period of time then you loose the right to call yourself a patriot.

I believe we have to look deeper into the problems, problem of not only availing drinking water for generations but more like food security, creating jobs, creating pollution free environment, proper sanitation, health facilities, solving political crisis and so on.

Most of the issues raised above are nowadays among the front runners of any inter governmental or international meetings’ agenda list but in India no body is seriously concerned about them except for few NGO’s and other social organizations but they alone cant help for sure until it carries a larger participation of fellow countrymen. Today every body is talking about the global consciousness but do we have a national one?

The basic problem with this country is its mass population. India’s population density is about 350 people per sq. km as compared to world’s average of 50 people and its getting worse every two seconds. Thanks to the India’s fantabulous natural resources that we are still surviving without facing a real humanitarian catastrophe but the time has come to take a break and have a kitkat before we get nature’s tight slap. With the current rate we would cross China by 2050 and it wont be no sooner than 2100 when we can hope our population to stabilize but that’ll be too late and the better advise is not to give ourselves a chance to cry on already split milk. Extreme urgency should be shown by the Govt. of India for making “Hum do hamara ek” rule and this should not be done in any kind of dictatorial manner but people should be awakened for that and I accept this’ll not going to be an easy task either but one which is definitely possible.

The datum line is we are running out of our natural resources in a manner faster than the flight of a humming bird. I recently came across an official statement published by Coal India declaring that present coal reserves of India will last only by 2060. In this scenario its getting really difficult to generate jobs for such a large masses moreover with more people getting educated in rural India and with increasing migration rate to metros and cities, I afraid one day another big bang will occur or what but certainly things aren’t looking healthy from any perspective. I genuinely doubt that when all these Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and Gram Yojana etc would be successful and we’ll achieve a cent percent literacy then would we be able to fulfill all the admirations that we have lightened in our children? The day may come when we might have to encourage people for “Disguise Unemployment” that too in a disguised manner.

A new threat to the society is terrorism as we don’t know whether we would be alive to witness all the hard realities or Uncle Osama’ll do a favor by just dropping a uranium apple on us. What we as a part of civilized society can do best for avoiding such situation is to resolve all the political issues currently prevailing in the world from Palestine-Israel to conflict Kashmir. It is on this particular issue India’s participation with world diplomacy is needed by its people.

We have to become more liberal, more honest to ourselves, more dutiful , more planned in every manner, more global, more secular, more thoughtful we can’t let our life flow as a holy Deepak in the river Ganga and I’m worried about all these as I can’t see any of them meeting its horizon. I’m disturbed, I can’t sleep.