Saturn Combust Dates

For about five weeks each year the Sun passes Saturn, and for as long as the two stand within fifteen degrees of each other, the orb Parashara and Surya Siddhanta give for Saturn, Saturn is combust. Saturn cannot be seen in the Sun's glare during those weeks. The state is asta, and it costs Saturn its strength.

In Parashara's table the Sun and Saturn are enemies, father and son who do not agree. Duty, discipline, service, delay, the old and the poor are Saturn's significations, and all of them lose their steady footing. Authority presses harder on people who serve, and the patient work of several months can feel undone.

The texts treat a combust graha as unable to give its full results, good or bad. So a Saturn that protected a person through discipline protects less, and a Saturn that obstructed them obstructs less. The birth chart, and Saturn's place in it, decides which applies.

The house of the conjunction, counted from the Moon and from the lagna, shows where the pressure falls. It usually comes from government, employers or fathers. Elderly people and the chronically ill need more care during these five weeks, and one's own stamina runs lower than usual.

The period tests how much of a person's discipline was habit and how much was choice, because for five weeks the usual structure is missing. Keeping the routine anyway leaves a discipline that is genuinely one's own.

• Offer water to the rising Sun and serve the old, which answers both grahas.
• Give sesame and oil on Saturday, the dana Parashara names for Saturn.
• Recite Om Sham Shanaishcharaya Namah, and delay the start of long commitments until Saturn reappears.