The Vedic Astrology Podcast - Episode 8 

What would Vedic Astrology say to your 20 year old self?
Can your Astrologer be your Career Counsellor??

Show notes

0:00:00 Welcome to today’s episode

As a life coach, this is the time of year when I am invited to speak to new students and classes at Universities and Colleges around the world about getting the most of the opportunity they have in front of them.

Maybe about time management, project management, stress management, study/life balance, personal planning, Ayurveda and daily routines, yoga for stress, pranayama for studying etc.

Of course I also get asked to speak about MBTI.

And sometimes, I even get invited to speak about Vedic Astrology!  

00:01:19 So what would Vedic Astrology say to your 20 year old self?

Where ever you are in our life now, is there something that you would have liked to have known then? That you had to learn the hard way?

And is there any other way to learn??

Pause the podcast now, and really reflect on this question – write your answer down, and use it as we go through the podcast today, as a touchstone, a gauge, for how useful Astrology could have been – I’d love to hear your thoughts!

College Career Counselling and Vedic Astrology

I imagine, for the average person on the street, the idea of a Vedic Astrologer providing career advice to college students is frightening!

We live in a society where Astrology has been so defamed, denigrated, criticised – that it seems an outrageous and dangerous to expose influential / impressionable minds to such pseudo-science!

What is really interesting to me, is that I am also qualified in the MBTI. The Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator. Which is widely used to give career advice, recruit staff and establish effective teams.

So what’s the difference between Vedic Astrology and MBTI and why is one seen as creditable and the other not?

00:02:20 About the MBTI

MBTI was developed by a brilliant mother and daughter team.  Katherine, the mother, entered college at 14 years of age!

Once she became a mother, she became fascinated with psychology and began observing differences in people’s personalities.

By chance, she stumbled on a copy of Carl Jung’s ‘Psychological Types’ – and clicked immediately with some of the observations that Jung was making based on his clinical work and research.

This became the focus of her calling – finding questions that helped sort people into one ‘type’ or another.

Her daughter joined her in this work and over decades they generated and refined hundreds of questions that eventually became the MBTI instrument that is used in 88% of Fortune 500 companies today.

MBTI Strengths

The MBTI is used in workplaces all over the world and it has several strength to offer in this area.

One, it has always been focussed on work – not psychosis or understanding your entire psychology – just work.

This is because the genesis of the tool formed during the 2nd world war when thousands of women were entering the work force and the idea of an efficient tool that would place new recruits in the right work from day one appealed to employer and the government alike.

The other factor that makes it so useful in the workplace is that all types are good – there are no bad types, no unproductive employees, just people in the wrong jobs.

It doesn’t say anything about gender, race, religion, health etc – so it’s non-discriminatory.

And, it’s simple – really just 4 questions – and it allows people in the workplace to communicate about differences in a non-judgemental way.

MBTI Weaknesses

And while it has a lot of strengths – so much so that people are literally recruited and sorted into teams based on their type – it has a lot of problems too.

One, it’s a self-select tool – you pick the answers you want – so it’s not very objective – the very opposite, it’s by design, subjective.

Leading to one of it’s major criticisms – it changes over time – the result you get at 18 is far different from the result you get at 42 or 65.

And then, maybe a more major objection – it wasn’t developed by psychologists – and it’s not psychologically valid.

Katharine and Isabel were amateurs – brilliant amateurs, but never the less, their model is not based on modern, academic theories of personality.

And, of course, just like Astrology, it’s pseudo-science – that is, it can’t be disproved. (And we talk all about that in Episode 2 of this podcast). 

MBTI and Pseudoscience

So, given all of that, why is MBTI so popular in the corporate world?

Why are people willing to accept the ‘pseudo-science-ness’ of MBTI and not of Astrology?

One of the criticisms or rabbit-holes that Astrology gets pulled into all the time is what is it based on?  How can Jupiter or Mercury retrograde possibly have any effect on my personality or my career etc.?

And I kind of really admire how MBTI just dodges this question entirely :D

It doesn’t even aim to provide any explanation about why a person is an ESTJ or an INFP or whatever – so I love that!

MBTI vs Vedic Astrology

And, while MBTI might be good at pointing you in the right career direction, your learning style and how you solve problems (and I think it is!, because it’s very affirming and it helps you value things in yourself that you might otherwise not realise are sought after skills in a particular industry).

It can say nothing about timing, how you might feel about that industry, where career will fit into the rest of your life, how your work will change over time.

And this is where Vedic Astrology has so much to offer …

So if we are comfortable with young people being able to survive the pseudo-science of MBTI, let’s see what Vedic Astrology can share …

00:08:53 What do 20 year olds want to know about their lives?

Meanwhile, back to our podcast for today …

I polled a couple of classes of new University students and found they selected the following areas of interest …

·         Life path

·         Career

·         Where they will find happiness

·         What they will worry about

·         What will cause losses

00:10:00 Overview and approach of this episode

Today, in this episode, we are going to look at:

·         What Vedic Astrology can say about these topics

·         The context of using Vedic Astrology for career advice (which we just covered with MBTI)

·         Using 2 case studies of young people and

·         1 case study of a very old person LOL!

Approach for the Case Studies

Look back to your reflections that you wrote down at the start of the podcast about what Vedic Astrology could share with your 20 year old self.

Would you also have been interested in Lifepath, career, happiness, worries and losses?

How can Astrology help in these areas …

Today I’m going to look mostly at techniques using combinations of planets and houses – obviously, there are many, many other ways – but these tried and true techniques that I’m going to share today, provide insights that are helpful for our podcast today. 

Please feel free to apply the techniques that you know and work well for you.

But, if you are joining me today and you want to know what your 20 year old self could have got from a Vedic Astrology session, sit up now and take notes …

00:11:25 How do you look at 'Life path' in Vedic Astrology?

Vedic Astrology is so helpful, in that it puts ‘life path’ front and centre of each birth chart reading, reminding us that everyone has a different life path.

School, Uni, Marriage, Mortgage, Children, Retirement might not be the path for everyone.

And yet, this is how it can seem at 20 years of age.

Who here in the audience knew what they wanted to do at 16, 18 or 20?  For some, it was crystal clear – for others, they might still be figuring that out!!

00:13:28 The Maturity of the planets

And, why is that?

Could it be the ‘Maturity of the Planets’?

In Vedic Astrology, it is accepted that …

·         Jupiter 16

·         Sun 22

·         Moon 24

·         Venus 25

·         Mars  28

·         Mercury 32

·         Saturn 36

·         Rahu 42

·         Ketu 48

Even, just knowing that can be helpful right? Knowing that it takes time for each of these powerful parts of my energetic make up to working at their highest potential. 

Incidentally, MBTI has the Grant Model which explains how preferences develop over time – but maybe that is the topic of a different podcast episode LOL!

So, not only has Vedic Astrology already helped our 20 year old self by letting us know that we might not be on a ‘standard’ life path (because there isn’t one!) but also that, at 20, we are still a lifetime away from some of our planets being at full maturity.

00:16:51 The Purusarthas - the 4 Paths

Getting back to life path …

When considering a person’s life path, the first house and the first house lord are very important.  What is your first house? And which planet rules that house?

Let’s break this down a bit more …

Is your first house in an Artha, Kama, Dharma or Moksha sign?

These paths are the 4 paths or Purusarthas of Vedic / Yoga philosophy.

Where your first house is, is going to shed a lot of light on your life path?

And what about the planet that owns the sign? Which of these paths has it gone to?  The same, or different?

We could look at a million more things, but to keep it simple, and profound, let’s stick with that and flesh it out in our case studies …

00:22:00 How do you look at 'Career' in Vedic Astrology?

Next, the students expressed interest in knowing about their careers.

And following on from the first house, we can use the same approach with the 10th house – that house of karma, of activity, of the things we do outside the home.

Which path is the sign of the 10th house?

Where did the planet that owns that sign go?

Does this match with the 1st house?

What can we learn about timing? When does this planet mature?

00:23:10 How do you look at 'Happiness' in Vedic Astrology?

Beautifully, the next things the students showed interest in was happiness.

And I love how Vedic Astrology makes it so clear that happiness is a completely separate thing to wealth, to love, to work, to fame – it is its own thing – and you can see it in chart – how my 20 year old self would have loved to have known where to look for that??!!

What is the sign of the 4th house?

Where does the planet that owns that sign go?

When does it mature?

Who is it with?

00:24:01 Vargas and Happiness

00:25:17 How do you look at 'Worries' in Vedic Astrology?

Next, these wise students asked about worries – what will pre-occupy them?

For this, the 3rd house can be invaluable.  It is all about what occupies the mind, our hobbies, interest and distractions.

What planet rules the 3rd house in your chart?

What other house does it rule?

i.e. for Aries and Libra – 3 & 6, Taurus and Gemini – 3, Cancer and Capricorn – 3 & 12, Leo and Aquarius - 3 & 10, Virgo and Pisces – 3 & 8, Scorpio – 3 & 4, Sag – 2 & 3

What is the state of that planet?

00:28:41 How do you look at 'Losses' in Vedic Astrology?

The final area of interest was in losses

Here, the 12th house can be very insightful

What is it with?

And, how is Saturn?

Let’s take that now into our case studies …

00:29:03 Summary 

00:29:49 Context of the Case Studies

Before we begin, let’s keep in mind:

·         I am not the personal astrologer of any of these people

·         The birth times, could be entirely wrong

So, as we head into these case studies we want to remember that we don’t actually know these people personally AND we don’t know their birth times – so therefore, we are not talking about the real person, we are talking about the shared public image and knowledge that they put out into the world.

It is imperfect, like so many things

But, this shared imagination that we have of this person, these people, helps us take the concepts of techniques of Vedic Astrology, and make them meaningful, make them rememberable by taking them from the abstract, to the concrete (to borrow a term from MBTI LOL!)

We have been lucky enough in AstroliJam, to look at the charts of some very young people.

And for those who don’t know what AstroliJam is, it’s a monthly get together that I host of Astrologers and Astrology enthusiasts of all persuasions, where we pre-research an agreed chart and bring our insights to the group, so we can jam together.

Anyway, we’ve looked at dead people, our current person is extremely old and we’ve looked at a couple of very young celebrities.

So I’m going to call on their charts for material today.

00:32:12 Case Study 1

The first person I’m going to call on is Billie Eilish – I think she might have been the subject of AstroliJam 2 – way back before the summer.

She’s 19 years old – so she’s perfect age for our Podcast topic today!

The birth data we have for her is Dec 18 2001 at 11:30AM in LA California USA.

You can see her chart on the webpage associated with this podcast.

Life path

The first house of this chart is in the sign of Pisces.

Pisces is a Water sign and a Moksha sign – this person is going to have something ethereal and flowing about their life path.

Jupiter owns Pisces and it is in the 5th house of Cancer (another water sign).

It is Exalted.

It’s only receiving Rasi Aspect from a waxing Moon (the owner of the sign).

And, as we know, Jupiter matures at 16

This is someone who is going to experience and exalted lifepath early in life.

Career

And if we follow that through to the 10th house – we see the same indicators.

Jupiter, EX, strongest in SB, very assisted in drik bala, rasi aspected by the Moon.

In fact, we have a raj yoga – angular lord 10th in an trinal house, 5th.

So this is exactly the kind of person that we wouldn’t see for career advice LOL!

She’s inspired, her lifepath and career are aligned, exalted, mature.

Moon rules music.

Happiness

4th house is Gemini – kama sign.

4th lord is in a kama house – 11th – getting better over time in a hard work sign.

Saturn and Rahu are in the 4th house – making for a lots of fear and risk taking in the same house!

In terms of vargas – the D10 is doing very well, all the vargas have better dignities than the D1 – this person is going to feel successful.

Worries

3rd house is in sign of Taurus.

Venus owns Taurus.

Venus also rules 8th house of sudden changes, death, occult and transformation.

Venus is in the 10th house, being shamed by the Sun – feeling like her own tastes must be sacrificed, may worry about the good things that she has in her life.

Losses

12th house is Aquarius – kama sign.

Ruled by Saturn in the 4th – losses might be emotional, of the heart.

Saturn is low in Ayana bala – this makes a person really feel the hurt of conflict or adversity – so any losses, maybe feel quite deeply, she may really wish to avoid loss.

00:43:20 Case Study 1 – Summary

Obviously, this is a person who probably wouldn’t be approaching a career counsellor.

But we can see how Vedic Astrology shows:

·         She has a path of her own

·         She will have early, exalted success – this is a life that should follow its inspiration, its dharma – no need to fit into a conventional path

·         The great success and fame are guaranteed by that beautiful Jupiter – and the good D10

·         But the person may worry about their good fortune, they might feel ashamed of their blessings

·         And their happiness is restrained, marred by the involvement on Saturn in the 4th and as the 12th

·         (She also has a malefic on the ASC, which makes the life path a little more difficult – and with Rahu on the 4th – this is not someone who finds happiness – unbridled happiness and joy – an easy thing)

·         There is a heart here that is vulnerable to deep pain and could be guarded

·         3 planets are with nodes, delaying their maturation until 42 and 48 – so the career lifepath part of life will soar from an early age – but other things may take time

00:46:34 Case Study 2

Our next hypothetical career guidance case study is with Naomi Osaka.

She is just 23 year old – putting her right in the age range we are thinking of.

Just like Billie Eilish, she has achieved success at a young age – but what would Vedic Astrology say if she was asking for life direction advice?? How would it be different to Billie Eilish?

Birth time

We don’t have a published birth time for Naomi Osaka.

Making this even more of a hypothetical case study.

However, we looked at her chart last AstroliJam and came up with an estimate …

So you can connect to the diagrams on the webpage link for this podcast.

Or put into your software … October 16, 1997 any time around 3am in Osaka, Japan

Life path

This gives us a Virgo ASC.

Virgo is an artha sign – hard work, life will involve hard work.

Virgo is ruled by Mercury.

And Mercury goes into an artha house – the 2nd house of resources.

So where as Billie Eilishes fame and success comes almost from past life grace – Naomi’s comes from work, hard work, daily practice.

Mercury is also combust the Sun – meaning the striving for greatness is intense, serious – the person will feel they are not good enough.

Which is backed up by Saturn being starved by Mars A LOT giving the sense that one is behind time.

Success may also come before time as we have Mercury not maturing until  32, being pushed by the Sun who matures as 22 – but will be held back by Mercury (not to mention Rahu on the ASC not maturing until 42).

And Sun combusting Mercury is going to give problems with communication.

Career

Just like Billie Eilish, the ruler of the 1st house is also the ruler of the 10th house.

So everything we just said, relates not only to life path, but to career as well.

She will work for money and for status.

This is someone who is going to work.

Happiness

The 4th house is in Sagittarius – a dharma sign.

It is ruled by Jupiter.

Jupiter is in the 6th house – an artha house.

Once again, happiness is being linked to work, daily effort.

Worries

The 3rd house is Scorpio – a moksha sign.

Mars owns the 3rd house.

Mars is in the 4th house – a moksha house.

Just like Billie Eilish’s chart, the ruler of the 3rd house, rules the 8th house.

There will be a lot of worrying about what is this all for, what is everything for, how can I escape all this work and transcend, isn’t there something more than work.

As Mars also rules the 8th house of death, transformation, psychic energy, the occult, the unknown and it is in the house of inner peace – there may even be anxiety and worries that seem paranoid – venus is there stirring up those passions, it’s a fire sign – Saturn (fear) is also ruling the intellect (the 5th).

Losses

The 12th house in this chart is Leo a dharma sign.

It is owned by the Sun.

The Sun is in the 2nd house of work and responsibilities.

Losses could be linked to authorities, the father, to work, to speech or speaking.

Saturn is in extremely tight conjunction with the Moon in the 8th house of death/ change / transformation.

The emotions could be very heavy, depressing, morose around change.

01:00:22 Case Study 2 – Summary

So what guidance would Vedic Astrology give to Naomi Osaka in her 20s?

·         That she will achieve success through hard work.  That her lifepath is unusual and unexpected.

·         Rahu on the ASC is going to make it hard for people to know how to read her, how to classify her, she will be a mystery to others (and to her self)  Embrace that.

·         There is a lot of hard work in this chart, 1 in 2, 10 in 2, 4 in 6, 7 in 6, 12 in 2

·         There is a lot of heaviness in this chart, 4 in 6, Saturn with Moon

·         She will worry about escaping / transcending but that seems impossible with all the heaviness

·         Her thinking about moksha is not linked to her work, her work is not leading her to peace

·         Be gentle on the self, don’t worry about being great, explore the mystery of the self, don’t look to work for fulfilment, it will take time for you to find your true path

01:03:49 Case Study 3

And, now for something completely different …

We’ve had 2 young people, now what about someone who’s been waiting to start their career for 50+ years!?!

The final hypothetical case study for career guidance today is Prince Charles.

Birth details are – November 14, 1948 at 21:14 in London, UK.

Life path

This chart has a Leo ASC – which is a good start for a King!

Leo is a dharma house – i.e. what one must do.

Leo is ruled by the Sun.

The Sun is in the 4th house.

This should be a raja yoga right – trinal lord 1 in an angular house 4 (think back to Billie Eilish) this person’s life path should cause happiness – but what do we find – we have the 11th lord there – the yoga breaker.  This is a Vedic Astrology thing – the 11th lord will break a raja yoga – and that seems to be what’s happening here.

Not only that, but Ketu is there as well, so we have a shamed avastha for Mercury and we have the Sun conjunct Ketu which creates strong self-doubts and a feeling of lack in everything the person does.  We could think that Ketu is indicating that this soul has already been a king and in this lifetime, Ketu is going to create all the inner doubts (and outer doubts) in order to free the person from their attachment and identification with power, status and leadership.

What an acute awareness this person is going to have of their being a disappointment?

·         A broken raj yoga

·         And Ketu’s influence on the Sun

·         Ketu is also going to hold back the maturing of the Sun and Mercury until 48.

This is someone who is going to feel better with age.

Before we say any more about that, let’s look at the career indications

Career

The 10th house of this chart is Taurus – an artha sign.

Taurus is ruled by Venus.

Venus is in the 3rd house of hobbies and interests.

This person may be famous for their interests rather than their career?

Plus, we have a glorious nearly full Moon right at the top of the sky here.

In fact, the Moon is EX here just days away from a lunar eclipse following on from a total solar eclipse that happened on 1 Nov.

This person is going to be famous for their emotions.

The Moon is Rahu so others are not going to know how to react to this person’s emotions – and neither will this person.

They will have flashes of brilliance that will be far-out or zany and hard to explain logically or rationally.

Why I wanted to include this person is because they had a lot of expectations for a conventional life – university, military, marriage, leadership.

This chart does not indicate that conventional life.

I remember researching this for chart for one of my papers and reading how his father, prince Philip tried to make prince Charles more manly by sending him to a military style boarding school from a young age.

I this is where astrology is so useful in the nature versus nurture debate – it doesn’t matter how much time this person spends in the military – they are going to be an emotional, zany person who doubts themselves!

Happiness

The 4th house of this chart is Scorpio – a moksha sign.

Mars rules Scorpio.

Mars is in Sag – the 5th house and a dharma house.

These are good indications – although, the 8th lord is involved and there is a rasi aspect from Saturn, constraining one’s happiness somewhat.

BUT what is really noticeable, is that shamed avastha in the 4th house – this person will feel shame when they feel happy.

They will have a very complex relationship with their own happiness – they will feel worthless, like their contribution is a cause of shame.

Worries

The 3rd house is Libra.

Libra is ruled by Venus and Venus is in Libra.

The person will think about their hobbies and interests – which might be refined.

They will be famous for that.

They might also worry about their career, status, fame and their emotions – but doing anything about that will seem unfathomable because Rahu is there – they will be fascinated, obsessed but completely inept at their career.

Losses

The 12th house is Cancer a moksha sign.

The Moon rules Cancer.

The Moon is EX with Rahu in the 10th house.

This person will be famous for their losses.

Princess Diana comes to mind and Lord Mountbatten.

And of course, their career can’t start without the loss of their mother.

01:18:19 Case Study 3 - Summary

So what would a Vedic Astrologer Career Guidance Counsellor say to Prince Charles at 20?!?

·         Your inner sense that you are the wrong shape for this job is validated here

·         One has to trust that there is a reason for this, so find a way to be you, be emotional, be zany

·         Things are going to take time

·         You are going to disappoint a lot of people – can you find a way to be at peace with that – and not try to prove them wrong – but be yourself so that when you disappoint people, it is for being you, not for being someone that you are not

·         Don’t let people try to make you conventional 

·         You will be a very unconventional king

·         The chart is asking you to disidentify with the classic Sun leadership things – work with that spiritual quest

01:21:25 Conclusion

How does this compare to your life and the answer to the question that you wrote down at the beginning of the podcast?

Use the comments section on the webpage of this episode to share your thoughts!