Wednesday, Budhavara

a birth falling on a Wednesday

What the tradition reads

Wednesday, Budhavaram, is the fourth of the seven varas, ruled by Budha, Mercury, the same name given as the day's presiding deity. Astrosurkhiyan's tradition assigns the day the quality of rajas, and calls it a day of wisdom, knowledge and happiness, favourable for communication, business, refined work, shopping, sales, logic and the starting of new projects, a broader range of favoured activity than the tradition gives to most other varas. Wikipedia's account of the Surya Siddhanta's rule places Mercury sixth in the hora sequence of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon; the weekday order this cycle produces, Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn, places Mercury fourth, matching Wednesday's own name. Budha's astrological character as an agile, benevolent influence on intellect and memory, a reading given to the planet elsewhere in the tradition, matches closely with the day's own favour for logic, negotiation and the sharper kinds of new beginning.

The story

Budha's parentage, as Wikipedia's account describes it, is the tradition's most openly scandalous: he is the son of Chandra, the Moon, and Tara, a story the article ties to the Tarakamaya War, the conflict that follows from Tara's abduction by Chandra while she is still the wife of Brihaspati, guru of the gods. Budha is born of that union rather than of Tara's marriage, a birth of disputed and uneasy origin that the wider tradition nonetheless resolves into honour, naming him god of intelligence and counting him among the nine grahas as a generally benevolent influence on the mind. He marries Ila and fathers Pururavas, founder of his own royal line, carrying his contested birth forward into a settled and celebrated lineage. A day ruled by a deity whose own beginning was awkward and disputed, yet who is remembered chiefly for a quick, adaptable intelligence rather than for the circumstances of his birth, fits Budhavara's reading as a day suited to negotiation, commerce and the kind of clever new start that need not wait for perfectly settled ground.

Written from

Corpus key vara:Wednesday.