Did you know? 23rd September 2008

According to our Puranas, Budha (mercury) is the illegitimate son of Chandra (moon) and Tara (wife of Bruhaspati – Jupiter) !!

Doshas in the body

Ayurveda says that all problems in the body come as a result of imbalances between the three types of constituents in the body – Vata, Pitta and Kapha. And generally, one is born with an imbalance. One or two of the constituents tend to dominate over the others. Thus we see people commonly complaining about [...]

Nakshatras, Padas and Rashis

In measuring angles,
60 seconds = 1 minute
60 minutes = 1 degree
The entire zodiac comprises of 360 degrees.
There are 27 Nakshatras (stars or constellations) according to our tradition occupying the 360 degrees of the zodiac. This means that each Nakshatra gets 13 degrees and 20 minutes in the zodiac. Further, each Nakshatra is divided into 4 [...]

Did you know? 8th July 2008

Our ancient Rishis named the planet Mars (of ALL heavenly bodies visible to the naked eye) as Bhaumya or Kuja, both of which means “Son of Earth”. Our scientists, after inspecting photographs from a spaceship, have recently confirmed that Mars looks very similar to the Earth in its composition!

The Kingdom of the Planets

Sun/Surya: King, leader, follower and protector of Dharma, un-questionable, other planets have difficulty when close (combustion) as its not possible to question the King, power, politics, authority, aggressiveness, temper, kshatriya.
Moon/Chandra: Queen, gentle, moody – can wax and wane (Shukla and Krishna paksha), sensitive, mind, art, culture, food, vaishya.
Mars/Kuja: Commander of the royal army, extremely aggressive, [...]

The importance of the 60th year

Amongst practicing Hindus, especially in South India, the 60th year of one’s life is considered very important. It is considered as a new beginning in one’s life. The shashtyabdi poorthi (completion of 60) ceremony is a very important occasion and is celebrated with lots of pujas and yagnas.
Astrologically too, the 60th year in one’s [...]

How Shani became slow

I was reading a book on Shani (Saturn) a couple of days back and it had a very interesting story on how Shani became the slowest of all the planets. It is of course well known that Ravana, the Lord of Lanka, had all the nine planets under his control. He is supposed to have [...]

Curses do take effect

Yesterday was a very educative day for me. My uncle turned up home in the evening with one of his colleagues. He wanted to take an opinion on his 15 year old son’s horoscope. My Guru also had come home from Mangalore and so we got down to analyzing the chart. We quickly figured out [...]

The planet of benevolence

I thought of posting another blog in the series of “Gods in popular culture” but I am going to deviate a bit from that topic. I will attempt to post my views on one of the Navagrahas – Shukra or Venus. Amongst practicing Hindus, Shukra is one of the most misunderstood planets (along with Shani- [...]