The Story, as Bholenath Spoke It
O Goddess Parvati, three miles north of Ayodhya lived a Brahmin named Lok Sharma. His wife, Leela, was very beautiful. One day, Lok Sharma abandoned his Brahminical duties and became a hunter. He delighted in killing deer and many kinds of birds, even their young ones, and eating them together with his wife. Leela herself was short-tempered, unstable, and involved with other men. She had no interest in worship or any higher conduct. Their life passed in this way.
When Lok Sharma grew old, he died from a snake bite in his own village. His wife also died. According to their deeds, both entered hell. After suffering in the terrible hell known as Kumbhipak for thousands of years, Lok Sharma took birth as a pig. After that life, he was born as a cat. Then as a vulture.
Only after these stages did he return to human birth. But in this rebirth, his wife could not carry a pregnancy to full term. If a child was born, he did not survive. She suffered from recurring disease and fever.
Bholenath then revealed the remedy:
- Have the Santan Gopal Mantra chanted 100,000 times and
- Perform 10000 homas.
- Feed 100 Brahmins.
- Have a golden idol of a deer with its young made, weighing five palas (20 tolas), and five silver birds crafted. Worship them ritually and pray to Lord Vishnu. After worshipping Lord Vishnu, worship a Brahmin. Donate gold and a horse along with the idols.
- If a well or stepwell is built on the roadside, a son is born, disease is cured, and the lineage survives.
Human Meaning of the Story
Pada 4 enters the deepest, most shadowed corner of Bharani’s energy. Lok Sharma is introduced as a Brahmin — someone aligned with insight, empathy, conscience, and moral clarity. But Bharani’s journey in Scorpio Navamsa shows what happens when a person slowly loses connection with these capacities and begins living from instinct instead of wisdom.
A Brahmin becoming a hunter is not about changing profession. It is about a collapse in consciousness. A hunter is not careless; he is precise. He studies softness, notices vulnerability, and knows exactly how to strike. When a Brahmin becomes a hunter, it means the very intelligence once meant for guiding others is now used to destroy tenderness. His conscience does not just weaken — it becomes inverted. The skills that once served sensitivity now begin suppressing it.
“Killing deer” represents killing the tender, innocent, emotionally sensitive part of oneself. “Killing young deer” means damaging the inner child — the future capacity for softness. Birds represent emotional freedom, hope, inspiration, and the ability of the heart to rise above heaviness. Killing birds means destroying one’s emotional freedom and the possibility of future uplift. None of this is literal. It is a psychological pattern: a person repeatedly chooses numbness over softness, harshness over feeling, and instinct over conscience. Over time, this becomes habitual, then skilled, then the only way he knows to function.
His wife’s character is a map of his emotional world. She is not a commentary on women. She represents the emotional part of him — the feminine energy — becoming unstable, wounded, restless, and disconnected. When the emotional body itself is unstable, it begins reinforcing the very patterns that destroy innocence. Together, Lok Sharma’s hunter-mind and his wounded emotional world form a partnership that attacks inner tenderness again and again.
Modern Interpretation
Today, this story appears quietly in people who once had emotional depth but later became hardened. It begins with hurt or disappointment, then the slow collapse of sensitivity. The person stops feeling fully and starts living on instinct. They may still appear intelligent or articulate, but their emotional reactions are blunt. Softness feels threatening. Vulnerability feels weak. Empathy becomes selective. Wisdom becomes sharpness. And the very qualities that once made them humane are now suppressed.
“Killing deer” today looks like shutting down when softness is required, dismissing emotional needs, criticizing innocence, or hurting someone who approaches with tenderness. It is the subtle destruction of gentle qualities. “Killing birds” looks like suppressing joy or hope, refusing lightness, self-sabotaging opportunities for growth, or choosing heaviness over inspiration. The hunter consciousness emerges when someone learns exactly how to cut down their own feelings or the feelings of others with precision.
The “cat” stage in his rebirth is not a small domestic cat. It represents big-cat consciousness — the stealth, cunning, predatory sharpness of a tiger or leopard. This is the psychological stage where a person becomes highly skilled at suppressing vulnerability and navigating life through shadows, defensiveness, or emotional predation. The pig represents indulgence in unhealthy emotional patterns. The vulture represents living off old pain — feeding on what has already died inside. Together these lifetimes describe a long downward spiral through Scorpio’s trika-house terrain of decay, karma, and emotional transformation.
Eventually, the snake bite — a classic Scorpio symbol — becomes the turning point where shadow catches up. When reborn as a human, the emotional consequences unfold as instability, broken continuity, and chronic inner stress (represented as fever). Life brings him into situations where tenderness refuses to stay, not out of punishment, but because the emotional foundation was damaged over many cycles.
The Essence of Bholenath’s Remedy
The remedy Bholenath gives is about restoring the emotional world Lok Sharma dismantled. The Santan Gopal Mantra is meant to restore innocence, joy, and the inner child — the very qualities he repeatedly suppressed. The homa (fire sacrifice) burns the instinctive patterns that overpowered conscience. Feeding Brahmins restores Jupiter, the energy of wisdom, sensitivity, and ethical clarity.
The golden deer with its young symbolizes the deliberate restoration of gentleness and tenderness, purified through gold, which refines Venus. The five silver birds restore emotional freedom, inspiration, and uplift — with silver purifying the Moon, the emotional mind. Worshipping Vishnu brings stability and alignment, while worshipping a Brahmin restores respect for conscience and moral clarity.
Donating a horse represents redirecting raw instinct toward purpose instead of destruction. Building a well or stepwell feeds life, symbolizing the return of nourishment and emotional generosity, the opposite of harming innocence. Each part of the remedy is designed to rebuild an emotional landscape that was damaged through repeated neglect.
Modern Equivalent of the Remedy
In today’s world, this remedy asks a person to reconnect with their own sensitivity and to value tenderness rather than suppress it. It means nurturing one’s inner child, choosing gentleness where impulse wants control, healing old emotional wounds instead of repeating them, and consciously engaging in acts of care. It includes helping those who are vulnerable, protecting innocence, and creating emotional safety for others. It means stabilizing one’s inner world, building conscience through honest reflection, and intentionally uplifting others rather than weighing them down.
The well or stepwell represents offering emotional nourishment to people who cross your path — becoming someone who gives calm and care instead of taking it away. The deeper message is simple: rebuild the emotional qualities you once ignored.
Closing Reflection for Pada 4
Pada 4 brings us to the final and heaviest edge of Bharani — where instinct overtakes wisdom and a person becomes skilled at harming the softer parts of their inner life. Lok Sharma’s fall is not sudden; it is gradual. Feeling becomes uncomfortable, tenderness becomes inconvenient, hope becomes fragile, and instinct becomes easier than conscience. In that state, the mind becomes a hunter of its own sensitivity.
Bholenath’s compassion lies in showing that even at the deepest point of emotional decay, the path back is not closed. The remedies are not punishments; they are invitations to restore what was lost. They point toward rebuilding innocence, freedom, gentleness, and emotional stability — the very qualities he once dismantled.
Pada 4 leaves us with a quiet truth: when a person repeatedly harms their own softness, life eventually guides them toward protecting it again. In the end, rebirth is not just a change of body; it is a return to the emotional truth one must learn to honor.
Final Summary
Bharani sits in Aries under Venus, guided by Yama’s quiet firmness. It belongs to a space where beginnings and endings meet, where actions have weight, and where life responds quickly to whatever we choose. Bharani doesn’t punish — it reflects. It shows the truth of our impulses, our insensitivity, our neglect, and our shadow, so we can grow past them.
Across its four padas, Bharani reveals a simple pattern: what we fail to honor eventually returns as a lesson.
- In Pada 1, the lesson comes through haste — a single impulsive act that breaks trust.
- In Pada 2, it comes through harshness — the absence of empathy when it mattered.
- In Pada 3, it comes through neglect — the pain caused by not noticing someone’s burden.
- In Pada 4, it comes through emotional collapse — when instinct replaces wisdom, and a person becomes skilled at harming their own softness.
Despite the heaviness of some stories, Bharani remains deeply compassionate. Yama is not a judge; he is a mirror. He simply shows the outcome of our choices so we can take responsibility for them. And Bholenath’s remedies across the padas always point in one direction: restore what you harmed inside yourself or others.
Rebuild trust where you broke it. Nurture tenderness where you ignored it. Lighten burdens you once increased. Bring back innocence, hope, and emotional freedom if you suppressed them.
Bharani’s medicine is not ritual — it is awareness. It asks us to treat softness with care, to act with conscience even in fire, and to stay connected to our emotional truth. The same intensity that creates harm can create healing the moment we use it consciously.
In the end, Bharani is not about burden; it is about rebirth. It teaches that every action matters, every feeling has a place, and even the deepest fall can lead back to tenderness — if we are willing to return to it.
Quiet Reflections 