No Connections

In the drama of the deities, in-coherent (no contact) Ketu's permanent longing for wholeness is a consequence of Rahu's excited refusal to respect conventional boundaries.

As a result of Rahu's wildness, Ketu the Tail Cauda Draconis is forced to gaze with eternally unsatisfied longing at His dear severed partner Rahu the Head Caput Draconis. Ne'er the twain shall meet.

No Boundaries

• In-finite (no limits) Ketu represents the vague, uncommitted, disengaged "no-boundary" state. As a result of His singular focus upon the sole source of meaning in His universe which is Rahu, Ketu is characteristically unable to recognize boundaries and divisions between people, things, or ideas.

No Meaning

• From Ketu's perspective, everything which lays in the territory between Ketu and Rahu is (1) meaningless and (2) seamless.

• Everything in the path from Ketu to Rahu is characterized as having no ultimate value; as distraction or annoyance; as mere impediments to Ketu's reunion with Rahu.

No Distinctions, No Rules

Due to Ketu's inability to recognize conventional connotation-denotation meanings, Ketu displays a lack of discrimination or even comprehension of those distinctions which create physical, emotional, mental, and social meaning in the world.

To Him, it is all one big dust-cloud, all one sandstorm, all one nebulous particle field.

It is all the same and it is All One.

• Naturally, at the higher levels of perception, Ketu's 'All One' apprehension of reality can be a tremendous asset to the spiritual seeker.

• However, at the lower levels of material survival, Ketu's inability to make value judgments and His disinclination to make choices can result in extreme passivity.

• the native shows equal disregard for oneself and those around one.

• Ketu is an Equal Opportunity Ignorer.

No Capabilities

• Ketu has few actual "abilities" except for His cleaving and dissolving powers.

• Particularly in Association with other graha, Ketu creates a negative power = disempowerment, "inability" and "disability". Ketu is 'handicapped', disabled, and disoriented.

No Time

• In reality, only material values are capable of "improvement" (becoming proved, i.e. perfected).

• Ketu does not recognize any material value, including the meaning or significance of Time. Tenants of an upachaya sthana (3, 6, 10, 11) which can "improve with Time" will improve not improve Ketu.

Apprehension without Comprehension

• Due to His perceptual handicap of being unable to locate physical or emotional or social boundaries, Ketu is exceptionally "psychic".

• He possesses extraordinary intuitive sensitivity.

• However Ketu may dissolve other forms of knowing such as perception or comprehension. Ketu is particularly damaging to the decisive, rational forms of intelligence.

12th-from Effects

Like all malefic graha, Ketu gives best effects in a dusthamsha: 6, 8, or 12.

• Ketu in 6 = uncaring about physical health, unattached to animosity, uninterested in acquisition of debt or increase of poverty. Disempowers the threat of radical imbalance.

• Ketu in 8 = ambivalent or detached from the conditions of death. Likely to die in a coma or other numbed state, unconscious or barely conscious of the physical dimension of the transition. Disempowers the threat of violent death.

• Ketu in 12 = apathetic about the clairsentient pathways and the spirits who communicate along those pathways. May be perfectly clairvoyant but unconcerned to share the knowledge gained from intuition and dreams. Disengaged from the formal practice of meditation. (Which ironically can produce some brilliant meditations. This native can meditate in a crowded subway.) Disempowers the threat of "reverse osmosis" -- forced return to the astral plane.

Ketu has an especially strong affiliation with bhava-12, the house of dissolution of Identity. Ketu will give a " 12-from" effect wherever He is found in the nativity.

Apparently Contradictory Qualities

• Reading the above quotations from Jyotisha commentators, one might feel confused. The listed traits seem so contradictory!

• How can Ketu both "render the mind unbalanced", yet be a "planet of spiritualization"?

• How can Ketu "disturb social relationships" and cause "humiliation" while ending with "respectability"?

Witness Role Required

The answer is that Ketu is the graha who requires, even more than Shani, a position of "witness" to the whirling, swirling, ego-crazed world around us. Ketu imposes no material conditions whatsoever. Rather, Ketu enforces the removal of conscious attention:

• Away from grasping at material, emotional, and mental attachments,

• toward spiritual attachment (holding fiercely to the Witness position)

• And ultimately toward the goal of full merger of material, emotional, social, mental realities within one's true spiritual self-identity.

• Ketu does not effect the "next-step" full merger, but Ketu clears the path so that merger becomes achievable

Massive Push of the Elephant-Head

Ketu has one goal and one goal only: to push t the native 's perception, as far as possible, in the current lifetime, toward re-unification with the Divine.

In order to effect that forward movement, Ketu ruthlessly destroys any obstacle that occurs upon the individual's path toward enlightenment.

Mere humans rarely grasp Ketu's purpose

To those with eyes to see,Ketu is doing us a huge favor. No matter how painful the separations and losses caused by Ketu, the native who holds a clear conviction of the value of spiritual enlightenment will understand and appreciate what is going on.

the native with sufficient consciousness will heed Ketu's clarion call to "witness" rather than resist the removal of obstacles.

In the end, Shri Ganesha will be praised as the great leader of the troops (Gana) who are marching toward the bliss of reunion with the Divine.

To those with deep material, emotional, or mental attachments, Ketu is disruptive, invasive, destructive, and damaging. Ketu causes one with the lower consciousness bondage to cry in despair, "why me? why was my life attachment taken from me?"

• The answer is that this attachment was, in Shri Ketu's view, creating an obstacle to spiritual progress.

• However that answer may not be acceptable to one who continues to externalizeperception and to insist that the true self is defined in terms of material possessions, human relationships, or systems of belief.

• Indeed the true self can only be defined in terms of one's relationship to the Divine. When all the attachments are stripped off, one will see the "enlightened" or "unburdened" truth that the nature of that truest most core relationship is an actual "Identity" which is no longer polarized. In other words, Self and God are, in their deepest true nature, absolutely One and the Same.

• This is the realization toward which Shri Ketu is pushing, with His big strong elephant head.

  Still, many are still deep in sleep, craving only sensual attachment ... and for those many, holding "witness" to the dream is quite unlikely. For them, Shri Ketu is a bitter enemy of possessiveness, completion, "wholeness" and "success".

Ketu damages both "positive" and "negative" attachments.

• the native with strong ego attachments, including "negative" attachments such as victimization, catastrophic loss, poverty, or death; as well as "positive" attachments such as wealth, title, religion, children, siblings, spouse, or life, will find that Ketu is an "equal opportunity destroyer."

• To those who might have an inkling of what Ketu is trying to accomplish, the apparently " malefic" powers of Ketu destructive, separative, and embarrassing effects may be understood to be offering the greatest spiritual help available to humans.(Even greater than the service offered by Ketu's malefic competitor, Shani!)

• Ketu does not care about whether the content of an attachment is socially approved or disapproved, moral or immoral, valuable or worthless. If it is an attachment, Ketu will negotiate to have it severed.

• (Remember the myth of Rahu-Ketu. By force of Vishnu's razor-sharp discus, Ketu gets instantly, brutally severed from the desire-mouth of Rahu.)

• If Ketu, in His wisdom, determines that any relationship is creating an obstacle to the development of the consciousness which is necessary to permit the native to advance on the path of spiritual re-unification with the Divine, that relationship will be severed.

• If only one component of that relationship is compulsive or damagingly habitual or hiding the native 's true feelings from oneself or otherwise problematic for consciousness, Ketu will take action - that particular obstacle-element of the relationship will be cut off. But the relationship itself, or its social shell, will remain.

Ketu = A Great Difficulty, and (potentially) a Great Genius

For example:

• Ketu in bhava-5 may indicate a Genius for Teaching Difficult Children. Here may be found not only a parent who must raise a difficult child, but also a gifted teacher of hypersensitive, out-of-orbit, anti-social, pre-criminal, or other "behavioral disorder" children.

• the native has a special blessing of "witness" consciousness which allows one to resist the impulse to react negatively to threatening or inappropriate behavior from children.

• Free from habitual punitive reaction, the children suffering social adaption difficulties may feel more safe and accepted, and even quite adversarial children may learn and begin to thrive.

  • With Ketu in putra bhava, one's failure to produce "successful" children may bring wisdom that can greatly advance the spiritual life.

Despair

Ketu gives aprofound longing to connect with the Other, yet anacutely painful realizationthat it is impossibleto do so.

• Acute disappointment, chronically unsatisfied desire, and perpetual disconnectedness - especially during Ketu periods - may induce the experience of Despair.

• The spiritualization option Occurs when the native upgrades one's basis of evaluative perception from "disappointment" of expectations, to"no expectations".

• With the liberation from expectation, comes the "witness" or non-judgmental observer perspective.

• From the witness viewpoint, Ketu's positive service of removing obstacles to enlightenment can become quite clear. Liberation of disappointed expectation signals the end of despair.

• Perhaps with the aid of the vidya of Jyotisha, the native may move, in a single lifetime, from a condition of chronic despair to a condition of deep appreciation for Ketu's liberation!

Attraction and Repulsion: effects at higher or lower consciousness levels

• In the Jyotisha charts, Rahu-Ketu reflect our cycles of attraction and repulsion:/p>

• Ketu periods, and Ketu transits to Vimshottari timelords, will place the native in a sustained period of repulsion.

• During Ketu periods, the native is either unwilling or unable to connectwith the Object of one' s desire.

• Depending on the level of consciousness, the Ketu period (including Ketu transits to significant lagnas) can provide beneficial, mixed, or malefic effects.

• The spiritual, mental, social, emotional, and physical effects of Ketu can be considered at three levels of psychic development

At the higher levels of awareness, Ketu can:

Aid concentration and meditation

• create authentic, fully transformative sacrifice

• support pure tantrik practices

• establish complete non-reactive neutrality

• invoke a conscious state of surrender - one' s only felt desire is the desire for deeper surrender

• provide sincere and willing detachment from objects of desire

• induce a state of passive, non-interfering and non-invested acceptance of reality

• reduce " interference patterns" in perception

• increase the size, scope and clarity of the field of consciousness by eliminating desire-driven distractions

• strengthen clairvoyant and clairaudient capabilities (again, reaping benefits of reduced interference)

Benefits:

• If Ketu is well-situated, Ketu periods may bring all the benefits associated with the Ketu-occupied bhava. For example, Ketu in dhana-sthana may bring extraordinary wealth - but the native will not be particularly attached to it!

• Ketu periods with their conscious rootlessness are very auspicious for guided austerity practices, withdrawal from non-spiritual relationships, sanctuary retreats, temple pilgrimage, sacred journey

At medium levels of awareness:

• Ketu tends toward a mix of bitter disappointment and continuous yearning for connection:.

• Denial of ego nutrient,

• mental tension, caught in moral dilemmas and lose-lose options

• lack of praise, denied promotions, loss of status

• personal and professional setbacks due to failed expectations

• Emotional withholding behaviors by Self and projected upon others

• Frustration and blaming one' s shortcomings upon Other

• Unconscious projection of childhood abandonment fears into adult relationships

• Bitter disappointments

• Deep yearning for apparently unachievable goals, partners, and experiences

• Contemptuous rejection of Other, cycling back to frustrated union, and rejection again

• Unconscious or barely conscious projection of negative fantasiesupon others

Benefits:

• Ketu periods are exceptionally Auspicious for personal psychotherapy, but may not yield much progress in relationship counseling. A focus on " abandonment" and " separation" issues will be fruitful.

• If Ketu is well-positioned and the native knows their true capabilities, there can be professional and personal advancement through careful management of power vacuums and unusual circumstances.Key to success is neutral humility paired with sensitive awareness of other's desires.

• (Not self-effacing or other false humility, but true neutrality and authentic skillful ability to serve other's interests, such as to help an organization reach its goals.)

At lower levels of awareness:

Ketu tends toward its more malefic state:

• error of abandonment

• urgent but thwarted survival need to achieve union with the object of desire, leading to stalking, anxiety-driven predatory behaviors, etc

• Rejection of reality

• Disregard for social and psychic boundaries

• Fantasy-driven behaviors, falsifying credentials, posing and posturing, obsession with distant celebrity figures, claiming that fantasy relationships are real, other confusions of the reality-imagination boundary

• Native is exceptionally absorptive; other people' s negative projections easily find him, and stick to him

• Deep neediness, relies on others to provide his/her identity

• Inability to accept personal responsibility

• Victim state

• Feels that homelessness, rootlessness, acts of desperation are the result of having been abandoned by those s/he once trusted

• Asks for shelter from government, community, or family - but rejects services, fears and distrusts connection, needs to wander

• rapped in Ego reaction of toxic anxiety

Divorce as a lower-level reactive fear bondage:

• Ketu is a karaka for divorce of the " I-give-up" type.

• However, true to the myth of Rahu-Ketu, divorce under Ketu means that the native s may physically separate from each other but they remain psychically connected in a perpetual cycle of victimization, blaming and distrust.

Trauma

The brutal act of separation, abandonment, and rejection is described vividly in the myth of Rahu-Ketu.

Ketu = trauma.Look for trauma in the signification of Ketu's house and the character of His lord, as well as in any co-tenants who share a house with Ketu. Wherever the native shall suffer unbearable separations, with a great but unachievable longing for consummation or reunion, there is Ketu.

Ketu is a karaka for ex-communication, divorce, being shunned, ostracized, or invalidated.

Ketu's trauma is not likely to "heal" in the sense that material reunion will not be fully accomplished in this lifetime. However the emotional pain can be neutralized by deep acceptance and forgiveness.

Each new Ketu bhukti will re-stimulate the core trauma of separation, rejection, abandonment, and loss of wholeness. Each Ketu bhukti offers and opportunity to practice neutrality and forgiveness.

Q: Can Ketu-driven Suspicion and Distrust Give Good Results?

A : Yes - at higher consciousness levels

Ketu's periods increase the perceptual intensityof suspicion and distruSaint the native can see one's Other half, partner, reflection, key to wholeness - but by some force of the universe, access to this wholeness is being withheld. One suspects that the desires of the Other are destroying the relationship.

Severely Reactive: Paranoid delusion

• At the lowest levels, paranoid delusionand a feeling of social invisibilitycan give very undesirable mental results.

Moderately Reactive: Invalidation

• At the lower levels of consciousness, Ketu's negative perceptions of invalidationare chronic. the native slips into varying degrees of suspicious distrust of the motives of the Other. It is possible to enter a state of psycho-emotional despair, considering how hopeless is the prospect of the Other ever changing their nature. Yearning for connectedness but believing that a deep and permanent bond is impossible. It is easy to become trapped in this state of bondageto an unattainable, but always perceivable, object of one's desire.

Proactive: Distrust of reactive delusion

• At the higher levels of stabilized consciousness, suspicion and distrust of the motives of Other can be a very good thing!

• Nothing is more spiritually healthy than a vigorous distrust of the mind's propensity to generate delusions.

• Manas, the mind, is nothing but a big delusion machine! All perceptual reality is a product of subconscious projection.

• Ketu, a node of the Moon, turns a reflective mirror onto The inner workings of Manas.Ketu periods are premium opportunities to watch the illusion-generating machine in action!

• the native who is secure in this perceptual awareness will enjoy significant spiritual and philosophical benefits from Ketu periods. This native will seize the opportunity to enter psychotherapy, pursue reflective meditation, read spiritual books, and otherwise cultivate increased awareness of one's own projection behaviors.

Conscious Relationships during Ketu periods

• During Ketu periods, the native may find oneself cast in peculiar relationships vis-à-vis various power-hungry authorities or other strong Rahu-type personalities. In an environment surging with constant disruptions and ambitious (but usually illicit) desires, the native retains his calm.

• In Troubled interpersonal relationships, the Ketu native will have deep insights into the psychopathology of the Other, but the native will also lack ability to intervene or otherwise alter the Other's behavior.

• For the conscious native, Ketu period is a time of detached awareness, based on healthy suspicion of one's own compulsive projections.

• One realizes that behaviors attributed to outside agents Are in fact nothing but reactive projections of one's own subconscious.

• his final Ketu-driven result is deeply calming. Spreading one's own calm awareness of trauma reactions and various ego collisions in relationships of home, workplace, and community, will enhance leadership capabilities and stabilize the local environment.

Social Leadership in Ketu period?

• If Ketu is placed for leadership (in kendra, lord is prominent, etc.), Ketu period can give surprisingly high levels of responsibility although official recognition will not occur.

• Ketu is by nature a somewhat socially invisible period.However, responsibilities assumed now will bear fruit of recognition later, in more socially visible periods.

Reactive distrust vs. Proactive distrust

• The lower consciousness Ketu native experiences increased psycho-social reactivityand outward fixation with blaming.

• By contrast, the higher consciousness native handles the exact same experience with proactive awareness that the Other is in fact the product of one's own subconscious projection.

• The apparent distancing, withholding, taboo-breaking, desire-hungry behavior of the Otherin fact originates in one's own incomplete self-knowledge.

• he roots of this apparently external and real relationship are in fact deeply embedded in one's own subconscious.

• The wise Ketu nativetakes the cue: To resolve outward dilemmas, go inwardto find the roots of negative expectations and unfulfilled desires within one's own Mind.

Ketu = expectation of disconnection and neglect

• As a result of Accumulated experience stored in the subconscious, the native fundamentally expects that the matters of Ketu's domain will be unreliable, and eventually disconnect. Ketu's source is deep in the subconscious, rooted in human reptile-brain fear of abandonment.

• This deep and terrible fear of abandonment affects all human births, and therefore Ketu must occupy some domain in each human birth.

• Ketu's house contains the site of humility/humiliation, where the native longs for connection and yet is repeatedly disconnected from the object of their desire.

• These expectations typically yield the real world psycho-emotional experiences of deep-seated anxietyregarding abandonment, social or emotional rejection, terrible uncertainty about the feelings and plans of the beloved, and parental/spousal/collegial unresponsiveness or neglect

Positive management of Ketu's malefic effects:

• Ketu is a karaka for meditation and conscious awareness.

• All disabilities caused by Ketu can be improved through conscious awareness of the subconscious predisposition to expect disconnection, leading to a lifetime of disappointment and chronic mistruSaint

• While Shri Ketu does have An essential lesson to teach regarding impermanence, it is not necessary for the native to suffer a lifetime of compulsive, subconsciously impelled rejection of connection and trust in matters of Ketu's domain.

• It is very difficult to manage Rahu's obsessive-compulsive desires. However, it is not so hard to manage Ketu. Luckily the reptile brain does not have to dominate human life.

• Conscious natives can learn to managemany historic, subconsciously driven compulsions -- even the most natural, largely bio-chemical, 'hard-wired' survival fears.

• Calm awareness of one's habitual rejection of completenesswill go a long way toward resolving the malefic effects of Shri Ketu. The area of most dramatic rejection will be Ketu's birth domain (see table of Ketu in Houses, below).

Meditation on impermanence can correct much of Ketu's disability

• That same calm awareness can transform Shri Ketu's fearful effects into an overall positive spiritual experience of appreciation of impermanence. These two phenomena are really two sides of the same coin. The difference is that one is physically and emotionally terrifying and one is sweetly wise.

• Later in life, comes Ketu's spiritual wisdom and eventually amusement!

"Lower Your Expectations"

• Conscious management will give good results. However, Ketu's terror runs deepand progress will be incremental over a lifetime. Ketu's fears will not be fully understood by the native until the native 's age of 48 years,which is the age of maturity for Ketu. Even after the potential Ketu is particularly pernicious in the four kendra, where security and confidence are needed to stabilize material life. As a point of practical advice:

  • it is Best Practice when managing one's own position of Ketu, to have low material expectations and conscious ego detachment where Ketu resides.

Myth of Ketu's Dismemberment

• Ketu's personal story tells it all. There He was, the innocent tail of Rahu the Serpent God, sitting at the Deity Banquet, minding His own business. Ketu doesn't have an Ego - He's a tail. He's present, but absolutely soundless and uninvolved.

• Shri Ketu is as innocent and quiet as a tail can be, completely tranquil and neutral in the scene, when Rahu the Rage of Desire decides to make His big ego ploy. Rahu has snuck into the divine banquet illicitly, and He wants a sip of that divine immortal Amrit, the exclusive private drink of the Gods. He has an intense desire for it. Rahu will get a drink.

He will.

• The chalice of Amrit is being passed around this gathering of Gods... Rahu slips into position to receive the next drink. Rahu succeeds! However at the very moment when the first drop of Amrit touches Rahu's lips - guaranteeing Rahu a lifespan of the Gods -- Shri Vishnu sees illicit Rahu! Vishnu is enraged at this slimy impostor and throws His magical discus at Rahu, slicing Rahu in half.

With a terrible shriek, the head of Rahu's severed body flies in one cosmic direction, and the tail of Rahu's body flies off the opposite way.

Rahu's severed tail-half is now called Ketu.

• Rahu the Naga Head retains all His passion-driven intention and desire.

• Thus Rahu remains a perpetual troublemaker. Ketu however has no sense of purpose or goal. Ketu forever languishes in memory of His once-whole Self. Ketu pines for unification with His lost Other.

• Ketu is bereft, abandoned, hopeless, lost, unrequited - and locked into an orbit wherein He can see His other half Rahu, but never rejoin with Him.

Emotional obsessions and insecurity

Ketu rules psycho-emotional trauma of forced separation and abandonment. The deepest, most painful and desperate losses in life are signified not by Shani - but by Ketu.

Ketu signifies:

• the psycho-emotional consequences of Abandonment and Neglect.

• post-traumatic shock disorder, where the victim compulsively relives a horrible loss.

• Ketu evokes subconscious fears of forcible disconnection from one's host body and terror of painful exposure, including traumas of:

  • he agony of birth

  • parental death or abandonment

  • divorce (abandonment by spouse)

  • painful romantic separations

  • unrequited love, where the native 's mind is locked into the quest for union with an inherently unobtainable object.

  • All of life's hopeless losses that are part of the human condition

Predicting the Effects of Ketu period

See Ketu Mahadasha, BPL modern comments

Solution to Ketu Suffering

The solution to Ketu troubles is always a spiritual solution: to intentionally focus the heart away from Rahu's passions, toward the more eternal and reliable realm of the legitimate gods. Developing committed awareness to that which does not change, which cannot be lost, from which one can never be separated - the Divine within - will resolve all of Ketu's suffering.

• Graha which may cast graha drishti upon Ketu will especially aid the native in creating this positive intention. Ketu cannot have intention of His own. (Ketu casts no drishti Himself.) Ketu is the victim of a horrible trauma. Ketu needs help to focus outside Himself and His sorrowful longing for union with the Other.

Ketu's job is ultimately to remove obstacles which prevent the native from advancing along the spiritual path. His purpose is to enforce "disconnection" from Rahu the Impostor's passions so that one may enjoy the lasting peace of communion with the Divine. Ketu leads the native toward realization that grounding oneself in Divine Love rather than in the slippery realm of human passion is the only solution.

• However Ketu's agenda can create a painful and exhausting path. Ketu evokes from the subconscious a tremendous - almost unbearable - dissatisfaction with human relationships, with wealth, power or pleasure-causing substances, with all the sensual delights and privileges on Earth. Ketu causes one to wander in hopeless desperation, searching for fulfillment.

There is only one connection which will meet Ketu's deep and aching need. However, things have to be karmically somewhat rigorous, in order for Ketu to do His job fully.

• If Ketu's lord is favorable, and both Kuja and Shani also have dignity, after a period of acute suffering and loss, the path of Shri Ganesha will open. Obstacles to union with material pleasures - including spouse, children, social position, food and drink - will be recognized as the secret blessing they really are. Observing that for each material pleasure taken away, that space in his life becomes filled with the radiant love of Divine healing, the native may become extremely happy in a simple, materially unencumbered existence.

• If Ketu's lord is not favorable and too many benefics distract the native with temporary pleasures,there may be recurring victim's rage and grief without long-term resolution, especially during Ketu periods, and especially regarding the relationship with person and environment signified by Ketu's house and lord.

Psychically, Ketu shows "holes in the aura"

Ketu shows where the native is the most bewildered and confused. Something that evades them, can't quite put their finger on it, seems foggy and they can't quite hold onto a stable understanding of it.

• Psychically, this is a weak patch in the aura, the protective energy shield of positive energy which surrounds each spirit in a body. For humans the aura is somewhat egg-shaped, broader at the bottom where it connects to earth energy, rather narrower at the top where it connects to divine energy.

Animals do have auras, but humans have much stronger, more complex, and "brighter" auras than other earthly forms. The more divine energy that is connected to and nourishing a human aura, the "brighter" the person looks psychically.

• The first physical evidence of a bright aura is a "bright" smile. Even in cultures where smiling is not necessary to convince people of your goodness, the natural brain reaction to happiness and inner peace is in fact to smile. Whether its and important cultural gesture or not, smiling is always the sign of happiness in the human - it never signifies anything else.

In English we often refer to people having "bright" qualities such as intelligence, charisma, enthusiasm, verve, good humor, etc. These qualities are "seen" (with the intuitive third eye) as "bright" patches in the aura.

Ketu controls the disconnect-function in the ego. Ketu is in charge of the grey patches of foggy uncertainty, apathy, or confusion which show where the ego in this life is rather disinterested, yet for karmic reasons obliged to continue to connect by a thread (literally).

Grey is of course the colors of elephant, and Shri Ganesha is the elephant-headed god. Remover of obstacles, Shri Ketu is like a bulldozer plowing away all unnecessary distractions from our spiritual path.

That's why results of Ketu are generally "bad" materially (i.e., not acquisitive or accumulative) but "good" spiritually (i.e., liberated from junk and free to pursue the Divine unimpeded.) Looking back on obstacles which Shri Ketu has removed we are always grateful for the peace and deep sense of freedom we feel at the end of a karmic cycle. Job well done, and we're so glad to be finished with it!

However when Ketu is hampered by the karmic effects of a compromised Moon or when Ketu's planetary lord is inauspicious, Ketu can leave the person lingering in the limbo between connect and disconnect.

the native will find him/herself still surrounded by the influences of Ketu's house and sign, yet unable to successfully interact with those influences. In re: the matters of Ketu's sign and house, the native will experience confusion, indecision, unclarity, while often developing some type of unsavory coping mechanism for the social/physical disability that the disconnect causes.

Ketu effects include ego-compensation behaviors of contempt or arrogance in some cases, various victim attitudes and passive-aggressive blaming others.

he general pattern of a dysfunctional Ketu is always a lack of energy and focus available to address the matter at hand. Yet the native remains, foggily and often passive-aggressively, engaged with it - often believing that someone else is causing the issue or that forces outside himself are at work. Ketu can be highly intuitive but in lower consciousness will tend toward superstition because the native passive-aggressively attributes his problems to the evil intentions, failures, or incompetence of others.

Ketu is cruel -- but a relief.

As a manifestation of Shri Ganesha, the beloved remover of obstacles, how can we understand Ketu's cruelty as beneficial?

Ketu gives remarkable benefits through disconnection and detachment. Cutting one's losses, abandoning hopeless projects, leaving unsuitable relationships, surrender before annihilation, etc. Similar to radical surgery - a painful and invasive process which when successful can restore health and extend life. It is always cruel but provides a great relief. Looking back, it will be seen as a necessary and beneficial loss.

Years ago my lovely neighbor, the devoted mother of small children, developed a life-threatening cancer. Without stopping to consider gentler alternatives, she agreed to radical surgery. She said, "I just want it Outof me."

I was aghaSaint I believed that she should try some natural cures. What if the radical surgery caused an infection that she could not ward off in her weakened state? Immediately after surgery she was terribly ill and too weak to mother her children; I feared the worSaint However she did recover, and eventually (months later) regained her full health.

Afterwards she told me: "cutting out that disease felt so good, even though the side effects were horrible I knew right away that this terribly painful and invasive surgery was exactly the right thing."

Ketu is associated with radically surgeries of my neighbor's type, divorces / disconnections / removals that occur only when every other option has been exhausted, and "final solutions" in all forms.

Depending on Ketu's kshetra, and also the disposition of Chandra AND Ketu's lord -- one might experience separation via the death of a terminally ill family member or being fired from an enslaving job.

After the pain of loss subsides, one confirms this loss to have been a spiritual gain.

Ketu gives the results of His lord and co-occupants

The most important thing to understand about the lunar nodes Rahu and Ketu is that they do not own any houses, and they do not own any signs. Rather, Rahu-Ketu function as magnifiers and distorters of the their bhava and rashi lords. Rahu-Ketu also amplify any co-tenant Grahawithin their house.

Ketu contributes frustration and denial wherever he goes in the normal realms of life. Only at the highest levels of awareness is Ketu really an asset.

When Ketu becomes the mahadasha-pati or bhukti-pat, His Vimshottari periods will give the results of Ketu's lord and to a large extent also the results of His co-occupants. The quality of experience during Ketu periods is typically a disoriented, confused, and stagnant version of the planets He magnifies.

However under good circumstances Ketu's power of disenchantmentcan also break the spell of material attractions, and show a direct route to enlightenment.

Producing as He does the irresolvable conflict between Saturn/social law and order versus Mars/personal independence, Ketu induces a state of deep frustration and repressed anger which alienates the individual from the matters of the house which Ketu occupies. the native feels that, in matter's of Ketu's house and its lord, an irresistible force is trying to budge an immovable object. The result is Tractionand deep alienated frustration.

Furthermore Ketu complicates the expression of his lord and co-occupying planets.

Ketu and a strong Shukra, the native will have not only the excesses of wealth, beauty, prestige, and addiction that this Shukra would have brought independently. Ketu adds a surly, denying, frustrated to Shukra's effects which result in addiction to food, drugs, sex, and elegant company while plunging the individual into great denial about his true behavior.

One will feel that it's not my problem, or that others do not understand me, or that someone else is obviously to blamefor the excess. (Since Ketu occupies 7 in this example that someone else is certainly the spouse!) The central complication of any planet ruling or conjuncting Ketu is that the native feels disconnected from his own reality, will not own up to his own actions, and typically seeks to blame the problems that this dishonesty and detachment will cause, onto the Other who is represented by that house. (For example, the Other of house-10 is the boss, the Other of house-4 is the mother.)

Ketu casts no graha drishti ; only the rashi drishti

• The sign aspect (rashi drishti) of Ketu can be damaging, because Ketu can radiate frustration, stagnation, confusion, and discontent. However in the right company the aspect of Ketu can enhance the values of the house which receives His ray. Of course whenever Ketu has company in His house, He amplifies that companion and carries that companion graha's energy along on all His aspects.

In the example chart above = Ketu + Shukra in Taurus/7, Ketu's rashi drishti from Vrishabha affects Karkata/9, Thula/12, and Makara/3.

Shukra will independently drishti all those three Chara signs, plus Shukra will send His own full planetary aspects to lagna/Vrischika.

Because Ketu is a shadow without his own independent identity, His rashi aspects to houses 9, 12, and 3 - carry along Shukra's energy too.

he luxurious but excessively indulgent effect of Shukra is also subtly carried into the 9th house of religion (where it is quite unfavorable because Shukra is teacher of the demons) as well as 12th (which Shukra already owns, this is the house of extramarital affairs.

But Ketu may make the native blind (or unsure whether these are happening) and 3rd - the house of small-group associations such as meetings and dinner parties (this native was a highly placed executive who enjoyed very luxurious corporate meetings and gave lovely small parties).

Ketu's sign aspects combined with Shukra's full aspect on the lagna result in destruction of religion, extramarital affairs of the spouse, and lavish corporate entertainments - none of which is very satisfying to the native , because Ketu whilst amplifying Shukra is rather permanently discontent.

If Ketu is alone in his house He will cast rashi drishti and give the results of his lord only. In this case the condition of his lord determines the value of Ketu's three sign aspects. Where the lord is dignified (e.g., in the sign of a friend, or exalted, and in a non-dushthamsha house) Ketu's aspects may induce meditative awareness, the scientist's objective detachment, and other positive forms of non-violent approach toward conflict and profound acceptance of the greater law.

Most of the time, Ketu is far too psychic to be comfortable in the mundane - no matter how luxurious his worldly life.

The Great Withholder

Ketu is Rahu's diametrically opposite force. Rahu is permissive and expansive like Venus and Jupiter, but Ketu is restrictive and like Shani and Mars. Whereas Rahu is passionate and desirous, Ketu is detached and withdrawn.

he house, degree, sign, aspects, and other characteristics of Ketu show psychic imagery that has already been manifested by Rahu,. Under Ketu's influence the matter concerned is finished; we have stopped desiring and now wish to separate that matter from ourselves. Wherever Ketu is, there the person is detached, impassionate, stopped, and uninvolved with the development of those matters. Ketu is a manifestation of Shri Ganesha, the elephant-headed god who is the somber, plodding Remover of Obstacles..

Ketu is excellent for meditation and withdrawal from the world of the senses but understandably Ketu's influence damages any attempt at acquisitions. Ketu will "destroy" marriage in the 7th house because he doesn't really care enough to keep the fires of affection burning. Ketu gives a spouse but not affection toward the spouse; not passion.

Maybe he thinks he should care; maybe his society thinks he should care; but Ketu in 7th proves he really doesn't feel the passion. Often this position is bewildered and frustrated.

Ketu will make the person quite unconcerned about financial wealth when he occupies the 2nd or 11th houses. Financial affairs are blocked in some way, beyond personal control. That doesn't mean a person with Ketu in 2 or 11 will be poor. If the house lord is in good condition, that person with Ketu in 2 or 11 might have much money at his disposal. But he will not care about investing the money, and he will not have permission to change or control it. He will not take steps to protect money, develop his wealth, or show much attachment to it. Often this position is the spouse or child of a wealthy person, who has access to considerable funds but lacks passion for the wealth.

Ironically, because Ketu's disengaged energy-state has no resistance to money, native with Ketu in a money position (2, 5, 9, 11) could be remarkably wealthy as a result of past-life labors. Much poverty is caused by resistance to wealth! However whether rich or poor, he will be neutral on the subject of acquiring and developing wealth. Like the native with Ketu in 7, s/he will accept the presence of a spouse as a social given - but express little truly personal interest in marital development.

Similarly, Ketu in 5th house of children gives detachment toward one's children. As with money for Ketu in 2/11, Ketu in 5 or 9 can produce numerous children provided Guru's aspects are fertile. However the parent with Ketu in putra bhava will be emotionally detached from his offspring - and often frustrated with them.

he first child may be adopted, from inside or outside the Ketu parent's family. Or, the first child may have some birth condition which detaches then from the parent's home, such as a health problem, needing special education, or something else that creates an emotional distance.

Ketu is spectacularly helpful for all matters of meditation and spiritual ascendance. Be sure to visit a temple of Ganesha to enhance your transcendent spiritual awareness. However, if you are wanting to enhance your bank account go see Lakshmi; or to acquire academic credentials see Saraswati! Shri Ganesha's portfolio is the profound cosmic awareness born of the most intractable inner conflicts. Shri Ganesha is not about acquiring, but rather about liberation through transcendence.