RishiRahul wrote:
...
Both sound romantic!
RishiRahul
Speaking of romantic, I have heard that in many contexts, but was quite surprised many years ago when Mr. Rao (a venerable teacher of many and a celibate, yogi with a rather endearing and charming style of narrative writing, rather unique in the field of Jyotish) in his writings mentioned about the 'romantic' aspect of Jyotish. If I understood correctly, he was using the term in the context of a somewhat imaginative, slightly different from the norm or even what had been laid out in scriptures etc. Now, many individuals particularly those who insist on going by the 'letter' might snicker a bit about interpretations and applications from the norms of *tradition*, and they have perfect rights to do so in modern democratic environment, but what Mr. Rao saw and described as *romantic* (such as using Jaimini principles with Parashari nakshatra dashas for instance or utilization of vargas in innovative ways) can also be seen as means to 'fill-in the gaps'! Vargas, for instance, are almost unarguably accepted generally as critical parameters, but the scriptures are generally -- if not silent -- are rather sketchy about those or even scattered! Information is there here and there, buried in the slokas. And, of course, overriding all those speedbumps is the on-again/off-again matter of whether the ancients recommended the use of sub-D1 vargas as a chart or merely as places. In other words, if lagna is in dhanu navamsha, then makar navamsha does not automatically become the 2nd house in the D9! Or aquarius navamsha the 3rd house in the D9 chart used as an example. However, by the 'placement' folks (as opposed to the chart folks) if Jupiter is in Sagittarius navamsha or Saturn in Capricorn or aquarius navamsha, then that has significance in the given nativity. The vargottama is a similar situation, which I view as being similar to a polarizer filter utilized in the context of photography (more about that, some other time!
Utilizing Mr. Rao's context of *romantic*, one would say that Choudhury's System Approach is a romantic digression to a minor extent, whereas KP is a more obvious departure and Lal Kitab of course takes the cake (or gulab-jamun or mawabati, or raj-bhog, depending on your personal preferences) insofar as *romanticism* is concerned within the large tent of Jyotish.
I have noticed certain paternalistic, patronizing, unctorial tendencies in the more experienced astrologers. They tend to baby their students and hand out material rather cautiously. The student might be a 40 year old individual, well educated, perhaps in a profession, though new to jyotish! Why such an attitude continues to prevail or its superiority in terms of efficient education (in astrology) remains a mystery since astrology practice and education are self-regulated and kind of kept hush-hush in general! Everything by syllabus, in other words, and the syllabi seem to vary from school to school!
How unromantic...? <LOL>
Love and Light,
Rohiniranjan