An old post from elsewhere (Parallax and divination etc.)

[Rohiniranjan]

Dear Friends,

From time to time, being the ant that I am, I make a deliberate effort to go over my notes and earlier responses to situations and without any 'judgment' involved regarding the value of same, like to share those publicly. PLEASE NOTE: These are for browsing and then moving on, and not necessarily for responding to or commenting upon, unless you feel impelled to do so.

Some of the questions would be obvious so I would not elaborate. My responses would be indicated by 'RR:'

Yours in sharing ---

RR

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At 11:02 AM 7/1/97 +0300, you wrote:
>
Q:>But to the first point of Mesha. Where are we standing? Should we
>stand on the earth or in the sky? Earth is tropical. It is in the sky.
>But where? North Pole?
>

RR: Think of yourself traveling in a train going by the countryside. As it rushes past the countryside, we see that the nearer trees seem to 'move' faster than the ones that are in the far distance. If we could freeze the scene (as in freeze-frame in movies or TV), and look at the scene first from the locomotive, and then from the other end of the train, we will find that the nearer tree line up with a different distant tree. This is parallax and affects the location of nearer and/or relatively bigger heavenly bodies, such as moon, depending on where on the earth we are at the moment. If earth can be 'frozen' and we were to look at the moon from Hong Kong and then from Reykjavic, we will find that the moon lines up against a different star from the two places. This parallax error, in the case of the moon can be greater than a degree in longitude. It is much less for the planets because they are farther away and their disks are much smaller. Though the sun is very far away, its enormous size makes for a parallax error of about quarter of a degree. In most ephemeris and practically all calculations, the geocentric positions are given. This assumes that the observer is placed at the centre of the earth. The distance between this artificial vantage point and the real vantage point (topocentric, or from the surface of the earth) is about 4000 miles, or roughly 1/6th of the distance travelled along the equator on the surface of the earth. This can create quite the parallax error! However, all of this assumes that no matter where we are on the train (earth) the distant trees (constellations) are so distant that they do not move relative to our position, as do the nearer trees (moon and planets). So, whether we are at the North pole or elsewhere on the earth, the first point of aries, which is amongst the distant trees, would hardly shift, and hence would not make a difference. Parallax, of the moon, is a bigger and significant problem which most of the modern calculations do not address. In India, the general trend has been to use a local panchang (ephemeris and almanac rolled into one) and many of these are based on drig-ganit (calculations based on and corrected by the visible positions of bodies). These are to be used in the local area and hence take into account the parallax error. With parallax error of the moon ranging up to a degree and more, it is amusing that some people fight over things such as 10 minutes of ayanamsha difference or a birth-time variation of 5 minutes and other quantities! Any of these could be easily wiped by the parallax! And, please note, that the (lunar parallax) is not the same for all the bodies, so unlike ayanamsha, there would not be a uniform correction that would be applicable to all the planets!

>
Q: >If we take North Pole or any other point in our MilkyWay for observing
>point we are not on the level of Brahma.
>

RR: I am just trying to be an ordinary human being, Brahma-hood is a star that is too distant. Miles to go before I sleep!

Q: >Does this mean that proper Ayanamsha depend on Jyotisi's Dasha? Or
>does it have some connection to the moment of consultation?

RR: This definitely would be an important factor, unless the jyotishi is an advanced soul. However, to me, the veracity and usefulness of many different approaches tells a different story. I believe that any 'divination' is based on symbol interpretation. There is not a single way alone to interpret a symbol. Also, my faith is that in the universe, in our realm of existence, things work like a watch, where wheels are connected with other wheels, and so on. There are many events and phenomena that are happening in this realm, all of these are connected with each other, but not necessarily *causing* the other. When we look at a symbol set, be it astrology, be it yarrow sticks, be it tarot, be these images appearing through clairvoyance, be they shakuna, be they swara, we are 'tuning' into a zone of the creation which like the pulse felt by an ayurvedic physician, can tell the story about a distant part of the body, or even about the functional status of the body.
This becomes very clear on a list like this, where some are willing to put their line of thinking and method of approach in full view of others. We see the different approaches adopted when the same chart is being read. There are many ways to explain anything and make the connection between a symbol-set and say an event or a trait. With a million paths that exist and lead to the same goal, it makes sense, at least to me, not to lose too much sleep over the exclusivity of any technique or its supremacy over the other.
Since we live in a solar-calendar dominated era, it is easier for us to side with the solar year, but in vedic times, they used both the solar and lunar year as well as the savanamana year. There were, at least two measures of the length of the day used. One had to do with the sunrise. A weekday was considered to stretch between one sunrise to another, with the tattwa of the day rising soon after sunrise. The other measure for the day was the 'tithi' or the luni-solar (synodic) day. Years were created by humans by taking 12 of any of these cycles as a unit. By themselves, all of these are complete, but need correction to bring them in line with the solar cycle through the 12 rashis (solar year). It would seem that there was always a move towards conforming to the solar cycle, and for 365.25 reasons, of course! However, vimshottari dasha is a lunar progression! The natal moon is progressed through the fixed-length nakshatras at an unequal pace! It progresses through sun's star in 6 years, after progressing through venus' star in 20 years. Therefore, there is no reason why it should have to be clocked to match the pace of the sun (actually the earth!). In fact, most of the human beings do not have a 24 hour internal cycle, but something different, even we who rise by the sun and go down with it are not in perfect tune with good old Sol! For dashas, all we need is some form of a year and not necessarily the solar year. Now, obviously, we can't use the 27 or 29 day months because the differences in the periods would show up quite distinctly. Despite indications in the texts, most sub-periods do not give the result at a cuspal point (beginning or ending of the sub-period) and therefore there is quite a bit of overlap that can exist between marginally-different years when used for dasha length determination. The best way, obviously, is to study the chart of older individuals where the differences really show up.

>
Q: >My feeling is that we are in that kind of process until we reach
>Sruti. It means we get knowledge directly from the DivineSource.
>

RR: In other words, we find the divine source, which had been whispering to us from within all our life, while we were trying to find it elsewhere, outside of us!

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