🌞 [The ABCs of Vedic Astrology] #4 - Horoscope Letters: The Sun [Totally ORIGINAL content!]

So, let’s have a look at the main elements of horoscope. There aren’t many, but anyway reading horoscope is not still an easy task. But along with my next lessons you’ll learn simple, natural and effective ways of reading it. I would like you to start reading your own horoscope, your natal chart ASAP. So we’ll get familiar with basic elements – planets, signs and houses.

9 planets

Jyotish mainly uses 9 planets – Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Rahu and Ketu. Surely, you know the first seven ones or more correctly you’ve heard these names. Rahu and Ketu could possibly be something new to you, but relax – it’s not that complex as it sounds.

I listed the planets in such a definite order so they lined out with weekdays where a week starts from Sunday. Sunday is related to the Sun energy, Monday – to the Moon energy, Tuesday – to the Mars, Wednesday – to the Mercury, Thursday - to the Jupiter, Friday – to the Venus and Saturday – to the Saturn.

Rahu is similar to Saturn, and in case we don’t know where to put it we always relate Rahu to the Saturn element. Therefore Rahu relates to Saturday as with Saturn. Ketu relates to Mars. So we associate Ketu with Tuesday.

The first key set for the planets

Now, we have 9 planets named in order provided for weekdays. And now let’s learn what those planets keys are. The planet key is that thing which reveals the energy corresponded to the planet. We use the classic Jyotish texts to learn about the keys. Thus we can find the first key –

‘The Sun is the soul of everything ("sarva-atma")’.

We should understand what it means, how to comprehend and use it for reading a chart. At our previous lessons we considered a human being as a 3-component-system: spiritual soul, subtle material body and gross material body. Peculiarity of soul is that when it leaves the gross material body, the body bleeds out of life. We call it death. So the soul is vital source of power which makes material body alive. When the soul is out of body, the body dies. That’s why the soul is vital power, that’s life-giving and essential part for all the living systems. The soul is more important than a body. After all when the soul leaves a body, we berry or cremate that body much the same like rubbish. It means that the soul is the top thing for living systems.

And now it’s important to remember that talking about planets we talk about energies. In fact any existing energies can manifest in different forms. While the energy is shapeless we’re unable to perceive it.

And so studying energies comes through studying the forms the energy shapes in action.

The Sun energy is something extrasensory what means we can say nothing about the Sun energy until it starts effecting via some perceptual form. The very planet Sun is just one of the forms the Sun energy shapes. I hope you see my point.

So then a soul is one of the forms that Sun energy manifests. We’ll put it shortly – 'soul is the form of the Sun energy', 'soul is the Sun energy' or 'soul is the Sun'. When you see the saying 'soul is the Sun’ or ‘the Sun is the soul’, you should understand that it means the soul is one of the Sun energy forms.

What actually is soul?

First of all soul is the most important thing. Soul is that necessary substance to bring system in action; that is life-giving power for any system. Soul is vitality. Consciousness is also a soul's symptom. Consciousness is ability to feel, comprehend, realize. Quite literally being consciousness means to feel, to sense. We sense some feelings, we feel something and that’s our consciousness work. Soul consciousness is spread all over a human body. It’s easy to find it out. Pinching or touching any part of your body is enough. You feel the contact, don’t you? This means you – spiritual soul – spread your consciousness over your body and now you can sense your body, feel it and feel every contact with it. So soul doesn’t just brings into life, it spreads itself all over the system and makes you feel the parts of the system. In other words soul bands each separate element of the system into one human body. For this very reason soul also makes us feel and unites isolated elements into a single entity.

We briefly sorted out the Sun energy key, which is provided in Jyotish writings. At the moment we should try to remember the only point: the Sun energy is the most important, life-giving, uniting (integrating), making feel force.

How can we use the key?

If you meet a leader gathering others into a team or rather creating a team out of different personalities, be aware that person uses the Sun energy. Given that nothing can be united without the Sun energy. The Sun is uniting factor. So our way of thinking can be like this: ‘If I want to unite people into a team, I need the Sun energy’. This is the first natural conclusion we can make after analyzing the key for the Sun. To assemble separate parts of a mechanism into a complete system we need the Sun energy. If we have it in us, we’ll be able to bring odds and ends together. If we lack this energy, we’ll fail, puzzle won’t come around. That is the way we should understand this first key. Put in other words without the Sun energy all the system falls apart to isolated components and no longer works. So the Sun is the principal force of any system: human’s body, system of values, emotions, family, society of people, country, world, etc.

Before I've already said that reality could be perceived as different models. Each person has their own model of reality, their own ideas about world structure. Developing in Jyotish you’ll gradually built up one more world model in your mind, another approach to the world, which can help you to see that there’s more than meets the eye. That is the hidden power of Jyotish.

Previous lessons

#1 - What is Horoscope?

#2 - It's not about the 9 Planets, it's about the 9 Energies

#3 - Possibilities that Jyotish Can Give to You