Calamity & Large-Scale Material Devastation What does Jyotisha have to say about huge catastrophic events? What is the astrological explanation of large-scale calamities and catastrophic events such as war and famine? Q: Wondering if you could maybe answer this question on your site for the benefit of other Jyotisha students: How does astrology make sense of calamities that affect a whole group of people who share particular time-space coordinates. . I am thinking specifically here of terrible happenings like the one in Rwanda where in the space of 180 days 800,000 Tutsis were killed by Hutus and in the most brutal manner. Then we have the recent unfolding of the final days of the war in Sri Lanka. Then there's Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan ... a seemingly endless parade of death and destruction. So from Sri Lanka to Palestine, how does one astrologically contend with the world's major conflicts and why do some spots seem to be singled out for conflict. Ex: Sri Lanka seems to be at war since Rama's time and the middle-east has also been a flashpoint of religious strife for centuries. A potential answer I suppose is that regardless of the macro picture, individual players will respond based on their planetary combinations just like in any other situation. But I was wondering if you had thought about this and could shed some light... Thank you in advance! A:  Namaste, Yes, my response is precisely as you suggest.  Each incarnation has a particular script. The native who is not yet empowered to change one's own trauma-reactive expectations from past lives, will repeatedly walk in lock-step through a series of painful and devastating experiences. Sadly, material opportunities must be provided for the execution of the belief system programming.  The projected imagery of millions of negative expectations from millions of minds (I will be hurt, I will be hated, I will be tortured, I will be dehumanized, I will be victimized, I will be annihilated, I will never have enough food, I will always be unsafe...) creates an intensely psychically reinforced shared reality which is extremely vivid and often tragically violent.  But these terrible tragedies are not "fated". They are the result of psycho-emotional thought projection which can be avoided by purifying the thoughts. In devastating scenes of unspeakable dehumanization and satanic violence, many lives are brutally traumatized or destroyed. However, many are only somewhat affected. Some are nearly untouched. That is why IMO karma can only be accurately predicted at the individual level. It is interesting to look at the survivors, and those who remain unscathed. How can good, bad, and neutral results all emerge from what appears to be an unpspeakably evil event? The Collective Unconscious Carl Jung expressed the function of large groups of people with a shared subconscious expectation as "the collective unconscious". It is the power of what Jung calls the "collective unconscious" which manifests these dreadful and tragic large-scale events. So long as parents teach their children to hate and be hated, so long as religions and school systems reinforce cultural divisiveness, so long as material manifestation is pronounced as the ultimate (rather than the least important) expression of reality, the cycle of terrible, large-scale catastrophic destruction can be expected to continue. Supervisory Intelligence At another level of perception, it may be useful to consider that the psychic imagery of Earth (this house of mirrors in which we earthlings live!) is governed by a large hierarchy of supervising intelligence. This directing intelligence creates the conditions necessary to satisfy the requirements of each individual script.  Mainly, the planetary "set designers" have an easy job to manage the earthly theatre of operations. It is easy, so long as humans remain trapped in a predictable cycle of endless animal desires for sensual pleasures, physical survival, and ego thrills like political domination.  Their job becomes more challenging as individual humans break out of the cycle of endless repetition of old patterns of anger, jealousy, rage, sexual lust, etc - the classic bondage entrapments.  When some individuals start to break out of the "pack mentality", the supervisors have to set things up in a way that allows individual variation of experience within the same material environment. I.e., in a bloody ethnic war, some people experience unspeakable terror and death; while some people experience panicked fear with eventual traumatized survival; and perhaps some people see (and use) an opportunity for spiritually transformative compassionate action. All of the sudden, terrifying, life-threatening, catastrophic, explosive turnings of the cycle of birth and death are represented by the "randhra" angle of Jyotisha - the "8th-from" angle. Calamitous consequences may be predicted vis-à-vis the 8th-from the lagna for the subject matter being examined.  8th-from Randhra (meaning "aperture", specifically the soft spot in the top center skull [the 'fontanel'] which marks the kundalini channel toward divine power) is the angle of magical transformation. That is, change of material form created through a change of psychic imagery (magic). Involuntary change-of-form is terrifying - Shani programs humans to resist change of form at all costs! But voluntary cooperation with the massive collective force which mandates large-scale and violent change-of-form can yield positive spiritual development. Great saints may emerge in times of terrible trouble on earth.  Therefore IMO Jyotisha cannot say for certain that a whole nation or tribe or village is in "danger". Of course it is possible to assert a lagna of some type for the nation, or for the family or the tribe. Then one could watch for untoward influence upon that lagna or the 8th-from it.  However, while many will suffer and perish in these miseries, some will survive, and some are sufficiently advanced to "turn a profit" spiritually speaking, by responding to the tragedy with compassionate thought and action.  It is also possible for anyone, who is dying from any material cause whatsoever, to realize brilliant enlightenment in the final sixty second judgment review, immediately before the spirit breaks its connection to the physical body.  For one of noble spirit, who trusts absolutely in divine guidance, it is possible to die in outwardly terrifying circumstances, yet inwardly free of fear. The conditions of life, it turns out, are mere preparations for the spiritually "mission critical" conditions of death. Perhaps a violent death was the last item on this native's karmic "to-do" list, and having satisfied that court-ordered restitution, the native can now die in exhilarating bliss, knowing that one is done with it!  My own perspective is that Jyotisha cannot predict the movements of the imagery of the collective unconscious with any degree of accuracy. Clairvoyant and clairaudient intuitives can see the patterns of shock and disorder arising in the form of chthonic spirits, who display burning heat, dark ominous colors, and threatening sounds. Warnings of global or local catastrophe can emerge from these shamanistic observers with great accuracy.  However Jyotisha tools are focused primarily on the individual path of navigation through the larger events. Even in the old days when nakshatra Jyotisha was used mainly to predict success in royal battle, astrologers used the nativity of the individual warrior kings as a baseline for the forecast. Thus IMO Jyotisha is less effective for predicting general conditions that may produce a wide variation in individual response.
	updated: 30 May 2009   Copyright © 1994-2015 by Barbara Pijan Lama - Contact - Sitemap - How to Request a Jyotisha Reading - www.barbarapijan.com - Barbara Pijan Lama Jyotisha Jyotish Vedic Astrology Horoscope Readings Surya Sun Chandra Moon Mangala Mars Budha Mercury Guru Jupiter Shukra Venus Shani Saturn Rahu Ketu Graha Planets Dasha Timeline Nakshatra Navamsha Marriage Children Wealth Career Spiritual Wisdom Death