Vedic and Western astrology are cousins. They share common origins in the third millennium BCE, in the river valleys of Mesopotamia and, we increasingly suspect, those of Northern India-but since then they have grown apart. While Westerners have rediscovered the technical astrology of the classical world, it is shorn of its ancient philosophy. Vedic astrology, on the other hand, is still deeply embedded in an extraordinarily rich vision of the human spirit, arises out of ancient cosmology and is intimately linked to spiritual practices.