Originally published on skywebsite.com/hollow/astrovedica/id19.html (2002-01-22), a page of Dean De Lucia's website; recovered from the Internet Archive.
An earlier version of Astro Vedica — a Vedic (Hindu) Astrology Book and Its Chapters, in Dean's Corner.
Introduction to Astrologia Vedica Continued:
In this sense, the present effort is truly unique. The beginning chapters practically play the role of a book on esoteric astrology. Some very unique philosophical perspectives and mindsets are presented.
For example, the initial chapters aquaint the reader with the concept of the " Parampara " system, the system of disciplic succession by which the Vedic astrological art was handed down. Information received from this disciplic succession is not empiric or experimental. It comes to us from the celestial beings who generated and fostered humanity on the earthly plane, and through the rishis and sages who were their earthly medium. Thus, Vedic astrology is special as it was handed down, which precludes the need to add or subtract from it- in contrast to the tendency to hodge podge systems of astrology, which is so commonly done in the West nowadays. The book also delineates on such themes as the nature of time, gemology and an astrologer's intuition.
After presenting the reader with esoteric concepts, the book then proceeds to map out before the reader the main components of Vedic astrology, giving all components their proportionate weight and consideration. In so doing, an attempt is made to support the astrological principles and concepts with both logic as well as appropriate statements from the ancient astrological writings. A constant thread runs through the book in this sense, such that a harmonic justification, peculiar to the author's style, is not lost sight of at any stage.
It may be questioned, then, why there have been so many quotes from modern Indian ( Hindu ) writers in the book, given that many modern Hindus have a tendency to mix up systems and depart from the standard of old. This quoting of modern writers has mostly been done in the chapter which deals with the signs of the zodiac. The answer is twofold: first of all, the ancient writers did not typically delineate at length on the nature of the zodiacal signs themselves, although they did map out the rest of the science in great detail. This may have been due to compositional constraints, such that the information had to fit into a certain slot determined by Sanskrit meter and rhyme. It seems that the ancient Sanskrit writers composed in more of a pleasing and poetic way.
A reason which is possibly closer to the truth would be that the ancient writers didn't have to delineate in terms of the basics. A student could simply learn sign characteristics, which was common knowledge among astrologer brahmins, from any local village astrologer. The theme of sign characteristics was perhaps too simple to warrant a display of learning, maybe as embarassing as discovering onion soup. Some works had a rather narrow focus rather than a complete presentation of the science; they purported to preserve simply elements of the science which, for some reason, they felt needed exposure.
At any rate, an expanded description of the signs is hard to come by in the ancient writings, and there are modern writers who have done a good job of expressing the characteristics of the signs. For this reason, proper recognition of their comments has been given where due, though recognition is not necessary in the case of the observations which are not original or which are obvious or generally accepted. Even so, this present work is focused on the version of the more ancient writers of the disciplic succession.
In addition to the " as it is " perspective, the present work sets forth the astrological science giving proper weight and allotment to all the main component factors, which makes for balanced judgements.
In addition to the " as it is " perspective, and the inclusion of all the main component factors -giving proper weight and allotment- the book comes to a conclusion with a sample interpretation of the horoscope of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami.
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