Aspects and Houses

Chapters 19 and 20 · Part of our series on the Brihat Jataka of Varahamihira

The last two articles described each planet by the sign it stands in. These two short chapters add two more layers. The first describes what happens when the other planets look at the Moon. The second describes each planet by the house it occupies, counted from the rising sign.

Part one: the planets looking at the Moon

In Article 4 we met aspects: a planet's gaze on the houses around it. The Moon, the mind, is especially sensitive to who is looking at her. This chapter takes each of the twelve signs the Moon might occupy, and describes the result when each of the other six planets looks at her there (19.1 to 19.3).

A few patterns are easy to see. Jupiter's gaze is good almost everywhere. Mercury's gaze often brings rule or learning. In several signs, such as Virgo, Libra, Sagittarius, Aquarius and Pisces, the three harsh planets, the Sun, Mars and Saturn, all give the same difficult result, while the gentle planets give good ones.

The divisions refine the picture

The chapter then applies the same idea to the divisions of the sign. The Moon is also judged by which hora, drekkana, dvadashamsha and navamsha she stands in, and who looks at her there (19.4 to 19.8). The same rules are applied to the Sun, with the Moon's gaze taking the place of the Sun's.

The last verse settles which picture wins (19.9):

वर्गोत्तमस्वपरगेषु शुभं यदुक्तं तत्पुष्टमध्यलघुताशुभमुत्क्रमेण । वीर्यान्वितोंऽशकपतिर्निरुणद्धि पूर्वं राशीक्षणस्य फलमंशफलं ददाति ॥

vargottamasvaparageṣu śubhaṃ yad uktaṃ tat puṣṭamadhyalaghutā śubham utkrameṇa | vīryānvito 'ṃśakapatir niruṇaddhi pūrvaṃ rāśīkṣaṇasya phalam aṃśaphalaṃ dadāti ||

The good results described are full, middling or slight, when the Moon is vargottama, in her own navamsha, or in another's. The bad results go the other way. A strong lord of the navamsha overrides the earlier result of the gaze upon the sign, and gives the result of the navamsha instead.

In other words, the navamsha has the final word. When the lord of the Moon's navamsha is strong, the finer picture from the navamsha replaces the broader picture from the sign. This is the navamsha's "second, deeper layer", which we met in Article 2, at work.

Part two: the planets in the houses

The second chapter describes each planet by the house it stands in, counted from the rising sign. As we saw in the second article, each house stands for an area of life, so a planet in a house brings its nature into that area.

To save repetition, Varahamihira gives the Sun in full and then says that Mars, Mercury and Saturn act like the Sun in many houses, and Venus acts like Jupiter. The table below fills in these cross-references (20.1 to 20.9).

Some of the strongest patterns:

• The tenth and eleventh houses are good for every planet. The tenth, the house of action, brings success and valour. The eleventh, the house of gains, brings wealth.
• The harsh planets do well in the third and sixth. The Sun, Mars and Saturn give intelligence and valour in the third, and victory over enemies in the sixth. These are houses of growth, where harshness becomes strength.
• The gentle planets do well almost everywhere, except in the twelfth, the house of loss, and the eighth.
• The Moon and Saturn in the rising sign depend greatly on the sign. Both are difficult in the first house in general, but strong in their own signs or exaltation, and Saturn in Jupiter's signs as well.

Two principles for reading the houses

The chapter closes with two principles that apply to every house (20.10):

सुहृदरिपरकीयस्वर्क्षतुङ्गस्थितानां फलमनुपरिचिन्त्यं लग्नदेहादिभावैः । समुपचयविपत्ती सौम्यपापेषु सत्यः कथयति विपरीतं रिःफषष्ठाष्टभेषु ॥

suhṛdariparakīyasvarkṣatuṅgasthitānāṃ phalam anuparicintyaṃ lagnadehādibhāvaiḥ | samupacayavipattī saumyapāpeṣu satyaḥ kathayati viparītaṃ riḥphaṣaṣṭhāṣṭabheṣu ||

The results of planets in a friend's, an enemy's, a neutral's, their own or their exaltation sign should be worked out together with the houses: the rising sign as the body, and so on. Satya says that gentle planets make a house grow and harsh planets make it decline; but in the twelfth, sixth and eighth, it is the reverse.

The first principle is that a planet in a house must always be read together with the sign it is in. The second is Satya's rule, and it is wonderfully simple. A gentle planet strengthens whatever its house stands for, and a harsh planet weakens it. But the twelfth, sixth and eighth are houses of loss, enemies and danger. There a harsh planet weakens the loss, the enemies and the danger, which is good, while a gentle planet strengthens them.

The last verse gives a precise scale for how fully a planet's good results come about (20.11):

उच्चत्रिकोणस्वसुहृच्छत्रुनीचगृहार्कगैः । शुभं सम्पूर्णपादोनदलपादाल्पनिष्फलम् ॥

uccatrikoṇasvasuhṛcchatrunīcagṛhārkagaiḥ | śubhaṃ sampūrṇapādonadalapādālpaniṣphalam ||

For planets in exaltation, mulatrikona, own sign, a friend's sign, an enemy's sign, their fall, or hidden by the Sun, the good is: full, three-quarters, half, a quarter, slight, and nothing.

The commentators add that bad results follow the same scale in reverse: in full for a planet in its fall, and not at all for one in exaltation.

With these two chapters, the main tools for reading a chart are all in place: each planet in its sign, in its divisions, in its house, looked at by others, and weighed by its strength.

Verses are from Varahamihira's Brihat Jataka, chapters 19 and 20. English renderings are our own, made from the Sanskrit and checked against the public-domain translation by N. Chidambaram Aiyar (1885; second edition 1905) and against the word-by-word analysis in Michael D. Neely's edition.