A very, very warm welcome to the Holistic Astrology Podcast from Bhagyashree Holistic Astrology. Here we discuss astrology in a more wholesome and holistic light and try to understand its deepest concepts in the simplest way possible. This is Season 1, Episode 5 and today we will talk about Ascendants or Rising Signs.
Over the past few years, Ascendants or Rising signs have become very popular. I explicitly remember a time when all that people asked for was your moon sign. Now, we have become more aware and pay attention to our ascendants or rising signs as well.
An Ascendant is called lagna in vedic astrology. It is the first house of your kundli or birth chart. Remember, Indian vedic astrology divids your kundli or birth chart into 12 houses. Each house represents a part of your life.
According to Indian astrology, your ascendant is the sign that rises from the east when you were born. For instance, let’s assume that you were born in New Delhi at 6 am in the morning. Whichever sign appeared on the east when you were born becomes your ascendant or rising sign or lagna.
This sign could be any of the 12 signs of the zodiac, starting with Aries and ending with Pisces. The rising sign tells you about your physical or material reality. It defines the way you look and also defines your outlook.
In simple terms, this is known as the ‘tanu bhav’ or the house of the body. Your physical being is reflected in this house and it tells us about your height, your weight, even your metabolism. We can get to know about how your facial features are shaped, how much body hair you will have and what kind of diseases you are naturally susceptible to.
It also defines your life path, your career trajectory, the way you like to look at the world and its people, what kind of temperament you have and what kind of people you get attracted to. It tells us how you will eventually end up behaving at a job or in a relationship and how you will express yourself to the world.
For instance, people born in Aries ascendants look at the world from a wide-eyed, creative but action oriented point of view. On the other hand, people born in Taurus ascendants have a more conservative and accumulative nature. Those born in Pisces prefer to sail gently and comfortably without offending or hurting anyone while those born in Leo prefer to exert their unique personalities.
Every sign has a lord. We already know that vedic astrology takes 9 planets into account. Of these, Rahu and Ketu are shadow planets and do not rule over any signs.
The Sun and the Moon control Leo and Cancer signs.
Mars controls Aries and Scorpio.Venus controls Taurus and Libra.Mercury controls Gemini and Virgo. Jupiter controls Sagittarius and Pisces. Saturn controls Capricorn and Aquarius.
We need to check the placement of the ascendant lord in your chart to understand if your results will be expressed strongly or weakly. We have to check the sign in which the ascendant lord is placed and the house it is placed in.
Apart from this, we also need to check the aspects on the ascendant house and the ascendant lord.
Finally, we need to check for planets occupying the ascendant.
Understanding these placements is critical to knowing the physical realities and the physical manifestation of your atma or soul.
We can find more specific results about the lagna or ascendant by understanding the rising nakshatra and nakshatra pada or the drekkanas of the ascedants.
The reason why Ascendants are gaining more popularity these days is because they provide more specific results in your kundli. Not to forget, the physical realities often take precedence over our mental realities. Our mental makeup is defined by our moon sign.
Now remember, Moon changes its position almost every 2.5 days. This means that people born in this period will have similar mental makeups. We obviously can’t call it the same because the moon changes nakshatras and nakshatra pads as well. However, in general, the moon sign for 2.5 days remains the same.
Lagna changes every 2 hours. This means that within 24 hours, the lagna will change 12 times.
To apply it practically, people born on the same day will have the same moon sign but different lagnas. This kind of changes their personality. Now add the specifics like nakshatras and nakshatra pads and you have really different people being born on the same day.
So the next time somebody tells you why people born on the same day, have different personalities- tell them the reason.
That’s all for today. Hope to see next week as well when we discuss the first ascendant- Aries and the kind of personalities it produces.
Good day and may Ma Bhagwati bless you!