EYE ON SPIRITUAL ASTROLOGY: THE ASTROLOGY OF MOKSHA OR ENLIGHTENMENT
Many of us that are attracted to astrology are also attracted to moksha or getting off the wheel of karma and getting enlightened. My first question 1985 to Chakrapani Ullal during my first reading was whether I would get enlightened. I have always had a fascination with it It is a very complex question and there are some answers in Vedic astrology. Lately, I have been blessed to be getting weekly darshan and instructions to hasten my journey.
One of my spiritual teachers taught me that there are 750 lives that we go through before we get a chance for 7 spiritual lives and in the final one we may gain spiritual freedom finally. Through my own spiritual Gurus, I have learned that regular spiritual practice, service to mankind, and bringing spirituality to others are key to developing enough good karma to gain the merit to receive that grace to become liberated. It is a rare thing and I am very grateful to my spiritual Guru to guide me on this difficult path across the razor’s edge.
The Rahu/Ketu axis reveals a great deal about our blocks to enlightenment as Rahu is always craving more and Ketu wants us to let go and meditate and transcend.
If you are lucky to have good Ketu signatures, you still have a lot to work through and the planet Rahu, the planet of desire is the biggest block to enlightenment, and what house it is connected to may indicate your Achilles heel on the path in this life. For example, if you have Rahu in the 12th, you may have a strong spiritual bent and desire for Moksha but it could easily get lost in sexual conquest or a psychological roller coaster. Rahu in the 2nd might give you such a strong desire for money or nurturing and support in family life that you forget your quest. So one key is always seeing how Rahu creates a life-long obsession and how mastering it in any life is key to getting off the wheel of Karma.
The 12th house in Vedic astrology is the house of Moksha but it also can bring with it great suffering. It is often misunderstood as a house of loss and expenditure but revered in Vedic astrology as the place of loss of ignorance. The key to the 12th house is sacrifice and service and moving beyond your ego to help others on the path.
The sign that is connected to it and the planets it may contain offer hidden keys to unlocking some of the karma in this lifetime. The problem with the 12th house is that it represents deeply hidden and unconscious patterns that are blind spots that we cannot see and that is why Moksha is often elusive as we cannot see our blocks. From an astronomical point of view, according to Ptolemy, the 12th corresponded to that part of the sky, just above the horizon, where stars were obscured by the “thick, misty exhalations from the moistures of earth.” According to the Egyptians, stars here were lost in, and debilitated by, the sun’s light at sunrise. Hence no planets do well in the 12th house except Venus and Ketu and even Venus will more often get you too caught up in sexual play and keep you off the highest goal.
Certain rising signs and their house owner-ships connected to who owns the 12th house may also give us some insights. Gemini rising has Venus owning the 12th (Taurus)and 5th house so Geminis are so often caught up in the search for being loved, particularly by women, and the continual romantic intrigues and sexual desires can easily pull them off the quest to move the kundalini up the spine rather than down. In thinking about house owner-ships, I have come up with a partial guide to rising signs and their blocks to liberation:
Here are some blocks connected to the 12th house that I have outlined and are connected to planets and house owner-ships by rising sign:
- Sexual over-indulgence—energy going down vs. up. Gemini, Taurus, and Scorpio rising may have watched this problem most with Venus and Mars and moderate their sexual energies.
- Over-spending creates money and debt problems. The 12th house governs expenditures and is opposite the sign of debts, the 6th house. Venus and Jupiter or Saturn in the 12th may create too much extravagance or overspending to create enough peace to continue on the spiritual path.
- Worries about hidden enemies throwing our sense of safety off. The 12th house is the house of hidden enemies so planets connected to the 6th/12th axis may throw off our sense of equanimity and prevent us from finding peace.
- Blind spots and bad judgment create deep suffering in the 12th house. For example, Mars in the 12th house represses anger and lacks the bite to get its actions done and then it explodes in range and destroys any chance of peace, and creates deep suffering. So what planets are in the 12th house and their karakas and blind spots that they create may create huge blocks for us.
- Checking out. The 12th house is connected with deep unconscious pain and past life suffering and can create deep mental and emotional storms. If we do not have enough spiritual guidance and the grace of an enlightened master, they can lead to mental breakdowns, hospitalization, and the darker side of the 12th house as we have little ability to deal with the depth of these problems. This is why a personal Guru is so needed to get through the ” night of the soul.”
- Self-punishment: Libra and Aries have lords of 1st and 8th as the same and tend to be their own worst enemies and create their past life crises and 8th house is also a Moksha house and another place of deep spiritual mysteries.
- Balancing material and spiritual realms with proper expenditures vs. service. The signs of Virgo, Leo, and Gemini rising may have the most challenge. Leo is a very material-orientated sign but Sun as the owner does a deep spiritual quest for moksha. The signs of Virgo and Leo can have challenges with this balancing act.
The journey to Moksha is often very rocky and if we can get through our 12th house issues, we may have a shot at liberation. But that process is so often filled with turmoil As one great astrologer noted in an article on the 12th house: ” There are times when being a 12th-house person means being lost in the darkness, tossed by mysterious storms whose origins are unknown and perhaps unknowable, unable to stand upright long enough to take a compass bearing, not knowing where the journey is leading, when it will end, or whether one will survive at all.”
Our 12th house karma needs to lead us to meditation, spiritual retreats, and looking to transform our blind spots and our deepest unconscious karma into the conscious realm so that we can master it and not become a victim. 12th house karma is the most difficult to deal with but if we can master it we can bring out our hidden talents and overcome our biggest obstacles.
The quest for Moksha and walking the razor’s edge requires an enlightened spiritual master. This article comes out of a personal interest in the subject but I am hardly qualified to guide anyway and I humbly bow down to my own spiritual Guru who has seen into the blocks. For me, it is about unlocking my artistic talent as a poet and doing service work at the ashram that will lead to more freedom. I can see that in the Parivartana Yoga now between the 3rd and the 12th house and Venus and exalted Saturn but he always knew by just tuning in. Still, the 12th house tasks are the hardest to do and if we can get through them and surrender to our spiritual teachers, then we have a chance at liberation. It is a many-lifetime process.
I will leave you with a beautiful quote from one of the great spiritual teachers from my spiritual tradition, Swami Brahmanada Saraswati Jagaguru Bhavan Shankaracharya of Jyoti Math:
To get a human body is a rare thing. Make full use of it. There are four million kinds of lives that a soul can gather. After that, one gets a chance to be human. To get a human body, therefore, one should not waste the chance. If you don’t value this, then you will be left with nothing in hand and you will weep in the end.
Because you are human, God has given you the power to think and decide good and bad. Therefore you should never consider yourself a weak or fallen creature. Whatever may have happened up to now may be because you didn’t know, but now be careful…after getting human, if you don’t reach God, then you have sold a diamond for the price of spinach.
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