Michael Laughrin's North American Jyotish Newsletter April 2005

[Guest guest]

Michael Laughrin's North American Jyotish Newsletter April 2005

http://www.jyotish.ws

Michael Laughrin, Michael, business phone: (440) 582-

9848; cell phone: (440) 263-2159

To , send an email to: jyotish_ws-

Contents of this newsletter © copyright 2005, Michael Laughrin

unless otherwise noted.

 

Contents:

1. Introduction to Michael Laughrin's North American Jyotish

Newsletter

2. A Message From Mars

3. The Moon

4. Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas in the Zodiac

5. Relentless Personalities

 

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1. Introduction to Michael Laughrin's North American Jyotish

Newsletter

 

I offer you this newsletter to enhance and deepen your experience of

Vedic Astrology. In these newsletters, expect to find a combination

of helpful articles, book reviews, Jyotish links and more. The

purpose of this newsletter is to educate and titillate the Jyotish-

loving public. The opinions given within are solely those of the

author.

 

In this issue, a word from a very macho Mars. I include an important

article on the Moon entitled "You Are The Moon". And Alison Nielsen

offers two great Jyotish articles: one on the three gunas, and one

called "Relentless Personalities." The latter article is a clear

explanation on how Saturn and Mars influence each other to result in

extreme personalities such as Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Evil

Knievel and Michael Jordan.

 

Please visit my website at http://www.jyotish.ws at your

convenience. I offer Traditional/Classical Vedic Astrology,

Intuitional Jyotish (Vedic Astrology based on deep intuition),

Chakra Readings, and Advanced Structured Psychic Work (for deeper

interpretation of your karmic pattern).

 

- Michael Laughrin (Michael)

 

"Wow Michael (and Alison), another brilliant newsletter...well

done!" - A reader

 

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2. A Message From Mars

By Michael Laughrin (Michael)

 

[As you may know, I can talk to the planets and other celestial

bodies. Mars wants me to give you this message. - Michael]

 

I must win. Be it war, an argument, fixing a bicycle, a sexual

conquest, selling (a thing or an idea)--it does not matter. I must

emerge victorious. I am courage in Man. Manliness, the practical man

(also ruled by Saturn), the protector--these are among the masks

that I wear. I am the real "man's man." Look at your average pater

familias before 1960 and, in most cases, you will find this type of

man. He was the boss. He was the protector of the family, the

provider, the ultimate authority. He went to war, he went to work,

he cut the grass. He made things in his basement workshop. He had a

lot of tools. He loved sports--playing them, watching them, getting

his sons involved in them. He was practical, brave, and usually

ready to lose his temper at the drop of a hat (a little pitta,

perhaps?). He often fixed things around the house--the car, the

washing machine, the radio perhaps. He cleaned out the gutters. He

did not cook, except in front of a charcoal grill (very Martian).

He did not engage in "girly" things like art, music or babysitting.

He went to church but was seldom very religious. He loved hunting,

fishing and firearms. He worked with his hands for at least part of

his life. You get the picture. Most likely, either your father or

your grandfather (or both) was (and maybe still is) that type of

man.

 

On a deeper level, I am will power. I conquer. I am independent.

Others are dependent on me; I am not dependent on them. Only in the

last 30 or 40 years (at least in the United States) have I had much

of anything to do with women. I am a meat eater. Meat and potatoes

are my favorites. Salads (and vegetables and vegetarianism in

general) is for wimps or women. I only listen and/or take orders

from other "macho" men--preferably one who is more "macho," more

Martian than I am.

 

I burn. I seethe. I control (but not in a very intellectual way--

intellectuals are pencil-necked geeks). I am the Patriarchy

(contrary to popular belief--it is alive and well in much of the

world). Father, Son and Holy Ghost--do you see any females there?

 

I glare, I fight, I draw the line in the sand and dare you to cross

it. I accept any dare. I own things (renting is for wimps.) I do not

back down from a challenge. I live according to principle if that

principle reflects the innate values of the Patriarchy:

1. Men are stronger than women.

2. Women need to be protected by men.

3. The father is the king in his own house.

4. War is a good thing.

5. Sports, being the imitation of war, are good also.

6. I put my wife on a pedestal.

7. Intuition is for women.

8. God is male.

9. I own the people living in my house (at least, to some degree).

10. Enemies are to be crushed.

11. I accept all of the old knightly values.

12. I keep society and civilization going.

13. I defend the laws of society because they reflect the values of

manliness and the Patriarchy.

14. I am my own boss.

15. Ultimately, I believe in a kind of dictatorship (dictators have

manly values). Democracy is OK as long as it is men who decide

things.

16. I do not accept backtalk from women, children or servants. I

give the orders in my own little section of the Universe.

17. You may not "get in my face" but it is my right and duty to get

in your face unless you are also a grownup "macho" man. In that

case, may the best (either strongest, smartest or both) man win.

 

The following is from Michael Laughrin and not from Mars:

 

The problem with your "macho" man is that he more or less perfectly

reflects the qualities of Mars, but not many qualities of the other

planets. This is what we call imbalance, neurosis. There are 9

planets and we need to reflect the qualities of all of them (in

varying degrees).

 

(Back to Mars):

 

I win. I conquer. I am the beginning, the victor, the real man.

 

Om shri mangalaya namaha.

 

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3. The Moon

By Michael Laughrin (Michael)

 

Moon is everything internal--one's moods, one's feelings, one's

thoughts, one's psychic impressions. The tides exist not only in the

oceans, but in us as well, men as well as women. I can only "see"

you, indeed, "see" the world through the colored glasses of my

internal geography which includes my emotional makeup, my culture,

my so-called neuroses, my training, my beliefs, my longings, my

particular angle on Infinity (which is, ultimately, our true

nature).

 

The outer world more or less resembles our inner world because we

see what we are inside. When a thief sees a saint, he only sees his

pockets. This is all because of the Moon in our chart. Our body is a

universe and the internal Moon rules the tides, the rhythms of the

ebb and flow of the lymph, the blood, the cerebrospinal fluid. We

are 85% water and the Moon indicates how that water will affect us.

Will we drown (in too many psychic impressions)? Are sharks and

other killers on the hunt in our inner ocean? Or is it a glorious

day at the beach, with sunny skies, balmy temperatures and gentle

tides? The inner Moon (and it is always Inner) rules all of this.

 

Indeed, until we can "escape" the universe of the body through

transcendence (even death won't do it because the psychic

impressions go on and on until the samskaras have been roasted in

the fires of spiritual purification from thousands of hours of

sadhana), we cannot escape the "gravity" of the Moon. Someone once

said that all of Jyotish can be seen by deeply analyzing the Moon.

All karma comes through the Moon (the Mind, the emotions, the

psychic impressions). If you purify the mind through mantra (and

perhaps tantra and yantra) or thorugh seva (divine service) or

through charity, then the small self starts to become the Big Self

and true Ascension begins to unfold.

 

It is all a question of personality (the small self) versus the Soul

(the Big [or Higher] Self). Tell me which one rules in a man and I

will tell you a great deal about him. Is he primarily an egotistical

animal? Personality rules. Or is he more like a divine angel? That

is because the Higher Self rules. The action is all within us. The

planets merely indicate that which is occurring within.

 

And the Moon--Queen of the Night, queen of the mind, the soul, the

individual essence that is us--rules us most of all (at least, until

Enlightenment dawns). The Moon rules liquid--our bodily fluids. The

Moon (and Venus) rules perfumes--the almost ineffable essence that

indicates our truest Natures. The Moon is the Mother (the seat of

the Divine Mother within is the Crown chakra on the top of the head)

and the brain rules the whole body. The Moon is the main emotional

planet (like the tides, they go up and down in an endless cycle.)

The Moon is the love of the Mona Lisa while Venus (the other

emotional, feminine planet) is more like the sensual love of Marilyn

Monroe. The Moon is the most changeable of planets (our hormonal

state is changing all the time as it responds to new sensory,

psychic, and biochemical stimuli). The Moon, even though it gets all

of its Light from the Sun (the Soul), is "wiped out" by being too

close to the Sun. Just so, our personality (entirely a thing of the

Relative) that ultimately derives from the Soul, prefers to be

separate from the soul so that it can do its own thing (even if that

thing is neurotic and full of imperfections [Vive la Difference!]).

The essence of Music is Silence, yet Music prefers to break the

Silence.

 

The Moon is a symbolic parallel of human life on Earth. We wax, we

wane. Occasionally, we are entirely eclipsed. Sometimes we are blood

red. At other times, we are pale and weak. At harvest time we are

fat, full and yellow. We are pockmarked, perfect yet imperfect, like

the Moon's surface. We have our season and then we fade away. But,

at some level, we are eternal. We die only to be born again in a

seemingly endless cycle.

 

O Great Mother, look down on Me with love. Bless me. Be with me.

Guide me in my every mood, my every human condition. Jai Chandra Ma.

Jai Kali.

 

Om shri Chandraya namaha. Om shri Somaya namaha.

 

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4. Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas in the Zodiac

By Alison Nielsen (premavratini)

 

Most students of Indian spirituality and philosophy are familiar

with the three gunas, or fundamental qualities, of all manifest

existence. These three are sattwa, rajas and tamas. Each guna has

both positive and negative attributes depending on the state in

which it is functioning.

 

Sattwa guna is positively characterized by purity, kindness,

contentment, forgiveness, harmony, order, knowledge, stability and

truth. It is negatively characterized by attachment to those things

for themselves rather than as way to draw nearer to God and/or by

inertia and complacency. It is the energy of knowledge as is

Saraswati and its color is white.

 

The sattvic planets are Sun, Moon, and Jupiter. The sattvic rashis

are the dual rashis.

 

Rajas guna is the energy of energy, kriya shakti, and its color is

the red of dynamic activity. It is characterized by activity,

dynamism, desire, passion, emotion, change, enthusiasm, pleasure

seeking, goal orientation and active selfishness. When it slides

into negativity, it becomes insatiable desire, undue attachment to

likes and dislikes, unnatural tenacity, cunning, greed,

hardheartedness, fickleness, and irritability.

 

The rajasic planets are Mercury and Venus. The rajasic rashis are

the moveable rashis.

 

Tamas guna is the energy of fixity, or dravya shakti. Its color is

black. Positive qualities include constancy, rigidity, mass,

structure, the bliss of ignorance or non-awareness, and inactive

selfishness. Negative qualities include laziness, helplessness,

refusal to change, stinginess, mechanical behavior, dullness,

chronic negativity, and non-awareness of others.

 

The tamasic planets are Mars, Saturn, Rahu and Ketu. The tamasic

rashis are the fixed rashis.

 

In order to establish the predominant gunas in an individual's

nature, one can look at the primary influences on the lagna,

lagnesha, sun and moon. Planets that are strong will usually produce

the positive qualities of the guna with which they are associated,

and positive results as well. Planets that are weak will usually

produce negative qualities and results. A person with weak rajasic

planets may become increasingly distrustful of generating new

projects because they are likely to have a history of disastrous

results. People with a strong and influential Saturn may grow

increasingly stubborn as they age because they find that tenacity

usually produces positive results.

 

What may sound like simple Jyotish can become a profound tool for

insight and suggestions for productive shifts in attitudes and

behaviors.

 

 

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5. Relentless Personalities

By Alison Nielsen (premavratini)

 

One quintessential horoscope combination for obstinacy in the human

personality is a mutual aspect between Saturn and Mars. This

combination spells difficulty in every language known to man--

including Braille and Telugu--and it usually spells difficulty for

both the chart owner and those who know him. Saturn and Mars share

one thing in common: tamas guna. Tamas guna is the force of fixity

and inertia in the Universe.

 

Shastra says that a vira, a hero on the spiritual path, must have

enough sattwa to understand his predicament, enough rajas to get

going on doing something about it, and enough tamas to stay the

course until the predicament is resolved. Tamas guna represents

staying power, the staying power of the pyramids and other such

monolithic structures. When focused in the proper direction, tamas

guna can be the force behind tremendous accomplishment, but it has a

serious drawback: non-awareness.

 

In Jyotish, both Mars and Saturn indicate this guna. But they are

very different. They are often referred to as "the gas" and "the

brakes." Mars represents the gas. He is our motivation and our

(usually misdirected and self-serving) burning ambition. Saturn

represents the brakes. He is our refusal to change or open up or go

forward and flow with life. Both usually impart a sense of certainty

to an individual that the position they hold is true and correct.

 

When they fully aspect in a horoscope, they exponentiate the other's

capacity for obdurateness. Saturn gives longevity to the anger of

Mars while Mars fuels Saturn's sense of self righteousness and

punitiveness, often creating an individual who will neither listen

nor compromise, who feels immensely angry and justified in

inflicting harm on self and others and who would rather die than

cooperate with life. One notable personage to whom this combination

applied in spades was Adolph Hitler. Because his Saturn-Mars

combination potently influenced his lagna, lagna lord and Sun, he

very potently demonstrated some of the worst qualities of that

combination. He was famous for throwing a fit if anyone contradicted

him, he passionately hated other beings, he committed suicide, and

refused to surrender even after surrender was obviously the only

logical choice. He preferred instead to send tens of thousands more

Germans to a useless death rather than give in. However, viewed

through the lens of accomplishment, those same obstinate tendencies

allowed him to direct and complete an enormous number of projects.

This combination also appears in the charts of Benito Mussolini and

Guttlor Burgher (an SS general who specialized in racial selection).

 

Mussolini and Hitler are both extreme examples of people who have

fallen out of touch with the rights of others. This combination also

appears in the horoscopes of more overtly benefic beings who will

nonetheless demonstrate pit bull tendencies and pigheadedness to

some degree, such as Evil Knievel and Michael Jordan. Evil Knievel

is Capricorn rising with Saturn in the third house of courage

aspected by Mars from the ninth. It takes a certain kind of

blindness to consequence and inability to be advised by others to

even begin to do the kind of stunts that he was famous for. In the

course of his career he was severely injured and yet went back to

performing even after a head-to-toe body smashing.

 

This combination is also famous for producing both addiction and

suicide. Because Saturn and Mars are both natural malefics, when

they occur together, they have a tremendous capacity to produce

unalleviated pain and suffering. Just as the anger of such a person

can last forever, so can their pain. This often results in a person

who feels he has plenty of reasons for hating life and for burning

resentment towards others, as well as despair. Neither resentment

nor despondency are emotions that engender a sense of responsibility

for self and other, or a sense of personal power to effect change,

thus both addiction and despair can develop. Bill Wilson, the

founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, had Saturn and Mars conjunct in his

second house. Ironically, AA's first step of twelve is to surrender

to a higher power. And step four or five consists of writing a

detailed list of all the resentments one feels toward life and other

beings in order to dissolve them. Bill Wilson was a tremendous

alcoholic who lived a very difficult life.

 

Following is the chart of a longtime female AA member who lived

through multiple terrifying surgeries, unyielding eczema, childhood

molestation, a narcissistic mother, obesity, drug and alcohol

addiction, outrageous sexual behavior, self mutilation and thyroid

cancer--all by the age of thirty one: she is now studying to become

a surgeon. Saturn-Mars often grants the tenacity to survive the

difficulties it creates.

 

Scorpio lagna, Sun and Ju in 1st, Me in 2nd, Rahu in 4th, Saturn in

6th, Moon in 9th, Ketu in 10th, Venus and Mars in 12th

 

And lastly, here are the planetary positions for another person who

committed suicide at the beginning of his Saturn dasha after

surviving tremendously difficult childhood circumstances and drug

and alcohol addiction.

 

Capricorn lagna, Saturn in 2nd, Jupiter Sun Mercury Rahu in 5th,

Venus in 6th, Mars in 8th, Moon and Ketu in 11th.

 

 

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Michael Laughrin's North American Jyotish Newsletter

http://www.jyotish.ws

Michael Laughrin, Michael, business phone: (440) 582-

9848; cell phone: (440) 263-2159

To , send an email to: jyotish_ws-

 

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http://www.jyotish.ws/wisdom

 

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