Bhava

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What the tradition reads

Bhava is the Sanskrit term for a house in Vedic astrology, one of twelve divisions of the chart that together account for the whole of a life's affairs, from the physical body in the first bhava to loss and liberation in the twelfth. Where Western practice also uses quadrant systems reckoned from the horizon and the meridian, which the Swiss Ephemeris groups as unequal house systems, the Vedic tradition standardly reads the bhavas as whole signs counted forward from the lagna, so that each bhava is exactly one entire zodiac sign regardless of how quickly or slowly that sign was rising at the moment of birth. The tradition treats the first, fourth, seventh and tenth bhavas, the kendras, as the chart's strongest positions, and an ascendant lord that also occupies its own bhava is read as unusually able to deliver what that house promises. Every bhava is further assigned a karaka, a planet that naturally signifies its affairs regardless of chart particulars, so that Jupiter is read as a natural significator of the ninth bhava of fortune and higher learning wherever it happens to sit, layered on top of whatever that bhava's own ruling sign separately contributes.

The story

The whole sign house system that most Vedic astrology still uses takes one line to state, and the Swiss Ephemeris states it: the first house starts at the beginning of the zodiac sign the ascendant is in, each house covers a complete sign, and the method was used in Hellenistic astrology and is still used in Hindu astrology. Wikipedia's page on Hindu astrology gives the transmission from the Indian end, saying that Hellenistic astrology and astronomy transmitted the twelve zodiacal signs beginning with Aries and the twelve astrological places beginning with the ascendant. When whole signs fell out of use in the West is not stated by any source consulted for this entry, so no date is claimed here. The classical Sanskrit source for the bhava scheme, the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, treats the twelve bhavas as inseparable from the rest of its system of planetary strength and timing, giving extended chapters to the natural significations of each house and to the special strength, kendra, given to the first, fourth, seventh and tenth. The word bhava itself carries the ordinary Sanskrit sense of a state of being or a condition of existence, the same root that gives the language its everyday word for how something simply is.

Written from

Corpus key glossary:bhava.