How the 12th House becomes the 1st House and other Decoding Zodiac Mysteries with Pratyush Bhattacharya

[00:00:00] The Mystery of How the 12th House Becomes the 1st

Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Vedic Astrology Podcast, and welcome back Pratyush Bhattacharya

Thank you so much for having me over here. 

I always really enjoy speaking with you. And last time we were together, we were midway in the middle of a conversation.

Yeah

I remember that. 

It's great to have you back because last time we met, we were talking about a few things. We were talking about the persona and the shadow. We were talking about the 6th House and the 12th House.

And in our conversation, we stumbled into talking about how the 1st House and the 12th House are related to each other,

Yeah

and it left me just wanting to know more. So that's why I'm back. And tell us a little bit more about that link between the 12th House and the 1st House

That's a fascinating place to pick up the conversation from last time, actually. So there's how I think about it, okay? Say somebody's born with an Ascendant of, I don't know, Taurus. For simplicity, let's say they're born with 15 degrees of Taurus. Now, imagine if the Ascendant is Taurus, then the 12th is Aries, right?

Yep

So two hours before their birth, what was the Ascendant? It was Aries. That's when their mother was in labor. So when they were being released from the womb, when the womb they come from was in the most final stages of activation of a new life form, the Ascendant was Aries. So by the time they've transitioned into Taurus, their body has become a part of Earth. The umbilical cord has been cut. new umbilical cord has been established, which is the breathing, the Kurma Nadi, have been established, which is gonna go on again for as long as they live. So essentially, the person has been transplanted the mother's womb to the Earth's womb, and this transplant is what is signified by the movement of the Ascendant from Aries to Taurus in this case. So when I say the 12th becomes the first, it's that your existence in the womb very smoothly transitions into your existence in the larger womb, which is Earth

Hopefully very smoothly transitions.

I do hope if you look back into nature, the way it used to happen, it was not that smooth. And I think that is part of the reason that's where the whole idea 12th house Dusthana comes from. And I like to think of it this way, birth is the first near-death experience everybody has

Absolutely.

Yeah,

Yep.

both mother and child.

Yep.

Yeah.

I think that's something that I didn't get until I became pregnant, and then you realize that it is a bit of a portal situation, and

Mm-hmm. 

Know what's gonna come through that portal. You don't know if it's gonna make it through that portal. You don't know how you're gonna be, in the experience of holding that.

And then you find out that so many of your girlfriends have had miscarriages or whatever. It's not until you're in that sacred space that stories start to come out. And then it becomes clear that there is this 12th house, first house threshold

Yeah. And you do have to, completely be willing to give up your body if you want to become a mother. That surrender is the root 12th house. You have to be willing to let, technically speaking, a parasite grow inside you. It is a parasite. It's feeding on your resources. It's feeding on your body. And when it comes out again, remember that the, the name of the eighth house is Ripha, right? Ripha means a, a rip. Generally a rip in the fabric. the process of giving birth is when the womb breaks, you are experiencing you are the eighth house now. you're transferring from the 12th to the eighth. And if all this thing goes well, you have a child in your arms, now you're in the fourth.

You're a mother now. It cycles, the-- Just the process of giving birth cycles through all the Mokshas.

Yeah, trying. Yeah.

so intense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So then let's talk a little bit about this the 12th becomes the 1st. What can this share with us about people's Ascendant? You started there with someone possibly born with a Taurus Ascendant means that Aries is their 12th, but was the Ascendant at the time of the final maybe hour before they were born.

What's the significance of that? Is there something a- that can tell us about Taurus and Aries-

yeah. Okay. The first step to realize is that the process of birth end when you are transplanted on Earth. That's just a physical birth. A lot of other things has to be born in the new entity that has been born it to become into an individual. instance, now next step, you have to learn how to breathe, then learn how to walk.

All these things are births. Birth is the beginning. And each birth we're gonna go through, and finally in a larger scale, the Graha maturations we're gonna grow through, all the dashas we're gonna grow through. The puberty, aging, death, everything we're gonna go through is all a new experience. Every experience is a birth, and each of this birth is connected to a previous 12th. It comes from somewhere. So we essentially live through in a succession of life and death. We just call it life because it's easier for us to think that way, but a succession of life and death. And in the end, the last stage is a death, then there is no life after that. We call that the body has ended. So the 12th and the first, they are-- they oscillate between each other across life.

[00:05:32] Why the 12th House Shapes the Ascendant

So this Aries and what-- in this case Aries and Taurus, the dynamic is going to play out across this person's life they are going to encounter a new phase of their life. That's the significance. The first new phase is having a new body. That's the most fundamental new phase you're entering, from non-physical to physical. within the physical, you keep transitioning from one phase to another. Each of this transition comes with its own 12th house. Now, what happens is, because if Aries becomes the 12th house, for you to transition into a new phase, need to experience that I have performed my Aries well. Unless you feel like your Aries performance has been adequate. Now, what do I mean by adequate? Depends on the chart. Everybody defines d- different to what adequate is, depending on where their Mars would be. That would be the definition of what Aries is supposed to look like. they would have a definition of what adequate looks like. Unless they feel it's been adequate, even if life pu- pushes them to the next phase, they will still stay stuck in the past. And that's where our 12 stories begin. I am living in the present, but my mind is stuck in the past. I haven't transitioned cleanly and think about if that happens when you are being born, you are just not being born So the stake is that high. If that happens down the line, once you have a physical body, once you are actually physically born, stake is still high, but it's not as high as actual birth, as physical birth. But whatever new phase is supposed to come in, into your life through natural process of time, that phase simply going to be sitting in a dormant state. It won't be complete we finish the last stage. So the, the significance is this: the 12th house at the beginning is very much connected to the health of the mother, right?

[00:07:24] Birth as the First 12th House Experience

So you can s-sense a person's overall journey through life, how well they can transition from one phase to another life throws situations at them, looking at how easily they were born. One who is born through a lot of difficulty, a lot of grief, a lot of strife, a lot of complications, won't have an easy life transitioning from one phase to another. The 12th is fundamentally and the first indication of that affliction is a difficult birth, a difficult labor and difficult birth. And I have observed this thing, not commonly though because I didn't have enough data to observe this, is that women who go through like longer labor than necessary, generally have a Saturn afflicting, afflicting the child's 12th, not their 12th. It's so fascinating, the, the delay is about that.

Absolutely. Yeah, this is yeah, you start thinking about... One of the things I've always enjoyed is a tradition in some African nations that they name the child about something about the birth that occurs, and you get children called Lucky, and you get children called Fast or Quick or Hurried or, Slow or Delayed, or you get something about, what was going on around at that time.

They're named after something that was happening. And I think that the, the... I've always thought that was really beautiful because for me in this body I don't have a memory of what that was like,

Yeah

Actually, my body probably does, my conscious memories are not there.

But if my name said something about it, then I, people would tell you stories. "Why are you called that?"

mean,

in, in a way it's just fascinating because think about it, isn't it obvious that you should be given enough data, as much data as possible about the beginning of your life? our culture do not have that opportunity that much. West is even less. I love this tradition you mentioned, like the, the child would carry throughout their life an impression of the 12th, like their mother would carry the impression of the birth. They should carry that because it's the same event created two entities. So you should be carrying that birth. Like when a child is born, the woman who was not a mother has become a mother. A new entity has been born. mother has born, the child is also born. So the mother and child are born at the same time, That's the same birth going on. So they should carry the same imprint, But in our culture, the mother carries the imprint across their life, in their body, in their mind. The child doesn't. It's, it's-- I think it's very imperative that we do that. That's part of, staying connected to your origin, right?

Was that, Was that a trend, Pratyush of naming, naming children? Now I have loads of questions 'cause I'm hearing this for the first time, the same as the audience as well. Do you think that we're talking about the 12th in that lead up couple of hours before the birth? Do you think that the 11th, the 10th, depending on how long the mother's in labor, do you think that this factors into it as well?

Or we take the 12th as symbolically the threshold between the placenta breathing and the air breathing?

That's a great question. Yeah, I would stick to 12th, both because symbolically at the same time, think about it, the 12th also signifies the horizon. It's a twilight, right? The, the eastern horizon is where the, the morning is shining upon. the 12th is that morning has already happened. The second is going to come up. So think about the, the transition of time here. The 12th right now shows what was horizon a few minutes ago. So it is something that is coming from past. It was, it has gone into the day now. It signifies something that was created before is about to bear consequence now. That's why I would say the pregnancy that happened before is the 12th. was fertilized before. Now it's going to bear fruit. And we think about it this way: by the time the person is born they are being-- the very first elemental care has been taken to them, the doctors are coming, helping them breathe and stuff, the 12th has transitioned into 11th. They are linked to that.

A community has come and supporting them. That's the first family. And think about as the 12 cycles through, the beginning, the womb is a real beginning. The first is not the beginning. And as seen,

[00:11:35] The Lost Astrology of Conception Charts - Niṣeka Chakra

you know about Nishak Chakra, right? Yeah. See, that was done with the 12th. It was the real beginning. So as the 12

Tell us actually about Nisha Chakra because I don't think we've covered it at all before on the Vedic Astrology Podcast

Right. So the word Nisheka means fertilization. It's a Sanskrit word. It really means the egg being fertilized. Okay? And it's a general term for any egg. Even in some cases, if you plant seeds in the ground, the first season is also called Nisheka. It's fertilization. Generally fertilization. A Nisheka Chakra is you figure out the moment of fertilization and cast a chart from there. Now, the real question to get, how the hell do I figure out the moment of fertilization? We don't have the technology at this point in time. The thing is we do have that, but not any way of detecting it randomly. For example, now we know there has been direct MRI evidences of that. When the eggs are fertilized in the, in a womb, release zinc ions, and these ions create a pulse.

It's a visible electromagnetic pulse can be seen. That is the real moment of fertilization. But of course, we can't detect it normally in, in our home. Turns out the old Sanskrit seers, they had ways of figuring out when fertilization is going to happen. I don't know which those ways are. That's why Nisheka Chakra technique is lost. don't know the moment when Nisheka Chakra is supposed to be calculated. What is being said, the Nisheka Chakra is supposed to be taken in consideration with D1. This is the real horoscope. essentially we're working with half the thing. That half is

Yeah. And and that's a bit like hu- human design, although also not quite like human design. They use a... they combine two charts as well, but it's not really a conception chart. It's

Maybe when the soul came into the body. Yeah, it's not my area but they have that idea of the difference between these two charts,

Can give you a lot of information.

Yeah,

Yeah.

pretty

Yeah

wish I could have, I could figure out the Nishek one because the transition from this nine to 10 months is pretty significant. If you

Yeah.

the transition, you would know how the pregnancy is progressing and how the child is formed, You could see how the pranamay kosha is already integrating with the physical body. could be incredibly informative if you could get that level of resolution

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then just following up on this question about whether we use any other houses other than the 12th. 

[00:13:59] Mars, Venus and the Astrological Forces Behind Birth

if one is lucky enough to have a natural birth, then the moment that the contractions begin seems to come from the baby. The, the mother doesn't really have anything that she can do, and sometimes when you're at that point, you you go all these long walks.

You try and, make something happen. But there's nothing really that you can do. But it makes me think about these short labors and long labors, that there, there is this impulse,

Yeah

That would be really interesting to see what, what was rising at that time. Which could be well back, but in...

If we talked about the birth moment as the first house when that breath is taken, and the mother's uterus being the 12th house, the actual impulse to begin contracting and for the uterus to begin helping the process of moving the baby that could be, like, six ascendants back or...

that. Yeah.

Yeah, okay

what this is, see, contractions are fundamentally electrical activities, That's controlled by Mars. starts as electrical activity. think deeper, it's not really Mars, see, the Grahas have tastes, Each Graha controls a certain taste. I read about that Venus rules the acidic taste, sour taste, It's acidic. acid's the things that releases protons in liquid, In water.

Yep

So correspondingly, Mars rules electrons That's his alkaline.

Nice

release negative ions in water, so they are the proton-electron pair. So think about it, in order to have electrical discharge in any place, not just in the body, need to have electrical potential difference, That means you have to have a cluster of positive charge, negative charge piling up. There's a Mars-Venus interaction that has to play out for the cramping to begin, for the contractions to begin. And think about it, this-- the Venus is the womb. It's the water of the womb. That's the primary signal. And Mars is the electrical, like the neural signals coming in, the electricity coming in, making this womb stir, and then the contractions begin. So the interaction of Mars and Venus, the two Grahas that just lies on each side of Earth, Yeah. They oscillate, and they create new ar- life form that's made out of Earth.

Yep

It's amazing connection, right?

Good.

All right, so now let's take this 12th House as a way to understand the 1st House. And for those of us listening, whether we have children or not, or we're giving birth or not, it's an insight into how we begin anything, and how we cross thresholds, how we let things go so that we can embrace a new experience.

[00:16:42] The Real Purpose of the 12th House

Let's talk about some of the, I don't know, personality combinations between these signs that are next to each other. So we talked about Taurus-Aries, but as we go all the way around, what are some of the... If we were to pick a few to speak about what can w- the combination tell us about how the person will let go of something and begin a new thing?

Okay. Okay, I see. Now we're actually going into the Ascendant templates because we're not talking about how

Pruth

is gonna play out for each Ascendant. That's a whole discussion going on, but it's great that we're starting that. So I like to think of it this way. The core motivation of the 12th, I think of each house as a motivation

Yes

is a combination of a Guna and a Purushartha. are both motivations. If you combine them, we get a complex motivation. The motivation of the 12th is to leave behind the past, what is no longer working for you, and move on toward the next phase of life. Essentially, on to the next chapter of life as time enables you to do that. That's why the Karaka is Saturn.

It's something you can't control. It happens automatically. It's shed the past, accept the future, make the future your present. Now, if you think about it, the very first incident of that category is your birth. You couldn't control it. You were in your mother's body. Everything was perfect, literally perfect, and then you're kicked out. It's a transition, right? How you accept the transition creates a map of how you're going to accept transitions down the line So see also in another way, think about this way: your mother's body is the first literal formative environment that you had. You're formed there. So from that point onwards, every formative en-environment you will go through will be signified by the 12th house. So you're born in a family, and suddenly you have these uncles, aunts, maternal aunt, everybody. You have a nation, you have a nationality, you have an ethnicity. You didn't choose any of that. Saturn. It's imposed upon you simply because you have a body. That's your formative environment, right?

Outside the womb, that's the next immediate formative environment is the culture, the people, the family you're growing up in. How that formative environment enables you go to the next stage of life will be again shown by the 12th house. So each time you transition from one formative environment to another, and how that environment supports you to move on to the next one, is always shown by the 12th house. The healthier the 12th lord, the more unafflicted the 12th house, the more you can take from the formative environment to nourish yourself and, essentially ready yourself move on to the next stage when the time comes. it's not, your time in the formative environment feels undernourished. If you are well-nourished, the formative environment feels like home, and you can surrender just like the womb. the deepest level of surrender happens in the 12th because it's the same level of surrender your body remembers that as the womb. There's nothing more safer than that. So we're technically looking for that level of safety, that level of surrender, that level of nourishment every formative environment we're experiencing. And if you can have even a semblance of that, then we feel moksha, which is contentment. That's the fancy of saying contentment, that contentment lets us move on to the next phase So a nice example with this. So let's say a parent is raising a child. They know the child is going to grow up and eventually going to leave. They're not gonna remain children forever. So as long as they remain children, even the parent is in a formative environment of where they can be a parent. That parental state is not going to stay forever. One day it's gonna go away. If they do their parenting job right, when the child finally transitions into an adult and the parent's role is retired, parent feels nothing but contentment. They have a good 12th house. They have made peace that, "Okay, my role is retired now. It's time for me to transition." If it's not, "Oh, I didn't do enough. I wish my child was here with me for a little bit longer." And that's when the struggle happens. That's when 12th house Moksha becomes a prison. That's what the idea of in 12th is all about, on getting stuck in a place. Yet actually we're getting stuck in only one place, which is your mind. other place is perfectly fine. the only place you're getting stuck in the 12th, right? you're not letting go of an identity that you have built. Why the identity? That's the real connection comes in. Because what is the 12th becomes the first, right? The 12th creates the identity. If you don't let go of the 12th, you can't go into the first. If you hold onto the past identity, there's no transition for you. So I would say i-in some way, the three Moksha houses together are the deepest spiritual stuff I can find in all astrology. That-that's it. The-- I can see, sparks of every religion and every guru teachings that I've read in these three houses somehow playing out, interplaying out. 

[00:21:57] Aries in the 12th - the Hidden Voice of Taurus Rising

Tell us a little bit about bringing it back to the signs themselves. I think as astrologers we feel very comfortable with perhaps Pisces being the 12th, Aries being the first, that for Aries it's important that there was a Pisces before it, that there was a completion of a cycle and a dissolution of everything.

But what's it like when the 12th House is a different sign? Like for example, just sticking with the Taurus one, so your 12th House is Aries, and Aries is the first, and it wants to start, and it wants to take action, and it's a fire sign. How is this quality unique for people that have Taurus Ascendant and have Aries as their 12th?

Great question. I think in order to understand how 12th Aries works, we cannot understand in isolation. We have to take it in conjunction with sixth Libra, because the persona defines the shadow. We're not born with the persona, we're born with the shadow and persona both, then the split happens. So the idea is that we first want to know is what is the persona of the Taurus ascendant people? They have a sixth Libra. Libra, the word, is very much connected to liberal. They're all about accepting, they're about figuring out what the trend is, and then staying right in the middle of the trend. The symbol Libra is balance, right? But it's not about balance, it's about transaction. It's a scale that constantly evaluates, okay, which options is more valuable for me, and then straightening yourself that way. It's a constant process of seeking value by interacting with people. a relentless cycle of forming transactional relations one after another. Now, what it means is that if that skill is your persona, then your persona revolves around getting along with people. You are the one who constantly talks to many people, find out who's valuable for which particular situation, and then interact with them accordingly. You are the one who can be partnered up with everybody. In a simpler way, if your sixth is Libra, you believe your value to other people, which is sixth, Rajas Artha. value as a partner comes from being the person who is the best possible partner. And the best possible partner needs to be somebody who always agrees, who's always going along, who's not saying, "I'm not gonna do it." So you're an agreeable person. agreeability as the persona defines the Taurus ascendant But in order to be the perfect agreeable person, you have to give up the tendency to disagree. The tendency to say, "I don't like it. I'm gonna do it my way. It doesn't matter whether people approve or not, I'm gonna do it my way." That's the 12th Aries. If you see it in context, it just immediately falls in pa- place, right? Now we can derive very simply what the 12th Aries is. Taurus ascendant people, if 12th is not very healthy, they have a tendency to repress their need to assert their own opinion, their individual opinion. The moment they try to do that, they feel like, "Okay, if I do this, if I'm going to lose this thing.

I'm going to lose my value to my transactional partners," which in an adult life means practically everybody. So either I to assert myself and use my Aries, and behave according to what my will tells me to, or I behave like an adult. So the idea that forms in mind's mind is that sixth is what associated with adulthood. Therefore, the 12th becomes the child, The shadow is nothing but the child mind that you haven't paid attention to. So the child of the Taurus ascendant is a rebellious person, is a rebellious kid who wants to explore and assert and dare into places where nobody goes. But that adult self is the person which says no. what everybody else does. Stay where everybody else is. Always stay in the market. Always stay where you are valued. Always stay where everybody likes you because of how you are behaving in the moment." So if you keep behaving that way, sixth Libra, The shadow has a way of leaking out it always follows behind you In the places where supposed to be vulnerable, you'd end up being dominating. The shadow comes out in places where you know there is nobody whom you can benefit from. Because six is ultimately a survival skill. You form the persona because in order to survive in society, you have to constantly prove something of worth.

You have to constantly contribute. That's how you can get something in return. what happens if you're with people where you know for certain they cannot give you anything in return? For example, your child. For example, maybe some random wild animal. They can't give anything in return. That's when your shadow comes out. 

 I hope that clarifies how the Rasis can come in

Of course I wanna ask more about it. Let's just stay a little bit with the Taurus example. That w- one of the things that we could take from this model that you're sharing is that for a Taurus Ascendant to feel that it's time to move on and it's time to let go and this thing is finished, it's important that they have expressed their true opinion, even if it was unpopular or unsupported.

Or even if it's wrong . That's right.

they have 

but

to make that mistake

yeah, so in some ways that's the benefit of knowing that Aries is your 12th House, is that to help you with 12th House transitions, don't be afraid to stand on your own and be outspoken or be rebellious or whatever it is, even if that is contra to n- most of your day-to-day personality.

So being as I'm new to this model too, just like everybody listening

[00:28:05] Taurus in the 12th - the Blind Spot of Gemini Rising

let's move along to Gemini Ascendant would then have Taurus as its 12th House. So how is this different for a Gemini Ascendant who's wanting to understand their best way to deal with the threshold, the transition? What can they learn from having Taurus as their 12th-

this, this particular Ascendant, it's fascinating. I still love all the Ascendants. So yeah. L- think of it this way, is a milking cow, 

Taurus is a milking cow.

Yeah, Taurus is not a bull

Oh yeah. Yes.

feminine Rashi. It's a,

Yes

a Kamdhenu. In Sanskrit it's a divine cow that never stops giving of milk.

So now think, so the, the skill of Taurus is offering milk to others.

Yeah

You nourish and think. If you wanna break down the word nourishment to its functional level, it means helping others improve their worth. That's Taurus, right? It's the feminine form of V-Venus. We help each other, help others improve their worth. So if I'm practicing Taurus in the moment, I'm this person, I'm sitting here with all my resources. saying, "You know what? You need to improve your worth. Come and take what you need." That's Taurus. I'm not giving you anything. I'm simply holding everything open. You come and take, is the ultimate giver. Now let's go to Scorpio. The symbol is a scorpion with a sting. One has an udder that you can extract milk from, another has a sting you can extract poison from, and it won't give you poison easily. There is nothing about Scorpio that says, "I want to give something than trouble." Because it's the Rashi of setting boundaries. Scorpio says, am vulnerable, I know how vulnerable I am. Therefore, I also have discovered how to protect myself." Why do I say the word discover? It's a Brahman Rashi, weaponizes wisdom for protection. So if you put Taurus and Scorpio as an axis, as a, the twins of the opposition, Taurus is the ultimate giver, Scorpio is the ultimate protector. One shares, another holds. So now if you want to understand that, you can run the six and 12 very easily. For Gemini, they're sixth is Scorpio. They have figured out that my value in the world comes from being the protector. Geminians and people can be very loyal friends, loyal partners. They're all about protecting. They wanna prove to the world, they're the partner. See, I will protect your vulnerability. If you have vulnerability, just share with me. I will do my best. I'm gonna fight with my life and limb to protect it. I will sting others to protect your vulnerability. Because in my mind, if I do that, then you'll value me. That's their value-seeking algorithm. But think about it. In order to do that, they're constantly fighting for somebody else, You're not focusing on the 12th, is simply about enjoying the resource that you have. All your resource without even knowing, it's like it's a blind spot, You don't even know is going to fighting for others. You're not using for yourself because the Rasi exists in your chart for first and foremost to nourish yourself. You don't do that. Gemini Ascendant people can actually in the problem of, "I'm so busy, so engaged and involved in protecting somebody that I've completely forgotten that I've run out of resource." They may become bankrupt trying to protect their friend, for their friend, protect them out of legal-- maybe the friend is doing all kinds of illegal things, and they're trying to bail them out, spending all their money because they're trying to prove, "I'm a good friend.

I don't leave my friend behind. I protect and fight with them." by the end of the thing, their friend is gone, and they're in jail, and they're bankrupt. That's the extreme polarization you can see. They have to figure out that, first, my resource is for me first. If I am not nourished, I can't nourish anybody.

I can't fight for anybody. That balance has to be created inside them. And again, it all boils down to how they're raised. That's the whole truth. Their formative environment did not model Taurus for them. That's the real deal there. If formative does not model the 12th for everybody, your formative environment did not model the 12th Rasi for you, which means you did not see the elders around you practice that Rasi effectively. Nobody teaches you any Rasi by explicitly, They don't sit down and have lessons with you. But you see them perform that in daily life. The Rasi you see least being performed is the 12th, is your 12th. So Gemini Ascendant person is raised in an environment where nobody actually uses resource a proper worthy way. They either squander it or hog it. The proper usage of re-resource comes in, you use it in a way, so that it brings in more value. That is not modeled. But what is being significantly modeled is Scorpio. to fight, how to protect, how to hold a back. And as you go through that arc, you develop this thing that, okay, in my family, in my lineage, if I become better at sixth, it's almost like I'm becoming good at my family craft. I have value now. That mapping, that programming stays-

So for Gemini Ascendant, if they're wanting to help their experience of crossing the threshold,

Something about realizing how much nourishment they actually have, or that it's okay for them to use their nourishment to look after themselves right now

Yes. And see what happens is, in the process, because if you don't practice the 12th Rashi, life will make you transition, So maybe you're friends with someone. I keep saying friends, but it could be anything. You're friends with somebody. Eventually, maybe your friend simply moves on to a different nation or something happen, the friendship ends. it hits you, "Oh, I just spent all my resources for this person. I didn't get anything back in return." That resentment is a real trouble of the 12th house. An unprocessed 12th is the seed of all resentment you have. That's because you're supposed to use it for yourself first. You didn't do it, that's where the Dussthana hits

Fascinating, Pratyush. We could go through all of them, but we would definitely wear out our pleasure in people's ears if we talk all day long.

[00:34:29] Why Your Ascendant and 12th House Feel So Different

Let's zoom out a little bit because you and I are gonna start talking about Rasis together in our book club coming up. Let's zoom out just a little bit, if we can, to the patterns of first houses and 12th houses.

For example, the difference ... We've just looked at a earth Ascendant with a fire 12th house. That was Taurus and Aries. Then we looked at Gemini, an air Ascendant with an earth 12th house. Let's just quickly talk about that water Ascendants would have air 12th house, and fire Ascendants would have water.

Any- anything that you just want to say about this,

Yes. That's--

level of the first and the 12th?

important, distinction there. See, if you look at the Rasi aspects, how they're created, no Rasis can aspect the Rasis beside them, It's like this fundamental inability for the Rasi to see what's beside them, So when the Rasi becomes your Ascendant, you gain that inability. You can't see what's beside you. And the 12th is the one that's the biggest blind spot. It makes sense because as an Earth Rasi, let's say, the most difficult thing you c- you can't even conceptualize what fire looks like. It's just, it's not in your build. That's why you have to integrate it. of get it from outside, import it, and then attach it, install it within yourself. And that difficulty translates to every Ascendant. The 12th is a Rasi that you simply do not get naturally. And by the way, that applies to all Moksha. If your Ascendant is fire, then all Moksha is water. You

It's in

naturally. That's why if you got Moksha, then you would already be liberated, and you wouldn't be born anyway. you have the Ascendant because you don't get that. I think, the, the biggest marker in the chart of wellbeing in life, how content you are with your life, is not the yogas and everything. Those are m-markers of success. But wellbeing comes from simply having functioning Moksha. You may be a beggar in the street, but you would be in perfect bliss if the Mokshas are working. And that's why I think we come to Earth to figure out our Moksha houses. How to be content with this limited, broken, difficult place. So in that sense, every Ascendant starts with its biggest challenge. I come from the 12th, but I don't get it. It's like you're trying to catch up with a shadow all the time. What we-- Where it c-came from, where we came from. challenge remains across the life. So I would say the problem of the mismatched element of the Ascendant and the 12th lord, I don't see it that way. I think of it in a slightly deeper way, is that it's a mismatch between the element of your Dharma and the element of your Moksha. It's a more general problem, is that who you are by default and how you can find contentment in this world are always at odds. Figuring out a conjunction between them, figuring out a way intersection between them is your way to a next life. That's how I think about it.

That's so interesting because intuitively there's a part of me that thinks that the exit from the uterus, that is where you came from, that's what you've done. That's your Pisces, from a previous lifetime. But you're saying that it's a blind spot. It's...

And I think last time we talked about this I was saying that I always visualize the 12th House as, the one that as we were born, it's behind our back. And as the day gets longer on that first day, it's always behind our back. We just can't, we can see the second house coming up in front of us.

We can see the third house coming up. The fourth house comes up, but that 12th house is always setting behind us.

And

Yeah

here, like you think of the human body, this is coming from Vastu, is that we know that the head is the Ascendant, it didn't talk about which way the head is looking. The head is looking towards the second house

Yeah.

that's where-- because these are the nourishment count.

That's where the family and the support is, right? So our head is always backing. The 12th is always in the back.

It's a direct blind spot that you always have. And yeah, it's just so fascinating, and it's-- we're all studying blind spots here, like I see a lot of, very negative and mystical reputation about the eighth house. Oh, it's the blind spot, the transformative place, the, the refi- All this is very true, it shouldn't be taken in isolation. The three mokshas together the entire blind zone. It is only one pillar of that. It-- We cannot really understand them in separation, actually. That's so profoundly can...

This trine is the, I think, the most important trine for having contentment

And if we think about where they were at the time of birth, one is as we just said, it's just above the horizon. It's the one... Yep. And then it's the one just before setting the horizon, so we've got these liminal spaces, and then the fourth is underneath the earth. It's interesting the light that is in these

spots, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah

fundament that's not symmetric, not in sync with our-- with the way we understand symmetry, which is created by the Ascendant, the one, five, nine trine.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

[00:39:38] The Tension Between Stability and Change

Let's try that then with we talked about elements which really naturally m- matches with the Purusharthas, the, the Dharma and the Moksha. But what about if we go back to our Aries and Taurus example? So someone with a Taurus Ascendant is a fixed sign and their 12th House is a cardinal or moveable.

People use different words for that.

And whereas for our Gemini Ascendant with Taurus as the 12th House, they're in a mutable sign and their 12th House is fixed. So those modalities, do you think that they also play a role in our relationship with-

See, the all 16 archetypes of a Rasi, they all play a role. The more you know them, the more you can delineate through Rashis, generally speaking. The modalities are, of course, extremely important. See, I-- fixed Rashis, in my opinion, what they really do, are about consolidation. They represent three different skill set, three Rashis, are used to consolidate something that is not stable yet. They're stabilizers. They fix things in place. They're not fixed per se. They are the ability of fixing stuff that's unstable. That's like wobbly. But the dynamic Rasis, they're designed to make fixed things wobbly. They're the opposite things. So when Aries says I don't like the way things are done," or maybe, "Let's go to that mountain." of people like Edmund Hillary, Tenzing Norgay. Why would they go to the mountaintop? Grahas, they said because it's there." That's a perfect Aries spirit. There is no reason to upset an equilibrium on the ground. It serves no purpose. But because it's non-equilibrium, therefore I'll go there. That desire to bring in instability, bring in chaos, is fundamentally linked to the movable houses. So if you have the Ascendant in a fixed Rasi, that means your fundamental nature one that of a consolidator. You fix things, stabilize things. this is a default nature. Doesn't mean that you have to go through it all your life, because the world has all modalities in equilibrium. You're challenged to figure out how can I be okay with the fact that no matter how I fix things, it will change eventually because somebody with a movable Rasi will come in and destroy my sandcastle. That's their Moksha. learning that no matter how well I fix things, eventually it will be decimated. And the flip is true for the other side, it's that no matter how much change I seek, eventually people will come in and make it a rigid structure.

[00:42:08] Join Pratyush in my Patreon Book Club - Decoding Zodiac

Well, I'm glad that we've talked about just a few of the 16 because that's something that I wanna invite people to explore with Pratyush and I in our Patreon group, which I will attach information about here. But basically, to talk a little bit about that, Pratyush I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to invite people to follow along as they're reading your books once a month to have the chance to join our book club and ask questions about the chapters that we're covering

I'm looking forward to it, this is the way it's supposed to be. I just-- I would love to have people speaking. I'll, I'm looking forward to learning a s- lot from them

Maybe Pratyush tell us a little bit about how your thinking about Rasis has continued to grow over the time since the book's been published. Obviously there was a lot of thinking about Rasis leading up to the first book. How do they fill your world these days?

I, I think my understanding has become simplified. Whether I think the

simplified

yeah, I, I-- my understanding of the Rasi, that these are the s- 12 Rashis are 12 evolutionary skill sets that the people who could not master at least one of the Rasi skills, in my opinion, they are the one who perished. We are descendants of those who could master at least one Rasi. That's these 12 skill sets. They're-- they have an anthropological quality, in my opinion. if you see 12 skill sets universally expressed through every single human being irrespective of culture and creed, it has to be something that was developed as a feature of humanity. And the only place it could have developed is through natural evolution, through natural selection. So I started thinking in that sense, but now I think in a much simpler way. Yes, it could, that could be true, but that truth is something that's, that blows my mind. It's very, it's very awesome, it doesn't help us understand the Rashis from day to day, in day-to-day life.

So what I focus on now, and maybe for a long time now, is that I like to call them micro-manifestations. I like to think about, okay, how many times did I use Aries, for example, in the last one hour? Maybe last 15 minutes. the narrower the window I can get, the smaller manifestation Aries I can pick up. what's the most rudimentary, simplest elemental manifestation of Aries that can happen? For instance, if you I don't know, say in the last hour, maybe you tore open a small box of something. Aries is the skill to break into things, It breaks boundaries. That was Aries. You practice Aries by simply cutting out a packet that came from Amazon. I'm focused much more on this kind of stuff now that if I could map out one hour of behavior of a person, maybe I'm watching a random person going through their life for one hour, and maybe this, this 60 minutes, I can break it into segments of five minutes, and I can pack them into... here's how in a histogram they applied each Rashi, every single one. maybe they sat down and sighed for a moment. That would be their Pisces. They'd relax for a moment. Maybe they, simply brushed off the seat before sitting because they feel maybe there's, there could be something sharp or something dirty there. They're using Scorpio. They're protecting themselves, Maybe they sat there and then changed posture because their back was hurting. that moment, they are doing Virgo because they did a small debugging. I'm hurt. Where is it hurting? What should I do to fix it? is tiny, these very almost like instinctive expressions.

That's what I'm very interested in now because what people expresses without conscious effort day-to-day basis is 90% of life. So if I can understand at that granular level, then I can say, "Okay, this person just performed 20% Aries plus 80% Scorpio plus 30% of something." That's what I'm looking for at this moment.

I love that. The huge smile on my face as you're speaking. And that's what I'm very excited to share with people is the opportunity to come once a month and bring those observations about our own life, talk about these 16 modalities of the signs, and all of us get a much richer and living experience of the signs.

And one of the reasons I'm really smiling there is because one way that the, the signs are taught is that they are the unconscious body of Vishnu, or they are the, the lord of time. This kind of... Which, which text am I thinking of that, 

hora Shastra

Exactly, it's in Brihadaranyaka. Because why I'm smiling so much is that when we give our awareness to what you're calling the micro moments, our micro skill,

Micro manifestations, yeah

yeah, manifestations or experiences of these signs it's almost like we're just giving our attention to Vishnu, aren't we?

We're giving our attention to the lord, to the time, the lord of time, or the, the lord that is sustaining this great play that we're in

I think of it as it's like Vishnu enacting through us, and that's the way, like 12 Grahas. The Grahas are created for that Vishnu could Janardana, could give us the effects of our karma. That's how the Grahas chapter opens. And then the, they're unconscious limbs of the body. And yeah, the truth is, if you look at our own body, we don't even know 99% of what goes on in there.

It's a complete mystery. We have no clue. So yeah, body is fundamentally unconscious. We don't know what goes on there. It's unknowable. So that's why the way the body moves especially the subtle body language shifts of people. How they tilt their head, how they smile, how their muscle tenses. I think not-- I have seen obviously that depending on which Rashis are in focus, if you just study the Rashis well, you can get a good body language profile of a person. You get a good profile on them. that level is something I'm deeply interested in because it can help a lot of stuff about how people are storing trauma in their body, how they're being suppressed.

For example, you remember the fascia, right? It's a whole

Yeah.

fibers, yeah. So

No, but tell us about fascia because fascia is amazing. I say yes 'cause I was a massage therapist, but let's talk about fascia.

then you know much more than me. I would love learn from you then. So what I understand, you correct me if I'm wrong, is that the fascia is something that's, that essentially connects everything inside the body, the muscles and tendons and everything. It's once they can... It's a web of almost invisible, not invisible, connective tissue sheath. The thing is that it can contract and stay contracted if

Because of exactly what you talked about of the Venus and Mars that you talked about earlier. That fascia

Yeah

is, it's To use the word plas- plasma would be incorrect, right? It's not plasma, but it's somewhere in between a liquid form and a solid form. And w- and when the body passes it, it d- it deteriorates very quickly and you can't really see it on a, when you do a postmortem or whatever.

It's already reabsorbed. But for massage therapists, we think of fascia as, everything that we're working on.

It is fascinating. Massage is about Venus, right?

Yeah, and that it's communicating. It's the electricity goes through the fascia. That's where

And it can stay contracted permanently. And that controls people's posture to a significant degree. When you think of like the body parts of the Rasis, like where the Aries is the head and everything, I like to think about the fascia in that part. If you have an afflicted Aries, the fascia is tightened. And I've seen with afflicted Aries people they tend to develop migraine much sooner than other people. may have something stuck there somewhere. That's why you can, you could be, you would know much better than me. But I'm obsessed and that their-- the way they hold their head is different, they may have a tilt all the time.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

of us have the tilt, and

Extremely significant because when you pay attention to something, we do that tilt, trying to make sure the body is in the most minimal maintenance stage at that point because we are focusing everything there.

So if that, this is the minimal maintenance stage, then clearly something is contracted here. That's a signal I can pick up then, okay, what's this part? It's my Gemini. What's afflicted in my Gemini? I can work with that.

Yeah

level of, like a, behavior mapped to astrology, mapped to

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good. All right. I wanna invite everybody who is also thrilled by this conversation and wants to dive deeper into how to really experience the Rasis, how to know them in such a profound way. It's going to change the way that you read charts, make it a very alive experience, come alive for you.

I hope that you'll join Pratyush and myself in our book club, and I will put the details below

Looking forward to them

Great. Great to have you back here, Pratyush, and great to talk about the signs and to dive deeper today into that liminal space between the 1st and the 12th.

It's probably a conversation that we can have over

end.

again.

We've still got more things to say to each other.

Yeah, we haven't even brought in the nodes yet. A whole dimension is left

Good. All right. It means that we've got more to look forward to. So thanks so much, Pratyush, for being here today

You too. just excited to be here

Great. And thanks everyone for joining us, and I look forward to seeing you again the next time we get together for The Vedic Astrology Podcast. Bye everyone