The sky of the stars: the sidereal zodiac, the rashis and the nine grahas

The astrology of India is called Jyotish, the “science of light”. It reads the sky as you see it at night: each body is placed against the stars, in a zodiac called sidereal. This is the sky you are about to learn to read, one night after another.

Its way in is not the Sun sign. A Vedic astrologer looks at two things first: the sign of the Moon, which tells your inner world, and the lagna, the sign that was rising in the east at your birth (the Ascendant). In India, “my sign” almost always means the sign of the Moon.

The zodiac is a 360° circle cut into twelve signs of 30°, always in this order: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. A position counted from 0° Aries is divided by 30: at 135°, four whole signs have passed (120°) and 15° remain. That is 15° Leo.

Each sign has an element, in an order that repeats: fire, earth, air, water. Fire: Aries, Leo, Sagittarius. Earth: Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn. Air: Gemini, Libra, Aquarius. Water: Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces.

Each sign also has its opposite, six signs farther on, 180° away: Aries and Libra, Taurus and Scorpio, Gemini and Sagittarius, Cancer and Capricorn, Leo and Aquarius, Virgo and Pisces.

There are two ways of setting 0° Aries. The tropical zodiac, the one of Western astrology, places it where the Sun stands at the spring equinox: it follows the seasons. The sidereal zodiac, the one of Jyotish, ties it to the stars. The same twelve signs of 30°, two starting points.

Now the Earth’s axis slowly traces a circle in the sky, like the axis of a spinning top: the equinox point slips back against the stars by about 1° every 72 years. This is the precession of the equinoxes. The two zodiacs coincided seventeen centuries ago; their gap, the ayanamsa, is about 24° today.

From tropical to sidereal, you subtract 24°. From 24° of a sign onward, the position stays in its sign: 25° Capricorn becomes 1° Capricorn. Before 24°, it moves back into the previous sign, and you simply add 6° to the degree: 10° Leo becomes 16° Cancer.

From sidereal to tropical, you add 24°. Before 6° of a sign, the position stays there: 3° Virgo becomes 27° Virgo. From 6° onward, it moves forward into the next sign, and you take 6° off the degree: 16° Cancer becomes 10° Leo again.

So most positions change sign from one zodiac to the other. The Sun of the example sky is at 21° Taurus in the tropical zodiac: in the sidereal zodiac, it is at 27° Aries.

In Sanskrit, a sign is called a rashi. The twelve signs keep their order and their image, only the name changes: Mesha (Aries), Vrishabha (Taurus), Mithuna (Gemini), Karka (Cancer), Simha (Leo), Kanya (Virgo), Tula (Libra), Vrishchika (Scorpio), Dhanu (Sagittarius), Makara (Capricorn), Kumbha (Aquarius), Mina (Pisces). “My rashi”, on its own, means the sign of the Moon.

To remember them, think of the image: Simha means lion, Kanya maiden, Tula scales, Dhanu bow (the bow of Sagittarius), Kumbha jar (the jar of Aquarius), Mina fish. Two names look alike: Vrishabha, the bull, and Vrishchika, the scorpion. On the wheel, they are brought forward: these two signs face each other.

A graha is “that which seizes”: a force that holds a part of your life. Jyotish reads nine of them. Seven are visible to the naked eye: Surya (the Sun), Chandra (the Moon), Mangala (Mars), Budha (Mercury), Guru (Jupiter), Shukra (Venus) and Shani (Saturn). The last two, Rahu and Ketu, are points in the sky: the next card introduces them.

A few landmarks: Surya is the sun of yoga’s sun salutation; Guru, “the teacher”, is Jupiter, the graha of wisdom; Shani, “the slow one”, is Saturn, the slowest of the seven; Shukra, “the bright one”, is Venus, the most brilliant body after the Sun and the Moon.

Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, invisible without a telescope, are not grahas: classical Jyotish does not read them.

Rahu and Ketu are not bodies: they are the two nodes of the Moon, the two points where its orbit crosses the path of the Sun. Rahu is the north node, Ketu the south node. Eclipses happen near these two points: they have the power to veil the Sun and the Moon, hence their rank as grahas.

They are always opposite, 180° from each other: knowing the sign of one is knowing the sign of the other. Rahu tells what you reach for: a new appetite, a ground to conquer. Ketu tells what you already know: something mastered that you let go of in order to go farther.

Each graha has a temperament. Jupiter and Venus are the two great natural benefics: they open, protect and ease the way. Saturn, Mars, Rahu and Ketu are the natural malefics: demanding forces, which ask for effort and build when you work with them.

The other three are read case by case: the Moon is benefic when it is waxing, Mercury takes on the color of the grahas that accompany it, and the Sun, fiery, leans toward the demanding side.

Look at the D1 of the example sky, its chart in the sidereal zodiac: lagna in Leo, Moon in Scorpio, Saturn and Rahu together in Capricorn, Ketu across from them. Next night, you will learn to count the houses from the lagna: the bhavas.