In this episode of “5 Minutes,” Dr. Robert Svoboda explores Nadi Jyotisha and its traditional approach to understanding karma and destiny.

Jyotisha is the divinatory discipline of India, and generally speaking, there are five major varieties of Jyotisha. There is Parashari Jyotisha, which is the most common and follows the teachings of Parashara. There is also Jaimini Jyotisha, which is similar in many ways to Parashari Jyotisha but has significant differences and was taught by Maharshi Jaimini. There is Nilakantha Tajika, and Tajika suggests that many of its principles originally came from the Arabs, who received them from the Greeks, who in turn received them from the Babylonians and others. There is also Tantrika Jyotisha. The fifth variety is called Nadi Jyotisha.

The word Nadi is also used to describe the nadis within the body, the pathways through which prana circulates. Nadi Jyotisha suggests that there are certain pathways along which karmas move. It is said that centuries ago, some experts in Jyotisha would sit and project their awareness forward, describing that at a certain time and place, a particular individual would be born, the qualities that individual would have, and the karmas that would bring that person to the moment of the reading. They wrote these things down and collected them into compendia.

Today, there are still places in India where these collections exist. One is in Hoshiarpur, sometimes referred to as the Bhrigu Samhita. There is also a place in Tamil Nadu, not far from Chidambaram, where many of these grantha, or collected texts, are preserved. I personally have not been to Hoshiarpur, but I have been to Vaitheeswaran Koil and had a reading done there.

The method used there involved a thumbprint. They went through groups of leaves and asked questions such as whether I had four sisters and three brothers. If the information did not match, they moved on to another leaf. When they reached my leaf, they asked whether my father’s name contained certain consonants, which it did, and whether my mother’s name contained certain consonants, which it did. After asking a few more questions, they found the appropriate leaf.

There was also a gentleman I knew in Bombay for many years, who sadly passed away last year, who used a different method. He would examine the individual’s birth time and ascendant from the horoscope. If someone did not know their birth time, he would take them outside around noon and measure their shadow using a special instrument with different symbols on it. He would then calculate the ascendant from that measurement. Because chaya means shadow, he was known as a Chaya Shastri.

Whatever kind of Nadi Jyotisha reading you receive, people who practice it often find that the reading can be extremely accurate up until the time of the reading. However, the predictions after that point are often not as accurate.

The reason for this is that the experts who created these collections were calculating according to the karmas that would have brought a person to the moment of the reading. But there is also a certain element of choice and free will. After the reading, according to what you choose to do with that information, you may influence the future in ways that do not directly reflect what the reading described.

Nadi Jyotisha can be very interesting, but it is not something that should be followed or accepted without careful consideration.