Drew Thomases
ABSTRACT: This paper explores how non-Indian spiritual seekers engage with the practice of Vedic astrology, or jyotish . In particular, I focus on a 75-hour online course in 2021–2022 that sought to train members of a global yoga community in the basics of Indian astrology. Led by an executive life coach with an explicitly “East-meets-West” orientation, the course presented jyotish as a practice that went “beyond and behind Hinduism.” Indeed, here jyotish was not a “Hindu thing” but an ancient secular science accessible to all who seek its gifts. In what follows, I articulate how the course’s instructor, Nish, used the idea of science in his framing of jyotish , and how the concept of a scientific and accessible jyotish aligns with a broader constellation of yogic beliefs and practices.