What are Remedial Measures (Upāyas) in Vedic Astrology?

The introduction of remedies is a beautiful thing to be able to utilize and help someone with. When looking at a persons horoscope, a Jyotishi is able to not only see the problem areas of a persons life perhaps; finance, career, relationships, family troubles, what have you, (this karma does show up in the horoscope) the Jyotishi can look at different ways of opening the door to transform perspective “have you thought about this or have you thought about maybe pacifying or working towards pacifying this energy in your life and how its showing up for you”

It is ways to see within a chart that help clients live and experience the highest fulfilment within their life. Tools that turn the dial up to a higher function of whatever is not functioning at a level that is helping that specific person. The planets represent our positive and negative karmas within our life and we can influence that within remedies.

Let's go more in-depth into the mechanics of how the planets do that and how essentially if you think about it in the Vedic sense, in the way that it's explained to us through the body of knowledge within Vedic astrology; the planets represent us, they represent situations in our life, they also represent our desires. The word planet in Sanskrit is actually "Graha", Graha means that which seizes or grabs, so you can think of the planets as embodiments of this energy that is puling our attention in a certain direction. Depending on how these planets are sitting for us in our horoscope, sometimes there are higher qualities that they're pulling out of us and sometimes they are lower qualities that being pulled out of us. When working with remedies, it's not necessarily changing where the planets are in our lives and changing our lives that way but essentially improving that energy of the planet and how it’s showing up in whatever placement it is.

It's very important to say we’re not changing the chart. Not taking one planet and making it something else, not taking mars and making it Jupiter. We’re elevating the frequency of that specific planet elevating what is there because there’s an upper and lower and we’re elevating it to something higher.

When looking at Vedic astrology, my pervious post talked about it as being the eye of the vedas, it's one of the Vedangas; different limbs of the vedas and Jyotish is the eye, it's able to perceive really whats going on through the movement of time. The whole Vedic foundation is that we are living in this physical realm but we are not these bodies, we are not this limited consciousness, we are something greater than that and essentially coming down through the different subtler realms to this gross physical realm taking on this body and the key that brings us down here are the desires. And the desires are reflected through the qualities of planets.

The desires lays the foundation for the manifest world. At any moment we can have thousands of seeds/desires going on within our dream consciousness. We pick what we want to grow but it's not conscious. There's a certain frequency we’re living on, a level of the planet we’re participating with that is manifesting a specific seed that is then manifest into the physical world. What remedies and especially mantras can help with is influencing a particular seed. Choosing what we’re focusing on to change what happens in the manifest world.

Some people may not be completely familiar with the use of mantras. Essentially the word mantra in Sanskrit Man is derivative of Manas which is the mind and tra is the same etymology is connected to, you could say its connected to transverse. So we’re traversing the mind the limited faculties of our mind and we’re in some ways bypassing the normal cognitive processes, we’re latching on energetically to sound and to a vibration thats connected through the words of the mantra. Or you could also say one word is traverse, the other way to say it is protection, the protection of the mind. I am taught in this lineage there are many different remedies at my disposal because there’s not just mantra. But mantras are that shape of the mantra, the rupa, the nama rupa is said to be divine. You don’t even really need to know what you’re saying when you’re doing the mantra, you’re engaged in that action of repeating that sound over and over and over and from there that subtler sound, that subtler energy is like a magnet that draws and it improves. It’s basically saying, you know, if it’s Jupiter for example it’s saying let’s bring out those higher qualities, you're tuning yourself more to those higher qualities of Jupiter. If Jupiter is creating a desire in your life for more knowledge, or to teach, or for more inspiration or purpose, then that higher faculty of Jupiter is coming into your life.

Some of the remedies and practices that astrologers give when seeing people are so the different Vedic faced dieties may be invoked or different deieties from that Indian cosmology. Each deity essentially, it's like when you’re speaking to your loved one, there’s only one god but ultimately you could say to your loved one and call them hunny, you can call them sweetheart or dear, so there’s different ways, different vibrations of connecting to that deity, and that deity itself is an archetypal embodiment of a planet.

You don't necessarily need to have that relationship, that relationship gets introduced through the practice of mantra. Some of the other remedies that I work with as an astrologer are a couple different levels of remedies. The first one is gross, that’s “Sthula” this can be advice to help someone be in more alignment with the highest fulfilment of their life; advice on certain colours to gravitate towards, certain types of people and activities, certain foods, that in itself can be a remedy. On a karmic level is Karana, shifting things at a deeper level than some of the more subtle remedies. Then there’s also different forms of Dhana like donations to different charities and then there’s different Upayas.

Essentially the astrologer is saving the person a little bit of time saying "focus more on appeasing this aspect” for example if it's an afflicted venus then donations to organizations that support women, beauty or even grants for different types of artists. An astrologer can help you towards the right area. You will start noticing, assuming the astrologer does their homework properly, these shifts in your life as those planetary qualities begin to transform in the higher aspects begin to come to fruition. There are different times in our life when the remedies will have a more potent effect. Time is unfolding when these remedies will work the best.

There are many different types of remedies, even pilgrimage. What that means is taking a journey to some place that is representative of that energy that you're trying to bow to, shanti, bring into your life as a stronger presence. There’s also traditional Vedic ceremonies; pujas and yagyas, there’s the use of yantras as well. Of course there’s gem stones as well which can become a whole different conversation because you need to go to a skilled gemologist, a certain purity of metal and gemstone, it can become quite pricey. I have learned within this lineage to work more on the practical level in terms of giving remedies.