Dusthana

sanskrit: दुःस्थान (Duḥsthāna)

Definition

Dusthana is the Sanskrit name Vedic astrologers give to the difficult, or malefic, houses of a chart — most often the sixth, eighth and twelfth. Many authors tie these houses to suffering and to the things people fear: disease, enmity, injury, loss, debt and death. The sixth, eighth and twelfth are also called the trik houses, 'the three.' Some authors widen the dusthana set to take in the third house too, though they read it as bringing only slight difficulty.

In Tradition

Across the modern Jyotish writing surveyed here, the dusthanas — the 6th, 8th and 12th houses — are read as places where planets tend to give unfavourable results. A planet sitting in one, or ruling one, is treated as weakened or spoilt, and is held to harm the matters of the houses it touches. Several authors soften this, noting that even a dusthana placement can sometimes turn out well, depending on what the rest of the chart is doing.

In Practice

Vedic astrologers use the dusthana label to flag weakness and difficulty. Levacy reads planets that rule, aspect or sit in the 6th, 8th and 12th as mostly unfavourable. Sutton holds that the sixth-house ruler can bring injury and disease, the eighth-house ruler wrecks the matters of whatever house it lands in, and the twelfth-house ruler brings loss. Raman counts an eleventh lord in the sixth as a blemish, and reads a planet in the eighth from a chosen reference point when timing a death. deFouw and Svoboda hold that a trik lord in a trik house suppresses its good results and frees its bad ones, then carry this into the dasha periods, the timing cycles: planets in the 6th, 8th or 12th from the dasha lord tend to give bad results during their bhuktis, or sub-periods. Cole notes that even helpful planets here are often felt as a problem, though Venus and the badhakesha — the obstructing planet — handle the twelfth well.

Historical Origin

The sources here are all modern works on Vedic astrology, and they paraphrase the classical doctrine rather than quote it. They are Frawley's Astrology of the Seers, Levacy's Beneath a Vedic Sky, Sutton's The Essentials of Vedic Astrology, Raman and Vasudev's How to Judge a Horoscope, deFouw and Svoboda's Light on Life, Rath's Crux of Vedic Astrology, and Cole's Science of Light. No classical text or dating is supplied in the bundle.

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Further Reading