(c) Narasimha Rao, 2000. Author's permission needed for reproduction in any form.

33.3 Known Past vs Future

Some authors present some principles in their books and present many examples that show the efficacy of the principles.

However, one finds many times that these principles are too vague to be useful in practice. They are good enough to explain known past, but not good enough to predict future.

An extreme example will make this clearer. Suppose someone presents us with a principle: “Someone born with lagna in an airy sign gets married when Venus transits in an own sign or a friendly sign or a watery sign or a trine from natal 7th house”. It may make sense to us, because Venus is the significator of marriage and being in an own sign or a friendly sign or a watery sign makes this watery planet strong. Also, Venus transiting in a trine from natal 7th house may seem favorable for marriage to occur.

We may test this principle against as many examples as we want and we will find it to be satisfied in 100% cases. Does that mean that this is an excellent principle?

No! This is not a meaningful or useful principle at all. Why? The list given covers the entire zodiac. Ta and Li are own signs of Venus. Ge, Vi, Cp and Aq are friendly signs. Cn, Sc and Pi are watery signs. Ar, Le and Sg are trines from the 7th house for any person with lagna in an airy sign. If you count the signs, you will find that all the twelve signs are covered! So the principle indirectly means, “someone born in an airy sign gets married when Venus transits in one of the 12 signs”. Of course, Venus transits one of the 12 signs always and this is a trivially correct statement. So it will be satisfied in the case of all people with lagna in an airy sign.

But, can we use it to make any predictions? If we get the chart of someone with lagna in an airy sign, can we predict using this principle when he will get married? No!

This is the problem with vague astrological principles. True, this is an extreme example, but didn’t “Venus in own or friendly or watery sign or a trine from the 7th house” make some sense to us? However, it turned out to be too general (or vague) to help us in making a precise prediction.

Constructors like the above are commonly found in astrological literature. We talk about the 7th lord giving marriage or a planet aspecting or occupying 7th or 7th lord. Or a planet having an argala on 7th or 7th lord. If it is still not enough, we can add the nakshatra lord of 7th lord or his dispositor or someone else. As we add conditions, we finally cover all the planets. We can always explain the known past this way. Of course, if we have a standard procedure for finding the strongest candidate among all those planets and if his dasa always gives the results, then it is logical. But, if there are 6 candidates and we explain an event by simply showing the candidacy of the planet involved, it is irrational. We are in trouble when making predictions about future in that approach – which of the umpteen candidates will give the result?

The root cause of the problem is that we often use the wrong tool to analyze a matter. Sages explained hundreds of dasa systems and yet we use only a handful. When we use the correct technique, probably the strongest candidate gives the result. When we use a wrong technique, we are forced to give a vague justification.

For example, we saw in Example 58 that Mercury (8th lord in 7th) and Rahu (malefic in 2nd) were the strongest killer planets. By taking a variation of Vimsottari dasa that starts from the 8th star from Moon’s star, we found that the native passed away in Rahu’s antardasa in Mercury’s dasa. However, one relying on standard Vimsottari dasa always will find that Venus dasa is running and he will explain the event based on the situation of Venus in the 7th house. But, if we take yogakaraka Venus to be a maraka because he is in the 7th house, we can take 6 planets (occupants and lords of 2nd and 7th) as marakas. With 6 planets out of 9 qualifying as marakas, how can we predict when the native passes away? On the other hand, by using the most appropriate dasa, we see that the event was given by the strongest candidates.

Because of the corruption in astrological knowledge, many contemporary astrologers don’t use the most appropriate techniques always. Due to this, they have to deal with a lot of vagueness and they rely on spiritual strength for correct predictions. When explaining the past, a vague principle is fine. But predicting the future becomes difficult. One needs luck or spiritual strength.

33.4 Probability Analysis (Footnote: Some knowledge of the probability theory will be assumed in this discussion. Readers can refer to standard high school/college mathematics textbooks.)

The point made above can be expressed mathematically. Let us say that event A denotes the occurrence (satisfying) of an astrological combination. Let us say that event B denotes the occurrence of an event. Let us say that we want to correlate and link A with B. For example, event A can be “Venus transits in a trine from the 7th house” and event B can be “the native gets married”.

Now the conditional probability P(A|B) denotes the probability (or chance) that A occurs, given that B occurred, i.e. the chance that the combination is satisfied given that one gets married.

And P(B|A) denotes the probability (or chance) that B occurs, given that A occurred, i.e. the chance that one gets married given the combination is satisfied.

The two are different. When making predictions in real life, we are concerned with P(B|A). However, when explaining a known event in a book, we are concerned with P(A|B). If A is a large composite of many small conditions joined by “or” (e.g. Venus trnasits in a trine from the 7th house or Jupiter aspects UL in transit or dasa of UL lord runs or dasa of 7th lord runs), we maximize P(A|B). In other words, A is satisfied in most charts when B (marriage) occurs. So we think that A is an excellent principle with a good correlation with event B. However, making A very large makes P(B|A) very low and we can’t predict B just because A occurred.

So we should stop unduly worrying about P(A|B) and we should worry more about P(B|A). High P(A|B) helps us in giving nice examples in books. It doesn’t help us in predictions. We should not make our principles vague combinations of many components (e.g. if combinations x or y or z or w or v or u is satisfied, then event B occurs). We should always identify the strongest candidate to give an event. If an event is given by one of the six or seven weak candidates, we should reject the logic and search for an alternative technique in which the event is given by the best candidate. Only with an uncompromising rational approach and dedicated research into the teachings of great Sages can we ever appreciate the subject of astrology in its fullest glory.