Saptarishis Astrology’s Update
I
t has been a journey of thrills and adventure since we launched Saptarishis Astrology. Some of our aims and missions have been fulfilled with the favorable response received so far by you all while many remain yet to be achieved.
Saptarishis Astrology was started after years of frustration to improve few shortcomings in the astrological research, knowledge: mining as well as practice of astrology that have been observed over the time. Glaring shortcomings were observed in the areas of manuscripts translation, lack of good software and importantly for rare and hidden knowledge to come out. We started off as a business website but unfortunately have not been able to concentrate on the business aspect in spite of 1.5 years of SA. This business aspect along with the dream & mission of helping old astrologers monetarily was mentioned in the first editorial and it was not just lip service but is still a burning mandate that has yet to be fulfilled. We have not been able to focus on it due to more love & concern for content. The business model is based around the Google model of business and can be a successful one at the same time serving the astro community. The magazine’s size has grown from 96 pages of Vol 1 to 634 pages of current issue and beyond. The number of emails that we receive consumes our time and while we cannot respond satisfactorily, we are also improving in our ability to concentrate on our specific goals that would improve the quality of astrology globally. Some emails of appreciation have come in highlighting that we have been doing a great divine service but let us also understand that for us, this magazine is also creating a library of articles for our own learning. We wish to re-emphasize, as stated in our Vol 1 editorial, that we are very much a commercial business website and the magazine, along with manuscripts and some other services, are given under our mission of promoting astrology for the benefit of humanity. The mission of Saptarishis Astrology is to get rare knowledge out which costs money and asking for huge discounts from our book shop is a bit tough on us especially when we are donating 10% of our profits to charity in your name. Most important is mother & Vidya is 4H, one never asks for discounts in vidya like one never asks for discount in mothers love. As they say without mothers blessings no one can learn this vidya properly. This mistake of asking discounts from book shops we ourselves did for many years until a few years back we realized the reality of the situation. Also there are hardly any profits in the book business and it should be understood that Saptarishis Astrology is a 14 to 15 hours, 365 day job. Apart from this would like to thank few kind souls who sent us donations which we had to return, since as a commercial venture we do not accept donations as a policy. Trinal Issues In the current 12 months there are few goals to be achieved. However, considering the limited resources presently at hand, we have decided to reduce the status of the magazine from a Quarterly to Trinal Issues for at least a year. This means instead of 4 volumes every 3 months it would be 3 volumes every 4 months thereby giving us some space to travel and search for more hidden astrologers. This can be facilitated by if more volunteers come out and do service to the astrological community. As we write this piece, it is mid-June and by Oct end, we will be pleased to release Vol 7 which would be the C S Patel Memorial Issue. We would like to request more editors to come on board especially from the West and from Indians whose command of English language and more importantly dormant editorial 177