Ketu

sanskrit: केतु (Ketu)

Definition

Ketu is the south, or descending, lunar node — the point where the Moon crosses the Sun's path from north to south. You'll also see it called the Dragon's Tail, the Cauda, or a chaya graha (a shadow planet), and Jyotish counts it among the nine grahas (the planets it reads). It moves constantly backward through the zodiac and always sits in the house opposite Rahu, six signs away. In myth it is the severed tail of a serpent. Together the two nodes circle the whole zodiac in roughly eighteen years and ten days.

In Tradition

Across the classical and modern Jyotish writers gathered here, Ketu is read as giving results much like the malefic Mars, and as the significator of moksha — spiritual liberation. Several of them are careful to add that this Mars-likeness is an analogy, not an identity, and they tie Ketu to detachment, to non-attachment, and to the kind of contemplation that turns the mind away from material things and toward enlightenment.

In Practice

Jyotishis read Ketu through the houses as a working planet, not just an abstract node, weighing what it signifies: bodily weakness, struggle over wealth and children, secrecy, and a spiritually inclined nature. Because it carries something of the martian temperament, Ketu in the eighth house, hemming the eighth from the Moon, or in a sign ruled by Mars can lend a fiery or violent edge to the timing of death, and a Ketu dasha or bhukti (a major or minor planetary period) may bring martian maraka — death-dealing — results. As the significator of liberation it is used to time spiritual awakening: when Ketu transits in trine to the Arudha Ascendant it can mark events such as a Kundalini awakening, and it is held to stand for the seven chakras. Sutton notes that Ketu takes away through its seven-year dasha until about age forty-eight, and after that begins to give. Ketu also stands as significator of the house or building — the Grihakarak.

Historical Origin

Among modern English-language Jyotish manuals, Ketu is described by Frawley, Levacy, Sutton, Behari, Charak, Rao, Ponde, Bhatia, Rath, and Raman — Raman invoking the old dictum Kujavad Ketu (Ketu acts like Mars). A separate strand of the tradition uses the word differently: in the Samhita astrology of Varahamihira's Brihat Samhita, Ketu names a comet or fiery omen in the sky, not the natal shadow-graha discussed here.

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Further Reading