Traps in jyotish! Savdhan researcher!

by
Rohiniranjan, Crystal Pages

Research in jyotish is quite the common endeavour these days. It ranges from the statistical end
to the exploratory end of the spectrum of the term research. Both ends have their problems. At
the statistical end, one of the biggest problem is the unavailability of database resources to most
individuals. Commercial databases are extremely expensive and have their limitations when used
by jyotish researchers; however, any serious number crunching would require one to have a
decent collection of birthdata and charts with biographical details and the software must have
some sort of searching and pattern recognition ability. It is not uncommon and by no means a
new trend amongst jyotishis to put too much emphasis on their own charts or of their few
relatives and friends. While important, this meagre database of a few dozen charts is simply not
adequate and sadly deceptive. The other kind of research is the exploratory kind and deals with
looking for unique ‘astrosignatures’ or tags as they are sometimes called. Traditional tags are
basically all the yogas such as gajkeshari or mahapurusha yogas and the umpteen other
combinations for fame, fortune yogas and the misery or penury arishtas. The exploration can be
of existing combinations or even into novel territory. Either way, it is easy to imagine how
important it is to have a utility that would allow one to test the combination in, not one or two or
even two dozen charts but in hundreds of charts.

A couple of years ago, there was a discussion going on what combinations are necessary for
making one an astrologer. A number of combinations were proposed by the participants, mostly
not even with classical citations, though claimed to be so. One combination which was very
simple was cited as a possibility, with all the caveats. Immediately one experienced person
jumped on this and provided a few examples of obviously non-astrologers who had such a
combination. He also claimed that he had tested the combination in about five hundred charts of
astrologers he had and did not find it to work. He did not elaborate on the details of the charts
and everything hung on ‘trust’. This kind of situation is fairly common and simply unacceptable.
Imagine how things would go if a scientist claims he has found a wonder drug and does not
elaborate on it or the tests he had conducted on the new medicine and expected other doctors to
begin using it on their patients! Anyway, without going into any comparison of scientists and
astrologers, which some may find distasteful, the situation is simply unacceptable and cannot be
called research. There is a lot of distrust in the jyotish scene and many do not like to share their
databases with others, partly for personal reasons (confidentiality of clients or simple
possessiveness and information hoarding) or for ‘malefic’ past experiences when shared or
declared birthdata had been distorted under the garb of “rectification” and the picture made even
more confusing and garbled than it started out to be.

Leaving aside greedy or malicious intent and display thereof, jyotishis being simply ordinary
mortals, one and all, there is sadly an ignorance or unawareness of tricks that ‘numbers’ play on
our perception! One common tendencies is that of many individuals of giving specific percentage
values even when talking about estimates. If someone who has experienced the performance of a
lot of jyotishis over decades states something like: half of them were correct, or three fourths of
them were correct, one gets the sense that an estimate is being expressed and this causes no
lasting confusion. However, when the same person, particularly when a reputed teacher says that
82% of predictions can be correct in experienced hands, the innocent-sounding statement can
cause a lot of false impressions and confusion. Firstly, the quality of the source assuages doubts,
and people tend to accept such statistics with fewer questions (and there is a lot of religious-type
faith in jyotish and amongst jyotishis!), secondly, the only way one can give such specific
percentages (82%) indicates that a documentation of some sort has resulted in the numbers which
may not have been the case. Thirdly, the matter that had been predicted could vary from serious
(illnesses, deaths, bankruptcy, even marriage or finding jobs or immigration) to minor (an illness
averted, a minor accident, a minor setback at home or at work, an infatuation that remained
unexpressed not coming to fruition) etc. Should we be equating these two categories and
lumping those together when preparing the score card for jyotishis? Did the 82% success rate
take into account such finer and extremely important differences? I do not think so! And, many
jyotishis at this point begin to switch camps and run away from numbers and begin to talk about
esoterica and the divine nature of jyotish and find alternative definitions for science and research
and the ‘classroom’ suddenly turns out into Halloween or Holi in India. Very colourful but hard
to identify any meaningful details!

Lest someone be mistaken, I have gone on record for not claiming jyotish as a science or having
solely a numerical/quantitative aspect and am comfortable if one talks qualitatively. After all, not
everything in jyotish is really a mathematical expression or a product that can be defined. Each
individual can honestly view their own predictive record going back some years and judge that.
However, if you are going to throw around numbers, you better know what you are talking about.
Just because jyotish is not a science does not mean that we need to stop talking or thinking about
it scientifically or at least rationally.

Recently, on a forum that has some very fine and energetic jyotishis and jyotish students,
discussion began to address on the issue of ‘sexuality’ and the association of venus and mars, the
classical culprits on this matter and the 7th house. There was also a corollary expressed about
how benefics can reduce the sexual drive and how Saturn and rahu can reduce or enhance the area
under debate. A couple of examples were also discussed indicating the influence of malefics on
venus and the expression of sexuality. I too contributed a few postings indicating that in addition
to the combination in the 7th, there could be other factors in the chart (neither related to mars nor
venus) which led to prominent expression of sexuality.

Regardless of whether this combination (mars and venus in 7th) is associated with sexuality or
hypersexuality etc or not, I thought I will give the astrodatabank software (3.0) a spin and see
what it tells us regarding distribution in its database.

Firstly, I decided to include only charts that met with the Rodden ‘A’ grade quality. Even this
high quality set contains thousands of charts and forms a reasonably useful sample. Next I used
the filters to select charts with ‘sexuality’ issues (using category subset or view). After this, I
added the filter: venus and mars in 7th house. The following distribution was seen for the different
ascendants (e.g., for aries below, the two planets would be in libra, and so on)
 ASCDT Count
Aries 13
Taurus 28
Gemini 26
Cancer 36
Leo 20
Virgo 37
Libra 48
Scorpio 33
Saggitarius 32
Capricorn 33
Aquarius 30
Pisces 13

Aries, leo, pisces seem to have mars and venus in 7th noticeably less than cancer, virgo, libra and
other sign. What does that mean? One could look into things such as: was the database including
charts from a certain subset of birth years or months? This is not the case. Then is it a hemispheric
effect? Births are commoner in certain signs (long ascension) in different hemispheres (north vs
south) or there could be other reasons. All these questions must be considered when doing a
population distribution examination. One obvious thing to examine was if the 'sexuality' sample
biased and had more charts from a certain signs and if that pattern followed the above count
distribution. The following table and chart indeed shows a northern hemispheric (summer signs)
predominance with the middle ascendants being higher in frequency than the two tail
ends.However, the distribution of counts is not quite the same as the ascendant distribution. What
to do?
 ASCDT Count Distribution
Aries 13 159
Taurus 28 208
Gemini 26 259
Cancer 36 274
Leo 20 308
Virgo 37 295
Libra 48 295
Scorpio 33 259
Saggitarius 32 229
Capricorn 33 187
Aquarius 30 151
Pisces 13 126

Now if everything was equally distributed, then the Count % and Distribution % should have
followed a similar (monotonic) pattern; however, as is readily apparent from the numbers below
and more so from the graph that follows that this is not so, at least in the case of some signs, with
leo taking the lion's share (pun intended!). These signs might be hinting at something probably,
but the general distribution is not the same as the summer sign northern hemisphere distribution as
you can see.

ASCDT Count % Distribution %

Aries 3.7 5.8
Taurus 8.0 7.6
Gemini 7.4 9.4
Cancer 10.3 10.0
Leo 5.7 11.2
Virgo 10.6 10.7
Libra 13.8 10.7
Scorpio 9.5 9.4
 Saggitarius 9.2 8.3
Capricorn 9.5 6.8
Aquarius 8.6 5.5
Pisces 3.7 4.6

The point I am trying to make here is that there are many types of biases that can arise even when
one is using a large number of charts. Think of the situation when one is just using a few, even a
couple of dozen charts, let alone just one's own and a brother or father's chart as many jyotish
beginners start out with. Nothing wrong in doing that, as long as one is aware of the pit-falls of
such a superficial approach.

While this discussion was in progress (still is at the time of writing this), someone asked: What
happens if moon, venus rahu and mars are in the 11th house? The concern probably triggered by a
combination in the chart of a nativity close to the querent or of interest to him. Since I had a few
minutes to kill, I thought I will give this a spin and decided to look at two sub-populations, one
with sexuality as an issue and the other sub-population with spirituality more on their mind, just as
a rough cut.

The distribution of ascendants with the four planets in the 11th house turned out to be, from aries
ascendant onwards: 329, 429, 555, 661, 612, 592, 629, 574, 457, 342, 255 and 284 charts.

It so turned out that of these with the four 'culprits' in the 11th house, 784 belonged to the
'sexuality' category and only 188 belonged to the 'spirituality' category. The conclusion is clear,
isn't it that fewer individuals with the four planets in 11th turn out to be of the spiritual type but
tend to have sexual issues? After all 784:188 is nearly a 4:1 ratio! Or is it?? The obvious thing to
check is the relative size of the two sub-populations we began with! It so happens that the sample
of individuals had approximately four times as many people in the sexual group than the spiritual
group, so the 4:1 ration actually becomes meaningless in terms of probability or likelihood and
merely faithfully represents statistical probability being correlated to sample size. As an aside,
cancer rising, which tops in this race of ascendant with the four planets in 11th also happens to
represent the largest number of ascendants in the entire database, while aquarius and pisces are
fewer both in the entire database as well as in the subset. These variations which spuriously give
cancer or pisces or aquarius their placement in the order are the function of sample distribution
and not of astrological significance in this investigation. Caveat researcher!

© Rohiniranjan, 2004