It is said that those who do not remember the history are bound to repeat it. Still, most of us rather look forward to the future than look back and reflect. It is quite natural given our fascination with the future and the desire to know more and more about it.

There are various reasons why we do it. One of them is shortage of patience in our fast paced lives and the anxiety to find solutions to problems without really working hard for them. Another is the state of confusion we get into, where there is an expectation of guidance from that disaffected someone, who can look at the issues without really getting involved and point us to a way ahead. This usually happens when we are apprehensive about making decisions on our own. While it is not advisable, this can be perceived as a way of transferring our own responsibility to someone else. During these times of stress and distress, we turn towards a friend for advice and more often than not, turn towards as astrologer.

An astrologer therefore finds herself/himself in an extremely difficult situation. There is a burden of expectation that a miracle can be conjured to make things right and an expectation that she/he can come up with a quick fix gem/pooja/mantra that would ward off the problem to let us go ahead with our lives. While we can debate to what extent can an astrologer meet the expectation, one thing is clear - to be able to guide people, the astrologer always needs divine help that involves good memory, power of interpretation, reasoning, logic and a fair bit of intuition.

Astrologers are born with planetary combinations that bestow these qualities on them. Jupiter, the karaka of astrology, must be strong, free of afflictions and well placed in the chart. Moon and Mercury should be strong and a strong Mercury in second house to either Moon or Ascendant is considered auspicious. Fifth house should be strong to provide for intuition. Furthermore, ascendant should be free of negative influences such that thinking and judgement is not clouded. Astrology as a profession and a source of income happens when this combination involves the tenth house.

With this post, I complete two years of writing articles on this subject. Astrology has come a long way in these two years. Through half hour programmes on televisions, it has entered our living room and has become a topic of page three conversations. Through

I happened to catch a programme on National Geographic yesterday, July 04, 2007, called “Twins, Triplets and Quads” where it was mentioned that in case there is a shortage of blood in the body of fetus, miracle of biology siphons the blood away from dermis to more important organs of body - e.g. brain. The body keeps a record of this miracle and the index finger of left arm can be used to determine how healthy the heart would be in later stages of life.

I did a bit of search on Google and found out that a research paper was presented by some Indian doctors, titled Utility Of Finger Prints in Myocardial Infarction Patients. This work is not new, this paper appeared in a journal in 2000 and refers to another paper which was written in 1975. I guess I was the one not looking.

Quoting from the abstract -

Dermatoglyphics has been well established as a diagnostic aid in a number of diseases having hereditary basis … It is deducted that patients of myocardial infarction have higher incidence of whorls & lower incidence of loops in all the digits.

Unless I am being completely unreasonable, does it not qualify as palmistry?

Over the weekend, I found out a way of inserting Hindi/Sanskrit words in the articles. I will publish the entire procedure of how to use windows live writer to blog in Hindi on my other blog on blogspot.

Here, I would like to begin with a shloka:

सर्वे भवन्तु सुखिनः सर्वे सन्तु निरामयाः |
सर्वे भद्राणि पश्यन्तु मा कश्चिद दु:खभाग्भवेत ||

This verse taken from Vrihadakaaranyaka Upanishad means - may all be happy, may all be without any diseases. May all see good in the world, may no one have any sorrows.

English would still be my primary language of publication. However, this method would allow me to represent some of words in Sanskrit/Hindi for which transliteration is extremely difficult.