Long before the Covid-19 pandemic made shopping-by-Amazon a virtual necessity, Jeff Bezos had already built a mousetrap that brought the world beating a path to his door. Since the inception of Amazon.com in 1994 as an online marketplace for books, the company has since expanded in multiple directions, now selling virtually every kind of consumer […]
Ghislaine Maxwell, procurer for the privileged?
Ghislaine Maxwell, now under arrest and suicide watch, has fallen from the privileged perch she once held as alleged procurer of girls for the pleasure of powerful men. Maxwell is the long-time intimate of Jeffrey Epstein, who supposedly killed himself in jail last August awaiting sentencing for sexual abuse of multiple underage women. Maxwell and […]
Paris Jackson: you can’t go back to Neverland
Paris Jackson’s name turned up on social media last month when TMZ reported that she’d allegedly made a suicide attempt back in February. She vehemently denied this, but it’s not the first time she’s been in similar circumstances. Can astrology confirm or deny a rumor such as this? Normal people don’t understand depression, let alone […]
Kala Sarpa: the astronomical rationale for “yoga”
As I discussed in last month’s article, one of the great uncertainties among devotees of jyotisha is whether Kala Sarpa is a yoga or a dosha. The existential question is: does it promise success or threaten destruction? As I explained in that article, there are multiple consequences when the chart is split in two by […]
Kala Sarpa: the astronomical rationale for “dosha”
At the core of the mystique surrounding Kala Sarpa is the existential question: is it a yoga, or is it a dosha? Does it promise success or threaten destruction? That question can only be answered via yoga vichara, the careful analysis of a configuration in order to determine its nature, its strength, and its ultimate […]
Kala Sarpa: everything you wanted to know but were...
“If the Sun and Moon would doubt,” poet William Blake once wrote, “they would immediately go out.” As for me, there were times over the past 18 months when my own vision blurred, and I doubted whether I could write a book on Kala Sarpa that would do justice to its myth. But as it […]
Ted Bundy, criminal chameleon
The weird thing about Ted Bundy, people later reflected, was that he never looked the same from one photograph to another. Even in person, he had the ability to metamorphose, with a glance or a turn of his head, from someone of charming intelligence to one of cunning violence. Criminal investigators later attributed his chameleon-like […]
Sean Hannity, “opinion journalist”
Many serpents are immune to the venom of their own species. Perhaps this explains the cozy relationship between two current examples of the Kala Sarpa pattern – president Donald Trump and “opinion journalist” Sean Hannity. Snakes also have forked tongues, lurk in dark places, and are noted for their peculiar mating habits, wherein they engage […]
Charles Manson: Crawling King Snake
The Manson Family murders in the summer of ‘69 seared a hole in the American psyche. The Family was a cult of hippie nihilists led by Charles Manson, a frustrated singer-songwriter on the fringe of the LA music industry. In what was to become one of the first acts of social-class terrorism to date, Manson […]
Kala Sarpa Yoga
Kala Sarpa Yoga is not discussed in classical shastra. Rather, it arises from an oral tradition, probably with roots in South India. Some say it’s Tantrik in origin and, perhaps because of that, is subject to significant differences in interpretation. Some describe Kala Sarpa as a major flaw in a birth chart, a dosha which foretells loss […]