Questions and Answers
64 questions on Directions and Orientation
Will every map have a 10-degree tilt with North at the top?
No. Each map has its own tilt, 10, 12, 20 or 25 degrees, and North can be on any side. Measure the tilt with Google Earth and find which side is North at the site, from the client or from the North mark that most plans carry, although the tilt itself is not written on them.
At what degree do the corner directions (vidisha) fall?
North-East, South-East, South-West and North-West fall exactly 45 degrees from the main directions. Where they fall in your own flat becomes clear once you do the zoning.
Is the weeping zone with imbalanced gravity the West-North-West?
Yes. The West-North-West is the zone of depression, the rudan kaksh (weeping room).
Should directions now always be read by degrees?
Yes, always by degrees; reading directions without degrees was a mistake, and only the degree method shows the actual zones.
What if there is a well inside the house?
A well inside the house gives good results when it is in the right direction and bad results when it is in a wrong direction.
Does everything taught today also apply to an apartment or flat, or only to a kothi?
Everything taught today applies to flats as well, except bhoomi vibhajan. In a flat it is already done: the space left around the building during construction is its Pishach bhoomi. Ati marma, zoning and directions all apply inside the flat.
Should the client send a live location for taking the degree?
No, ask for the current location; a live location cannot be opened for this work. Copy the coordinates, paste them in the Google Earth search box and confirm with the client that it is the right property before taking the degree.
What is the most important step in marking a Vastu map?
Taking the degree correctly from Google Earth and marking north correctly. If north is right, everything else falls into place; if it is wrong, every zone, devta and ati marma goes wrong. Almost every plot, house or factory is tilted, usually by about 10 to 20 degrees, so north must be measured with care.
Why does each outer devta cover 11.25 degrees, and how are the pads marked?
The 32 devtas of the pishach bhoomi share the full 360 degrees, and 360 divided by 32 is 11.25. Mark North with the plot's actual tilt (for example 5 degrees), place Som devta centred on North with 5.625 degrees on each side, then mark every further 11.25 degrees with a protractor or a zoning chakra and draw those lines only in the outer ring. The 12 inner devtas follow an 18-54-18 degree split in each direction (27 degrees on each side of the direction line for the middle one), and Brahma sits in the centre.
In small houses three corners are closed by walls anyway. Does that count as covering the corners?
No. Walls enclosing a house are normal; covering means burying a corner under a huge mass, such as a boulder fill 35 to 40 ft long or a thousand bricks stacked permanently in one corner. Energy moves through all four corners, so keep them free of such heavy masses whatever the direction.
In farmhouse landscaping the corners are often hidden for the design. Is that the harmful covering of corners?
Yes, it is not good; industries whose corners were fully covered have suffered losses. The rule concerns the corners of the whole land at the boundary wall: covering inside an industry or along a side is acceptable, but not a corner (vidisha). A small 3 to 4 ft landscaped bed in a corner is fine; the problem is when the whole zone, for example the entire South-East area, is covered.
In flats, can wardrobes be kept in the corners, or does that count as covering them?
Covering means piling a mountain-like heap of mass on a corner. Wardrobes do not fully cover a corner, so they can be kept.
The kundli chart was shown with directions. How are those directions used, and what can a kundli tell about a house?
Go by the houses, not the numbers written in them: the top house is the 1st house (East) and the 4th house is North. If the planets on the North side are strong, the North direction is very good for the person. A kundli can even reveal where a person's house is, where its door is, how many windows it has and where a nearby river, pond or temple lies, so a map of the house can be drawn without seeing it.
Each house of the kundli has a rashi in it. Does the rashi decide the direction?
No, the rashi plays no role here. The 4th house is North, the 1st house East, the 10th house South and the 7th house West, with the sub-directions in between. Real charts are then analysed, five a day from the student group, to decide each person's interior; the key is knowing what to do for exalted planets and what for debilitated ones.
For someone with no astrology background, what does an exalted or debilitated planet mean in practice?
Learn the twelve rashis in order and the rest is simple. If the Sun is written with rashi 1, it is exalted, very powerful, and blesses the house and direction it occupies. If the Sun sits with rashi 7, it is debilitated and very weak; if that falls in the 4th house (North), building a house in that direction ruins the person. Vastu without this is incomplete, which is why even a perfect East-facing house can fail.
Do the directions of the kundli houses shift when the rashis or planets in them change?
No. The 4th house is always North, the 1st East, the 10th South and the 7th West, with the sub-directions between them. Like water flowing in a river, planets and rashis keep moving, but the direction a house represents stays fixed whichever planet or rashi comes into it.
You explained which vitamins and minerals the Sun gives in different zones. Will we learn which disease comes from which zone-wise deficiency?
Yes. Health is taught in detail in the diploma, including which zone supplies which vitamin and mineral. Nature gives these through the zones, but we fail to recognise them.
What is uttarayan, and does it reverse the zone energies described?
There are uttarayan and dakshinayan suns. When the Sun is uttarayan its composition is more energetic, so all auspicious ceremonies are done then; the dakshinayan Sun's composition is not as good. The zone layout does not become wrong; the Sun's composition at each angle of inclination explains which energy is needed for which work.
When door effects are given for each zone, do they mean the main door or room doors?
They refer to the main door of the house, not ordinary internal doors.
Which planet and metal belong to each direction, and why place that metal there?
In Vedic vastu each direction represents a planet: East is the Sun (gold and copper), South-East is Venus (white metal), South is Mars (copper), South-West is Rahu-Ketu (panchdhatu), West is Saturn (iron), North-West is the Moon (silver), North is Mercury (kansa and brass) and North-East is Jupiter (gold and brass). The planets cannot be held in a fist, but their energy can be deposited in the home: the material representing a direction's planet captures that planet's energy there, multiplies it, raises the power of the place and nullifies negative energy.
Why does the colour of the kitchen platform matter so much?
Eye contact is greatest with the platform, since rolling, chopping and all cooking work happen on it, so its colour works on the eyes and mind. In a wrongly placed kitchen the right platform colour alone can correct about 25% of the dosh: ivory for South, South-East, South-South-East and West-South-West kitchens; light red lakha granite for South-East and South-South-East, used sparingly because red stone comes only as granite, which develops pin holes; yellow for South-West and West; and green for South-East, South-South-East, South, North-East and North.
Is the direction of the whole kitchen considered, or only the direction where the burner is placed?
The place where the fire burns matters most in a kitchen, so the direction of the burner is the key one.
Apart from gridding the house, should the kitchen be gridded separately?
Yes. Interior vastu means zoning each room separately with its own grid and then designing its interior accordingly.
How is an individual room gridded?
Treat the room like a house: for a 10 x 10 room, for example, take the centre of the room and draw the grid from there exactly as for the whole house.
How can I know which direction I am facing?
Use a compass (disha suchak yantra); it shows the direction your face is pointing.