The Study of Jyotisha · Chapter 21 of 54 · Part Four · Yogas

#Difficult yogas and their cancellation

#The other side of the books

Every classical text has its unfortunate yogas: patterns said to bring poverty, illness, quarrels, loss. A student must know them, because they are in the books and in every astrology program. But a student must also know how the books themselves treat them — and that is very differently from how they are often used.

The books surround their difficult yogas with conditions, exceptions and cancellations. They often say that a "bad" yoga turns good under some circumstance. And the oldest authors were already uneasy about the harshest rules. This chapter shows how this works, with the main examples.

#A lesson from Varahamihira's commentator

Varahamihira's sixth chapter, on dangers to a newborn child (balarishta), was written in a world where many children died young. This course does not reproduce it. But notice what happened to it. Varahamihira's great commentator Bhattotpala attached to it a list of sixteen conditions under which those dangers do not apply — among them: a powerful Jupiter in the ascendant; a powerful ascendant lord aspected by benefics; a full Moon; any of Mercury, Venus or Jupiter powerful in a kendra; a benefic in a kendra (notes at the end of Brihat Jataka VI, Aiyar).

With sixteen escape routes, most charts that have one of the dangerous patterns also have a cancellation. This is typical. The tradition's own practice was to look for the cancellations as carefully as for the yogas.

#The twelve house yogas

The Phaladeepika gives twenty-four yogas, two for each house, according to where the house's lord is placed (Phaladeepika 6). If the lord of a house is well placed (in a kendra or trikona, strong), a good yoga is formed for that house. If the lord is in the 6th, 8th or 12th, a difficult yoga is formed. The difficult twelve:

The idea is simple and old: a house's lord carries the house's affairs, and if it goes into a difficult house, those affairs meet difficulty.

#The reversal: Harsha, Sarala, Vimala

Look at three of them. When the lord of the 6th, 8th or 12th — the difficult houses themselves — goes into the 6th, 8th or 12th, the Phaladeepika gives good results: Harsha ("joy") for the 6th lord, Sarala ("straightforward") for the 8th lord, Vimala ("spotless") for the 12th lord (Phaladeepika 6). The logic: a difficulty placed in a difficult house is a difficulty that weakens itself. Modern writers call these the viparita raja yogas, "reversed royal yogas"; the name is later, but the idea is in the Phaladeepika and in Parashara (Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra 39, where the lords of the 6th, 8th and 12th weakened while the ascendant lord is strong form a raja yoga).

#Strength changes everything

A lord in the 6th, 8th or 12th is not always weak there. It may be in its own or exaltation sign, aspected by benefics, or strong in shadbala. The general rules of Chapter 17 apply: a yoga's effect depends on the strength of its planets. A lord exalted in the 8th is not the same as a lord debilitated in the 8th.

#In the example chart

Check each lord (Libra ascendant): Venus (1st) in the 10th; Mars (2nd, 7th) in the 7th; Jupiter (3rd, 6th) in the 10th; Saturn (4th, 5th) in the 3rd; Venus (8th) in the 10th; Mercury (9th, 12th) in the 11th; the Moon (10th) in the 8th; the Sun (11th) in the 10th.

Only one lord is in a difficult house: the Moon, lord of the 10th, is in the 8th. So the chart has Duryoga, the difficult yoga for the 10th house (career).

But look closer:

• The Moon is in Taurus, its exaltation sign — the strongest dignity there is.
• It is in exchange with Venus, the ascendant lord, who sits in the 10th (Chapter 19). The two houses are bound together: the career house's lord is in the 8th, and the 8th house's lord is in the career house.
• The 10th house itself holds exalted Jupiter (Hamsa) and Venus, and has 29 ashtakavarga points (Chapter 16).

A reader who said "Duryoga — career will fail" would be ignoring everything else the chart says about the 10th house, which is among its strongest. A careful reading: the career is strong and visible, but tied to 8th-house matters — research, hidden things, other people's money, transformations, sudden changes — and may pass through upheavals. That is a description, not a misfortune.

#Sakata yoga

Sakata ("cart") is formed when the Moon is in the 6th, 8th or 12th sign from Jupiter. It is said to bring a life of ups and downs, like a cart's wheel turning — loss of fortune and its recovery. It is cancelled if the Moon is in a kendra from the ascendant (Phaladeepika 6).

(Do not confuse it with the Nabhasa yoga of the same name, Chapter 20, which is all the planets in the 1st and 7th houses.)

Example: the Moon in Taurus is the 11th sign from Jupiter in Cancer. No Sakata.

#Hemmed in: kartari yogas

If malefics occupy both the 2nd and the 12th houses from the ascendant, the ascendant is "hemmed in by malefics" — papa kartari, "the scissors of malefics". If benefics occupy both, it is subha kartari, and protective (Phaladeepika 6). The same idea can be applied to any house or planet: a house with malefics on both sides is under pressure; one with benefics on both sides is protected.

Example: the 2nd (Scorpio) and 12th (Virgo) from the Libra ascendant are both empty. Neither yoga.

#Debilitation cancelled: neecha bhanga

A debilitated planet is the weakest by dignity (Chapter 10). But the later books give conditions under which its debilitation is cancelled (neecha bhanga), and some say that a planet whose debilitation is cancelled can give even better results than an ordinary one — a fall followed by a rise. The Phaladeepika's conditions (Phaladeepika 7.26–29):

1. The lord of the sign it is debilitated in, or the lord of the sign it would be exalted in, is in a kendra from the ascendant or from the Moon.
2. The lord of the debilitation sign and the lord of the exaltation sign are in kendras from each other.
3. The lord of the debilitation sign aspects the debilitated planet.

The result is better still if the planet is not in the 6th, 8th or 12th house.

An example (not the course's chart). Jupiter in Capricorn is debilitated. The lord of Capricorn is Saturn; the lord of Cancer (Jupiter's exaltation sign) is the Moon. If Saturn or the Moon is in a kendra from the ascendant or from the Moon, Jupiter's debilitation is cancelled by the first rule. If Saturn and the Moon are in kendras from each other — say Saturn in Aries and the Moon in Cancer — it is cancelled by the second. If Saturn aspects Jupiter — say Saturn in Cancer, aspecting Capricorn by its 7th-house aspect — by the third.

As you can see, these conditions are not rare. Many debilitated planets have their debilitation cancelled.

In the example chart no planet is debilitated in the birth chart. (In the navamsa, Venus is in Virgo, its debilitation sign, Chapter 12; neecha bhanga is normally applied to the birth chart.)

#Poverty and other yogas

The books also list poverty yogas (Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra 42), yogas for illness, for quarrels and for short life. This course explains the method — how to find them and how they are cancelled — but does not list them for use on people, because:

• each has its own exceptions, and different books disagree about them;
• most charts contain one or more of them, just as most contain several raja yogas (Chapter 17);
• they have never been shown to predict what they claim (Chapter 52);
• and telling a person that their chart contains a "poverty yoga" or a "death yoga" does real harm and no good (Chapter 46).

#A procedure for any difficult yoga

When you find a difficult yoga in a chart:

1. Check that it is really there, by the definition of a named book.
2. Look for its cancellations in that book and in others.
3. Measure the strength of the planets involved. An exalted or own-sign planet in a difficult house is not the same as a debilitated one.
4. Look at the house concerned as a whole: its occupants, aspects, its lord's other connections, its ashtakavarga points. Is the difficult yoga outweighed?
5. Look for the reversal: is the difficulty itself being weakened (Harsha, Sarala, Vimala)?
6. Describe, do not condemn. Translate what remains into a tendency the person can work with.

#Summary

• The books surround their difficult yogas with cancellations; the tradition looked for the cancellations as carefully as for the yogas (Bhattotpala's sixteen, notes to Brihat Jataka VI).
• The Phaladeepika's twelve difficult house yogas form when a house's lord is in the 6th, 8th or 12th; but the lords of the 6th, 8th and 12th themselves in those houses give good results (Harsha, Sarala, Vimala; Phaladeepika 6; Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra 39).
• Sakata (Moon 6th, 8th or 12th from Jupiter) is cancelled by the Moon in a kendra from the ascendant; papa kartari is the ascendant hemmed in by malefics (Phaladeepika 6).
• A debilitated planet's weakness is cancelled under several common conditions (Phaladeepika 7.26–29).
• The example chart has Duryoga (the 10th lord in the 8th), but its 10th lord is exalted and in exchange with the ascendant lord, and the 10th house is strong: a description, not a misfortune.

#Exercises

1. For a Leo ascendant, the lord of the 9th is in the 12th house. Which difficult yoga is that, and what should you check before saying anything about it?
2. For a Taurus ascendant, the lord of the 8th is in the 6th house. Which yoga is this, and is it good or bad?
3. Mars is in Cancer (debilitated). The Moon is in Libra, and the ascendant is Capricorn. Is Mars's debilitation cancelled? Why?
4. The Moon is in Aries, Jupiter in Virgo, and the ascendant is Cancer. Is there Sakata yoga? Is it cancelled?
5. Why does this course not list the "short life" yogas?

Answers: 1. Nirbhagya (the lord of the 9th, Mars, in a dusthana). Check Mars's strength and dignity in the 12th (Cancer, its debilitation, for a Leo ascendant), any cancellation of that debilitation, the 9th house's occupants and aspects, and the rest of the chart. 2. Sarala: the 8th lord (Jupiter) in a dusthana; by the Phaladeepika it is good. 3. The lord of Cancer is the Moon; the Moon in Libra is in the 10th house from Capricorn, a kendra. So by the first rule, yes, it is cancelled. 4. Aries is the 8th sign from Virgo, so Sakata forms; but Aries is the 10th house from a Cancer ascendant, a kendra, so it is cancelled. 5. Because they have many exceptions and disagreements, are present in most charts, have never been shown to work, and telling a person about them causes harm without benefit.