One Life Spark, Nine Planets

Hindu astrology, Bepin Behari insists, does not ultimately refer to physical planets. The nine grahas are celestial force-centers, stages of one stream of divine energy as it descends into manifestation. He calls that stream the Life Spark. The Sun ignites it, the Moon receives it, Mercury polarizes it, Venus electrifies it, Mars generates with it, Jupiter distributes it, Saturn bounds it, and the two nodes, Rahu and Ketu, govern its karmic law and its release. Read the planets this way and a chart stops being nine separate influences and becomes one current, traced through nine transformations.

The Sun: the Spark

The Sun is the positive Spark of the Divine Spark, the fragment of primeval fire which ensouls every speck manifested on Earth; its withdrawal is the cessation of life itself. Described as the Soul of the Universe, the Sun is the atman, the Silent Watcher, vitally concerned with the well-being of every being yet never interfering with its evolution. Where your Sun sits is where the spark sits in you: the innermost essence that watches, and does not bargain.

The Moon: the Receptacle

The Moon is the Receptacle of the Life Spark, the queen of the solar system. Receiving the life-force from the Sun, she directs it to Earth, taking motherly care of the manifestation of the different forms of life. The spark is useless without a vessel; the Moon is that vessel, which is why Vedic astrology reads the mind, the emotions and the very texture of a life from her.

Mercury: Polarization

Mercury is the Polarization of the Life Spark. The triad of Atma, Buddhi and Manas, soul, consciousness and mind, is linked with Mercury, which controls the movement of the polarized energy. Intelligence, Behari says, is essentially bipolar in character, and Mercury stands at the crucial stage of its development: the point where the one current splits into subject and object, knower and known, and thought becomes possible.

Venus: Electrical Attraction

Venus is the Electrical Spark resulting from the polarized Life Spark. Electricity and magnetism are her attractive power; she also enables the individual to radiate that scintillating spark which bestows grace, beauty and sociability. Once the current is polarized, its poles attract: that attraction, in a human life, is desire, love, art and the pull toward harmony.

Mars: Generation

Mars is the Generation of the Electrical Fluid. He is the blood circulating in every human being, the warmth and latent fire in every living entity. As commander-in-chief of the planetary hierarchy, he manifests the Life Spark radiated by the Sun in every form of creation: the Sun puts the Spark at the inner core of the entity, and Mars brings it to the surface. Energy at the core is potential; Mars is what makes it deed, heat and wound.

Jupiter: Distribution

Jupiter is the Distribution of the Electromagnetic Fluid of Divine Energy for human development and expansion. He tends the manifesting entity like a gardener, protecting the plant from rough weather and providing the necessary nourishment. Where Mars generates, Jupiter apportions: growth, law, teaching and the wisdom that decides how much energy goes where.

Saturn: the Boundary, the Journey's End

Saturn is the Boundary of the Electromagnetic Field of Divine Energy for the present stage of human growth and development. He is the ring-pass-not of human consciousness. Many more psychic faculties will be bestowed on human beings, Behari writes, when they have mastered the powers assigned under the present dispensation; Saturn marks the edge of that dispensation. In the individual chart he is misery, limit and time, the wall at which the current turns back, and therefore the teacher of everything that lasts.

Rahu: the Cosmic Law

The nodes represent the Law of Divine Manifestation, which at our level of existence is the Law of Karma. Rahu is linked with past karma: when the individual is ready, Rahu brings back those karmic forces for release. That is why his periods feel like compulsions arriving from outside the present life. He is not a villain in the story; he is the mechanism by which what was stored is discharged.

Ketu: the Eternal Wisdom

Rahu and Ketu together are the demon who stole the nectar at the churning of the cosmic sea, linked with the Dragon of the Deep Sea, symbolizing karmic nemesis, and also bestowing wisdom. Ketu is the other pole of the axis: where Rahu binds the current into new experience, Ketu holds what experience has already taught. His gift is the wisdom that no longer needs the lesson, the atonement and insight that surface in situations which cannot be easily comprehended.