Waiting on the Light...

Sitting here, listening to bhajans and waiting on the light to return from darkness...in other words Divali. The Hindu "Festival of Lights" will be celebrated by 885 million Hindus worldwide on Tuesday November 13, coinciding with a New Moon at 21 degrees Scorpio. Divali is associated with Mother Lakshmi, goddess of wealth, prosperity, and beauty (Ochun anyone?). According to some sources Lakshmi is indeed syncretized with Ochun in places like Trinidad, where Divali is a national holiday.

Here she is, happily floating on a pink lotus, draped in a pink sari bordered in gold, crowned in gold,
in the middle of a river.

And here are Orisha devotees in Trinidad, carrying their offerings to where the river meets the sea, celebrating the Ochun Festival, wearing - what else? Pink.

So what's happening in the sky this day? We have a New Moon as I've already mentioned, as well as a Solar Eclipse on November 13. The light, the dark, and then the light again! Keep in mind that the Sun (Chango) and Saturn (Eguns) are in Scorpio, with Mercury retrograde (Ellegua shuckin' and jivin' backwards) also about to re-enter Scorpio on November 15. In my last post I talked about the meaning of all this energy in Scorpio - invoking the darkness, death, mystery, transformation and rebirth - all Scorpionic themes.

What does this have to do with the beautiful Ochun/Lakshmi/Venus? Well She is about to enter Scorpio as well on November 21, and then conjunct Saturn (a dance with the Dead?) a few days after. That's quite a party. Ochun will be moving into Femme Fatale mode here, and relationships could be intense. Passionate, cutthroat, ride-or-die, intensely loyal, black-and-white, get-off-the-fence type stuff. Ochun is moving from Libra ("I-just-want-to-be-fair-and-everybody-to-be-happy-and-still-like-me") to Scorpio ("it's-you-and-me-against-the-world: or else!"). Reminds me of a Monica (Scorpio, birthday October 24) song (see Scorpio's cameo at 1:30!):

So how to honour Ochun as this time of darkness and light? Just so. Remember that she embodies both energies, reflecting the darkness and light within ourselves. We can be uplifted by love, an outpouring of love, sustained by and sustaining through love, peaceful, beautiful, graceful and abundant...but we can also be stung by love, wounded by love, crippled into an abyss of darkness where we are afraid to love and be loved, too damaged to extend ourselves to another and to the bounty that can be ours (of human touch, of sexual satisfaction, of luxury, of material security, of pleasure....). Watch the outpouring of gold (Ochun Yalodde!!) and light from Mother Lakshmi's hands in the final clip, and know and meditate on an abundance of good things for yourself and others. Fear not...

 

Shubh Divali!