Vedic Love Astrology

Romantic compatibility and Vedic Astrology

by Carol Allen

Virtually every great civilization has had its own system of Astrology, including the Celts, Mayans, Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, Chinese, and Hebrews, to name just a few. But I've got to tell you -- no one system of zodiacal analysis has figured out interpersonal relationships like the system of ancient India, also known as Vedic Astrology. (Though I hear the Chinese system is pretty amazing for love. I'm a Horse and my hubby is a Tiger, and they're supposed to go great together, so they MUST be right!)

Vedic Astrology is first found written about in the Vedas, some of the spiritual scriptures of Hindu philosophy, believed by some scholars to be over 5,000 years old. Here's the amazing part: traditionally, if you were a Hindu, you didn't get married without the blessing of an astrologer. (This astrological "thumbs up/thumbs down" is still done for the majority of Hindu marriages in India to this day.)

The whole idea of marriage in traditional, Eastern cultures is nothing like in modern Western culture. For centuries in India it's gone a little something like this: You married once to a mate selected by your parents whom you didn't so much as meet until you walked down the aisle at your wedding (gulp). Divorce was non-existent and is still extremely rare. And if your husband died first, you'd throw yourself onto his funeral pyre, sacrificing your life. (Getting cremated ALIVE... Isn't that romantic? My husband wants me to do that if he dies before me. Believe me, I make sure he wears his seatbelt and takes his vitamins!)

So, you didn't want to marry just anyone. It was literally a matter of life and death to know if you were compatible, and if the "destiny" of your love and life together would go smoothly and that they had good longevity, for reasons I think I've made clear. Talk about pressure!

So astrologers and Hindu society as a whole have taken this whole topic extremely seriously, highly motivated for thousands of years to know what they're doing. Fortunately, they've more than figured out a few things. Many tools and techniques are unique to Vedic Astrology, and differ a great deal from the more commonly known system practiced in the West, called Tropical or Western astrology.

The two biggest differences are that the Vedic system uses a different zodiac called the Sidereal zodiac (meaning "of the stars"), while the Western system uses the Tropical zodiac, measuring the relationship of the Sun to the Earth's tropics (the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn).

This causes the calculations from one system to the next to be around 24 degrees off - pushing your entire chart and all of your planetary positions "back" almost an entire sign. This has the often shocking result of making most people a different Sun sign, Moon sign, and rising sign than they are in the Western system. Now, before you freak out and decide that Vedic Astrology must be wrong, you should know that the Sidereal calculations are in keeping with what modern astronomers say.

Vedic Love Astrology | Tarot.com -- Continued »