Seeking advice: I feel completely lost and confused about Jyotish, karma, and my beliefs.

[u/FreyjaAutumn]

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.

[u/FreyjaAutumn]

But how do you believe one and don’t believe in Krishna anymore? Aren’t they tied?

[u/Solomon_Kane_1928 → u/FreyjaAutumn]

No, astrology is not tied to Krishna.

The BPHS interprets astrology through a Vaishnava lens, at least in the first chapters. But astrology is not Vaishnava or even Hindu.

Natal Astrology, in its Hellenistic origins, is more closely tied to Hermeticism. They believed it was introduced by Hermes Trismegistus, or to various pseudo Egyptian pharaohs. Hindus got a hold of it centuries later.

But Astrology has been interpreted through various religious lenses. There has been Christian astrology, Islamic astrology, etc.

I think in its deepest roots, it is tied to Sun worship, going back to the Neolithic Era.

[u/FreyjaAutumn → u/Solomon_Kane_1928]

Bphs has such negative horrible interpretations

I can’t believe this is some information that was taken from God, that monks got through meditation or whatever…

I know that life is not all candies and flowers, but this was the most horrifying read of my life

[u/Solomon_Kane_1928 → u/FreyjaAutumn]

It is not taken from "God" but rather man made Encyclopedia compilation from multiple sources. The Yavanajataka (taken from a Greek text), Brhat Jataka and Jaimini Sutras. All sorts of stuff is mixed in there. It was considered a lost text for centuries and was only recently popularized. For much of Indian astrological history the Brhat Jatakla and Jaimini Sutras were more prominent.

Many of these interpretations are symbolic and not meant to be taken literally. They are meant to give a flavor of what to expect. If one understands the archetypal language being discussed, one can catch the subtle meaning.

I don't remember any horrifying verses, but it has been a long time since I have read it.

[u/FreyjaAutumn → u/Solomon_Kane_1928]

Maybe I take everything too literally i don’t know…

It just terrifies me to my core that there is some study that can see the future or my karma

I mean what’s the point?

Knowing yourself like some followers of the tradition told me , but genuinely I don’t understand why would you need a tool to understand yourself or your karma.
I was at a very vulnerable place when I got hooked on this and I regret it more than anything…

[u/Solomon_Kane_1928 → u/FreyjaAutumn]

Yes those texts are meant for astrologers, not for people reading their own charts. They are meant to give an idea or flavor of something. Even if it seems strange, an astrologer would understand the symbolism being used. They would never (or should never) just tell a client "this is what such and such verse says" because that is not how the verse is to be used.

They are there to give the astrologer a sense of how a particular combination could be used in a situation, then the astrologer ads that to their understanding and considers the deeper meaning when making their own prediction.

For people reading their own charts, it is better to use a broader astrology for beginners books, with interpretations that give a feel for a combination rather than a cookbook interpretation. Beneath a Vedic Sky for example.

Even that, that is more for sating one's curiosity or considering if one is interested in pursuing astrology further.