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CHAPTER X :: CAN VENUS CAN BE MALEFIC! AND, WHAT IS THE ULTIMATE STRENGTH OF A PLANET?
This brief essay addresses a friend's questions. He asked me if there were situations when venus could become a malefic? He also asked me if there is a way of determining the ultimate strength of a planet......?
Many vedic (and perhaps other) astrologers buy into the idea that any given planet can be either benefic or malefic. Venus and Jupiter are usually considered as "always benefic" whereas, mars and saturn are their polar opposites in always being blamed to be the bad guys. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Planets do have natural dispositions and these do predominantly affect their expressions of an influence or effect, but one must take into account the following qualifiers when trying to determine the benefic or malefic effect of a planet:
1) Which houses does the planet rule in a given horoscope? Here I must urge students to suspend their desire to be mathematically precise and use the whole sign-as-a-house method that I find useful and practical. If the ascendant is in sidereal Pisces, the whole sign of Pisces serves as the first house (regardless of the rising degree) and the others follow (aries being the second house, taurus the third and so on). The rulers of the 6th, 8th and 12th houses (signs in those houses!) are malefic. If jupiter rules one of those houses, so be it! If the planet also rules a benefic house (1st, 4th, 5th, 7th, 9th, 10th) then its sting is reduced a bit but it still remains a malefic for that horoscope. In the hindu concept, malefic does not mean only in a materialistic sense but also a spiritual sense. One with a strong but malefic venus would be given to the pleasure of senses to the detriment of one's spiritual progress. An evil jupiter would make one turn away from listening to good counsel provided by teachers and elders or even incline him/her to black magic and other base procedures. I am certain that people who suffered sex-scandals had a malefic venus in their charts. It would be interesting to compare charts of AIDS victims who contracted the disease by sexual means as opposed to those who got it through transfusions or similar non-conjugal routes.
2) Next we should look at the sign and star dispositors of the planet (venus in this case). If the lords of the sign and the star in which venus is placed in the chart are friendly towards venus and are in strong aspect or association with it (by means of conjugation or by forming a beneficial yoga combination with it) then that venus stands a better chance for fully expressing its effects. Most effects of any given planet that we see are never pure but are modified, filtered, enhanced or weakened by the planets that it is invariably associated with. People do disservice to astrology when they are hung up on dishing out the effects by the position of a planet in a house or in a sign (many interpretive astrology programs unfortunately fall in this trap) while ignoring the modulating influences of other planets. This consideration of associating planets is very important. Even the bravest general cannot do much in the battlefield if he is not surrounded by friendly, cooperative soldiers. Even the most effective leaders need their ring of supportive and honest counsellors. A planet likewise needs to be in a positive, friendly environment to bring out the best (or worst) in it. A malefic planet which is weakened by lack of strong associations, is in unfriendly quarters is less likely to express its venom with full vengeance. A planet is always modified by the company it keeps.
3) Finally, the planet might be a benefic or malefic with lots of butressing influences from other planets, but if the native is not going to be subjected to the dasa of the planet or of a planet which is placed in the star of the planet, the effects would not come to pass in full fury/glory (as the case may be). There still would be bhuktis (subperiods) of these planets but those would be generally limited or contained by the effects of the planet whose major period (dasa) one is running at the moment.
4) An interesting observation about venus and saturn is that whenever one is going through the period of venus in saturn or vice versa, if the planets are strong in a horoscope they give a reversal effect during their mutual periods. By extension a weak venus and saturn would bestow a strong effect in their mutual period. Again, this dictum should not be taken verbatim or we would not perform better than those interpretive astrology programs!
The second question pertains to the issue of planetary strengths. How do we determine a single numerical representative of a planet's ultimate strength or total strength? A planet essentially has the following strengths:
a) The classical bala-determination which takes into account the placement of the planet, the sign it is in, the vargas, diurnal cycles, retrogression, aspects etc. The four sources of strength that I first described in and article in Astrological magazine (1979) and then in an article of mine published in the NCGR newsletter in 1992, and in Chapter VIII here is what I use. This method includes the sign strength, directional, exaltation and angular strength and by normalizing the individual ranges of strength also take into account the natural strengths of the planets.
b) One may also calculate the ashtavargajabala which is a point system which takes into account certain positions from the natal placement of planets and is specially useful in transit delineations according to ancient authorities in vedic astrology.
Having gone through these and other minor mathematical gymnastics do we still achieve the ultimate strength index? Life would be simple if we did. The four-source technique that I use gives a fair measure of the strength of a planet.
-A planet that gains high total percent strength on these four counts must indeed be considered strong, but if it is evenly balanced (roughly equally strong on all four counts), then that would be significant. If it is strong in total strength but lacks exaltation strength, that would indicate a deficiency in this otherwise strong planet. Many such planets indicate a deficiency during early life or a genetic deficiency (not in a medical sense but in terms of childhood opportunities or the family background, really a combination of genes and environment if you want to get technical!). Caveat Emptor! If such a planet is strongly associated with other planets which are strong on all kinds then the childhood deprivation influence would perhaps be overcome, so tailor your interpretations after synthetically considering all planet influences. This analytical synthesis is a vital part of astrological deduction and must not be overlooked.
c) We must also not ignore an important source of strength. This involves the navamsha chart. A planet in the same sign in the natal and navamsha chart is considered as strong as if it was in its own sign. This underscores the importance of the navamsha chart. Such a planet is called vargottama. I have seen planets which are in their neecha or debilitation signs in the natal and navamsha charts and still managed to express strongly. Why this should be so is one of those things in vedic astrology which defy rational or logical explanation (unless you say that two negatives together make a positive!) but astrological is after all an empirical science and observations such as this do not lose importance just because they are not explainable, yet!
d) We must also include the dispositors, as always, in our strength determination. A weak planet fortified by a strong dispositor (sign and/or star lord hosting it) is stronger than a weak planet with a weak dispositor. It is hard to quantify these sources of strength in hard absolute numbers without a large scale retrospective study but one does develop a feel for the rough extent of strength imparted by these modifying factors. What is important, I think, is not in determining how much strength in quantifiable terms these influences impart but when we are looking at a chart we should make it a habit to include these factors in every analysis so that these do not get ignored and result in inaccurate interpretation. And after you have included all these into your interpretation would you be 100% accurate always? No, because there must be other minor factors (and who knows some major yet unknown ones) that would throw the monkey wrench in from time to time, but if my experience is any index, the results would be accurate enough to keep you going because it would reveal that there is something in astrology after all and it is not mumbo jumbo. Would you be able to convince the sceptics about the validity of astrology with such an approach? Perhaps not, because they would try to judge astrology through the narrow slit of scientific method which works fine for physical things and physical sciences which deals with things that can be measured, weighed, dissected etc. Astrology deals with all aspects of the human (and perhaps other) existence and deals with issues larger than the slit of scientific method. After all we could not detect an x-ray emitting star without developing an x-ray detecting system, could we? Doesn't mean those blimps did not exist way back then?
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