A Controversy

A Controversy

Houses are found with respect to lagna, special lagnas and some planets. Houses are found in rasi chart and in all the divisional charts. Some scholars ignore all these and take houses only with respect to lagna and only in rasi chart. They prepare something called “bhaava chakra” or “chalit chakra”, in which houses can start in one rasi and end in another. They take lagna’s longitude to be the mid-point of the first house and construct all the houses accordingly. In the “equal house method”, they take a 30º arc with center at lagna as the 1st house. The next 30º arc is taken as the 2nd house and so on. This method is popular among Indian astrologers. Another method taught by Sripathi is more complicated and it is also popular. However, this author recommends neither. Each rasi is a house. The rasi containing the reference point chosen is the 1st house and the next rasi is the 2nd house.

Though there are some indirect references in BPHSsuggesting that Parasara supported house divisions placing houses in 2 rasis, there are quite a few direct references making it amply clear that each house falls in one rasi. Parasara taught us to find houses by counting rasis from the reference chosen. Moreover, only this approach is logical as we go to divisional charts. Parasara’s treatment does not differentiate between rasi and divisional charts, as far as the basic techniques go.

So readers are advised to ignore all the discussions found in other textbooks on house division methods, “bhaava chakra” and “chalit chakra”. It may do good to follow the instructions in this chapter.

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