Yes, akriti yogas are important. Also, sanyasi yogas. Here we have moon with saturn aspected by Mars and that motivated him to just do the work and get finished with the pain. He also has Yogakaraka in l agna and its with Sun who is a neutral planet and so takes on the sharing of the raja yoga.
@amit I just saw Ernst´s answer. Do you know if Ernsts teaches Sanyasi yogas in some course? There is a video in the Yoga judgment coruse in which he speaks about "moksha" yogas; are those Sanyasi yogas?
Staffan
I think you can find sanyas yogas in the Kala spiritual yogas. Also 4 or more planets can be a combination for sanyas.
Moksha yogas can show retreating from the world into ashram too.
I also believe that sometimes being an enlightened or a saint may be operating outside of the chart. Beating the odds. Remember Yoganando chose the worst moment, astrologically, for to initiate projects, just to prove to himself and others that he did not depend on what the stars dictated.
Staffan
P.Yogananda's chart is actually having perfect yogas for success except for his sun which is starving in the 6th house. So he didn't like the idea of institution while actually wanting to meditate in Himalayas.
However with the sun in 6th and Rahu in the 10th, he was obligated to deliver his service in the world anyways.
Sri Yukteswar corrected him for his ideas about astrology that stars are in perfect alignment as per the karma of the individual and not the other way round.
I am not sure when he tried to deliberately attempt to do things out of muhurtha because he wanted to prove it wrong.His idea was like don't be dependant on stars in a pathological way because at the end you are the one creating your destiny and so your first faith should be on the God within yourself. I think many people misunderstand him about astrology because he placed greater attention meditating on the indwelling soul more so than any other thing including astrology. But many people take it you should not do astrology at all which is like blind following. It's like you should not do a particular profession which is what he really didn't mean. I think that time Astrology didn't pick enough in order to be used as a tool to work out psychological health and even today most people only want to know the favourable things coming through astrology rather than using it for self analysis. That's why I believe he didn't advocate it knowing people will get stuck in its pitfalls rather than real benefits.
@amit Very well described, and I agree. I´m still playing with the thought that some people, in some rare circumstances, might step out of their charts. Not saying that it has to be so, it´s more an idea. Like an utter consecuence of having a free will.
Staffan
I think that the only and the most essential way we need to step out of our charts is to destroy the bad LAs and embrace Ra/Ke and the outer planets. These are the most difficult parts of the chart.
Perfect. Churning the ocean, first the poison will come out followed by nectar as in samundra manthan!
@amit That myth is the best description ever given to the spiritual/evolutionary path, I think. We dream about liberation and chanting with the angles - very similar to the eternal christian dream of reaching heaven. But what we have to focus on are our avasthas and Rahu/Ketu, just as you said.
Staffan
@amit As an illustration of how holyness is often reached only after a sinful life and a drastic conversion, life presented Tolstoy´s short story "The Godson" to me.
My God, Tolstoy must have be the best writer that has ever lived! If one is into self-development as a spiritual path.
I used to read a lot when young and later in life lost the appetite. I don´t think I read more than one book a year, or so. But now, that I´ve found my way back to Tolstoy, we´ll see what happens.
Staffan
I checked Tolstoy´s chart btw, and if the calculations are right (sept 9 1828 at 22.52 according to astro.com), he has the Yupa "sacrificial pillar" akriti.
Jupiter in GF in the 5th.
Staffan
@staffan Tolstoy would be very interesting to analyze - I absolutely love him as an author, I also very much love the empathy towards animals he lived by and preached about in the second half of his life. At the same time he was, it seems, extremely cruel and cold towards his wife - who mothered 13 of their children. She was begging him not to get her pregnant, as each subsequent pregnancy was excruciatingly painful and life threatening for her (he didn't care). It's a shame we don't have a database of everyone's exact birthtimes, imagine how much Astrology could progress if we did.
@nkan What you wrote got me curious and I learned more about Sophia Tolstoya from Wikipedia. I didn´t know that Anna Karenina was to a certain degree auto biographical. When he makes her read about his sexual adventures with the female servants... Tolstoy had the 5th lord in the 7th house, that may create sexual addiction, I remember Ernst saying once (if I remember him right).
Staffan
@staffan yeah it's one of the bad marriage yogas - lord of 7th in the 5th, or lord of 5th in the 7th "kills your wife". Explains a lot doesn't it!
Mercury with Venus in the 7th makes someone a "rake" as far as I remember, or simply denies marrage, and is only mitigated by a Jupiter aspect (in which case the marriage comes later in life). So yeah those marriage yogas are very surprising sometimes.
I have another weird one which sounds bad but actually is good for relationships: Lord of the 7th in the 6th.
Even more interestingly, Tolstoy wrote a story about a husband killing his wife: "In 1889, Leo Tolstoy published his book The Kreutzer Sonata. The book advocated for sexual abstinence. Its narrator murders his wife in a fit of jealousy."
Astrology just blows me away sometimes.
@nkan Yep, sexuality seems to have been a huge theme for him. We just discussed that the other day with Amit - was it in this thread even? - how sinful behaviour often times is what propels people towards spiritual development. For which reason it´s hard to identiy a saint by reading their chart - but I agree, there should be some factors that make them possible to identify; at least the suspects.
Staffan
@nkan I always wonder about this gap between a brilliant, humanitarian mind like that of Tolstoy and the private behaviour -apparently it can be two complete different things...would be interesting to see what makes this discrepancy in his chart. It is like if the humanitarian, empathetic part only expresses in that intellectual/creative field while in relating to real things, people, in this case his wife- is difficult and not possible. And maybe he could only express that in real life towards animals....my speculation and eventually far-fetched.
@tamarap yeah it seems to be a thing with many people, in the end we humans are all very contradictory and multifaceted beings. The saying "do as I say, not as I do" comes to mind.
It's why many of us prefer the company of nature and animals, much less stress and drama that way 🙂
@nkan With that said: We must not judge. Only observe. For a starter, none of us were there.
Staffan
@nkan Just checked his nakshatra and it´s Uttara Phalguni. Which I personally find interesting, since it´s also my nakshatra. Very focused on having a life partner. I imagine that it might have caused an inner conflict to Lev Tolstoy, since he apparently also wanted to be a renunciate... That´s not the right way for people with Moon in Uttara Phalguni, I´d say. May explain some of his frustration.
His Mercury is in Uttara Phalguni too. Isn´t it interesting how he advocates for a harmonious marriage and man and husband working together - Levin and Kitty - in Anna Karenina? One could even say that it´s the main theme of the novel, and that Anna herself and Vronsky represents the wrong way, while Levin and Kitty walks the Uttara Phalguni way.
Both Moon and Mercury are agitated by the Sun. Mercury is also the 12th lord. 12th lord agitated - a recipy for frustration on the path of renuncation, perhaps?
Staffan
He had Saturn in conjunction with Venus in his second house - again, if the birthhime is correct. But it seems quite possible, since it puts Jupiter in the 5th and gives him a Yupa, the sacrificial pillar, akriti yoga.
Saturn in DK, and it´s with Mars in the Navamsa.
Having Rahu in the 4th house in Libra can´t have been helpul neither.
Nor the agitated Moon or Saturn starved Moon. And unsurprisingly Saturn is starved too, by the Sun as well as by Mars.
Sept 9 1828, 22.52, Tula
Yes, a moksha path (if that´s the vedic word for it; I´m mostly unfamiliar with the tradition) is often hard to combine with marriage, of course. It was now many years since I saw the movie about his last time in life, "The last station", but as I remember it that inner struggle of him - and of his wife, to cope with it - was quite well depicted. I didn´t know the details you are providing though.
Staffan