Patterns of Destiny
Hindu Nadi Astrology
By Martin Gansten
December 2003
Almqvist & Wiksell International
ISBN: 91-22-02031-4
228 pages, 6" x 8 ¾"
$77.50 Paper Original
OUT OF PRINT
Divination is concerned with central religious issues such as man's relation to the world, moral responsibility, and the revelation of a coherent divine order underlying human experience. In Hinduism, the divinatory art par excellence is the complex and systematic 'science' of astrology, which has recently gained great popularity in the west.
The tension of fate versus free will is here resolved in the teachings of karman, and the planets are worshipped as powerful deities. Perhaps the most spectacular form of Hindu astrology is the art of nadi divination, in which predictions are read out from texts of supposedly ancient and divine origin. The nadi texts examined in the present study, representing a common school or style of astrology, are based on a unique concept of fixed destiny patterns, to one of which every human being is necessarily born.
Contents include: Introduction, Thumbing Across South India, Divination, free will and destiny, Casting and reading the horoscope, the Devakerala Nadis, Text Excerpts, Conclusions.
Astrology
Lund Studies in History of Religions, Vol. 17
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