Vocation

Elementary School Teacher

Behind lock-down doors in a low-income, high-risk, government elementary school

Optimistic, modest and deeply appreciated by children and community

This retired, beloved teacher has served thousands of young children over the course of her long public service in classroom education.

Shani = L-10 Navamsha = Lord of Career

According to Varahamihira, because Makara rashi rules the 10th navamsha, this native's livelihood should be related to one of the traditional career areas for Shani: manual labor, killing, speculation, real estate, gambling, or horse trading. In fact, the native teaches in a K-5 school where her duties are considerably more genteel.

Shani Lifetime government employee. Worked the same hours, in the same location, performing the same duties, for nearly 35 years.

According to Phaladeepika, the navamsha sign occupied by radix L-10 Surya gives career information .

• the native works in a low-income government school serving the urban underclass. Her students come from families torn by drug addiction (Ketu), gang violence (Kuja), poverty (Shani), and rage (Chandra/Kuja). (Shani/Ketu/Chandra/Kuja =Vrischika/12)

• She enjoys a steady, well-paid government job (L-2+L-3 Shani), including the career teacher's prize: three months annual vacation (Guru/9).

• Musically and artistically gifted (uchcha Shukra/4) this educator has delighted the children with high permission for cultural song and dance. Music relieves much of the stress and boredom of strict classroom discipline, and gives low academic achievers an alternate route to social success.

1. Lord of the Navamsha position of Radix L-10 - as the lord behaves in radix = Shani

• Shani occupies dusthamsha Vyaya sthana: "buried" in the foreign, dreamlike sanctuary of the inner subconscious

• Shani = yuti the tantrik swakshetra Kuja indicating skillful negotiation of danger and underhanded dealings

• Shani + Rahu, indicating foreigners and taboo dealings

• Shani + Neechcha Chandra indicating emotional trauma, therapeutic potential (but no guarantee of realizing this potential) and profound emotional sensitivity

• Shani = radix L-2+L-3 for speech, song, communications, values

• Shani receives no graha drishti.

2. Lord of the Dashamsha position of Radix L-10 - as He behaves in radix = Shukra

the native works in a very female-dominated environment.

Radix Shukra

Uchcha Shukra in bhava-4 of radix indicates the mother and cultural roots of the mother's lineage. Indeed the mother and a sister are exceptionally gifted in musical and artistic talent. Women of the family include several concert-quality musicians, and a gifted fine-arts weaver, sculptor, and painter. the native herself received an excellent quality arts education with musical training from infancy, due to the strong arts values of the mother's lineage.

Shani = career ruler for an artistically gifted school teacher?

Generally, school-teaching is a white-collar activity not associated with rough and unschooled Shani.

Is there justification for interpreting Shani as the major career indicator for this elementary school teacher?

Let's consider her reality:

• classroom teachers, who talk all day with very little respite, need a strong talking-house lord. L-2+ L-3, and L-5 are talking houses. (2nd rules mouth/speech; 2nd-from-2nd = 3rd; 3rd-from-3rd = 5th.)

• Government or corporate mid-level employees must have the administrative skills and patience necessary to function in bureaucracies. L-3 Shani is the "bureaucracy lord" in charge of meetings, memoranda, requisition forms, referral forms, and a universe of other forms... which are the currency of any bureaucracy

• Rahu = foreigners and underclass, outcaste, taboo persons or groups. the native teaches children of underclass immigrant families who have fled the crushing poverty of their home countries seeking a better life in the USA. Unfortunately lacking education or marketable skills themselves, these parents suffer continuing poverty in their new home. Their children struggle with new language and foreign customs. Rahu in 12 indicates foreign affiliations; with Mars, add violence. With uchcha Moon, add anger and despair.

• Swakshetra Kuja oppresses Shani. The Vrischika planets in degree order are: Chandra, Kuja, Rahu, and the lowest degree is Shani. We should read Shani therefore as doing the bidding of Chandra, Kuja, and Rahu. Luckily we face no additional complications from graha drishti!

• Chandra as neechcha L-8 is both a serious troublemaker and a major healer in vyaya bhava. This native is a rescuer, who understands her spiritual mission to be the salvation of one or two children each year (from a class of more than forty) who would otherwise be destroyed by the forces of poverty, crime, and despair. neechcha Chandra is associated with prostitution, substance addiction, and international smuggling. the native works in a social culture infused with all of these events.

• Shani forms a wealth yoga+ L-2 in 11th-from-swakshetra. Also L-11 is exalted Shukra in kendra. This native works with the underclass but she hails from a wealthy family and her job is well-paying. Shani does not impoverish her, but it does create a career dealing with the impoverished, dispossessed, drug-addicted, and terminally angry.

• Kuja as L-5+L-12 is the healthiest of Shani's companions. L-5 is a bhagya house of speculation, theatre, joyful self-expression, and children. L-12 is the sanctuary house that provides peaceful respite from the chaos of the outside world. the native 's classroom is in fact the realization of these multiple factors: sanctuary, emotional catharsis of anger (with potential healing), collision of cultures and taboo acts, along with the sometimes oppressive stability of government bureaucracy and public law.

In fact, if we did not appreciate the social demographics of this teacher's career situation (in which she has practiced diligently and never left for easier circumstances in over thirty years - another proof of Shani's persistence!) it would be hard to conceive how the rough life of Shani could predict the normally genteel career of a middle class schoolmarm.

However, the fact that her classroom is an island of relative calm in a sea of violence, anger, and despair - and that her children daily bring in to school all the trauma that this cluster of volatile, combative planets in Vrischika/12 suggests - does justify Shani as the teacher's career lord.

Guru = lord of Dashamsha = lagnesha= 10th-from-Chandra

• lagnesha Guru occupies 10th-from-Chandra, showing that this native's psycho-emotional service instincts are fundamentally humanistic (strong Guru). While tolerant of the dehumanizing effects of large, anonymous public institutions, this native is a powerfully compassionate person whose essential nature is generous and optimistic. She sees each person as a full human being. Her belief in the transformative power of education has never wavered over decades of stressful practice.

• Guru's role as lord of Dashamsha gives Guru almost as much career-defining power as Shani.

• hus a profoundly humanistic, generous and wealthy person (Guru) brings her optimism and faith in the power of education into a crime-ridden, impoverished and neglected school system crippled by restrictive rules and under-funding. Guru and Shani.

When I conveyed the Shani career indicators to this native, she said,

"You know, you're incredibly right about my professional life. I am officially a teacher but really I am a social worker, crisis counselor, probation officer, and cop.

Most of the people who graduated from my teacher training class at university, immediately went on to teach in mainstream schools. They have no idea what I do every day.

Most of my job is crisis management - with eight year olds! These kids have no childhood. Their parents have so much anger; their parents are insane. Drugs, murder, extortion, prostitution -- the kids feel it - danger everywhere. My kids come to school with bruises, black eyes, and hungry.Their parents get high on drugs and throw them out, sometimes at night. They don't get food. They get hit. Of course the kids are crazy. They're crazy and they're mad as hell.

Is there any learning going on? No. We're not learning. We're surviving. Our school tests at the bottom of the state, at the bottom of the country. This is one of the roughest areas in the country. When I started teaching decades ago we had nasty poverty, and all the abuse that goes with being dirt-poor. But now we have poverty plusdrug gangs. Almost all of my kids have a family member who's been murdered.

You got it right - this is rough work. The only good thing is the money, which is hardly worth it, considering the stress. I'm a wreck from this work. Most teachers leave within a year or two. I'd leave, but I feel responsible for these kids. When I hear that one of my kids has graduated from high school, I feel like it's all been worth it. Maybe they'll survive, stay out of prison, get a job. But most days, it's really too hard."

Frankly, when first analyzing this chart, I doubted the Shani interpretation. despite seeing the birth certificate for this native, I wondered if there might be some error in the navamsha. However, the native herself confirmed that Shani is telling the truth. Preconceptions about the normal conditions of the teaching profession must be set aside. This dedicated educator suffers the classic "rough work" of law-imposing, poverty-inducing Shani.

A dditional career indicators:

L-10 and L-7 = Budha

• For Dhanur lagna, the main radix career indicator will always be Budha. Dhanur lagna is historically associated with teaching, clerkship, and scribal duties. Budha occupies a talking house (2), where in Makara Budha is constrained by tradition and public law; conservative in expression; and tolerant of the slow, safe movements of bureaucracy.

• While not especially innovative, this Budha is patient and polite.

• The education industry is the single largest employer in the United States, and public education is the single largest institution. A tolerance for the detailed bureaucratic policies which govern large organizations, and an appreciation of mainstream traditions, support the "talking" function of Budha as career lord within a very large, rule-driven hierarchical social structure.

• L-10 Budha occupies 5th-from-10th, an auspicious angle that benefits wealth-building from public service

Shani + Budha + Chandra

Shani's effect on mental, verbal, and emotional communication in a high-stress, low-innovation career

• Shani Owns and casts drishti upon L-10+L-7 Makara-Budha, which strengthens the career-defining role of Shani

• Shani also joins Chandra, Kuja, and Rahu in bhava-12,the territory of emotional reaction and private imagination.

• Shani's powerful influence upon both Chandra (emotional-reactive mind) and Budha (mentality, communicative mind) indicates that this native has a remendous need for stability, security, and routinein both mental and emotional transactions. She has a traumatized background (visible through bhava-12) and she is attracted to professional environments that validate her emotional programming.

• the native is highly intelligent and professionally capable. However, Budha's restrictions have created an educational career that is based on values of safety, legality, and protection of self and students, rather than creativity, academic achievement, or other more luxurious values often embraced by educators in more privileged settings.

• Conservative Budha indicates that this educator does not engage in theorizing, experimentation, or innovation. She accepts the limitations of her community environment. Her steady, conventional, safety oriented approach has facilitated her professional survival for nearly 30 years, in a service ministry with very high burn-out rates.

• the native 's spoken expression is highly conventionalized, bureaucracy-speak, clipped, repeating platitudes and truisms, and other "safe" speech functions. Verbal style imitates the speech of the disenfranchised classes, including extensive back-channeling and "witnessing"that indicate participation and approvalwithout adding any potentially disruptive new content. (Belying her elite education, and atypical of the educator class in general.) There is a noticeable reluctance to challenge authority. Complain, yes; challenge or innovate, no.

• Her mental and emotional preference for repetitive, parochial, "talk-show" verbal style, while somewhat incommensurable with her superior arts education and a wealthy upbringing, has smoothed the way to a long career and great appreciation within her drug, exploitation, and violence-torn community. She is a bulwark of dependable predictability.

• Her willingness and ability to repeat the same information and instructions, every day for thirty years, to accept the chronic cycle of ignorant self-destruction within the community as "the way it is", and simply to show up for work every day, has provided thousands of children with an island of stability and safety. For six hours each day, on school days, they are loved and accepted (if not much "improved") for exactly who they are.

Surya

• Budha's companion Surya is low-powered ego in Shani's sign, looking for a safe identity within a large organization.

• ShaniOwns and casts drishti upon Surya, which strengthens the career-defining role of hierarchical, conformist Shani

• Surya occupies 5th-from-10th, an auspicious angle that benefits wealth-building from public service

A rudha of Karma Bhava ("Karma Pada") = Ketu/6

• like most workers, this native stays out of the limelight. Her job provides no celebrity status nor has she received awards or honors for decades of public service. Ketu in the difficult 6th house gives perceptive acuity and rational disconnectedness from the conflicts that surround her. the native does not talk about her work except with her immediate colleagues. Ketu in the arudha of karma bhava shows that her larger regardless of the dignity of her service, her public reputation is obscured.

• Ketu = 10th-from-lagnesha, strengthening the claim of general obscurityfor her overall professional reputation (i.e., unwillingness to "blow one's own horn".) the native is self-effacing about her work.

updated:18 May 2012

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