It is something that allocates the good and bad in a person’s life based on the good and bad that they had done. In other words, it makes sure that what goes around comes around. It can also be seen as a balancing sheet that sees to it that the deeds done by a soul, good or bad, do not go unrewarded.

Modern astrology is heavily dependent, if not completely dependent, on horoscope. Sadly, horoscope cannot delve deep into an individual’s oozh. A birth chart that can only give an insight into a possible future.,Today’s astrologers do not consider the possibility of a bad oozh, which would be a major road block to any blessings that may reach them if it were not for the nature of their client’s oozh.

No, they do not. Only Prasna helps in identifying the nature of an individual’s oozh. A horoscope can, however, be accurate to a considerable extent. For this, it uses a feature called Dasai.

Dasai is nothing but the planet that has a hold of us its specific period of time. Each planet has its own spell of influence over a star sign. This Dasai is then divided into Buddhi, which is further divided into Andhara. Andhara is divided into Prana and Prana is divided into Sutchuma. The deeper we go into this sub categorization, the more accurate will our deduction of the time at which something will take place.

A horoscope is analyzed in two different ways – the planetary alignments at the time mentioned in the horoscope(time of birth) and that at the time at which the horoscope is analyzed.

Every benison that falls upon a person is predefined and is based solely on the birth time’s planetary arrangement. The arrangement at the present time is called Gotcharam. This Gotcharam can alter the effects of the horoscopic arrangement of the planets at the time of birth.

Every planet in our solar system is constantly at motion. Even our entire solar system is moving as a whole. With the help of Ganitha, one can say where a planet will be at any point in time. For this, it uses zodiac, stars, and planets. The position of the planets and stars are vital for inference of what our future holds for us.

Even a variation of one minute can lead to vast differences in predictions when compared to real life. The 360⁰ that the Earth takes to rotate around the Sun is divided into 12 signs of the zodiac, each sign taking 30⁰. The orbit is also divided into 27 stars, each taking 13⁰20’. Thus, each zodiac can have up to three star signs.

Gola uses Ganitha to study the motion of celestial bodies, their nature, speed, circumference, distance as well as revolutionary speed.

Aryabhatta revolutionized the fields of astronomy, maths, and astrology. His time was well over 1500 years before ours. Many of his conclusions have been confirmed by modern science. His value of pi was accurate to four decimal places. He has clearly mentioned the reason behind the occurrence of eclipses and the time when they would take place in his works. He was called ‘The father of Indian astronomy’.

We know that a zodiac has 30⁰ and each degree has 60’. This means that each zodiac has 1800’.
It takes 24 hours for the earth to rotate around the sun. As there are 12 zodiacs, each would take 2 hours (120 minutes).
120 minutes = 1 zodiac = 1800’
1 minute = 1800/120 = 15’
60 seconds = 1 minute = 15’
Ergo, 1’ = 4 seconds.
It is apparent that with a difference in just four seconds, the appropriate element for an individual would change leading to massive confusions.

This 4 second difference is regarding the accurate birth time. In today’s world, a natural delivery has become a rarity. Moreover, there are those who seek astrologers for an auspicious date and time of C-section for the delivery, much like they would do for knee replacement surgeries and other major operations. Nowadays, it is the people who determine the birth of their child and not nature. When the situation is as such, one cannot help but wonder the mammoth discrepancies in horoscope, its calculation and prediction of such children’s future.

The Indus Valley Civilization is considered as the first civilization in India. The people who settled here were called Aryans. They were settlers from Mesopotamia who traversed the lands across Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan who reached the Indus River. Their time was 3300 BC – 1900 BC.

Every benison that falls upon a person is predefined and is based solely on the birth time’s planetary arrangement. The arrangement at the present time is called Gotcharam. This Gotcharam can alter the effects of the horoscopic arrangement of the planets at the time of birth.

A translated excerpt on the Tamil people from the literary work called Purapporul Venpa Maalai (9th century AD) says, “Kal thondri mann thondra kaalathae vaalodu mun thondriya mootha kudi” which means, “The first people who appeared with weapons (for hunting) before the time of mountains and agriculture”

In the late stages of prehistoric time, there was a land called Kumari Kandam in the southern part of the Indian subcontinent. It was ruled splendidly by the Pandiyas with South Madurai (present Kanyakumari) as its capital. The Pandiyas are the proud contributors to developing the Tamil language by founding the famous Mudhal Tamil Sangam (first Tamil society) and Idai Tamil Sangam (Mid Tamil society) in South Madurai.

Disastrously, waves of tsunamis swallowed the majority of the great empire’s lands.
In order to recuperate the lost terrains, the Pandyan rulers went on to wage wars on the Cheras and Cholas who were then due north. When they felt the lands conquered were adequate, they stopped the wars and began to rule rather peacefully. However, the three kingdoms were almost always at each other’s throats. The three kingdoms stretched virtually throughout modern India. They were together called the Dravidians.

The recorded history in Tamil literature and that of the Romans (as well as the Greeks) suggest that there have been numerous trades between the Dravidians and the west that date as far back as c. 1800 BC. The goods included ghee, silk, incense, pearls, and many more. Along with products, cultures, knowledge, philosophies, ideologies, tradition, respect and other incorporeal aspects were also bartered and shared between the Dravidians and the West more than 3500 years ago.

The principles of astronomy are called ideologies.
There are five ideologies viz.,
Brahma Siddhantham
Romasa Siddhantham
Suriya Siddhantham
Vashista Siddhantham
Boulya Siddhantham

The time period is categorized into four namely:
1. Kredhayugam - 17,28,000 years
2. Threthayugam - 12,96,000 years
3. Thuvaparayugam - 8,64,000 years
4. Kaliyugam - 4,32,000 years
The total of the four categories give 43,20,000 years. This is 2000 times the average breaths taken by an adult in one day. This is what is known as a Sadhuyugam.
71 Sadhuyugam = 1 Manvanthram
1 Manvanthram = 30,67,20,000 years
14 Manvanthram = 1 Kalbam
1 Kalbam = 4,29,40,80,000 years
Lord Brahma’s day is equal to two Kalbams. Hence, the current age of Lord Brahma is 50 years.

A soul goes through many lives before finally becoming one with God. This birth, death, and rebirth is a vicious cycle that is actually a painful ordeal. It is only when a soul surrenders to the Supreme Being that it reaches a state of beatification and escapes the cycle. According to Thiruvalluvar,
They swim the sea of births, the 'Monarch's' foot who gain;
none others reach the shore of being's mighty main.
It means, “Those who keep birthing in this world are those who are yet to reach God”.

A soul’s purpose is to reach God and for that, it has to let go of all the distractions on Earth. In order to do that, it must lose interest in the worldly aspects like happiness, sadness, and other similar things along with their root causes. When this happens, the soul will finally be open to divinity

We must understand that all the good and bad that comes into our lives are simply results of our past deeds. This past is not just the time before the present until the time of birth but also the entirety of the previous life.This is also the reason why even the blessings hinted to happen by the planets fail to take place in real life.In such cases, it is imperative that we look into the reasons behind the deprivations because, without the proper counter measures, things will turn out to be worse than previously anticipated.

Rebirth is when the soul gains a new host. The type of body that a soul chooses depends on the experiences, qualities and characteristics that it went through and possessed in the previous life. All these are recorded as memories and are ingrained in it and are uploaded into the new body in its next life. It is somewhat similar to a seed having the records of the physical qualities of the tree that it is going to grow up to be. This is exactly why no two individuals have the exact bodies.

The records are also responsible for deciding the time of fertilization of the egg as well as the time of delivery of the baby. Thus, the soul simply follows its protocol of selecting the apt body based on the variables from its previous life and chooses the underlying factors, the constants, which makes the horoscope of its new life.

Only with the help of all six tools in astrology (Horoscope, Prasna, Muhurtha, Nimittha, Ganitha, and Gola), can one get in touch with one’s past and do appropriate actions that would help him/her achieve true happiness and eventually, divinity.

A horoscope has three details – time, date, and place of birth. These decide the zodiac, the star, and the possible outcomes of a person’s future.

Calculations in astrology need to be meticulous as even a four second variation could easily result in the wrong zodiac and consequently lead to a lot of confusions when consulting with an astrologer. Hence, it is apparent that the right time of birth is of paramount importance.

Some say it is when crowning occurs, others say it is when the baby is fully out of the mother. A few others insist it is when the baby begins to cry or when it takes its first breath. Sadly, none of them are right. According to astrology, the time to be noted is the time of fertilization of the egg.

Ancient works on astrology gives us the necessary equations required to determine the exact moment of fertilization of the egg. It is said that that time is always in some proportion to the time of birth. The concept is similar to that of planting a seed in the ground. The tree that it would grow up to be depends on the time of its planting.

Almanacs form the basis of analyzing a horoscope. If a horoscope is a birth chart that has the details of the planetary alignments at the exact moment of fertilization, then an almanac is a collection of all the horoscopes. It has all the placements of all the planets and stars for every instance in time.

Everyone knows that the Sun is the center of our solar system and that all the planets rotate around it. In truth, the Sun steadily deviates a certain angle each year. The reason that there are many almanacs in the world is due to the fact that each of these adopt their own value of the deviation of the sun. This deviation is a variable that one must take into calculation for every year and every calculation. The degree of deviation that is under discussion is what is called as ayanamsam.

Not all places receive dawn at the same time. For example, the city Chennai would have its sunrise at 06:09 whereas the city Coimbatore, which is just 500kms south west of it, would have its sunrise at 06:18. There is a lag of about 10 minutes within a single state. Considering the fact that the calculations are extremely sensitive, one can understand how pivotal it is in astrology.
It is only with this time that a person’s star and Lagnam are assigned. And the results of the analyses are heavily dependent upon lagnam. We know that a day has 24 hours. In astrology, each zodiac takes two hours of a day. Depending on the time of sunrise, the lagnam will fall on a particular zodiac. As mentioned earlier, it is only with this lagnam that a horoscope’s results can be interpreted.

If a lagnam is Aries, cancer will take the fourth place and in this case, predictions on maternal household and vehicles will be made. If the lagnam moves a Taurus, Cancer will take third place. In this case, predictions on brotherhood will be made. Hence, lagnam is just as important as any other detail in astrology.

Each planet in astrology has its own time period to complete one full rotation around the Earth. Some may take years, some months. The moon takes a mere 2.25 days for one rotation. Since it is the only factor determining the star to which a person belongs to, it could be disastrous if one were to misread the time of sunrise or make any errors in calculations.

Ravana is a fictional character in the epic Ramayana. With his pious penance, he was able to bring all the planets under his feet, enabling him to bend the planets to his will. With such power, he could have become anyone, done anything he wanted. Instead, he met his end by doing an ignoble action. This in itself shows that though the planets have a strong hold of us, it does not necessarily mean that they would make us invincible. The planets are merely moderators.

There are two ways to do this:
(i) Knowing clearly what we want and requesting for just that and,
(ii) letting God decide what is best for us. It should be noted that the first approach has a catch. If something goes wrong, we are the only ones to blame. The second one has no such catch but requires absolute faith in God. The Pandavas in the epic Mahabharatham stuck to the second approach, which helped them win the war with the help of Lord Krishna.

“Thirukanitha Panchangam”, which is practiced in Tamilnadu, is a close second to Epimeris. Apart from these, there are many others like Arcaud Panchangam. Since they differ in the value of ayanamsam, they are mostly used for general events like vastu, marriage related activities etc.

Today, there are more number of almanancs in the world than there are colors. There is only a slight offset of one tiny detail between them all but it leads to massive variations in deciding the zodiac, star as well as the shifting of Jupiter and Saturn.
For instance, a particular almanac may suggest that Jupiter shifted from Gemini to Cancer on one month. The same month, another almanac would suggest something contrary to that. It would also be the same in the cases of determining the star positions, which are vital in deducing the muhurtha and other auspicious times for important events. In all these cases, an individual is confronted with baffling encounters and rendered unable in landing on something with solid beliefs.

There is an excerpt in Andal Pasuram, Thiruppavai, that says ‘much like how a tiny spark would turn a mountain of objects to ashes, all our sins and mistakes, even those from our previous lives, will be turned to nothing when we reach God’.

It is essential that one gets in touch with their soul. The concept here is that an individual should accept the bad karma from their past life and digest the hardships as a result of that in the current life. Astrology says such a life is unnecessary and that the hardships can easily be averted with proper use of Prasnam. Prasnam is a part of astrology that deals exclusively with the soul’s past life as well as with the nature and magnitude incurred during the time.