Ascendant - Lagna

The Ascendant

This is about the single most important part of the astrologer’s work. The ascendant is the riveting point that makes the difference in the analysis of the chart.

Opposed to what most people believe, the ascendant alone does not make for the wholeness of the person. For instance, just because a person’s Rising Sign or Ascendant is Taurus, does not mean his behavior and life experiences will be neatly packaged in a typical Taurus nutshell. This is the first assumption that many students of astrology make. In fact, I implore all of my students to divorce themselves from this misconception. It is a major untruth that gives astrology a bad name because it oversimplifies things the way astrology offers its truth. 

What you want to do is to take a few steps back and see the chart as a whole. Never zoom in too deep and miss out on what the other positions and configurations have to offer in the making of the subject’s life experiences. Every sign will play a role in the subject’s life, just as every planet would also give its own results.

No single sign tells the whole story of a person’s whole life. Rather, what tells would be the FOCUS of certain variables on some other factors and the intensities of their relationships. This can be a single strong position, or a strong unique relationship between two or more planets bearing on a certain house, or happening in a certain sign.

In the case above, the ascendant is Cancer. But to immediately start talking too much about his being a Cancer would be very wide off the mark. Experience tells us that for our case, you should immediately talk about his Capricorn issues because there is a major “presence” or focus in that part of the zodiac. It would be astrologically logical for his life events to “come through” Capricornian issues. As I have taught in my predictive classes, if at all you want to focus on “significant” issues in his life, you would want to “zoom in” on the Capricorn “presence” rather than his meager Cancer “contribution”.

But one of the most significant dangers a wrong ascendant placement can do is the shift of planetary rulerships. For instance, with his Cancer ascendant, Sun is the ruler of his 2^nd house. That makes Sun the significator of his personal finances. So the astrologer works with that in mind, making subsequent analyses based on that premise. But if his ascendant was placed in Gemini instead, then the 2^nd house would be Cancer, and the ruler of Cancer, the Moon, would be the ruler of his personal finances. Moon as the ruler of the 2^nd, and Sun as ruler of the 2^nd produce totally different astrological results because each has its own character and plays a different role when becoming rulers over certain houses.

I know of astrologers who take the ascendant flippantly, and I cannot regard them as serious practitioners. Astrology begins as a calculative science which every student must have serious regard for. It begins with the construction of the horoscope, and that part of it is a very objective science that the novice must commit to.

There two method  to calculate the ascendant. Two methods; the Local Sidereal Time method, and the Sunrise method.

The Local Sidereal Time method is currently about the most popular method. The sidereal time is given daily in the Ephemeris, based on Greenwich Mid Night. You may consider that as 8 hrs Malaysian Standard Time and do your calculations from there like how I would typically do it.

Then there is the Sunrise method. The results between the ascendant derived out of using the LST method and this Sunrise method will usually vary between 2 to 4 degrees. Till today, I use both methods and enjoy seeing the difference between the two and how it produces any difference in my analysis for the case, if at all. In most cases, a difference in nakshatra placement produces a different reading and the experience of the subject can tell you which reading is off track. If I had just stuck to the rasis, I couldn’t have seen the difference. But the nakshatras and their subsequent subs reveal a lot more than what is obvious at the superficial rasi level. This Sunrise method was advocated by the great father of Hindu astrology himself, the Maharishi Parasara. I have humbly gotten positive results with its use especially for cases closer to the equator. What I like about this method is that it’s less cumbersome. You just take the appropriate Sun’s longitude, do minimal working, and you’re there with the ascendant. It’s always good to keep in mind what differences there can be. That scholastic mindset can be a saving factor somewhere in the future. Experiment, enjoy, and share.

Note: Please don’t forget that with these tools, your final ascendant is Sayana (tropical zodiac). To get them down to the Nirayana (sidereal zodiac) which eastern practitioners use for predictive purposes, you would have to reduce your result by the Ayanamsa. So, Sayana ASCendant – Ayanamsa = Nirayana ASCendant.