Week of Festivals – Purim, Full Moon & Lantern Festival
Our upcoming week is filled with celebrations, which lightens our somber Lenten season. Friday is Purim, the Jewish Festival of Queen Esther who saves her people by telling the truth. Some people call our present crisis as the “Purim moment,” as the darkness (Dark Forces) allowed in this Kali Yuga is being revealed. Purim celebrates truth and freedom. The Hebrew people were suffering and soon to be destroyed under King Cyrus’s cruel magistrate, Haman. In order to save her people, Queen Esther, who was secretly Jewish, had to “reveal” her true identity to her husband. In telling the truth, and due to the love of King Cyrus for his Queen, Esther saved her people from death. The sweet-filled cookie called Hamantaschen, celebrates this festival.
Saturday is the Chinese Lantern Festival, highlighting the two-week celebration of Chinese New Year. The lantern festival, always occurring under a full moon, originated in the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 25), where the lighting of candles and lanterns marked the return of peace. Later, Emperor Ming heard of monks lighting candles to honor the Buddha’s Eight Noble Truths, and he ordered the palace, temples and citizens to light candle and lanterns in the villages. During the Ming dynasty, the Lantern festival lasted for an entire month.
Saturday is the Pisces solar festival full moon. Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac before the new spiritual year in Aries begins. At the Pisces Solar festival we recite the seed thought, “We leave the Father’s home and, turning back, we save.” Great Teachers, called Bodhisattvas, come to the Earth and remain here until all of humanity is enlightened. I posted the Bodhisattva prayer on Night Light News last Saturday. The New Group of World Servers, training to be Bodhisattvas, is called to the task of educating and thus saving humanity. Often, they work unrecognized. This is their sacrifice. Sacrifice (from the heart) is the 1st Law of the Soul, the heart of which is Love. This “sacrifice saves the world.”
ARIES: In the next month it’s important to see yourself as valuable. Perhaps this is difficult. If so, make lists of all your gifts, abilities, talents, good deeds, thoughts, ideas and plans. In these you will discover you are of great value. Place these lists on your walls. Read them daily. These initiate your self-identity as a server for humanity – the task for all Aries in the Aquarian Age.
TAURUS: Things hide away, especially you. Or you find someone else in hiding and join them. Resources are hidden away too, though still available. But you must call them forth while tending to practical things. Clean out, clear out and eliminate (give away) as much as possible. Then prepare to go into a state of retreat. For your health and well-being. Someone close is quite important to you. They’re knowledgeable and have the skills needed for your next creative endeavor.
GEMINI: Past friends, relationships and resources are considered, remembered, discovered and renewed. They’re valuable for reasons revealed in the future. A certain group, also from the past, holds great Love/Wisdom (Ray 2, Gemini’s ray) for you. They offer you spiritual possibilities and a way to enter the life stream of humanity through study and the understanding of the mysteries. You should be studying your transits/astrology every day. You are able, if interested and willing, to do this with ease.
CANCER: Ponder upon how you want to be seen, known and recognized in the world and how you want to help build the new culture and civilization. You are to nurture the new era at its foundational stages. Begin your garden soon, have a worm bin, create bio-dynamic soil, use organic seeds. Then teach those around you what you learned. Moon sign people need to move from feeding the world to helping humanity feed itself. You are the first experiment.
LEO: The Earth (soil, trees, plants, all of nature) is very important for your well-being. Make sure you’re out and about in the Sun with the devas and all of nature – the most balanced kingdom. Its radiations and beauty strengthen your heart and mind, refocuses your enthusiasm (“filled with God”). When we are balanced and in rhythm, following the light of the Sun, practicality emerges. Where is your garden and who are your heart-felt companions?
VIRGO: You may struggle to maintain balance and equilibrium between what you desire and what is actually possible. It’s good to study the subject of sacrifice – the 1st Law of the Soul. At the center of sacrifice is the heart of Love. Love and sacrifice are the same. Sacra – from the heart. We are on Earth because we sacrificed (chose) to be here. We are angels. You may feel you’ve become a warrior instead. You have. Spiritual warriors are always triumphant. And angelic.
LIBRA: You will assess your relationships in terms of their value. Not value as in money but in virtues. Simultaneously, assess the values and virtues you offer others and if there is more you can give of the Will to Good. It creates Goodwill which creates Right Relations. Allow only the goodness of yourself in relationships. Goodness is a purity and an inner quality. Review what exactly is your goodness and what you offer others. What do you offer all the kingdoms? Remember love, happiness, joy are not feelings. They are a choice.
SCORPIO: Tend daily to all things small, detailed and what you deem necessary. Give them your deepest attention. Observe habits, agendas, your work, environments and all whom you encounter in your many worlds. Observe how you care for yourself. We evolve slowly, step-by-step into the light. We begin with tending to our physical, emotional and mental bodies. Then we progress to the Soul. Each day “brood” upon the services needed for the coming day. Ask for Soul direction. The personality then becomes calm. And all’s well again.
SAGITTARIUS: The outcome of a long held creative dream is being assessed. You’re redefining, reviewing, reexamining, and reaffirming its importance as part of your life’s work. In the meantime, you’re called to other, lighter things. Amusement, enjoyment, pleasure, fun and play, much needed and much missed. Acknowledging your creative work reflects upon whom you are now, and also who and what you will become. All parts of you are aligning in a close spiritual unity. Riding down that long road of discovery.
CAPRICORN: You see the need for nourishment of the self and others. One source of nourishment is financial security. Another is the order, organization and beauty of your home – its rooms, windows, gardens, etc. Make sure as you tend to your home and its practical beauty, that you have a special workspace for yourself, for your creative home arts. Making a home is an art form. Your creativity is most important for the home and family at this time. Work on this. And in the garden of your dreams.
AQUARIUS: So many things seem paradoxical – wild, crazy, a bit out-of-control, things dissolving, leaving, hurting, changing, illuminating us. Eliminate all things not absolutely necessary, including that treasure trove of saved things. New interests, new sources of information, new identity in the new era are appearing. Know you are a “returned angel” come to help humanity navigate downstream in a lifeboat. You are to identify, work with and bring in the new culture and civilization. What part can and do you want to play? Think deeply on this.
PISCES: Life becomes more subtle, a bit out of focus, very different with deep calls to action along with compassion. Pay debts, then tithe (give) – St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital; Catholic Charities; Doctors Without Borders, local food banks, etc. These are difficult financial times with many who are suffering. We are all called to give, then give some more. The spiritual law is that whatsoever we give is returned tenfold so we can give again. When we serve others our life is spiritually cared for. The 3rd Law of the Soul is Service. To light up our lives, hang lanterns everywhere.
Risa – writer, teacher, counselor, mentor, astrologer, esotericist. Founder & Director of The Esoteric & Astrological Studies & Research Institute, a contemporary Wisdom School for the Ageless Wisdom teachings. The foundations of the Teachings are the study & application of Astrology & the Seven Rays. Email: risagoodwill@gmail.com Web journal: nightlightnews.org/ Astrological, esoteric, day-to-day news – art, literature, psychology, history, religion, economics, geography & cultural journalism.
Recognition of the unique value of every living being expresses itself in reverence for life, compassion for all, sympathy with the need of all individuals to find truth for themselves, and respect for all religious traditions. ~The Esoteric & Theosophical Worldview