Verse 423 from Thirukkural

” From whomsoever heard, knowing the truth by discerning is wisdom “.

Debilitation and exaltation in astrology – This article is the second part of a two-part series. If you have not read the first part of it, please get started from there for a better understanding.

The following picture provides a view of Zodiac with 12 constellations represented in a South Indian chart format, if you are not familiar with it.

Results and Discussion:

Four planetary positions were considered for this study. Their details along with metrics of interest are presented for each case.

Scenario 1: Jupiter Exalting at 5° Cancer + Sun at 5° Capricorn (Jupiter Retrogrades)

This corresponding planetary position is presented in chart below:

Following table provides those dates when such a planetary position happened and linear distance between Earth and Jupiter at that time (calculated at a specific hour across data points).

The Mean and Standard Deviation (SD) of the distance for these 12 instances is 4.28857± 0.02138 AU. Out of these 12 cases, record number 8 with lowest distance corresponding to 30/12/1017 is presented below for the distance involved. The green line presents the linear distance for approximately ±300 days from this date.

• You can notice that the distance between the two planets is in fact on the lower side (4.26821 AU), confirming the retrograde explanation we saw earlier.
• The distance between high and low points in this chart is approximately 190 days.

Scenario 2: Jupiter Debilitated at 5° Capricorn + Sun at 5° Cancer (Jupiter Retrogrades)

This corresponding planetary position is presented in chart below:

Following table provides those dates and linear distance between Earth and Jupiter.

Mean and Standard Deviation (SD) of linear distance for these 11 instances is 4.10871± 0.00350 AU. Out of these, record number 6 with lowest distance corresponding to 4/7/1095 is presented below.

As per these data points, you can observe the distance between Jupiter and Earth is consistently lower when Jupiter debilitates than when it exalts.

Scenario 3: Jupiter Exalting at 5° Cancer + Sun at 5° Cancer (Jupiter Combusted)

This corresponding planetary position is presented in chart below:

Following table provides those dates and linear distance between Earth and Jupiter.

The Mean and Standard Deviation (SD) of the distance for these 17 instances is 6.27807± 0.00364 AU. Out of these, record number 15 with lowest distance corresponding to 21/7/1919 is presented below.

Scenario 4: Jupiter Debilitated at 5° Capricorn + Sun at 5° Capricorn (Jupiter Combusted)

This corresponding planetary position is presented in chart below:

Following table provides those dates and linear distance between Earth and Jupiter.

The Mean and Standard Deviation (SD) of the distance for these 17 instances is 6.10601± 0.00444 AU. Out of these, record number 4 with lowest distance corresponding to 27/12/537 is presented below.

The corresponding all planetary positions for 27/12/537 are presented below just to give you additional assurance.

Conclusions:

1. Based on the two hypotheses considered in this analysis, data supports the second hypothesis i.e. The linear distance between Jupiter and Earth is consistently lower when Jupiter debilitates at Capricorn compared to its point of exaltation at Cancer. This analysis validates the hypothesis proposed by VP Jain.
2. Scenario 3 and 4 confirm that when Jupiter and Sun are at 5° Capricorn, Jupiter is relatively closely positioned to Earth compared to same 5° position at Cancer.
3. Based on the analysis of these limited combinations, we can infer that during exaltation, the planet’s distance with Earth is not the minimum.

This analysis invalidates the popular explanation given to us that a planet comes closer to earth when its exalted. 

Seeds for further analyses:

1. As stated earlier, this analysis considered only 4 key combinations out or 144 potential combinations involving 2 planets.
2. The distance of the other outer and inner circle planets need be calculated like Jupiter presented in this article.
3. This distance-based approach should be extended to more than 2 planets.
4. This analysis can be easily replicated between Sun and Earth only, which can address the basic premise on which I have started my analysis.

Though this looks like a small exercise, it took me many weeks to perform calculations and to estimate distances involved, with the currently available best of the breed software. I hope that some interested souls or students of astrology will continue this exercise for other combinations mentioned above. I would also attempt them, when time permits. If any of you would like to pursue research in this line, feel welcome to contact me for guidance (info@aimlastrology.in).

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I fondly acknowledge following resources that were leveraged for this study

1. Astrological Calculations for Planetary positions: Sri Jyothi Star 9 Pro Software (https://www.vedicsoftware.com/)
2. Astronomical Unit Distance Calculations and Graph Assistance: Stellarium V 0.19.3 (https://stellarium.org/)