In this conversation, Ernst Wilhelm and I discuss his latest research into the Indian symbology of the twelve Adityas and their value for astrological interpretation. The Adityas are solar deities first described in the Rig Veda and elaborated throughout Puranic literature. Ernst resurrects these ancient symbols and applies them to the astrological zodiac, where they construct a symbolic order of meaning that transcends and includes the Greek zoological signs.
The astrological zodiac signifies a 360-degree circle that circumscribes a relational field. If we understand the zodiac as a signifier rather than a thing, then its function as a symbolic order becomes available to us. What Ernst calls the “Aditya circle” is thus a meta-structure of meaning that reveals a new field of astrological inquiry—the question of what it means to incarnate love in the law of our being.
There is yet so much to explore in the Adityas from astrological, philosophical, and psychoanalytic perspectives. The Adityas are not only symbols in and of themselves, they are a symbolic structure that contains other signifiers. As Ernst notes, each Aditya travels with a Rishi that extends the paternal law of that Aditya, or what Lacan would refer to as the “Name-of-the-Father”. How do we incarnate the love we are here to give, so that love is no longer the egoic phenomenon of giving what you don’t have to someone who doesn’t want it? Is this the import of an astrology that unchains the symbolic order and encounters the real? We explore the Adityas as aspects of love, the purpose of astrology readings, and what it means to incarnate love.
For more on the Adityas, see Ernst’s introductory video here and his series analyzing the Trump cabinet using the Aditya zodiac here. Those interested in seeing their natal charts with the Aditya zodiac can access Ernst’s Aditya calculator here.
The audio recording and edited transcript of our conversation are both given below.
Neeshee Pandit: Hi Ernst, welcome, and thank you so much for being here with me to have a conversation about astrology, zodiacs, and whatever else we get into!
Ernst Wilhelm: Thanks for inviting me. It’s been a long time since we’ve hung out together, so it feels good.
Neeshee Pandit: I know you’ve been pushing the boundaries of zodiacal astrology as usual with this new concept of the Aditya zodiac, so I thought you could introduce that notion for people.
Ernst Wilhelm: In the Puranas (which are the mythological textbooks of India), a few of them, including the Srimad Bhagavatam, give this arrangement of Adityas, which are solar divinities related to different parts of the circle. And they basically tell us that a solar month corresponds to an Aditya.
The interesting thing about this circle of solar months is that the first month doesn’t start at the vernal equinox (where we have the first degree of Aries), but 30 degrees before that. That’s a very, very different thing. And these Puranas are old texts—the Bhagavatam is from the time of the Mahabharata. In these old books, they never mentioned zodiac signs. Instead, they are taken in 12 sutras.
They are talking about the Sun God traveling through the sky, and in each part of the year, he takes on a certain guise, a certain divinity, and that is the Aditya. One of the beautiful things about it is that it doesn’t stop there. Each Aditya (and there are twelve of them) is spending time with six other celestial beings. One is a rishi, one is a rakshasa, one is a gandharva.1 So there are these other beings there. This means we have a symbolism of six beings for every 30-degree portion of the sky, which adds a lot to that part of space. The first Aditya starts before the vernal equinox, and the second starts at the vernal equinox. And then it just goes around the circle.
What is really interesting about the Adityas is if we reflect on what they mean. “Aditi” means “the undivided”, or “the whole”. She is the wife of the Rishi Kashyapa, and they had these twelve children called the Adityas. If we think about this in mythological and astronomical terms, we have Aditi—the undivided. That is a perfect circle. It’s just this undivided circle. We can look at the circle as a symbol of love, of unity. We have the full circle of connection. A circle represents connection, right? I say we have this circle of perfect divine love, and Aditi is this unbroken circle of divine love. And then we’ve got seven planets to throw around in that circle. We are not going to cover the entire circle.
Then we take the circle, and there are twelve Adityas, twelve children, which are really twelve different aspects of love. So each of us has a way that we can love. Each of the Adityas, as a child of Aditi, represents an aspect of love.
We are really here to live that type of love in our lives. If we have healthy planets in a particular Aditya, we will be using that love in a healthy way, and through that we will be productive to ourselves. We’ll be productive to other people, and we’ll really be doing what we’re meant to be doing. But, of course, if we have afflicted planets in an Aditya, then we’re struggling with how to make that love work in our life. And then we’re having problems.
No one can give complete perfect love and every type of love that somebody might need or want, or that we might need or want.
One of the things I love about the Adityas is that when we look at it, we’re looking at what love are you here to express? You are not going to express perfect love—because it’s mathematically impossible. There are seven planets and twelve Adityas, twelve parts of Aditi only. The circle is perfect, but we don’t get to be the whole circle. Even when we take the perspective of the Kālapurusha2: one of the most basic divisions of the circle is that it’s Vishnu, and each part, each rashi3 of 30 degrees, is one of Vishnu’s body parts. So every one of Vishnu’s body parts is going to do something useful. But every body part is not going to be in use.
In our charts, we have seven planets. At most, we’re using seven body parts. Same with the Adityas. At most, we’re using seven Adityas. No one can give complete perfect love and every type of love that somebody might need or want, or that we might need or want.
It’s really interesting to start looking at this whole circle as what kind of love are you giving and what kind of love are you needing back, because maybe you don’t have an Aditya, and so not having that, you are thinking “that’s love coming to my life that I could really benefit from”. Of course, the Aditya on your seventh house is a love that is the most remote from you unless you have planets in there. We have to look at everything as the context of the type of love that a person is capable of expressing.
One of the things I love about the Aditya symbology is that we go around and we tell people there’s this big thing going on these days that “we should live as ourselves”. We shouldn’t be programmed entities. We shouldn’t be following cultural programming, television programming. We have to find out who we are and live with ourselves.
I don’t know what other people hear when they hear that, but when I hear that, I feel like I have to be this badass at something. I can’t just go draw. I have to be an amazing artist. I just can’t go write a novel. I have to be on the New York Times bestseller list, otherwise, I’m not living as myself. If I want to get into politics, I have to be the president. Being the mayor is not going to cut it. When we start thinking this way, it feels like living as yourself is this big thing in the world. But if you think about that, that’s mathematically impossible—because if that were the truth, and everyone who got into politics was meant to be president, it wouldn’t work. Everyone can’t be president. The New York Times bestseller list is only so long—everyone can’t be on it. You know what I mean? There are only so many museums. There are only so many galleries. Everyone can’t have their art in there because they’re all the best artists. If everyone is the best artist, it doesn’t work.
None of those things means living as ourselves. That is just what we’re doing, in this movie, in this role. So imagine this Western movie. We have one guy who’s a sheriff. We have one guy who’s the outlaw. We have one lady who’s the lone woman on the farm. We have one guy who’s a roaming bandit. We have one guy who’s a Civil War veteran, wandering across America—hopeless. We have all these different characters doing completely different things.
Yet none of that is living as themselves. Just like being president, being a doctor, being an astrologer, being an artist—none of that means we’re living as ourselves. Living as ourselves on the deepest level means to express the love that is contained within us. And that is seen as the Aditya. It’s living out this Aditya.
One of the Adityas is Varuna. He is the fourth Aditya, and he falls where tropical Gemini would fall. Varuna is the all-encompassing sky. It’s the force that can encompass everything. And it is essentially the all-encompassing love. It’s the love that can accept everything. People might have lots of planets there, but how healthy are those planets? They might need some work. But let’s take the example of a person who had this pure. They could just sit there, and somebody could come up to them who’s done severely evil things and say, “Oh, I’m a horrible person, this is what I did”. They explained everything they did. The pure Varuna person’s response to that would be so all-encompassing. They could embrace all the horrible things that person had done—without giving any signals of what’s wrong with you, without any judgment, without anything except pure sheer acceptance. In that, the person would find healing. It’s that level of all-encompassing love. It’s not a love that does anything. It’s the love that just encompasses everything. It gives room for everything under the sun that happens to happen.
The love of the Adityas has a way to transform us, and living as ourselves essentially means living out that love.
Now, if that same person went to anyone else, to any other Aditya, that Aditya wouldn’t have that love to give. Say it came to Tvastha. Tvastha wants to build something; he wants to build forms. That is the seventh Aditya, and where we would have tropical Virgo. He wants to build forms, and he is all about making a workable, real life that contains real things that have form and value for yourself and others. This person feels horrible and evil about what they’ve done to such a point that all they can do is continue to do evil things. Because when someone is at that level, the way they feel about themselves only makes them do more evil things. So the minute they’re told, all you have to do is this and make up for it, they’re going back to do evil things because they just can’t even begin to see themselves doing good things. They just can’t live with themselves enough to do anything good. They came to a Tvastha person, and the Tvastha person listened. He’d be showing micro-expressions in his unconscious, but he would be responding with, “Man, you really could have done something useful down here, and you did this and you were self-indulgent and you weren’t building anything”. He’d be thinking these thoughts—“You weren’t building, you idiot”. A person’s unconscious would register all that stuff and not be able to forgive himself as a result. That would be the wrong person to go to. Each of the Adityas has a love. Tvastha is the love of building. Somebody comes and you say, “Hey, how about we just build this?” You build something with someone, and they heal because they’re building something.
I remember when I was a kid, one of my dad’s friends visited from overseas, came for a week, and while we were there, we built this amazing kite together. I was seven years old, and that was one of the most helpful phases of my development. Just having someone building something with me, just showing up saying, “Hey, let’s build this together. We can build this thing”. It was extravagant—it wasn’t like this simple little thing. It was an amazing thing. To develop this confidence in building and to have an experience of brotherhood and building, that one week really was one of the most impactful weeks of my childhood. He was giving this seven-year-old a love of building, giving the love of let’s build something, let’s make something, see how that feels, see what that does to us. The love of the Adityas has a way to transform us, and living as ourselves essentially means living out that love.
Any of those guys in the Western movie, it doesn’t matter what the role is. The outlaw could be the guy with the all-encompassing love. He’s meeting people along the journey and just being so accepting of them. They heal. They get better. They make shifts. And the Civil War vet who’s wandering in dissolution doesn’t know where he goes. Maybe he’s got the love of Tvastha, and when he shows up somewhere and that barn is in disrepair, he just can’t help himself. He has to just build it.
Living as yourself essentially means living out our Adityas. Now we actually have a focal point. What does that actually mean? Live as myself? It’s to live as an Aditya. Are you living out this thing?
What’s really interesting is this psychic I know. He doesn’t use astrology or anything, but people take pictures of themselves or other people. I’ve heard about a few readings from people who have gone to this guy, and he effectively tells them their Aditya and says, “This is where your strength comes from. Live this way. This is how you have to be. This is how you live”. He just sees the Aditya in these people, and he approaches it from a very spiritual point of view. He had visions of Christ coming to him at age three, so he is a mystic. And the things he’ll say are like he’s talking about their Adityas and how this is where your power comes from. This is where your strength comes from. This is where your love comes from. And it’s just very clear to him.
So there really is a way of living to live as ourselves, and that’s living out the love that we embody, because that’s the only thing that’s really doing any good for ourselves or other people. It’s a whole different way to look at the astrology of it. There is also lots of practical value to using the Adityas. The symbology can just be so practical. For instance, the second Aditya, Aryaman, is the companion. So, how qualified are you for companionship? I’ll get to your seventh house and your karma with the opposite gender. I’ll get to that. But first, how capable are you of companionship? Because if you’re not, it doesn’t matter.
You have a wonderful seventh house, and a wonderful person shows up. The love of companionship—do I have that kind of love to give or not? It’s really interesting to just see the circle this way.
Neeshee Pandit: It just brings up so many things for me. And for the record, you and I haven’t actually had a discussion about this.
Ernst: No, we’ve never talked about this.
Neeshee: I think you’re bringing in a cultural symbology. We talk about Vedic astrology, but we’re using the Greek language a lot of the time. Here, you are actually looking at the Indian symbology. I think that makes absolute sense. But, even more important, is that we’re getting at something much more profound and even philosophical, which is that you’re looking at the zodiac as a structure through which we actually incarnate love and who we are—in a way that is even prior to the roles we might play. Something that brings up for me is a quote from Lacan, who says, “Love is giving something you don’t have to someone who doesn’t want it”.
And I think that that very much describes the dynamic of lowercase “love” that human beings engage in. They go to the place where they don’t have the thing, they try to give it to somebody, that person doesn’t even want it. And there you have the ritual of human ego-based love—which is seeking. On the other hand, you could actually say, well, where do I actually have love to give? We’re going to actually offer something that is truly mine to offer. When you do that, you’re no longer in this reciprocal game of I need something from somebody else to validate who I am, where I’m really just reaching for myself in the other person. What would it mean to actually access love itself, as something that’s even a spiritual phenomenon?
I think this is what you are getting at that with the Adityas. And you pointed out the meaning of the word. The root in there is “Adi”, which means “primordial”, “first”, “original”. We can think about the zodiac as a constitution: what is our true constitution? Not just in the sense of an Ayurvedic constitution of doshas and elements, but what about something even more fundamental than that? You are actually describing the fact that we all incarnate love in a unique way. And that is what there is to realize.
When we’re in a state of expressing love, we’re fulfilled in that state. And that’s the beautiful thing about it. So when we say live as yourself, it means live as a fulfilled being who’s expressing love.
Ernst Wilhelm: It’s really true. And you know, this whole thing of love versus need. Most people approach relationships from a point of need, like you said, they are trying to give what they don’t have to somebody who doesn’t want it. That’s one way of looking at it, and that’s a whole other discussion, of course. But that’s basically the love of me. People say, “I love you, I love you”. What they’re saying is, “I need you. I need you. I need you most of the time”.
But see, when a person is expressing love, they don’t need love because they have it already. And that’s really what the Adityas are. By expressing this part of yourself, which is really your most primal part, your most truthful part, then you don’t need back—you’ll get back because that’s how life works. But you don’t need back. If people come from a need point of view, that they need something back, and they don’t get that, they get upset. A lot of things they need, they have not even voiced to the people around them that they’re supposed to get back from. It’s just this unconscious, unqualified expectation, and when they don’t get it, they create drama.
When we’re in a state of expressing love, we’re fulfilled in that state. And that’s the beautiful thing about it. So when we say live as yourself, it means live as a fulfilled being who’s expressing love. Rather than living as an empty being who thinks they have to be on the New York Times bestseller list, and when they’re not in front of the camera and looking great, they’re having drama with their loved ones.
Astrology shouldn’t be an abstracting modality. It should be an incarnating modality.
Neeshee Pandit: That brings up the issue of what we are even using astrology for when we give people readings or when people study it? I certainly have seen my fair share of people who use it in a way that I think they’d be better off not even engaging with it. It’s just building up ideas and a sense of self that may be somewhat accurate, but it’s actually delusional. It’s using symbology to avoid actually incarnating yourself. And I’ve always thought of astrology as something that actually helps an individual become who they are, actually helps them incarnate themselves.
Astrology shouldn’t be an abstracting modality. It should actually be an incarnating modality. You’re getting to the core of that with this articulation of the Adityas, and maybe you are describing a circle that is getting at the very essence of what it means to be embodied.
Ernst Wilhelm: I think so. I think that Adityas really spell out what we are on a really truthful level. I’ve really come to see the zodiac signs, those 30-degree portions, to be more important than the planet. It’s not “Okay, what planet is strong?”. It’s, “What Adityas are really prominent here? Are they healthy or unhealthy?”
If you have a prominent Aditya and it’s unhealthy, your life is not going to work until you turn that around, until you heal those planets in there. But if your most prominent Aditya is a healthy Aditya, then you’ve always been expressing a kind of love. And you’ll only get better at it, and it’s going to make a big difference in your life. It’s not possible to be happy if our prominent Aditya is our most afflicted Aditya. And our afflicted Aditya will always be the one who’s causing us the most stumbling blocks. That’s why we have to develop a more truthful love, because love is a very confusing thing.
Everyone who does everything we are making fun of about people and being in love, well, they are not trying to cause trouble. We think this is how it works; we simply are playing the game wrong, and that’s why we have the Lajjitaadi Avasthas.4 Are you using this planet in the way that you win at the game, or are you going to lose every time because that’s not how the game works?
If we have trouble in our chart, it doesn’t mean that person is mischievous and trying to ruin everything around them. It’s that they’re sincerely trying to play by rules that they believe and think are going to work. They feel like they’re working so hard to make life better for themselves and others, and then when it doesn’t, they feel so cheated, and they’re trying to figure out why. You must have done that wrong, and this person did this. From their point of view, they’re trying their damnedest to do the good, beautiful, loving thing. But they have ideas about love they have that simply aren’t true and that aren’t the way things work.
It’s really, really sad when humans are putting so much energy into this love thing. If we approach it with ideas that aren’t true, we’re going to muck it up. We need a model of what really works—what kind of love is really there, and what does that love look like? And, second of all, are you seeing this clearly, or do you have wrong concepts about it? Why? Because when you’re raised in certain environments, you learn from your environment. In this day and day and age of Earth, we’re not really getting a lot of great examples of what works for people; what working love is, what working family is, what working anything is.
The astrology with the Lajjitaadi Avasthas gives us a perfectly working model of how love works. We can look at a planet and say, “Oh, I’m using this planet in a way that every time I lose”. Every time somebody gets hurt, including me, everyone gets hurt. As opposed to, every time I touch something, it’s gold because it works. And we’re all capable of making everything we touch gold, if we just learn and look in our charts to see where we’re confused about what works, what’s going to create love and connection, versus what we think will create love and connection but doesn’t.
You are structuring the zodiac and looking at what its intrinsic dynamics actually are. It’s a movement. And the fact that that movement has vectors and an axis means that it also mirrors itself. This is the structure of reality.
Neeshee Pandit: You’re really digging into the 30-degree portions of the zodiac circle in a way that’s more fundamental than the planets.
What is it, and how do we understand it? How do we structure it? How do we read it? Your whole movement from sidereal to tropical, and now the movement from tropical to the Adityas. Some might wonder, what’s right? What’s correct?
My view on it is that you can really draw the circle however you wish. It’s a 360-degree circle, and there are patterns of twelve in all kinds of ways. There are twelve meridians, too. So you can take the solar value however you want and put it into 30 degrees times 12. This is a basic mathematical pattern of reality, you could say.
Somebody might say, “Well, how come you’re getting rid of zero degrees Aries?” You can think about that. In the traditional notion of seasonal dynamics, there’s always the idea that a season begins before it actually manifests its energy. We have this ebb and flow, and you can either place the beginning of a season at its manifestation or you can place the beginning of the season before its manifestation—
Ernst Wilhelm: In seed.
Neeshee: Yes. So you can put 30 degrees before and say that’s where the zodiac starts. It is just as valid as putting it at the vernal equinox.
Ernst Wilhelm: How I see it all lines up is that we have this circle, and that circle is created by the apparent motion of the Sun around Earth. There are four times when that motion is unique. That is, at the vernal equinox and the autumnal equinox, where we have equal day and night and the Sun crosses the equator. At the summer solstice, the Sun reaches its peak, and then it begins to descend and move more south. At the winter solstice, the sun reaches its lowest point relative to Earth, the most southern point. And now it’s going to begin to move north.
We have these four points, this axis. We have to take this model of zodiac signs, the twelve Adityas, and relate them to that axis in a way that essentially works. Because we are working with that axis, the Adityas are tropical divisions of that circle using that axis. This is very clearly mentioned in the old books—they relate to axes differently than the Persians and the Greeks did, who put the first sign at the vernal equinox. What they do instead is they have the first sign here, the equinox here, second sign. The equinox divides the first and second signs, but that’s because the first and second signs are seen as reflections of each other.
So we have this axis. Imagine we put a mirror up, and we can see this reflection along this axis. These are reflections, and so they reflect across the axis, and we can just fold the whole chart along these four axes to see how different signs of the zodiac, different Adityas, are reflections of each other.
Rashi aspects are based on this axis. There is also some Greek astrology based on this idea of reflections. Jaimini astrology is so much about reflections. We have the ardasha rashi, which means the reflective rashi, which is a rashi that is on another part of the zodiac from another one.
We have to look at it in the structure of what these signs really are. What are they? How are they interacting? And then it becomes clear how to put them against this axis of the equinoxes and solstice.
Neeshee Pandit: That’s exactly the word I was thinking of: structure. You are really structuring the zodiac and looking at what its intrinsic dynamics actually are. It’s a movement. And the fact that that movement has vectors and an axis means that it also mirrors itself. This is the structure of reality.
That also reminds me of something I thought earlier, which is how do we move beyond looking at astrology in our charts as something narcissistic? And I think the only way you can really do that is by seeing the ways in which something that’s actually beyond you can move through you, which we are talking about as love. Rather than just sort of analyzing yourself in a mirror, in the sense of personality, you are actually analyzing yourself in a functional way.
Rather than thinking, well, I guess I should do this, I should do that, I’m this kind of person, I’ll never be happy, and my seventh house is trashed. People get these ideas about themselves and their life, and then they try to structure themselves inside that, and that’s not healthy.
Ernst Wilhelm: One of the tricky things about dealing with astrology as a language of symbols is that whenever somebody looks at their chart, they’re approaching their chart with all these ideas about themselves already. When they look at the chart, the first things they’re going to see in that chart are things that support those ideas of themselves.
The problem with that is we’re all walking around with a lot of ideas about ourselves that simply aren’t true. We think we’re a certain way, but we’re not. We think that we don’t care about this, that we’ll never have that, and this is what we really need. But if we watch our lives develop over decades and we get the maturity, we more and more have the ability to observe our lives and observe ourselves, and start saying, wait a minute, I was really never that thing. And it’s proven because now I’m fifty years old and none of that even happened. And then this thing over here happened, and I didn’t even try. It just kind of just happened.
There are always parts of ourselves that need to prove ourselves to mom, to dad.5 In our imaginations and our ideas of ourselves, we see ourselves as this thing that will please mom or dad. And then we think we’re that thing. We identify with that thing. And then you realize, I’m really not that thing.
One day, you finally start allowing yourself to exist as yourself. And that’s when you can really start seeing the horoscope working. Until then, we’re using it in a very limited capacity in that we’re only allowing ourselves to see the stuff in the chart that supports our perception of ourselves, our preconception of ourselves, which may not even be correct. How much of what we think about ourselves is true? Compared to what is false, you can say on average it’s 50/50. That’s if we take the world as an average. Statistically, on average, half of what you believe about yourself is true, and the other half has nothing to do with who you really are.
Of course, one person might have 10%, one person might make 90% of something. But collectively, we’re at 50%. So you need to realize, as you look at yourself and you look at your chart, that you need to observe—don’t just believe shit about yourself until it’s proven, until you see it actually happening. You need to stand back and say, I’m going to watch and see, does she really have the Sun in Aries? Or is this something else I’m seeing? Or do they have Saturn in Aries, and they’re trying to prove that they’re strong? The difference is that the Sun in Aries, one day, will have just done things that show they are strong, and the Saturn in Aries person will die trying to prove that they’re strong. But in their mind, oh, I’m strong. Because they need to prove that. And the only way to prove it is to start with positive thinking. You have to see yourself as that, but maybe you’re really not, and it’s not that you’re not strong, but maybe it’s not Aries strength. You have a different strength. And all the Adityas take great strength to express, so we have to always keep that in mind.
It’s been really, really interesting to look at charts of people who don’t have an observational attitude about themselves and about astrology and so on. And how they’ve been very stuck in the astrology. I mean that they don’t learn a lot of new things. Because they don’t spend time learning to go deeper and deeper. They’re like, okay, I’ve got the structure explained. My preconceptions of myself are working, and I don’t want to observe more than that. I can function in this place. Then you’ll see people who are observers, who are watching themselves, watching their lives going, wait, something’s not adding up. I need to go deeper into the astrology.
I’ve just had hands-on experience with this, with people, and having them look at different things in their chart without them knowing it was their chart. And they are seeing really profound things and realizing that it’s sort of like me. But then not wanting to follow up on those deeper techniques because they’re happy living in this paradigm of what they are, and for them life is not about going deeper, it’s about, “I want to make more money,” or “I want to be more famous,” or “I want to go on more vacations”, whatever. They want to focus on other parts of their lives besides self-knowledge.
But when you start digging into it from a self-knowledge point of view, it doesn’t take people long to realize the limitations of their astrology techniques, other astrology symbols. Because of what they know about those so far, and they really see themselves, something’s not adding up. But it’s so easy, like you said, just to have to walk in there, explain yourself away, and get stuck. And that’s not how we want to do it. We have to have a good Mercury to use our astrology, which means we want to observe. That’s the use of Mercury we watch—we observe and we learn and we don’t come to any conclusions, any opinions. We’re just gathering information, and then we’re seeing if it adds up. That’s step one.
And we need to do that very much in regard to observing ourselves and everything. “Oh, I’m really great. I’m a great guy. I treat all the girls right”. Okay, now stand back and observe yourself. And see, how are you really treating the girls? What happens after two years? Seemed like you were treating well, but where weren’t you? Just take that step back and gather information about ourselves. Or, “I’m really a loving person. I treated my husband so well for so long”. All right. You’re in divorce court—step back. Observe. Really watch your behavior. Drop this idea. Just drop all your ideas of how you were and observe: how were you in your five years of marriage?
Neeshee Pandit: When we’re looking at our natal chart, we’re looking at the past in so many ways. It’s at the moment of birth. It’s this idea we also find in psychoanalysis of needing to retrace our memories. But you can also challenge that and say, you know what? It’s all actually evident right here, right now, in your actual life. We don’t even need to go into this retro-regression to discover what’s actually going on in your unconscious. You’re unconscious is speaking right now, and with everything that’s happening in your life. Same with astrology. As you’re saying, we can actually understand astrology by just looking at our actual life, and not just going into the abstract. I think that’s so key.
Ernst Wilhelm: Our life is a symbol of everything we’ve done right here, right now. This is you. This is what you’ve created. This is what you’ve done. This is what you’ve screwed up.
Neeshee Pandit: In that sense, there is no objective truth to astrology. And that’s why I always start my readings by letting the client talk for a while. What’s going on in your life? Where are you at? What’s your actual query? Because what’s the point reading a chart in abstract to somebody—it doesn’t really make sense on that level. I need to read to the actual person in the moment in their life in which they’re coming to me for a reading. At that point, it’s improvisational. I’m just looking into the mirror for them—I’m reading their chart for them, and there’s benefit to that. It’s the function of an astrologer. You can have that third-party perspective. You’re not looking at it with your own perceptions.
That’s the value of a reading. Then you have students of astrology, who are ideally studying the way you’re describing—to actually understand themselves, how they function, what’s real about it.
Ernst Wilhelm: I think the thing with using astrology in readings, there are so many different ways we can help people.
I remember once when I was first doing readings, a woman came in. She came in with her boyfriend, actually. She was just holding, like the whole time she had her hands clasped way down low by her womb. Usually, people across their arms here. She had it way down here, and I didn’t really think much of it. I just got into reading the chart, and I just noticed that she’s not looking very comfortable for some reason. This is like a weird way to watch, having your arms crossed across your womb. I didn’t think about it because I didn’t really read body language back then. This is when I was starting. But during the reading, I said, Oh, it looks like y’all had an abortion a year ago. And, you know, I didn’t ask, I didn’t let them talk. I didn’t say, What are your questions? What are you talking about? I just jumped in and started reading it. “I’m sorry to say it, but it looks like you had an abortion a year ago”. And the minute I said that, her arms just came off her womb.
The fact that, without any information, I just said, Hey, this happened in your past, made her feel like, Wait a minute, maybe I don’t have to feel so responsible. It’s in my chart; it was destiny. I’m holding all this pain and guilt. This was destiny. You know, it’s in your chart. Sometimes that really helps people. So there are times when I think it’s better not to have any interaction with them. You just go in. And then there are other times that I figure we always have to be so sensitive to the person because sometimes the person will come in, and they have to express before they can be in a place of receptivity to anything. And so you just have to kick back and say, okay, and then jump into it. And of course, those people can be easier to read because, you know, they give you enough cues to know where to focus. That’s always nice—it makes our job easier.
Astrology is so validating. It releases you from the judgment and, in that, lets you take the next step in being yourself.
Neeshee Pandit: Those people who come in and they say, “I don’t really know why I want an astrology reading. I just know that I’m here asking for that”. And you just have to respond.
Ernst Wilhelm: The beautiful thing about astrology is we can work with someone who’s trying to figure things out, but who’s running around in circles. We can talk with them, have them open, and then we can say, “Hey, there’s a door here. There’s a door here. You can stop running in circles”. We can do that. Or we can just blast them with information and they’re like, “Holy shit, that just totally makes sense”.
I remember one of the funniest readings I did. A lady came in, just bowled over her for an hour—just read her chart, and she goes, “Well, that feels so good to hear all that. And now I know I’m not going crazy”. Then she says, “It feels good to know I’m not going crazy”. Because there was so much stuff that she was going through and thinking and feeling. And for someone just to say, Hey, and just explain all that.
Astrology is so validating, you know? Because it’s not you going crazy. It’s the universe making you go crazy. It releases you from the judgment and, in that, lets you take the next step in being yourself. That’s all we can do. We take another step towards ourselves and astrology. There are millions of ways it can help. I think we have to be very fluid, and somehow I think there’s a talent. I don’t even know how to teach it, but I think we astrologers all have to develop it, of just knowing what the person is going to need when they show up. And there are no rules to that. In modern counseling, they have different ways. The reality is that only works for the client who needs to be handled that way, you know?
Neeshee Pandit: Exactly.
We learn something about astrology every time we handle the chart.
Ernst Wilhelm: One day, I had a lady come in for a reading, and the day before, I had learned a yoga that makes a person poor and not good with money. Right before she walked in, I said, Let me see if she has that yoga. I just learned this yoga yesterday in a book. I looked up there, and she had the yoga. So she comes in, I say, “Hey, I know you’ve told me you’ve been to lots of astrologers”. She goes, “Yeah, I’ve been to a lot of vague astrologers”. I said, “I know they all said that you are wealthy”. She goes, “Yeah, they all said that”. I said, “And when you said, No, I’m not wealthy, they all said, You’ll certainly be wealthy one day. She goes, “Yeah, they all said that”. And I said, “Well, I’m here to tell you you’re never going to be wealthy”. Which is a totally inappropriate thing to say. And she just lit up. She goes, “That feels so good to hear, because I’ve been going to Vedic astrologers for twenty years. And I feel like I’m doing something wrong because I’m not wealthy. In fact, I don’t even care about money. I never think about money. I’m focused on these other things that matter to me. So it’s such a relief to hear I’m not doing something wrong, because I’ve been thinking, what have I been doing wrong this whole time?”
Neeshee Pandit: The other interesting thing in that story is the fact that you learned that yoga, and then somebody showed up with it.
Ernst Wilhelm: It was the only time I’ve used that yoga my whole life. I know the yoga by heart because it was such a profound moment with the client. But I’ve never felt the need to look that yoga up again. It’s just what she needed to hear. It’s not that she was poor in the sense of destitute. She owned a house in a town where real estate has gone wacko. That house she bought years ago must be worth over a million now. It’s not that she was poor. She had every financial yoga there is. She had all the money yogas in the chart that you can.
Every astrologer, from the best to the worst, was going to say you’re wealthy. That’s the first thing I thought too. I was working on donation at the time. I’m like, oh, finally a wealthy client, because I need some good donations this week. And then I go, oh, let me check that yoga.
Neeshee Pandit: It speaks to the fact of just how much an astrologer has to cultivate themselves. Because I’ve often noticed the same thing—that my clients reflect something to me. I’ll have a client who really somehow is just right on par with something that I’ve been going through or processed in myself. And now they’re coming and asking that query.
And that’s why we really, like you said, have to study and dig deep into the astrology. Not just take it as a mere technique or at a surface value, or get comfortable with it.
Ernst Wilhelm: Totally true. And also, if we’re dealing with something, we have an idea of what the right thing to do is. When that client shows up, we have an idea of what the right thing for them to do is. But maybe if we really focus on their chart, we might find the right thing for us to do, you know?
It’s pretty much a two-way street. We learn something about astrology every time we handle the chart. Sometimes the thing we’re learning about astrology applies to our own charts. It’s back to the mirroring situation.
Neeshee Pandit: And also being able to hold that ethical position as an astrologer, like you’re saying, where you actually can voice their truth to them. It may not be yours. You may advise them in a way that wouldn’t be appropriate for you, that you may not even totally agree with, because that’s not your design, really. But it is true for them, and it should be voiced to them.
Ernst Wilhelm: All we’re here to do is inform them. One time, I had a client who was referred by a woman who had had readings with me, and she had a really nice chart. I never actually met her, just did phone readings before video. She had a nice chart, though, when it came to a person that’s livable with, that you can go out and have a nice time with, and a free-from-drama life. So this guy is like, “I’ve been spending time with this woman and this woman, and I’m not really sure what to do”.
One woman was this nice client who referred him, and I said, “Yeah, she’s a great girl. You’ve spent time with her, you know what a quality person she is. And this other girl, she is a total hellcat. I mean, nothing is going to be easy with this girl. It’s going to be full of drama. She’s never going to be happy with whatever you do or give”. This is the girl I say run from her. And I said, “You know, but looking at your chart and the dynamics you have going on, I think you’re going to pick the hellcat”.
And he goes, “You know, I think I’m going to”, because he had to explore that part of his seventh house at that time of his life. But I told him the truth. That’s what he needed to do. It wasn’t going to be the road to instant gratification and happiness, but it was just going to be an experience that he was going to have to go through to develop into the person who could be happy with a girl who wasn’t going to be sticking knives in him.
Neeshee Pandit: We put a burden on astrology to try to save us from all that. I remember you saying this to me a long time ago that we’re here to have the experiences that we need to have. And sometimes they hurt. A lot of times they hurt, mostly even. But that’s what it’s about. That takes you deeper into your incarnation. It takes you deeper into the discovery of what love is. This whole Aditya revelation that you’ve brought forward is a powerful way of relating to astrology, relating to the zodiac, relating to who we are and how we can actually learn and become and incarnate ourselves, fruitfully.
The Aditya zodiac is a metastructure.
Ernst Wilhelm: I think that is the best thing about people jumping into the Adityas a little bit, not that you have to do the whole Adityas circle thing, but just the basics of Aditya symbology: which is the twelve Adityas, twelve Sun gods, and twelve Rishis. Each Aditya travels with a Rishi, and the Rishi is the law.
For instance, for the law of Tvasta, the Rishi is Jamadagni, who is the father of Parashurama, the sixth incarnation of Vishnu. And Jamadagni represents the paternal law that what the father says, that’s God, that’s the law. If someone has that Aditya full of terrible stuff, all you have to say is, you were raised in a household of extreme paternal law, that if you didn’t do what dad said, you were in trouble. He was God in the house, and you were miserable because of it. And they’ll go, oh yeah. Or, if you have beautiful planets in that sign, you can just say you’ve had really big benefits from your father and your family, and they’re like, yeah, I’m doing the same business my great-great-grandfather is doing, and I love it. You’ll see there’s this huge paternal influence for good or ill, that builds them into something beautiful if the Aditya is healthy, or which is the foundation of everything going wrong in their lives if it’s unhealthy.
There are very practical things we can pull out from these Adityas. Between those two things, everyone has an idea of Aries towards Gemini before they even start astrology. You know what I mean? They’ve already got some brainwashing in about what they’re supposed to be like just from their Sun sign and the newspaper, and from bad TV shows. The beautiful thing about Adityas is that you’re approaching this circle now without any idea. Nobody knows who these people are. We don’t have these deities being explained in terrible, useless ways all around us. People aren’t tattooing them on their bodies. But we have to change that. My wife’s working on the artwork right now!
So anyway, it gives you an opportunity, if you just learn these symbols, to look at your chart and learn something new about yourself, and to be able to see, is that true or not? Without any mind nonsense getting in the way. And that’s the coolest thing about me having taught this class.
I just got done with this first part, where we just talked about these twelve Adityas with the twelve Rishis. So many people have emailed me, and they said, Oh, now I really see that. I never really grasped that I had all these planets in this sign. It opens up a whole new world of being to them, a whole new validation of their being. And it’s not that if they didn’t understand that tropical sign more, they wouldn’t have come to a similar conclusion. But they only understood that tropical sign to the ability and brainwashing that they had experienced, a lot of which is not correct.
What’s a Scorpio supposed to be like? “Oh no, I’m a Scorpio. I don’t want to be that”. I have people do anything to make sure they’re not a Capricorn lagna now. “Oh, I hate Capricorn”. Let’s make you this Aditya. And we talk about that Aditya. And they’re like, oh yeah, I’m totally like that. I love being that one. I’m like, well, that’s kind of where Capricorn is, you know?
It gives you a fresh start to really learn something about yourself without anything in the way. So I think it’s really good for every astrologer or student of astrology to take a circle around this, the Aditya circle, to see what you can learn about yourself without prejudice.
Neeshee Pandit: It strikes me that the Aditya zodiac is a metastructure. It accommodates all of the tropical signs, but it is also giving you a broader meaning-field to participate in.
Ernst Wilhelm: I think it looks at the 30-degree spaces on a deeper level of what it really means to be human, where humans really get joy, what humans are really here for. Not that the zodiac signs don’t show the same thing—they do. It’s the same portion of space. It’s just that we haven’t looked at them in that context. Whereas with the Adityas, we’re looking at those parts of the space in that context.
Neeshee Pandit: It also reminds me of the fact that, in ancient cultures, the most primordial form of astrology was worshiping the Sun. The rising and the falling of the Sun was a ritualized event.
Ernst Wilhelm: The basis of all religions was the Sun.
Neeshee Pandit: Yes, agni.
Ernst Wilhelm: That’s what’s happening in us—the rising Sun. The Sun is the energy movement along our spinal chakras, developing us spiritually every year. And so it’s all about the Sun.
I remember a friend of mine was with this very advanced yogi hanging out one day. He was lucky to spend some time with this person. And they happened to hit a really beautiful sunset. My friend commented, “Wow, it’s such a beautiful sunset”. And this very advanced yogi said, “When you really learn to do those techniques right, you will really understand the beauty of the Sun”.
And so it is about the Sun. The Aditya is the Sun God that has to do with you. So it’s really a beautiful thing to learn.
Neeshee Pandit: This whole idea that the energy of the Sun is the energy of incarnation, of being alive—the vital force.
Ernst Wilhelm: It is. It’s all the intelligence that makes us what we are. All the other planets just reflect that light. The only planet that emits any of its own light is Jupiter. So Jupiter is giving some of its own intelligence, but it’s a very small amount.
But if we turned off all the other lights. Jupiter would still show a light, whereas Moon and Mars, we wouldn’t see them. They’d be black. All the other plants are reflecting the light of the Sun. Jupiter’s mostly reflecting light of the Sun, adding a little mix of his own individual spark.
Jupiter is that individual spark of soul in ourselves. And one of the names of Jupiter is jiva, which means living—that little individualized soul of creative spark in everyone. But most of everything is the Sun. I think that really makes the Adityas powerful.
Neeshee Pandit: That’s also the meaning of jyotish, the illumination.
Ernst Wilhelm: Right, exactly.
So what do we call it? A zodiac? I try to call it the Aditya circle. By definition, “zodiac” comes from zoology, which means it has to do with animals and earthly creatures. But we’re dealing with heavenly beings now. As a joke, I call it the Aditya “Godiak”, as in Gods, because we’re looking at the signs, not as these earthly creatures anymore, these zoological beings, which include humans. We have three humans in this zoo of the astrology circle. We’re really looking at the circle in the context of divinities now, so it’s definitely a different perspective. It raises the perspective of what we’re doing with these portions of space.
Neeshee Pandit: You’re moving beyond the animal and plant level and into the human level because the gods are often depicted as human incarnations of a sort.
Ernst Wilhelm: We’re looking at our essence. What is it really to be human? Is it being a doctor? No. The gardener can have a greater love than the doctor and often does. The gardener could be living more as himself than the president because he gardens with love, as himself with the love that he is.
And that’s really what it means to be human—to be a loving creature. That’s as close to God as we can be while we’re on Earth, to be a loving being. That’s really what it’s about—bringing that God, which is love, into our daily lives as ourselves. And living the human truth of being a spiritual being versus an earthly being.
Neeshee Pandit: That’s why it’s so fascinating that you’ve brought out such an old doctrine, but you’re applying it in a modern context in a very evolutionary way to point out that we can even move beyond the animism of astrology and into a truly human engagement with it.
Ernst Wilhelm: Exactly. And it makes sense if you follow Sri Yukteswar’s yugas.6 It was at the end of the Dwapara Yuga that we have the Adityas mentioned in the books. Then the Adityas disappear, and we replace them with the tropical zodiac. We replace them with zodiac signs with earth-dwelling creatures. And now we’re at the beginning of the Dwapara Yuga, according to his calculations. So it makes sense that we’re going to bring back an astrological symbology that really hasn’t been used in a widespread fashion since at least 300 BCE.
There are no astrology books that mention the Adityas. It’s only the philosophical and spiritual books that mention these beings and connect them to different parts of the sky. In the Jaimini Sutras, Jaimini uses the names of the zodiac signs, but tells us to ignore the names when he says them, and to take the name and turn the letters into a number. And that number will indicate the sign he is talking about. So he’s talking about the signs, not as Aries, Taurus, but as sign number one, sign number two.
Sometimes I wonder, did he do this because he wants us to use the Adityas? I don’t know. But why did he do this? Why did he go through all this trouble when it’s not necessary? He specifically tells us he’s going to do it this way. It’s not like it’s part of the mysterious hidden code. He tells us very clearly he’s going to do it this way. And so he’ll say Sagittarius, but he doesn’t mean Sagittarius, so I think that he was definitely trying to tell us there’s another way to use these portions of space beyond the zoological worldly creatures. Maybe the tropical zodiac creatures are more Kali Yuga manifestations of the symbology. Because the last time the Adityas were being used in any way was in the last Dwapara Yuga.
So it’s pretty cool to be diving into them. And it’s really been wonderful to see people develop a relationship with this part of their horoscope.
Astrology is going to evolve as people evolve.
Neeshee Pandit: It also makes sense because, if you think about it, today we don’t really relate to the animal world as we once did. We don’t have totems in the same way. We don’t see animals as an entry point to the spirit world. We need an astrology for where we are now.
Ernst Wilhelm: It’s true, we don’t live with animals anymore. We don’t watch animals. Some people know about animal omenology, but if we were living close to nature, we would have a completely different relationship to those animal signs—we would have a much deeper relationship to those animal signs than we’re going to have living up here on our cell phones.
Neeshee Pandit: But in a way, there’s also something positive to be said about moving beyond a certain element of naturalism. You can idealize nature, but at the end of the day, it’s still samsara. It’s still a cycle of birth and death. We’re just—
Ernst Wilhelm: trading one illusion for another. One that’s going to work better for the people born at this time.
Neeshee Pandit: Right. But as you’re getting into the idea of divinity and the Sun God, I think we’re getting closer to something that’s actually in our destiny as a human species—to evolve, to become fully conscious.
Ernst Wilhelm: Astrology is going to evolve as people evolve. And it’s going to decline as people decline. There’s a reason why it was only predictive astrology. Every culture was only predictive because all people cared about was the concrete reality.
Now, we’re realizing more and more that we just want to feel good, that how we’re feeling matters. In the concrete reality, everyone has too much food in their fridge. We can’t get away from people. No one has any reason to be lonely. There are crawling all over the Earth. People in most of the world have jobs. People don’t have to work eighty hours a week and still be hungry. We live in a different reality now, where things aren’t as important because we already have access to them. It was a very different thing when the majority of humanity went to bed hungry every day.
Our needs are not as physical anymore. It’s the emotional needs that we’re desperate for now because we have fat stomachs and empty hearts, even though we’re living in a world where you can’t go out without meeting a million people. We’re surrounded by people, yet there’s more loneliness than ever. Why? Because we’re not living out the love that we are. We have our physical needs met, and so now we’re recognizing the greater need of the emotional stuff.
Food, you just go out there, you hunt it, you shoot it, you pick it, you get it, and you swallow and you eat it, and you make it yours. Love doesn’t work that way. It only works from being a loving being. And the Adityas show us what that means for us.
Neeshee Pandit: What we need in the world today is meaningful connection.
Ernst Wilhelm: Which starts with ourselves.
Neeshee Pandit: We have all this connectedness, but we’re not connected.
Ernst Wilhelm: Exactly. We’re missing the part we need to be connected to first, and that’s our true self, what we really are. And not selling that out or avoiding that and chasing food. Bodily food starts with the outside. Emotional food starts with the inside.
Neeshee Pandit: Thank you so much, Ernst, for taking the time to hang out and talk, and as always, you give me a lot of inspiring thoughts and something to really consider.
Ernst Wilhelm: My pleasure. I hope people check out the Adityas. It’s just another layer of fun.
Ernst Wilhelm has been a Vedic astrologer and teacher for over thirty years. His research into the philosophy and techniques of classical Vedic astrology, alongside his published translations of traditional texts, has been influential for a generation of practitioners. His prolific course content can be found at www.astrology-videos.com.
The other three celestial beings are yaksha, apsara, and naga.
Kālapurusha means the “man of time”. In Vedic astrology, kālapurusha refers to the conception of the zodiac as the body of Vishnu, where each sign corresponds to a body part, beginning with Aries as the head and concluding with Pisces as the feet.
Rāśi is the Sanskrit term for a 30-degree portion of space, or zodiac sign.
The Lajjitaadi Avasthas are a Vedic astrological technique that analyzes the natural relationships between the planets to determine their emotional state, across of spectrum from “starved” to “delighted”. Ernst’s course on the Lajjitaadi Avashtas is available here: https://astrology-videos.com/courses/intermediate-courses/lajjitaadi-avasthas-masters-course
The understanding that human behavior is patterned on the primary forces of parental relations is elaborated upon in Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex, first discussed in his landmark publication, The Interpretation of Dreams.
See Sri Yukteswar’s The Holy Science for a discussion of his unique yuga cycle calculations.
Thank you, for this interview!