In Vedic Astrology we work with a one-hundred-and-twenty-year planetary cycle called the Vimshottari Dasha sequence. Where you commence your personal 120-year cycle and what planetary energy you start under, is based on the position of your Moon when you are born.
Different planetary cycles have different priorities and powers. They run different lengths of time. When we shift from one planetary cycle to the next it’s like we enter an entirely new part of ourselves. The new cycle brings a different emotional energy into us, circling around and driving us. It becomes our new emotional frequency.
People should want to know what Maha Dasha they’re in!
Vedic astrologers judge what the planetary cycles you’re in or shifting into are good for based on where the planet is placed in your horoscope. You may be completing a cycle that brought you before the public and into a leadership role and are shifting into one that puts you in the background in service to others. Or vice versa.
Alas our Western, free-will-oriented minds balk at the idea of shifting into a period of life that won’t be good for our Western aspirations and ambitions. Okay, our Western minds already resisted the idea of astrology in the first place! To assuage our tender sensibilities, I will therefore talk about the cycle of Rahu, the most ambitious and materialistic planetary period.
Personally, I’m fascinated by Rahu. Rahu is a demon and a malefic and his energy is base. At the same time, he is incredibly fertile like fresh volcanic soil. He is a force of both adaptation to and manipulation of the world around him. Rahu will survive by any means necessary. Rahu’s cycle is one of the longer ones, lasting 18 years.
Here follows a mostly descriptive sequence on the symbolism of Rahu. Since the Vimshottari Dasha sequence takes 120 years some of us won’t run his cycle in our lifetimes. Rahu has his favourite signs and houses where he’s better able to sate his appetite which won’t come up in this post.
Rahu is an iconoclast, a rebel, a non-conformist, a heretic. Rahu is the foreigner, the alien, the other.
In Western astrology Rahu is the North Node of the Moon. There is a South Node of the Moon as well, called Ketu in Vedic Astrology. These are the two points along which the orbit of the Moon intersects with the ecliptic. It is along these points that eclipses of the Sun and Moon occur.
This is why Rahu is known as the engulfer. It is because of his power to engulf the Sun that Rahu is said to be more powerful than the Sun. Rahu is known as the dragon’s head and Ketu as the dragon’s tail. Rahu is associated with the material world/the real while Ketu is connected to spiritual or mystical or otherworldliness.
Rahu is political. Of high intelligence. Disturbs. Is adaptive. Is manipulative. Is experimental. Is extroverted, materialistic. Rahu is psychologically astute. Rahu is future oriented.
Rahu is savvy. Rahu is untrusting. Rahu is prone to reality-based paranoia.
Rahu inflates. Rahu engulfs. Rahu consumes.
Rahu’s cycle brings ambition to improve your position in the world.
Rahu is materiality/ the stuff of the world. Rahu’s cycle gives you the potential to materialize/to manifest what it is you want.
Rahu is associated with political agendas and plans for going after and getting it.
Rahu is a thinker, a calculator, a conniver. Rahu is good at PR.
Rahu is the planet of acquisition. He is connected to the foreign and to foreign opportunities.
Rahu is politically upwardly mobile. Rahu likes to travel especially to foreign countries.
Rahu is the outcast. Rahu represents the process of involution and the descent of spirit into matter. Rahu is an indictor of material wealth and worldly recognition.
Rahu is also associated with healing.
Rahu’s cycle is one of ambition and improving one’s stature in the world. Rahu likes to do so in a subverting the status-quo kind of way.