Marital Karma
The partner too is an agent of our Karma…
A Beautiful Story for Understanding Vedic Astrology
One day a woman of around 40, Adelaide, comes to see me and asks for a reading of her Birth Chart, that is, an analysis of her Horoscope.
I ask her for all the data, I ask whether she is certain of the hour and minute of Birth, and then we arrange an appointment.
Adelaide’s Story Begins, the Reading of Her Birth Chart Begins
She has one son aged 20 and another aged 15.
She asks me to examine her relationship with the institution of marriage and couple relationships through Jyotisha, that is, to look at her inner structure and see what place the concept of marriage occupied, in essence to examine her marital Karma, therefore her evolution in general and above all within the family relationship through the Astrology of Ancient India.
In Vedic Astrology there is not the main Sign and then the Ascendant as in Western Astrology. There is the Ascendant and other important factors that provide the initial picture.
I look at her Birth Chart with the Birth data and it gives a Gemini Ascendant, a Sign that usually makes the Person rich in imagination and with a quick and mobile mind.
Such a constitution, generally speaking, requires a dynamic partner.
The impression I had received of this woman did not correspond to the characteristic Gemini trait in the way she had spoken to me about the family and in her behavioural manner.
I ask her the date of the marriage and immediately go to look at the Dharmamsha, better known as the Navamsha, the ninth Divisional Diagram, the one related to Dharma and relationships.
I realise that, with that day, that hour and minute of Birth, she would hardly have married on the date indicated: there was no auspicious Time, favourable for marriage.
I therefore make the first correction to the minute of her Birth.
I ask her for the Birth dates of the children, then I look at the Saptamsha, the seventh Division, the one related to children.
There too, the Times of Life did not match the possible dates of the children’s births.
I make the second correction to the minute of Adelaide’s Birth.
I ask her about her studies, whether she interrupted them or whether she reached the goal she had set herself: secondary school diploma, university degree or something else, then I analyse the area of study: the twenty-fourth Divisional Diagram, as taught by Parashara, the Author of the famous Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, who lived 5000 years ago. I make a further correction to the minute of Birth.
After asking other questions and making the necessary comparisons with moments of Life, I arrive at the real minute of Birth: 48 minutes before the official time.
This placed her with a Taurus Ascendant and was much closer, in character, to the impression I had of this Person.
The Astrological Sign of Taurus loves the family as one of the most important things in Life, easily slips into jealousy because of its possessiveness, but these are general indications that must then in any case be confirmed or contradicted by the entire balance of the Forces at work through the Planets visible in the astrological belt of the Signs, as well as by the Nakshatra, particularly that of the Planet Moon.
The Main Question Emerges During the Astrological Consultation.
Her main question concerned her husband.
She wondered how it was possible that a Person with whom she had shared everything, not even keeping a secret, and with a deep and solid identity of objectives, that is, with the same purposes in Life, confirmed several times over Time, could change, becoming less active, more sedentary, listless, inattentive to the children and thus contradict all the principles on which they had based their union.
Adelaide is a woman who has followed her own spiritual Path, has read somewhat about India and various Western works of good quality.
She had an idea of what Karma, Destiny, true Sincerity and what is believed to be sincerity (Maya) were.
Through the Arudha I received confirmation of these impressions I had.
She had served several times for an Indian Guru who periodically comes to Italy and had a certain familiarity with a spiritual vision of Life.
She therefore asked why her Karma had brought her to the current situation, what she still had to learn and whether there were dangers of fractures in the marriage in the years to come.
In these situations the Dasha are helpful, another important tool of Vedic Astrology.
Usually a Western woman asks what has happened to the partner, she does not look for an answer within herself. Adelaide showed great sensitivity, maturity and humility.
She in fact had a good aspect of Jupiter on the Ascendant from the ninth House, the House of Dharma, the House of the Guru and of Fortune.
Jupiter was in Capricorn.
The Ascendant fell in the third Constellation known in India as Krittika. The six brightest stars of the Pleiades form the constellation of Krittika, which in Hindu mythology are seen as the wives of the Great Prophets.
Krittika represents the tenacious and determined Will to accomplish and complete great things. A person born in Krittika is a fighter for the social cause, a spiritual warrior.
She, in fact, firmly believes in the choices she has made, in the goals she pursues, and has no intention of giving them up: a typical behaviour of the Astrological Sign of Taurus.
In her Birth Chart I see a husband who is available, not combative in everyday Life, but intelligent and humorous.
I ask her whether this phase of Life she was telling me about had begun two years earlier.
She tells me yes.
Astrologically, our Life is divided into irregular periods, that is, they do not all have the same duration. Each of these periods is governed by different Planets, that is, by meanings that we must experience, face and live according to a sequence that serves to make us grow, and each of us must live a sequence of these periods.
In simple terms, if your Karma includes an experience with a difficult husband, there will be a period of your Life in which you will have to face this problem.
Astrologically every period is governed by a Planet and she was in the period governed by the Planet Moon.
Governance, Archetypes and Transits
What does the Planet Moon govern? Or rather, which Symbols, which Archetypes become activated under its influence?
Among the various areas there are the mind, mental peace, the relationship with the mother, the meaning of the mother, serenity in Life. Her “own” Planet Moon was in Scorpio, a rather difficult Sign for the Moon and for the meanings associated with it.
When such a period begins, I mean the Lunar Dasha with the Planet Moon in Scorpio, the Person initially notices nothing.
The People closest to them notice a certain restlessness or in any case that something is wrong. A distant melancholy begins which, gradually, in Adelaide became a slight but constant dissatisfaction, veiling the ability to see things clearly.
A little objectivity is lost and, as happens with most of us, there is a tendency to see the negative change in others, but in reality it is a filter operating in our mind and above all in our perceptions.
Have you ever seen those lamps in front of which a sheet of coloured plastic is placed? It is widely used in photography and cinema: the light changes colour and everything around takes on that shade.
Things do not take on the projected colour completely because the original colour of each object can still be perceived: it is a filter, that is, a veil of a different colour over things.
This is how our mind works when it does not function clearly.
During the same period Adelaide had a transit of Mars directly over the Planet Moon. In her Birth Chart Mars governs the theme of the partner and the meanings associated with the XII House, a generally difficult House, as well as injecting a certain dose of aggression.
All the ingredients needed to spoil a beautiful celebration!
Why did Adelaide have to go through this trial after a marriage of excellent quality?
Vedic Astrology always offers the tools to go deeply.
Soul and Body as Though They Were a House
It is as though a beautiful house, built according to every criterion of strength and beauty, had to be “tested”, tried under the harshest weather conditions, severely put to the test to see whether it can withstand the ordinary difficulties of Life.
Long-lasting downpours to check for possible leaks, scorching Sun and intense cold to see whether it is properly thermally insulated, that is… to test the detachment of the Soul from the storms of Life with a few small earth tremors to verify its solidity.
Through an apparent joke of Life, or rather through the Action of one’s own Karma, good Souls, or in any case those determined in their honest choices, are often severely tested.
Adelaide had also had a very distant difficult past in which she had not allowed the partner, in that Life, to make mistakes.
She had a strong rationality, while that partner was strongly emotional, prone to ordinary everyday mistakes and, with high probability, she had constantly pressured him, attacking him verbally.
There was a difficult second House, the one related to speech, in this previous Life, with Mars conjunct afflicted Mercury.
I look at the twentieth Division of Vedic Astrology, one of the Diagrams used to evaluate the spiritual quality of the Person and which requires certainty about the exact hour of Birth. I also take a look at the thirtieth Division to see the subconscious, as Jyotisha teaches.
I see a fundamentally good Soul, with infiltrations of Fire that are not outwardly visible, except in the determination she has in Life. That kind of Fire usually burns, crackles and a few sparks fly here and there, slightly scorching what is around, but it does not destroy. It spreads the Force it possesses in a somewhat uncontrolled way.
Like all of us, Adelaide has to learn to manage everything, including that kind of Energy; Fire.
I describe this panorama to Adelaide as well, and she looks at me astonished, petrified.
She tells me that long ago she had a dream in which she repeatedly slapped a man whose face she never remembered, but whom she knew to be her husband.
It was not her current husband and she had had no other husbands.
She had believed it to be a dream without meaning, one of the many tricks of the mind, as she told me, and nothing more, but our Unconscious speaks to us in many ways, also through Dreams, which are doors towards worlds of important meanings, even though sometimes they are only noise.
Adelaide therefore was not entirely wrong in judging it useless, since she did not have the keys to interpret it astrologically or esoterically. She asks me why that dream had come to her if she could not understand it, or how she could have understood the Truth of that dream.
I answer her smiling: “You are here!”
Things do not necessarily reveal themselves immediately. They show their Truth when the moment is ripe. She could have understood that dream only if she had practised a Yoga of good quality and with the proper disposition and acceptance towards the discipline that Yoga requires.
The mind must be silent, quiet, in order to see clearly.
In any case, there was no indication in her Birth Chart for a postural Yoga; there were all the indications of the Themes she had to experience directly, vis-à-vis.
Jupiter, even in difficult situations, that is, even if it does not have a joyful role, can always help. It does not matter which Way we take, what matters is the quality with which we travel it, and she had always wanted to understand what she was doing and why.
A moderate Jupiter, that is, it was not a functional benefic in her Chart, nevertheless guided her constantly, while carrying within itself the Meanings of the difficult VIII and XI Houses. The infiltrations of the VIII House were the sparks of Fire that sometimes flew around her.
The husband was not the problem.
Her mind had begun to see things differently because this kind of impulse was foreseen in her Destiny, in her “school programme of learning”. She had to experience the joy of having the family she had desired, but at the same time she had to live what she had inflicted so that her Soul could understand.
Saturn also had a role in her Birth Chart.
She had to experience a demanding situation on the psychological level, from which she could emerge by working with her own sensitivity, with the same tools she had available in her Body and in her mind. In other words, she had the solutions for the problems that had brought her to me within the reach of her own abilities.
Her Jupiterian intuition had pushed her towards me so that I could give her a summary and panoramic description of the various events of her Life.
As always, of course, an Astrologer is only an instrument and the type of Astrologer one encounters always occurs according to one’s own Karma or Destiny…..
An unwritten rule that applies in every situation of Life: wherever we must meet someone who gives us points of reference, we meet another agent of our Karma.
She asked me what she could do.
She had understood her situation well and was greatly relieved.
Generally, an appropriate Gem is prescribed to activate the type of Energy required.
Seeing how much zeal she put into her Life, in wanting to understand and mature through what Life placed before her, I preferred to make her another proposal.
Prescribing a Gem, suggesting Mantras, prescribing propitiatory acts such as Puja and other things means relying on external expedients, crutches that support us along the Path, without taking anything away from their usefulness. There is then the risk of expecting more from these crutches than from personal effort.
Adelaide is a woman with excellent intuition and has already learned how to approach everyday Life. As a good Taurus, she has also learned to carry her own responsibilities on her shoulders.
I therefore propose only a Mantra to her.
She can request it from a Guru, if she follows one.
She tells me that she follows a Guru but that a great deal of Time will pass before she can meet him again, so I give her the Mantra suited to her according to the ancient experience of Vedic Astrology together with practices to put into action.
This Mantra has the purpose of keeping the contact with the Divine, or God if you prefer, always alive, so that her inner being may always dwell in the Land of the Self, from which to see, perceive and analyse, if necessary, the events of her Life and therefore of her family.
I suggest that she accept these states of mind that hurt her, give her restlessness and sometimes make her feel unwell, now that she knows the source and the necessity of these lessons.
Conclusion of an Interesting Story
Now she knows that the husband is not the problem, but the psychological condition in which she herself has confined him through her strong character.
Her astrological picture had spoken and, knowing that she is capable of managing this situation, I suggest that she do so with her own Forces and through constant contact with her Soul, keeping clearly in mind that everything has a meaning, nothing is left to chance.
The Mantra, repeated according to the methods and Times I suggested to her, will help her, will support her psychologically by giving her that support that sometimes seems to disappear because of the mental cage that we all have until we become Conscious of it.
I also informed her about the following Dasha, that is, the planetary influence she would have to face after the lunar period and therefore what lay ahead in her Karma.
She answered me with a beautiful smile.
A few years later I received a long and beautiful letter that I always carry with me, in my Heart.
Names and identifying features of the story have been changed or omitted for privacy reasons.
