Vedic Astrology & Career Selection

Career Selection 

As an astrologer, if you’re capable of addressing the perennial issues of relationship and career, your own career success is assured.

In ancient times, choosing a career was relatively simple, and in India at least it was laid out along the lines of the caste system. If you were a Brahmin, you’d be a member of the intelligentsia, and follow a career in the arts, education, law or ministry. If you were a Kshatriya, you’d go into the civil service, the police or military. If a Vaishya, you’d become a business person, if Shudra, a tradesman or laborer. But if you were a Mleccha, you were an outcaste and thus reduced to scavenging.

In modern times there’s been an explosion of careers, such that the choices now are literally mind-boggling. However, with a couple of simple techniques, it’s still relatively easy to identify a range of viable career options unique to each birth chart.

First & 10th houses

The basic method involves analysis of the first and 10th houses. Naturally, the 10th is an obvious focus, because it represents our career – the observable things we do in life, the karma we perform as a consequence of our natural inclinations, and our aspirations for social recognition.

But why the first house, so favored in South India? In practice, the ascendant is a natural starting point for understanding any client because it represents prakruti, the primal motive force, or basic nature of intelligence. In other words, the first house represents the individual’s instinctive actions and reactions to life. And it’s the influences of planets on the ascendant that identify the nature of our prakruti. Once we understand the client, we’re better able to anticipate their likely career path.

Vedic “full” aspects

Before discussing planetary influences, let’s first consider planetary aspects in Vedic astrology. In western astrology, aspects for the most part exist only between planets, although some practitioners occasionally refer to a planet aspecting the ascendant or the midheaven. If we keep this latter notion in mind, that a planet can aspect a point where there’s nothing physically observable, we’re on the way to understanding Vedic aspects.

Note that Vedic horoscopy is different from western astrology in at least three fundamental ways: (1) it uses the sidereal zodiac, (2) it uses whole-sign houses, so that if the ascendant is in Scorpio, the whole of Scorpio becomes the first house, and so on, and (3) it does not use Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

Although in Vedic astrology Mars, Jupiter and Saturn exert some “special aspects”, all planets follow a simple rule. If a planet occupies a given sign, it influences that house, and any other planets in the same sign, as surely as if they were two people in the same room, regardless of how many degrees separate them.

At the same time, each planet also looks diametrically across the chart to influence by its “full” aspect any planet occupying the opposite sign, regardless of orb. In addition, each planet will at the same time aspect any empty house that lies opposite. Although this may seem abstract to western astrologers, it thus allows for a situation where, for example, a house may have no occupant and yet at the same time be influenced by one or more planets from the opposite sign. 

Influences on the first and 10th houses

Now that we understand the capacity for all planets to influence both the house they occupy and the house directly opposite, we realize that so long as a planet is angular it will either occupy or aspect the 1st or 10th house. Eg, a planet in the 4th aspects the 10th, while a planet in the 7th aspects the 1st.

Thus, one or more angular planets can immediately create a signature for certain career inclinations. Once we understand the nature of the planets, we are immediately afforded clues as to the natural disposition (prakruti) of the client, and therefore their natural bias for career aptitudes and pursuits.

Perhaps the simplest example of this is to divide the planets into natural benefics and malefics. The natural benefics are the Moon, Mercury, Venus and Jupiter. The natural malefics are the Sun, Mars, Saturn, Rahu and Ketu.

With a majority of benefics angular in the birth chart, the individual is drawn to the humanistic or “people” professions: arts, media, sales, marketing, teaching, consulting, etc.

With a majority of malefics angular, the individual is inclined toward the reality-based or scientific professions: the trades, biology, chemistry, computer applications, engineering, mechanics and other physical sciences.

We can also divide the planets according to caste. Jupiter and Venus are Brahmin. Sun and Mars are Kshatriya. Moon and Mercury are Vaishya. Saturn is Shudra. Rahu and Ketu are Mleccha. By noting any particular caste dominance among angular planets, we can generalize to some degree what the likely career orientation will be.

For example, let’s assume only the Sun and Mars are angular. Since both are of the Kshatriya class, the client will have a natural command-and-control instinct, and therefore a bias for administrative or management roles, in fields such as government, police and military.

On the other hand, if only the Moon and Mercury are angular, these are Vaishya class. The client would have a flair for negotiation and trade, thereby favoring occupations in the fields of business and commerce.

Career themes by planet

Aside from caste stereotypes, however, a more comprehensive understanding of planetary natures can afford much greater insight into career potential. Following is a table of professions with which each planet is associated. Again, if such a planet is in any of the angular houses, it lends a bias for that type of occupation.

Our analysis of a client’s career potential might be simple if only one planet occupies an angular house. In practice, however, there are often two or more angular planets. In that case, we may need to determine the relative strength of angular planets by applying certain criteria.

For example, a planet is strong in its own or exalted sign, when it has dig bala (directional strength), when retrograde, or as a full Moon. It is weak when debilitated, combust, in a planetary war (conjunct another true planet within one degree), or as a new Moon. Once we determine the relative hierarchy of angular planets, it’s often the strongest among them that will give the client a bias for a particular career.

Career themes via planetary combinations

Although a single strong planet might very well nudge the client into a certain occupation or career, in practice we expect more complexity. There are, after all, more careers to choose from than ever, and some of these are combinatorial in nature, eg, forensic accountant, prosthetic engineer, immigration lawyer.

The table below provides a list of possible careers when one or more planets occupy angular houses at the same time. The list does not account for one planet’s dominance over another, as discussed in the earlier section, although that’s something to always keep in mind.

In the absence of angular planets

For the readers who’ve been following this thesis, and perhaps reviewing some charts in their files, questions naturally arise: What about charts whose angular planets have no strength? Worse still, what about charts which have no angular planets at all? Are those clients doomed to unemployment?

In practice, the absence of angular planets doesn’t make it impossible to identify a career, just a little more complicated. It involves looking at the chart another way, from the perspective of the ascendant, the Moon and the Sun. The resulting analysis identifies one or more “pointer” planets that subsequently identify associated career themes.

But this is a more complex technique, reserved for a subsequent article and discussion. If you’re interested in career analysis, please consider attending my lecture on this subject – Vedic Astrology & Career Selection – at 4:00 PM EST on Saturday, 15 November 2014, hosted by the Breaking Down The Borders online astrology conference.

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Alan Annand is a Canadian astrologer and palmist with an education spanning both eastern and western astrology. He has diplomas from the American College of Vedic Astrology, as well as the British Faculty of Astrological Studies for whom he was their North American correspondence tutor for several years.

He is also a writer of crime fiction, including his NEW AGE NOIR series (Scorpio Rising, Felonious Monk, Soma County) featuring astrologer and palmist Axel Crowe, whom one reviewer has dubbed “Sherlock Holmes with a horoscope.”

Find his books at Amazon, Apple, Barnes&Noble, Kobo, Smashwords

Websites: www.navamsa.com, www.sextile.com