(26 January 2025) One of the strengths of Vedic astrology is its clarity of terms and definitions. Each planet and house has a specific portfolio of significations which can be further categorized along a spectrum of auspiciousness.  Planets are classified as either benefic or malefic and houses are similarly grouped according to their relative favourability.  The naturally benefic planets are the waxing Moon, Mercury, Venus and Jupiter while the waning Moon, the Sun, Mars, Saturn and the lunar nodes, Rahu and Ketu are defined as natural malefics.  Of course, “natural” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here since we also have to consider their temporal qualities in terms of house rulership and sign placement.  In this way, even naturally malefic planets can deliver positive outcomes if they rule trikona houses like the 1st, 5th or 9th, or are aspected by benefics, etc.

So what are the implications of a malefic planet?  Simply put, a malefic planet will tend to deliver mostly negative outcomes in transit. Alignments involving malefic planets such as Mars and Saturn are therefore more likely to coincide with poor results, however defined.  In a native’s horoscope, this can mean loss, disappointment, frustration and hardship.  In terms of financial markets, transit alignments that include malefic planets are more likely to coincide with declines during the duration of their effective range.

Based on traditional definitions, the natural malefics (waning Moon, the Sun, Mars, Saturn, Rahu, and Ketu) may all carry some capacity to create harm or mischief, but they are not equally malefic.  The waning Moon and the Sun are typically seen as less malefic than, say, Mars and Saturn, which are the most malefic planets.   Outer planets used primarily in Western astrology such as Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are not seen as natural malefics although they often deliver negative outcomes when they form hard aspects (0, 90, 180 degrees) with other planets.  In previous studies, I focused on alignments that include Mars, a natural malefic.  On the whole, these studies provide some limited support for the notion that Mars is, in fact, a malefic planet that damages collective sentiment and thus corresponds with slightly below normal market returns.

But the lunar nodes, Rahu and Ketu, present a more complicated case. While they are natural malefics, there are usually more conditions and exceptions attached to them in chart interpretation.  For example, due to its association with acquisitiveness and materialism, Rahu, the North Lunar Node, is believed to deliver positive outcomes in areas of life where those qualities are valued.  Thus, career and income are said to be boosted if Rahu is in the 10th or 11th houses.  Negative outcomes are often more closely connected with purely physical or “living” matters such health, marriage or children as seen in the 6th, 7th and 5th houses.  Thus, Rahu in the 7th house tends to create significant challenges in marriage.

Background and Hypothesis

Rahu (and Ketu) therefore may be seen to be naturally malefic but may have more exceptions which complicate their interpretation in the chart. With that in mind, I decided to backtest the assumption that Rahu is malefic by examining stock market performance.  Specifically, I wanted to see what effect, if any, could be observed by measuring the change in stock prices before and after the Venus-Rahu conjunction.  My thinking in choosing this conjunction is that it occurs fairly frequently — about once a year — and thus we could assemble a fairly large sample of about 60 cases.   My other consideration in choosing this conjunction is that it combines a benefic planet, Venus, with Rahu, a malefic.  Venus symbolizes wealth, luxury and comforts so its transits with other benefics tend to be bullish for markets.  But its alignments with Rahu may be less positive as Rahu’s inherently destabilizing and disruptive nature could undermine the favourable influence of Venus.  And yet, it is also possible that the more materialistic side of Rahu might actually combine well with Venus and deliver positive market returns.  An alignment that blends benefic and malefic planets is an excellent opportunity to validate or invalidate traditional assumptions by examining the data and see where it leads us.

This ambiguity of the combined effects of Venus and Rahu make it harder to form a simple hypothesis.  Most obviously, there is a higher risk of a negative effect in the time around the conjunction since Rahu is a malefic planet.  And yet since Rahu has a materialistic reputation, we would also not be surprised to see positive market returns from this pairing.  The greater uncertainty surrounding this conjunction is another reason why a detailed statistical study is all the more important. We simply need more evidence before we can make summary statements about the probable outcome of the Venus-Rahu conjunction.  The other rationale for this study is that we are fast approaching another Venus-Rahu conjunction which will occur on February 3, 2025.  Actually, next week’s conjunction will be the first of three Venus-Rahu conjunctions in the near future as the upcoming Venus retrograde period commencing on March 1 will see Venus cross back and forth over Rahu two more times in the month of April.

Method

Using the Trading View database, I reviewed 60 years of closing prices of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (1965-2025). My operating assumption was that the strongest effect — positive or negative — would occur nearer in time to the exact Venus-Rahu conjunction.  Due to the relatively high velocity of Venus (approximately 1.2 degrees per day), I used 10 days before and 10 days after the conjunction as my widest time markers.  I then recorded the closing prices in two day intervals, 10 days before the conjunction, 8 days before, 6 days before, 4 days before and 2 days before. This 2-day interval pattern was repeated in the time following the conjunction as Venus was separating from Rahu.  The price difference for all possible time intervals were then recorded and converted into percentage differences in the second table.

I should also make special mention of the longitudinal position of Rahu, the North Lunar Node.  In this study, I have used the Mean Node position for Rahu.  This is a derived point that is widely used in both Vedic and Western astrology.  However, many astrologers prefer to use the True Node position for Rahu as they believe it more accurately reflects its actual position. The difference between the Mean and True node positions is usually less than one degree although there are times when the variation can be as high as 1.5 degrees.  A difference of 1 degree would likely not change the results of this study either way as most of the time intervals are much larger. (e.g. 10 days).  I don’t have strong views either way on this matter but chose to use the Mean position as it seemed to be in wider usage.

Results

Perhaps not surprisingly given the high velocity of Venus, the effect of the Venus-Rahu conjunction was quite small over the 65 cases tested.  There was a wide variation in outcomes with an approximately equal number of positive outcomes and negative outcomes.  Nonetheless, there was a slight bearish bias in the results, with the 12-day interval around the conjunction having the largest effect size per unit time.   This effect size was -0.57%, with an average decline of 0.24% for the period spanning from 6 days before the conjunction until 6 days after.  A comparable negative bias (-0.44%) was seen across a shorter 8-day interval around the conjunction (4 days before until 4 days after).  The 20-day interval beginning at 10 days before until 10 days after produced a larger negative average (-0.27%) and larger effect size (-0.82%), although on a unit time basis, it was slightly smaller than the 12-day interval.

The other thing that stands out is the large variation in outcomes.  The slightly negative average outcome hide the fact that there are many instances when the outcome of the 12-day window is quite positive.  In fact, there are 24 cases where the DJIA gained more than 1% during that time interval.  And there are 25 cases in which it declined more than 1% -- a more or less even split.  This wide scattering of outcomes suggest that the intrinsically bearish influence of the Venus-Rahu conjunction is quite small and that other simultaneous alignments are likely more important in determining market fluctuations.

Conclusions

While the dataset is too small to reach conclusions with high confidence, we have seen that there is at least some evidence that the Venus-Rahu conjunction has a bearish effect on the stock market. This provides some validation for the traditional understanding of Rahu (North Lunar Node) as a malefic planet which tends to negate or dampen the positive effect of benefic planets such as Venus.  The notion that Rahu could become benefic under certain circumstances is not without some support here, as there were many clearly positive outcomes in various time intervals.  In fact, 24 out of 65 cases (37%) showed a strongly positive outcome.  This suggests that while Rahu should be understood as a default negative influence, there are instances where it can either be overridden by the presence of positive alignments or perhaps completely transformed into a positive influence.

In future studies, I hope to explore the role of co-factors more systematically.  If two-planet alignments such as the Venus-Rahu conjunction are slightly bearish, what happens when a third planet such as Jupiter or Saturn also forms part of the alignment?  If Rahu is a planetary chameleon, then an alignment of Jupiter to the Venus-0-Rahu could well transform it into a more bullish setup.  Similarly, if Saturn formed a degreewise alignment with Venus-0-Rahu, it would not be difficult to imagine more bearish outcomes since Saturn is more of a malefic influence.

Neptune conjoins Venus-0-Rahu -- February 3, 2025

In fact, there is a third planet is part of the upcoming Venus-Rahu conjunction on February 3 as Neptune will conjoin Venus and Rahu within just 2 degrees at 3 Pisces.  As an outer planet used in Western astrology, Neptune is not considered to be either inherently benefic or malefic.  It is thought to act more malefically when in hard aspect to another planet (90 or 180 degrees) and more benefically when in soft aspect (60 or 120 degrees).  Opinions differ on the effect of the conjunction as it is thought to be less malefic but it not clearly benefic either.

The only other time when Neptune conjoined a Venus-Rahu conjunction in our sample was in late November 1974 when stocks fell 1.97% across the 12-day window.  However, there were other simultaneous alignments in that case which are missing this time around including those of the Sun, Pluto and Jupiter.  Obviously, we can't draw any inference from just a single case about the relative impact of a Neptune conjunction.  This is one of the difficulties in constructing three and four planet studies -- the sample size quickly shrinks to a point where evidence becomes too thin to draw any meaningful conclusions. The challenge is to discover three-planet alignments that occur frequently enough to maintain a sufficiently large sample size.

But that is a task for another day.