Decoding Sasa Yoga

I follow Astrology on the logic of characteristics and significance of Signs, Planets and the houses of Horoscope. Everything is manipulation of different combinations between these three factors. I, therefore, never bother to remember or rote by heart, any great yogas prescribed by the classical books of Indian Astrology. It is not that I have not learnt them.. but things devoid of logic never appealed to me and in, my more than 35 years of, experience of astrological consultation, I never had to repent for this omission.

Here, we are dealing with Sasa Yoga. Let us try to scrutinize it logically with the accepted rules of classical astrology.

Sasa Yoga is one of the Pancha Mahapurush yogas, therefore, it is most logical to accept that a Mahapurush yoga has to deal with the Ascendant i.e., Self and his Karma or deeds i.e., 10th house.

Sasa Yoga is believed to be formed when Saturn is in either Capricorn, Aquarius or Libra sign and placed in Kendra e.g., 1st, 4th, 7th or 10th house.

Let us tabulate the above conditions to facilitate logical inferences. The following table shows different Ascendants when Sasa Yoga is formed by way of Saturn’s placement in 1, 4, 7 and 10th house in either Capricorn, Aquarius or Libra Sign.

I think anyone who knows about astrology, will agree that whenever we hear of Saturn, we apprehend to come across something negative e.g., Delays, Restriction, Cold, Hardships, Separation, Obstacles, Burden of Responsibilities, Slavery, Labour, Hard-work, Discipline and beyond this it is linked with longevity and Karma as if it wants the native to live long and suffer. While holding this background, we must be shocked to hear about something great denoted to Saturn.

In the results described about this yoga, we can see that none of the above negative traits of Saturn are visible.

So, we can well infer that the extra ordinary Mahapurusha qualities cannot be directly attributable to Saturn. It is possible that Saturn’s placement may merely be indicative to some other secret source of power. It may be like landmark being used in postal address of a Corporate House building e.g. Birla House, Opp: Old Kabutarkhana..!! We know that the landmark is only useful in identifying the location but it is not the center of interest.

So we need to dig further..

Let us recall what are the denominators of strength in a horoscope?

(A) Lords of relevant houses placed in own, moolatrikona or exaltation sign

(B) Aspect or placement of benefic planets on relevant houses

(C) Combination of lords of Trikona and Kendra houses

(D) Absence of influence of or weakness of

• (Da) natural malefic or

• (Db) functional malefic planets

Since the yoga is silent about lordship and sign strength of houses other than where Saturn is placed, we cannot examine Sasa Yoga on the basis of condition (A) above.

Since, there is no reference of any aspects, condition (B), too cannot be useful. Similarly, condition (C) also is not useful. Saturn being a natural malefic and placed in Kendra houses in its own sign or exaltation, condition (Da) & (Db) also cannot be useful.

However, respecting the scriptures, let us primarily accept the Sasa Yoga and try to scrutinize its merit in different Ascendants.

Let us first mark out the possibilities where Saturn becomes Badhakesha:

Same way, let us mark out where Saturn becomes Marakesha.