LESSON 4

Welcome to Lesson 4 of Your Personalized Tutorial

TIMING THE EVENTS

Once you carefully evaluate the conditions and dominating planetary influences
in the natal chart and navamsha, as well as the Chandra lagna and other charts
you should be able to get an idea about the possible future events that are
going to take place in your life. At the same time, you will be faced with a
question of "When" will these events come about? You will most definitely like
to know when can you expect that great job promotion or when should you
watch out for your health. This brings us to the subject of techniques designed
for timing the events.

Dashas
The most important technique used for timing the future events is called
Dashas. There are more than a few dasha systems, but the one most widely
known and commonly practiced is Vimshottari Dasha system.
Vimshottari dasha assigns a designated time span of influence to each planet in
a fixed sequence, with the complete cycles amounting to 120 years. In the
modern time it is rare for a human to live past 120, so, naturally, one is not
going to go through the full cycle of Vimshottari dasha. Nevertheless, after the
full cycle of 120 years is completed, it repeats itself in a set order.
Each of the twenty seven lunar birthstars is ruled by a particular planet. Ketu
rules the very first birthstar, Ashvini. The birthstar rulership sequence proceeds
in this order: Ketu, Venus, Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, and
Mercury. Then again it starts with Ketu and repeats itself three times.

Time Span of each Dasha

Ketu Dasha is 7 years long.
Venus Dasha is 20 years long.
Sun Dasha is 6 years long.
Moon Dasha is 10 years long.
Mars Dasha is 7 years long.
Rahu Dasha is 18 years long.
Jupiter Dasha is 16 years long.
Saturn Dasha is 19 years long.
Mercury Dasha is 17 years long.

Although, the order of the planetary cycles is fixed, the commencement of a

particular planetary cycle is individual and depends on the Moon's birthstar
placement in the horoscope. Your Moon is placed in the Ashwini birthstar. Ketu
is the ruler of Ashwini birthstar, therefore, you were born in the dasha cycle of
Ketu.

The rest of the planetary cycles proceed in a fixed order. Whether or not you go
through the whole cycle of the first pIanetary cycle is possible that an individual
will not go through the whole cycle of the first planetary dasha, as depending on
the degree of the Moon, one may be born in the middle of the end of the first
dasha cycle.

Taking into account a considerable length of some of the planetary cycles, you
might wonder how could Venus dasha cycle keep producing the same results in
one's life for 20 years. Well, it is not going to. Now we come to the point of 5
levels of dashas. While the main dasha cycles can last for many years, as
shown in the table above, there are four more dasha levels that are much
shorter in length. The major dasha cycles are called Maha dashas, and the
planets ruling them are referred to as Maha dasha lords. They provide general