Vashya kuta

the second test of the ashta kuta marriage matching system, mutual control by sign group

What the tradition reads

Vashya sorts the twelve signs into five groups: Manava (human), covering Gemini, Virgo, Libra, Aquarius and the first half of Sagittarius; Vanachara (wild), covering Leo and the second half of Sagittarius; Chatushpada (four footed), covering Aries, Taurus and the second half of Capricorn; Jalachara (water dwelling), covering Cancer, Pisces and the first half of Capricorn; and Keeta (insect), covering Scorpio alone. Sagittarius and Capricorn are the only two signs split between two groups by half. Read for a single chart, the group a person's Moon sign belongs to is treated as a broad description of how easily that person is led or controlled by others and how much natural sway they hold over others in turn. Applied to two charts, vashya is worth two of the system's thirty six points and scores the pairing of the two natives' Moon groups against each other: the full two points where the pairing is classically read as a natural attraction, one point where the attraction is partial, a half point where it is limited, and none where the groups are read as classically opposed. The test asks whether either partner's basic temperament is likely to leave the other persistently overruled, a narrower question than whether the couple are otherwise well suited, which the remaining seven tests address.

The story

The five fold sorting into human, wild, four footed, water dwelling and insect follows the images the signs themselves already carry, a sign pictured as a human figure, the twins, the scales, the water bearer, sorts as human; one pictured as a bull or ram sorts as four footed; one pictured as a fish or crab sorts as water dwelling; and Scorpio, pictured as a scorpion, sorts on its own as insect regardless of the animal's size. Sagittarius, drawn as a centaur, is split down the middle between its human half and its animal, wild half, and Capricorn, drawn as a goat fish, is split between its water dwelling fish half and its four footed goat half, the two signs whose own pictures are already composite creatures becoming, fittingly, the only two the classification itself divides. Vashya kuta then asks a question about two Moons that the wider tradition asks about people generally, whether one animal in this old bestiary has traditionally been read as holding sway over another, and scores a marriage's balance of temperament on that older, wider scale.

Written from

Corpus key kuta:vashya.