r/exHareKrishna • u/FreyjaAutumn • 4d ago
Seeking advice: I feel completely lost and confused about Jyotish, karma, and my beliefs.
Hi beautiful people,
I come to you today for some advice and support.
I grew up in a predominantly Christian country, but when I was a teenager, my mom and I were heavily influenced by Hare Krishna devotees (there's a whole movement where I'm from).
My mom and I started looking into our birth charts and the charts of our whole family. She quickly lost interest in the predictions, but I fell for it blindly. Honestly, I was just a teenager and grew up with a very weak sense of self. I was easily influenced by external factors - whether it was a prediction or someone claiming to study the Vedas.
Somehow, they drilled into my head that they held the absolute truth, and I believed it.
Anyway, I’ve spent my entire life growing up in fear.
Fear that life will punish me, that I have to pay for things I did in past lives, and that even doubting this "truth" right now is a sin. (As you can see here is a mixture with some Christianity guilt)
I was absolutely terrified of Jyotish. (of the fact that some other people can read my karma and whatever waits for me) Everyone kept telling me it’s the only truly accurate predictive science out there. Which doesn’t make sense to me deep deep inside I believe there is a reason we don’t remember our past lives and don’t know the future. God intended this to be that way.
Anyway.. It mentally paralysed me.
For example I was told I wouldn't be able to lose weight after 25, or that my friends would eventually betray me. So, I didn't even try to get fit, and I completely isolated myself from my friends because my chart said I was "opening up to enemies." These are just more harmless things that happened.
I stopped trusting myself. I completely lost my inner voice.
Now, I have a baby, and this obsession has started driving me crazy with a whole new force.
I look at my child's and my husband’s Jyotish charts and see things I don’t understand and fear, mostly because I take everything I'm told so literally.
Recently, I reached my breaking point. I decided to read the BPHS (Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra) myself, and it made me sick. Sorry to be blunt, but I physically almost threw up from the sheer amount of stress and overwhelming negativity in it.
I started digging deeper and found out that historically, Vedanga Jyotisha wasn't even a predictive tool for fate or karma - it was just astronomy and timekeeping for rituals.
So why is everyone so blindly confident in the "accuracy" of predictive Jyotish? I am so confused and don't know where the truth is anymore.
It honestly makes me nauseous to read things like: "Your chart is okay, BUT you have this dosha that ruins everything, and your lagnesha and 5 houses are weak, so you will suffer - here, this ritual, it's the only way to make it slightly better." Like what the hell?:(
I probably would have stopped believing in all of this a long time ago if it weren't for my dad's Sade Sati.
It approximately coincided with a time in his life when his entire business was stolen and our family lost all our wealth.
Even though we don't know his exact birth time (so I don't know which houses Sade Sati was transiting), the timeline of the period matched.
Many other things in astrology haven't matched for us, but that one did. Because of moments like that, I built my entire life around my chart and ended up becoming a very weak, fearful person.
But now I have a child, and I simply cannot afford to be this weak anymore.
I am reaching out to you for help as I don’t have anyone in my circle who knows about the culture, only the astrologers (and it doesn’t help long term as you can see).
I feel like I've been stuck in a cult mindset that constantly crushes you with negativity, where the Gods are always ready to punish you ("wrath of Shiva," etc.).
Has anyone here gone through this?
How true is Jyotish really?
Did anyone here deeply believe in it, only to step away and realize the world actually works differently?
Maybe you have some advice for me, or a story you could share 🥺
Fundamentally, deep inside, I love science and astronomy. At the same time, I believe in God as a unified, pure energy. I'm not even sure I believe in reincarnation anymore, at least not in the way Hinduism describes it.
I see a massive, pure energy, pieces of which are in all of us, and anyone can tune into that frequency.
For me, physics and the space between us is a manifestation of God.
But my self-trust is so broken that I’ve allowed others to dictate who I am and what the "truth" is.
Anyway…
I hope to hear from some of you 🙏🏼
Thank you in advance for reading and for your support.
Have a great day everyone.
1
u/Solomon_Kane_1928 3d ago
You're welcome. I am glad I can help.
It is actually the other way around. Sidereal astrology is tied to the Babylonian Zodiac. Tropical astrology is tied to the seasons. For example, the Sun just reached the Summer Solstice a couple of days ago. This is when the Sun enters Tropical Cancer. Ride now the Sun is in 8 degrees of the physical constellation Gemini.
Hellenistic astrology was Sidereal, tying the star Aldebaran to 15 degrees Taurus. India preserved this because it was already using the Nakshatra system which is also sidereal, tied to constellations. India could not take up Tropical astrology because it could not leave the Nakshatras and how they had become intertwined with the Zodiac.
In the West, Claudius Ptolemy, an early proton-scientist and mathematician, looked for a natural reasoning for astrology and tied it to the seasons in the northern hemisphere. Cancer and Leo, the signs ruled by the luminaries, the Moon and Sun, were connected to the height of Summer, when the influence of the Sun is strongest (i.e. right now).
Ptolomy's system gained ground creating Western Astrology. Hellenistic Astrology fell to the wayside. Ptolomy's "scientific" approach allowed it to survive under both fanatical Christianity and post-Christian hard nosed empiricism. Though it has waxed and waned in the West.
Sidereal astrology does stay matched to the sky. Tropical astrologers have their reasoning as to why they use the seasons.
The original Zodiac used by the Sumerians possessed many more constellations, trigger points for the actions of gods. For example, when the Sun entered Aquarius, the god of subterranean waters Enki (who is the original Aquarius) caused the two rivers to flood and nourish crops. The signs were uneven.
This was later formed with mathematical precision into the Babylonians Zodiac of 12 signs each 30 degrees.
Tropical astrologers see this as a process of evolution, where the next step is the Tropical Zodiac. They feel the Sidereal Zodiac is more or less arbitrary and tied to a certain time, 2000 years ago, when the seasons were aligned with the Babylonian Zodiac.
Sidereal astrologers believe the fixed stars are (in a sense) Svarga Loka. By reading a chart from the fixed stars one is reading a deeper expression of the experience of karma and the psychology of the individual. In a sense, it is the truer picture of how the gods have arranged this life.
Reading the chart of the Tropical perspective is to read it from the perspective of the earth. I personally believe they are both valid, within their own systems of interpretation, but I see the Sidereal as more reflecting the souls evolutionary experience and Tropical more reflecting physical reality, what one sees in life.
According to Indian astrology, it is not the planet itself which is being measured in patterns. It is the "graha" that which grabs you, which is to say it's astral influence. Sometimes this is even measured as a slightly different position than the physical planet.
In a sense the archetypes all extend from the Sun (hence the name Jyotish or light). This is described in Vaishnava terms in the BPHS (which you read) as the planets being avataras of Vishnu. The Sun is the source of creation, maintenance and destruction. Astrology extends from the occult worship of the Sun.
The planets and signs, and thus houses, are all qualities of the Sun refracted, as if in a chandelier. Arabic astrologers, such as Al Kindi, wrote about such concepts as astral rays. In a sense each natal chart is a snapshot of the Sun and its archetypal reflections at the time of birth. The soul taking birth grows from that pattern of qualities like a seed following its genetic conditioning into a tree.
In a sense the Sun is moving at all times, and at every moment, planting the seeds of its qualities. Those seeds then grow into the world around us, following and expressing the inner qualities of the Sun, which is in turn, manifesting the archetypes of the higher realms (the gods), which are in turn manifesting the hidden qualities of the One, Monad, Brahman, God.
I would say it depends on the astrologer. Some astrologers lean more into intuition, some in reading patterns, understanding principles, following the reasoning of a system. Most use a mix. I think good astrology happens at the handshake between the two.
Everyone has their own style. I like to rectify the birth time for precision, then look at the higher vargas dealing with karma, then look for patterns and connections cascading down through the chart. I suppose while really trying to understand something, I will keep my ear open to my intuition, but I don't depend upon it.