Mango leaves are not available abroad; what is the alternative to a mango leaf toran?
Draw five swastiks with your own hand, using kesar, on the main entrance; they become a permanent bandhanwar (toran).
Related questions
Which toran should a vastu consultant (vastuvid) hang?
The teacher left it to the students; their suggestions, a mango leaf swastik toran and a toran of cow-dung cakes, were both called correct. He then gave his best (Kohinoor) bandhanwar for any wrongly placed door: make round discs of desi cow dung, draw a swastik on each, fix them on a bandhanwar strip and hang it on the main door, and the defects end. The alternative, a daily desi cow-dung lepan in front of the main door with a rangoli in the colour of its zone, is hard to keep up every day, so the permanent bandhanwar is better.
Houses abroad have back doors opening into the garden that do not lead to the road; do these bad entries need treatment?
Such a door is not counted as an entry; it is a prishth bhang dwar (rear door) that lets the negative energy of the house out. Energy enters with you through the door you come in by. No treatment is needed; if it bothers you, draw the energy-blocking swastik. Symbol vastu especially suits countries outside India, where demolition is not possible.
My main door is in the South; how should it be treated?
In interior vastu a wrong door is treated only with symbols and similar items, since the full door treatment alone would take about five classes. For South door defects the class gives bandhanwars of stone or gems, a toran of copper and wood, and a red triangular swastik bandhanwar hung on a Saturday or Tuesday. In the South only S4 is a good pada, and it suits those with Kark, Makar or Kanya rashi, mulank 9, or an exalted or own-sign Mars.
Ashopalav leaves look like mango leaves and are widely used in bandhanwars in Rajasthan. Can they be used instead?
No. What counts is composition and quality, not appearance; ashopalav leaves have a different composition, so they do not carry the properties of mango leaves. Mango leaves have many special qualities: their juice is used for purifying land, and where marriage is not happening or auspicious functions keep failing, mango leaf juice is applied as a lepan beneath the place where the girl or boy sleeps, after which the auspicious events take place.
Can the kesar swastik test be done on kitchen wall tiles?
It can be made on kitchen tiles, but a whitewashed surface is a must for the test. Make it in the earth (prithvi) tatva of Surya swar.
If doors are already open on wrong padas, how are they treated in interior vastu?
Vedic vastu says the defects of a wrongly placed door can be removed through the decoration of the door itself: auspicious symbols, yantras, paintings and artworks made on the door, door power at the threshold, and a bandhanwar (toran) hung on it. This class therefore treats wrong doors with symbols, torans, bandhanwars and colours rather than structural changes.