Festivals & Celebrations Under the Full Moon
We have many festivals again this week, all occurring on Thursday. Chinese New Year, Full Moon, Purim, Holi. Chinese New Year always ends at full moon with the hanging and releasing of lighted lanterns. It is a Festival of Lanterns and Light.
The festival of Purim celebrates the freedom of the Hebrew people from the cruel Haman (a magistrate) seeking to destroy them. Esther, the Queen of Persia, who was secretly Jewish, saved her people from death. It’s a joyful festival and one bakes the sweet cookie, Hamantaschen (Haman’s pockets), to celebrate this festival.
Holi is the Hindu Spring Festival of Colors. Bonfires are lit the night before warding off evil. Holi is the most colorful festival in the world. It is also a Festival of Love – of Radha for Krishna (the blue-colored God). It is a Spring festival with singing, dancing, carnivals, food and drink (Bhang, a drink made of cannabis leaves). Holi signifies good over evil, ridding oneself of past errors, ending conflicts through rapprochement (returning to each other). It is a day of forgiveness, including debts. Holi also marks the beginning of New Year.
Thursday is the Pisces solar festival (11.23 degrees) under a full moon. The Soul’s meditative seed thought for Pisces, recited with the Great Invocation, is “I leave the Father’s house and turning back, I save.” In Pisces under Soul direction, we are here to help “…close the door to evil & restore the Plan on Earth.”
ARIES: In the next days, weeks and months it’s important to see yourself as resourceful and valuable. Perhaps this is difficult. Make lists of all your gifts, abilities, talents, good deeds, thoughts, ideas and plans. And then all your blessings. In these your value appears. Place these lists on doors, walls and mirrors. Read and review daily. These offer you a new elf-identity as 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. Someone close is quite mysterious and valuable to you. They’re knowledgeable and have the skills needed for your next creative endeavor for humanity’s future. Resources are hidden away too, though still available. Call these resources forth in prayers and mantras and sacred words, while tending to practical daily tasks. Eliminate (give away) as much as possible.
GEMINI: Past friends, experiences, events, relationships, and resources are contacted, re-discovered and renewed. All of these are valuable for reasons later revealed in your future. A certain group, also from the past, holds great Love/Wisdom (Ray 2, Gemini’s ray). They hold out to you a way to enter the life stream of humanity through study and understanding of the mysteries. You should renew your study of astrology and your transits.
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 biodynamic soil, use organic seeds. Parsley and cilantro are most important for you this year. Teach everyone what you learn. Cancer (the sign) needs to move from feeding the world to helping the world feed itself.
LEO: The Earth (soil, trees, plants growing) is very important for your wellbeing. Make sure you’re out and about in the Sun at dawn and dusk, out with the devas and in nature – the most balanced kingdom. The Sun’s radiations strengthen your heart and mind, refocuses your enthusiasm (“filled with God”), rebalances your entire system. When we are balanced and in rhythm, practical health emerges. Where is your garden and who are your companions?
VIRGO: You may struggle mentally to maintain 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 Love. Love and sacrifice are the same. We are on Earth because we sacrificed (chose) to be here. You may feel you’ve become the warrior. Spiritual warriors are practical, poised and always triumphant.
LIBRA: You will assess your relationships in terms of their value. Not value as in money but virtues. Simultaneously, assess the values (virtues) you offer others. Is there more Goodwill you can offer others? Goodwill creates Right Relations. Allow only the goodness of yourself to be radiated outward. Goodness is an inner purity. What goodness do you offer others? Remember true love isn’t a feeling. It’s a choice.
SCORPIO: Tend daily to all things small and necessary, offering your deepest attention. Observe habits, agendas, how you work in all environments. Observe how others work, too. Care and tend to yourself. Evolution occurs step by step. We begin with tending to our physical, emotional and mental bodies. Then we progress to things spiritual. Each day “brood” upon the service needed for the coming day. Ask for Soul direction. The personality then becomes calmed.
SAGITTARIUS: A long held creative dream seems to be all around you. You’re redefining, reassessing and reaffirming the importance of your life’s work. In the meantime, balance yourself with amusement and play, much needed and much missed recently. Acknowledge that your creative work reflects who you are now, and part of who you will become later. All parts of you are aligning in a close spiritual unity. You are building a Temple of the Soul.
CAPRICORN: You see the need for nourishment of the self and of others. One source of nourishment is financial security. Another is the beauty, design and organization of your home and gardens and outdoor rooms. Make sure as you tend to your home that you create a practical and private workspace for yourself. Your imagination, vision and creativeness are most important for your wellbeing, your home and family at this time. Create over time, the garden of your dreams.
AQUARIUS: Times seems to have speeded up. At times, we can feel that life is a bit wild and out of control. We are entering the Aquarian Age, ruled by Uranus, god of Lightning. New things, in coming times, will appear. A new balance is attempting to come forth in the world. Know that you are a returned “angel” come to help humanity steer itself downstream in a new Noah’s Ark. You are to identify, work with and bring in the new culture and civilization. What part do you want to play? Think deeply on this.
PISCES: Life becomes more accelerated, yet more subtle, at times feeling a bit out of focus and very different. In these difficult financial times, it’s good to tithe (give) to those in need – St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital; Catholic Charities; Doctors Without Borders; UNESCO. These are difficult financial times. The spiritual law is what we give is returned ten-fold so we can give and give again. When we serve others, our life is spiritually cared for – the 3rd Law of the Soul is Service. Hang lanterns everywhere. Then leave them there.
Risa – writer, founder & director, Esoteric & Astrological Studies & Research Institute, a contemporary Wisdom School & College – an inter-disciplinary College studying the Ageless Wisdom teachings. The foundations of the Teachings are the study & application of Astrology & the Seven Rays. Email: risagoodwill@gmail.com. Web journal – www.nightlightnews.org/. Facebook: Risa’s Esoteric Astrology for daily messages. Astrological, esoteric, religious, news, history, geography, art, literature – interdisciplinary cultural journalism, part of our College.