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FEBRUARY, 2010
February 11 - 16:
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2/11
- 13 (3 days):
One of the great festival cycles of Ausar (Osiris) in the ancient Khemitian calendar, celebrated especially at the main center of Ausar worship in Abydos (2/11) and at Busiris, the ancient holy city of the Nile delta. The principal ceremony performed on the last of these three days was a dawn ritual of opening the doors of the horizon, and thereby reaffirming the precision of the divine order operating between Sun and Earth. (Month of Pamenot, days 28 - 30).
The Pharaonic melody for this feast, as preserved in music of the Coptic church, has been found by Dr. Maged Samuel in Cairo.
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First
appearance of Our Lady of Lourdes (1858), the most celebrated
healing emanation of the Virgin Mary. |
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On this day Venus enters Pisces, where she is "exalted." All Venus-ruled activities of love, art and beauty are favored; and women, and for that matter all people who know how to work their will through the subtle heat of attaction, will be at the irresistible peak of their beauty and power.
2/12 (Fri):
In the Greco-Roman calendar, this the feast of the virgin huntress Artemis, or Diana, whose purity symbolizes the ascendancy of spirit over matter. Artemis is the protector of women and children against sexual intimidation and all violence.
The Ides of February, beginning of the eight-day Roman festival of the Parentalia, the year's chief festival in honor of the dead.
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Mahashivaratri, the great annual Hindu festival in honor of Lord Shiva in his most beneficent aspect as the universal creator whose drum and dance bring the visible world into being. Shiva and his consort Shakti are honored with music, dance and other works of beauty, and with prayers for abundant vitality.
2/13 (Sat):
Among many East Asian Buddhists, this last day of the old lunar year is Sojong Day, when believers fast and perform rites of self-purification, and ask and grant forgiveness to clean old uneasy energies from the soul and prepare for the New Year.
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2/13 - 15 (three days):
In the Roman calendar,
this is one of the year's great feasts, the Lupercalia,
an agricultural festival sacred to Faunus, the beneficent
aspect of the god Pan in his role as giver of abundance,
protector of flocks and fields. This is a day on which
animal communication is especially favored, and animals
are said to assist humans in other ways as well. The
she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus is honored on
this day. Above all, this festival is a celebration
of love, both spiritual and erotic, in all its streams.
Fire circle communities sing this chant to Pan: "I am the dance of the forest glade in spring. / I am the joy of life, the soul of every thing. / I am the flame that leaps upon the hill. / I am the word. I am the will."
Best modern Pan story: Tom Robbins' novel Jitterbug Perfume.
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| 2/13 (Sat), 4:52pm HT; 2/14 (Sun), 2:52am UT: |
New Moon in Leo conjunct Sun in Aquarius. The special quality of this New Moon is that the Sun is "in detriment" - that is, limited and weakened in his usual exercise of power - in Aquarius, so that the emphasis of the time tends to be upon the lunar and traditionally feminine areas of hearth and home, and the protection of children from winter illnesses, especially as this is Imbolc, the time of the mid-Winter season, when homes are cleaned and purified before the coming of Spring. Powers of perception and observation are high at the Aquarius New Moon, manifesting under the right conditions as a wealth of ideas and ambitious plans, especially as they may involve collaboration with like-minded friends. That is especially true now, as the Sun-Moon at this Full Moon pair anchor an Aquarius stellium consisting of five planets and the Moon's North Node. For more on this see Astral Notes for Winter, 2009 - 2010. |
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In the Beth-Luis-Nion Celtic tree calendar used by devotees of the faerie path, this second New Moon following the Winter Solstice begins Luis, or rowan month. The rowan is considered especially efficacious for protection, healing and divination. |
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Curiously, a lunar New Year festival period of roughly three days, beginning at the New Moon during Aquarius month, was celebrated in ancient Europe for many centuries before Julius Caesar fixed the start of the New Year at Jan. 1 on a 12-month solar calendar that was the basis of the 16th-century Gregorian calendar, now the standard for time reckoning in Europe, the Americas and other lands colonized by European explorers. The implications of this -- that all the peoples of Eurasia once lived by a single lunar calendar, but were split from each other when the new solar calendar divided West from East, solar from lunar, intellect from intuition, masculine from feminine, etc. -- is at the root of the cultural rift that has separated orient and occident ever since. |
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In ancient Eurasia, peoples
everywhere celebrated this festival as one of the three
great turning points in the cycle of the Triple Goddess,
the moment when the aged Wise Woman transmutes back
into the Virgin who carries new life. Patriarchal religions
have since taken over the show, but whether they can
long continue to produce it remains to be seen, as the
new Aquarian Age favors neither male nor female, but
a complementary balance of the two. |
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Gong Hay Fat Choy! The Year of the Iron Tiger begins.
This is Hsih Nien, New Year's Day, in the Chinese lunar calendar. It begins a two-week festival culminating at the Full Moon. The Chinese lunar year, basis of several other Asian lunar calendars, begins on the evening of the first New Moon while the Sun is in what the west calls Aquarius. While the preceding Ox year was relatively slow in tempo and placid in character, this new Tiger year is likely to be speedier in though, sharper in action, often impulsive, competitive and intolerant in the pursuit of goals. The assertiveness of this year will be especially pronounced, and excessive to the point of explosiveness, in the momentous Summer of 2010.
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In the Vietnamese lunar calendar, which is synchronous with this year's Chinese calendar, this is Tet Nguyen Dan, first day of the New Year. |
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Losar, the Tibetan Buddhist New Year, is celebrated with joyous performances of light, song and dance, and with butter towers and other ritual sculptures designed to drive out evil and clear the way for abundance and blessing in the coming year. The feast of Losar precedes Monlam Chemno (Jan. 29 - Feb. 9), the prayer festival commemorating the miracles and teachings of the Buddha.
The Tibetans prefer to time their sacred year a month behind the lunar calendars of most Asian countries -- thus to keep their year distinct from that of the Chinese -- but 2010 is one of those years in which synchrony is unavoidable at Losar. It's best to check the timing of each Tibetan festival case-by-case.
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| 2/14 - 28 (15 days): |
In some Asian Buddhist countries, the two-week period from the lunar New Year to the next Full Moon is called Bumjudawa, or "Buddha's 15-day Miracle Time", when the karmic effects of beneficent actions are said to be multiplied 100,000 times. |
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2/14 (Sun):
In Christian calendars, and by now in the calendars of many other cultures, Valentine's Day, the famous feast of the lovers. According to one legend from Greece -- which has been celebrating Eros, erotic love, on this day since very ancient times -- this is the day on which young doves mate during the transition from winter to spring. As doves mate for life and live in a happy fidelity that other beings rarely approach, 2/14 has embodied ever since the loyalty of true love. The symbol that has stuck for this day is the heart pierced by an arrow, fired by -- who else? -- Eros (Cupid), who has always ruled this day.
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Before Feb. 14 became fixed in the solar calendar as the feast of lovers, the Athenians celebrated at this time the festival of Zeus and Hera, whose marriage bond -- despite the supreme god's constant infidelities -- somehow symbolized the ideal marriage to which earthly couples could aspire. In the Greek lunar calendar, mid-January to mid-February was the month of Gamelion, so called because it was a major mating season, engendering new babies to be born in November, when winter's approach would keep armies and other disruptions at home, thus increasing the mothers' chances of bringing new children safely to birth. Feb. 14 was Gamelion's climactic fertility rite, performed as the beginning of the mid-winter thaw heralds the coming of spring. |
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Similar practices survive in many European cultures. Slovenian people begin the year's work in their fields and vineyards, on the day when plants and flowers are said to start growing again, and birds are said to marry. Finns celebrate Ystavanpaiva, the feast of friendship. And in old Norfolk, long before England became the UK, a character named Jack Valentine was believed to come knocking on the back door of houses, delivering sweets and gifts to children. |
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Fascinatingly, the Christian association of this day involves no fewer than four Valentines: three priests named Valentinus (of Rome, Terni and Africa), all of whom were said to have been martyred on Feb. 14 in or around the year 270; and Valentinius of Alexandria, the much-admired bishop and Gnostic teacher who was reportedly among the leading candidates to be elected pope in 143. What may have ruined his chance to be the bishop of Rome was that unlike mainstream prelates whose views of women and sex ranged from ascetic to hostile, Valentinius taught that the marriage bed was the earthly sanctuary of couples who celebrated the hierogamos (see Zeus and Hera above), the sacred marriage rite between the human soul and the Divine Beloved. |
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In the Roman Catholic calendar, this is Transfiguration Sunday, commemorating the occasion on which, just prior to the time of his own purification that is now observed as Lent, Jesus manifested to his closest disciples as a being of light, as shown here in the last painting completed by Raphael.
In the ancient Khemitian calendar, the month of Parmuti begins on this day. The netert associated with this month is Renenutet, the serpent-headed protector of children and lady of fertility and good fortune.
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2/15 (Mon): |
Japanese Zen Buddhists celebrate this day as Nehan -- literally the sleeping holy day -- honoring the Buddha's attainment of parinirvana.
Some Buddhists mark the anniversary of Buddha's death on this day. See also 2/8.
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In the Norse calendar, this day is sacred to a noted animal communicator: Siegfried, greatest of all warrior heroes, who understood the songs of forest birds after slaying the dragon Fafner and inadvertently tasting its blood. |
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This
day is also the birthday of another famous fighter,
the hero scientist and warrior astronomer Galileo Galilei
(1564), whose severe personal ordeal of sacrifice for
the truth -- he was held under house arrest, and
forbidden to publish or to speak in public, for
some 16 years -- was the price of the knowledge
we have had since about the physical properties
of the solar system. The story of how Galileo smuggled
his secret writings out to his students, who sped
them by courier to bolt holes from Leyden to Paris
to Prague, is one of the world's great true stories
of the theft of fire. |
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For the people of Tanna Island in Vanuatu, this is John Frum Day, named for the semi-mythic figure whom the islanders invoked as far back as the 1930's in prayers for liberation from their colonial oppressors. During World War II, when the U. S. air force used Tanna as a supply base for the Pacific campaign, John Frum became a composite hero resembling the American fliers whose largesse to the local people in the 1940's made them the deities of the famous cargo cults that erected wooden control towers and airplanes in an effort to bring back the airmen and their bounty. John Frum Day features a ceremony of flowers and flag raising, face painting, singing and dancing, a military parade of men dressed in camouflage and carrying bamboo rifles, and a feast at which, presumably, people pray for Spam. |
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2/15 - 24 (9 days):
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The Iroquois mid-winter festival, just after the midwinter New Moon when the Sun is in what the West calls Aquarius. This a time of purification and forgiveness is celebrated by burning the offenses and grudges of the old year in tobacco offerings. Newly born children receive their names now, and the year ahead is forecast in dream telling, celebrated in music and dance. |
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The Chiron - Neptune Conjunction of 2009 - 2012:
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2012: The End of . . . What?
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Copyright 2009 Dan Furst. All Rights Reserved.
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