Western path or Vedic path: choosing your path for the seven nights

Two paths, the same seven stars

Whichever path you take, the rules are the same: one night a day, a lesson in short cards, then a trial drawn on real skies. Each night you pass lights a star of the Big Dipper, and seven stars take seven days at least. The full walkthrough is in the seven nights course, the pass mark and the daily attempts in the trial of each night.

What changes is the language you learn, and the names of the stars. On the Western path, they carry their names that come from Arabic, from Alkaid to Dubhe. On the Vedic path, the same stars are the seven sages of India, from Marichi to Kratu, and the Pole Star is called Dhruva (the Big Dipper and the seven sages). One sky, two readings: that is the whole idea of the course.

The Western path, night by night

This is the astrology of the zodiac of the seasons, the tropical one: the zodiac of your sign, and of the wheel the site draws when you calculate your chart. It starts from scratch and adds one reading skill each night: the signs and the planets, the houses, the rulers, the aspects, then time.

1. The alphabet of the sky: the twelve signs, their four elements and three modes, then the ten bodies of the chart, from the Sun to Pluto.
2. The stage: the Ascendant, the four angles and the twelve houses. You learn to count the houses on the wheel and to say where each body acts.
3. The rulers: the ruler of each sign, the dignities (domicile, detriment, exaltation, fall), then the ruler of the Ascendant and of each house.
4. The aspects: the five major aspects and their angles, the orb, and the method for counting an aspect between two positions.
5. The synthesis: ranking what matters in a chart, counting its dominants, spotting a stellium, then joining it all into one portrait that holds its contradictions.
6. Time in motion: transits, from the fastest to the slowest, retrogrades, the great appointments of a lifetime and the solar return.
7. The crossing: the two zodiacs 24° apart, the Vedic D1 and the divisional charts, to cross every reading of a chart.

Every lesson on this path can be checked the same evening on your own chart: open its wheel and find there what the night has just taught you (reading the chart wheel).

The Vedic path, night by night

This is Jyotish, Vedic astrology, read in the zodiac of the stars, the sidereal one: about 24° away from the zodiac of the seasons (tropical or sidereal). It starts from the Moon and the lagna, the rising sign, more than from the Sun sign. The vocabulary is Sanskrit, and every word is explained before a trial asks for it.

1. The sky of the stars: the 24° gap between the two zodiacs, the twelve rashis, the nine grahas, Rahu and Ketu.
2. The lagna and the bhavas: the sign that was rising in the east, then the twelve houses counted from it in whole signs, and the same count from the Moon.
3. Rulers and aspects: the seven rulers of the twelve signs, exaltation and debilitation, the ruler of each house, then the aspects, the drishti.
4. The nakshatras: the twenty-seven mansions of the Moon, their four padas, their nine rulers, and the birth nakshatra (the nakshatras).
5. The dashas: nine major periods over 120 years, their order, their lengths, the one that opens a life and their sub-periods (the dashas).
6. The divisional charts: how to compute the D9, the chart for each question, the D20 and the D60, always read together with the D1 (the divisional charts).
7. The crossing: Jaimini’s karakas, transits read from the Moon, the solar return and the Western chart, crossed in a set order.

Which one to start with

Take the Western path if you know your sign and want to understand your chart as the site displays it. Everything you learn there shows up on the wheel of your chart, in its houses and its aspects: it is the most direct way to read your own chart.

Take the Vedic path if the zodiac of the stars, the nakshatras and the dashas call you: you want to know why your planets often change sign there, which mansion of the Moon holds your birth Moon, how a major period of life is read. Its first night lays its own foundations, the rashis and the grahas: it does not ask you to follow the other path first.

• You have never opened a chart: the Western path, whose first night begins with the twelve signs.
• You already read your Western chart: the Vedic path teaches you a second language, and the seventh night ties it to the one you know.
• You are still unsure: read the first lesson of each path, the first night is played without an account, then keep the one that makes you want to come back tomorrow.

There is no wrong choice: both paths light the same seven stars, meet on the seventh night, and the other one waits for you afterward.

On the seventh night, the two paths meet

The last night has the same name on both sides: the crossing. On the Western path, you reach it with transits and the solar return, and you add the zodiac of the stars, the Vedic D1 and the divisional charts. On the Vedic path, you reach it with the dashas and the divisional charts, and you add transits read from the Moon, the solar return and the Western chart.

This is how the site reads: cross, never choose. The tropical chart and the sidereal chart are two true views of the same birth. The D9 says where you are going, the D60 where you come from, the D20 your spiritual life. Then comes time: your transits give the dates, the solar return the climate of the year. What comes back from one chart to the next is solid; what differs is a nuance to hold (crossing the charts).

The trial of that night is called the great sky: fifteen questions that cross the whole course, and twelve right answers to light the seventh star. Whichever path you took, you come out of it able to cross both readings.

Changing path, then following the other

Your choice is never final. Above the Big Dipper, next to the name of your path, the “Change path” link takes you back to the choice. Nothing is erased: each path keeps its own stars, its sparks and its days in a row, and you find your Big Dipper as you left it when you come back.

With your free account, the stars of both paths are kept from one device to the next: on another device, choose your path again and they are there.

1. On the course page, tap “Change path”, above the Big Dipper.
2. Choose “Follow the Vedic path” or “Follow the Western path”.
3. The Big Dipper of that path appears, with its own stars. If you are starting it, its first night is open; the next ones open one a day, as on the other path.

When the seven stars of a path are lit, the page says so under the Big Dipper and offers “Follow the other path too”: you start again from the first night of the other path, with seven new stars to light, the same ones in the sky, under their other names.

Two paths, one free PDF

At the end of the seven nights, the two pointers of the Big Dipper show the Pole Star: your tailored reading as a PDF, on us, for you or for someone close. There is one free PDF per account, for the first path completed. The second path lights seven new stars, not a second PDF: so choose your path for what it teaches, the reward is the same on both sides (the free PDF of the seven nights).

The exact birth time matters, above all for the Vedic path

To follow the course, you do not need your birth time: the lessons are read on an example sky, and the trials are played on real skies drawn by the site, not on yours. The time matters when you apply a lesson to your own chart.

On the Western path, it sets the Ascendant, which changes sign about every two hours, and the twelve houses along with it. On the Vedic path it weighs even more: everything is counted from the lagna, and the Ascendant of a divisional chart changes within minutes, about thirteen in the D9, six in the D20, two in the D60. At that level of detail, you need the time written on the birth certificate.

If you only have a rounded time, look for it while you work through the first nights: finding your exact birth time says where it is written. And if it cannot be found, the unknown birth time page says what can still be read.