Shiva's Grace: Understanding Maha Shivaratri, Lunar Days and Tithis

Shiva's Grace: Understanding Maha Shivaratri, Lunar Days and Tithis

[00:00:00] Introduction to Maha Shivaratri Special Episode

[00:00:00] Fiona Marques: Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Vedic Astrology Podcast. My name is Fiona Marques, coming to you on a very special day, and actually a very special night. It's Maha Shivaratri today. And with thanks to all of my patrons on Patreon, it seems that this is the topic that wants to be explored today. So we're going to dive into what this festival is about. What this astrological combination in the sky is all about. And also personalize that a little bit to your own chart to see how you can take this information and make it useful to your own chart. And also talk about where it's happening in the sky because there's an awful lot going on in the sky right now, isn't there? So sit back and get comfortable as we explore Maha Shivaratri.

And as I said, this is really an episode that's come from my patrons on Patreon. So a big thanks to all of them. We have a community there and we meet a couple of times a week for an astrological themed meditation on Mondays and Thursdays. We have "The Greatness of Saturn" Book Club every Saturday. And we also have an Investigation into Varhsaphal that we've been doing all year. So there's lots of ways that we interact and that you can have time with me and also suggest things for the podcast. And this is one such case that on our Monday meditation, this Maha Shivaratri was already in the air as it's on Friday, the 8th of March, (which is also International Women's Day) so this episode, we're weaving in some Moon energy from both the Shiva side and the feminine side. 

[00:02:01] Fiona Marques: Maha Shivaratri is the great night of Shiva. And it's a night when, in some ways, that veil between the physical and the spiritual world thins. It's a bit closer to us. And Shivaratri actually happens every lunar cycle. And it's that 14th day of the dark half of the Moon cycle. 

[00:02:26] Discovering Your Unique Lunar Day

[00:02:26] FionaMarques: So one of the amazing and beautiful things about Vedic Astrology is that every day, every lunar day or lunar night has its own name and is placed in our consciousness, this unique relationship of the Sun and the Moon. It's called Tithi, T-I-T-H-I, and it describes the lunar day. Or in some ways you could say it describes the shape of the Moon each day. So if you are like me from the West, you might have a good grasp on the Full Moon. You know what that looks like? You might have a good grasp on the New Moon. And if we're really good in science class, you may have retained the idea of a first quarter and a third quarter. A waxing quarter and a waning quarter Moon. So that's what generally we would have a concept of in the West. But imagine growing up or living in a reality where every day of the Moon has its own name, and therefore we can begin to measure it, identify with it check in with what happens on those days.

And think about how your own birth chart has a unique tithi, right? It has a unique Moon shape or lunar day. Regardless of whether it's a waxing Moon or a waning Moon, New Moon or Full Moon, your relationship of the Sun and the Moon at the time of your birth is recorded there on the birth chart. And if you want to, you can record and witness what it is like every time that lunar day comes along. That's pretty easy to do if you hop on the web and look for a tithi calendar. You can find out what's going on with the Moon every single day. And you could also use Kala to find out what your tithi was. So just reach out to me if you want any help with finding out your unique relationship of the Sun and the Moon. 

Because this is one of the great elements of the clock of Astrology. If we think of Astrology is really like a clock, it helps us to manage and measure and understand time in this ever moving universe galaxy that we live in. The relationship between the Earth and the Sun helps us to measure that year. And so then we can count years and we can see the passage of time in that way. So that's the Earth and the Sun relationship.

But as well as a kind of objective lunar cycle that there's the Moon is always going through its cycle. And in some ways we could feel like that is objective to us every 28 days, 29 days, it's going through that cycle. But actually in your birth chart, it records the unique relationship of the Sun with the Moon. So, that unique relationship is repeated every month in a different sign. So whatever lunar day you were born on, whether it was in the bright half, the waxing half of the Moon's journey, or in the dark half, in the waning half of the Moon's journey, that relationship was captured. And it happens once every lunar month in a different sign. So you might like to get in touch with that energy because this helps us to connect with the clock and with the cycles of time that are naturally occurring in the sky and here having their effects on planet Earth. 

And it's certainly something that in history, humanity has attributed various things to the movement and change of the Moon. And we might, as Westerners have dismissed those as not being valid, but there are now actually scientific studies pointing out some of those things that perhaps ancestrally, we intuitively knew about. 

[00:06:46] The Science Behind Moon's Influence on Us

[00:06:46] FionaMarques: So there's a study published on the site "BBC Future". The title of the article is "The Mood Altering Power of the Moon". And this is actually where scientists have observed patterns of Moon episodes in bipolar patients, and they seem to align with phases of the Moon. 

And then there's another study. This is on the Cleveland Clinic Health website, and it's called "Does the Moon affect humans?" And here it goes broader than humans. It just talks about biology and how various insects and marine animals use the shape of the Moon, these lunar days, the tithis that we're talking about, to activate various biological functions. So it's something that in the DNA of these animals is tuned into those different lunar shapes. 

And then finally, there's also a report in "Science Advances" from 2021 that under strictly controlled laboratory conditions, they've reported that there's a synchronization of human sleep and cortical activity that is in tune with the lunar phases. 

So while we may have grown up dismissing any idea of the link between the Moon and our own biology, there are certainly current scientific studies that are investigating this kind of thing. And we might just find that for our own awareness it's a fascinating thing to observe and measure and monitor. So you might like to go look up your own lunar day, your own tithi, and see what you find out and where that takes place each month as it moves through all of the signs over the year. 

[00:08:41] A different way to look at New and Full Moons

[00:08:41] FionaMarques: But we're talking about the lunar days and the tithis because in some ways Shivaratri is one of those. It is every dark Moon cycle. So that's the second half of the lunar cycle that we might think of as the waning Moon. That's when the Moon is returning to the Sun. So in that second half of the cycle, the 14th lunar day of that cycle, which means the day before the New Moon really, because the New Moon's going to come at the 15th.

So Shivaratri is happening every lunar cycle, the day before the New Moon. It's that sliver of little white Moon right before it becomes completely black to us in what we call the New Moon. 

And you can think about this as a time when we have the opportunity to be closer to the Sun, which is the soul, right? If we think about the lunar cycle. And as Astrologers and humans, we might have a favoritism for the Full Moon. Because the Full Moon has that beautiful light that it's reflecting onto Earth, making brightness so that on the Full Moon night, it's almost like we have more light, more energy, more magic, it's very special, very calming to look at. Perhaps as humans, we all have an affinity for the Full Moon. 

But what is good to remember is just like when we have a very cloudy and overcast day, we might feel that the Sun is not shining. And we could even say that the Sun is not shining, but the truth is, of course, that the Sun is always shining. Even on the cloudiest, wettest, rainiest, grayest day, the Sun is always shining. And it is just from here on Earth that we cannot see the Sun at that time. But it doesn't mean that the Sun is not shining. 

And like that, the Moon is the same, isn't it? That when it's full, it is shining all of the Sun's light here onto planet Earth and we see it in the sky and it's very beautiful. But what's important to remember is that when it goes to what we call the New Moon and to us, it seems that it, as if it's dark, it's actually still a hundred percent reflecting the Sun's light just back to the Sun. So this is why we can see the lunar cycle as being partly about manifesting that is partly about Earth. It is the Sun's light being reflected onto Earth. It helps in manifestation, which is what Earth is all about the element and planet. But we can also see that the New Moon is a chance to reflect that light to the Sun, which represents the soul often in Astrology. So what does it mean when we reflect all of our light onto the soul. It's a very meditation kind of experience, isn't it? It's a contemplation, a withdrawing, a quiet retreat. A kind of connecting with the soul and turning our back on the material world, on the Earth and all of the busyness, the goals, the to do lists, all of our material responsibilities. We've turned our back to that and we are facing fully the soul and we are in fact recharging that connection with the soul.

So while we might have a preference as humans for the Full Moon. If Moksha is really our goal, or if enlightenment and understanding the soul is really our goal, then The New Moon is the most powerful. 

And that's why we're talking today about Shivaratri because it's that sliver of the Moon before it becomes the New Moon. And this is often the darkest. It's a very dark night, right? Because all of that light that we would get from the Full Moon is just about gone. So it's a very dark night. And it's right before the New Moon. 

[00:13:16] Maha Shivaratri and PMS

[00:13:16] FionaMarques: And another analogy that seems to fit for me is if we think of our own female hormonal cycle has a kind of lunar cycle nature to it, that we can think of that Full Moon energy as being like our ovulation energy. It's the top of the cycle. It's where everything is fertile and where we have the most theoretically, the most energy, the most attractiveness, the most joy with life. And then as we move into that dark fortnight, like the lunar dark fortnight, we could map that towards progesterone in the body from the shell of the egg that was not fertilized, letting the body know that it's time to release. And that's when we would imagine, if we were taking this analogy a bit further, that menstruation is like the New Moon.

And it goes beautifully, doesn't it, that, that menstruation is a time to turn our energy inward and to connect with ourself, even to connect with our vulnerable self. And so Shivaratri becomes that day before the menstruation, which for many of us can be a time of increased stress and tension, a time when everything seems a little bit more on edge. And this is in some ways what Shivaratri is giving us the opportunity to practice is acknowledging that there is in life these rhythms that some of them are naturally, inverted commas, easier, and some of them are, in inverted commas, more difficult. And Shivaratri gives us the chance to practice on perhaps what is a more difficult setting on this 14th dark lunar day a chance to practice devotion, a chance to practice devotion to Shiva. 

[00:15:10] FionaMarques: If we're talking about Maha Shivaratri, which is happening today, a chance to fast and to stay up all night in that dark night worshiping Shiva and being open to the blessings of Shiva. 

And this is great because we already talked about Moon mythology earlier in a previous episode of the podcast (S2Ep11). That The Moon gets into trouble when it has a preference. If you remember when it was going through the Nakshatras at a particular point, the Moon decided that it had a preference for one rather than another and wanted to stay there. And this unbalanced the whole nature here on Earth. And that preference, had to be addressed and pointed out to the Moon that its role is to move through these Nakshatras and not to stay longer in any one or the other. And that's what we're honoring here is that while some lunar days might seem easier or more difficult, one is practicing that discernment and detachment, kind of Shiva words, I think, to be easy or to have practices that help us through even the lunar days that are more difficult, because we don't want either to be attracted and identify our ego to a particular lunar day, but we also don't want to be repulsed from or repelled from or afraid of a particular lunar day as well.

[00:16:49] Why does Maha Shivaratri take place now?

[00:16:49] FionaMarques: So Maha Shivaratri gives us lots of practices that we can do to remind us how to, with grace, traverse these more difficult lunar days. 

And in Maha Shivaratri, we're talking about chanting to Shiva, making offerings, a chance to fast, staying up all night. These are the kind of festivities that go on. 

But we also want to acknowledge why this is kind of "Maha" Shivaratri, why it's the big one. And Maha Shivaratri falls on the New Moon that is before the Equinox. So for those of us who live in the northern hemisphere, this is the last New Moon of winter or of the time when the nighttime is longer and the daytime is shorter. So this is the last one. And there's that saying "The night is darkest right before the dawn". So it's honoring that sometimes this very end of winter can, if you're in the Northern hemisphere can be the hardest because winter has been going on the longest. And although the days are getting longer, the temperatures have not caught up to that yet. So it still can be very cold even though the days are getting longer. And this 14th lunar day, this, the Moon is going to set before the Sun, and it's really not going to rise until the Sun is rising pretty much. So we're talking about having, a very dark night. And it's great to have festivities to look forward to, to help us through these darker periods. And that's why Maha Shivaratri comes along at this time. 

And of course it is that chance to reconnect with the soul, with the inner truth and acknowledge how important it is to have these quiet times and these times of letting go and reflection. 

[00:18:50] Legends associated with Maha Shivaratri

[00:18:50] FionaMarques: But it's also a very beautiful time to share the stories of Maha Shivaratri. And we are currently in "The Greatness of Saturn" Book Club. We are sharing the stories from "The Greatness of Saturn", and we're learning a lot about how powerfully these myths can heal us. Just listening to the myth helps to heal the psyche.

And Maha Shivaratri is no different. There are many beautiful stories and legends involving Shiva because it's a Shiva festival. Many of them play on the idea of the long night. For example, there's a story about a hunter who was in the forest and had not caught anything and lost track of time. And before he realized it, night was falling and he was in the middle of the forest. And knowing that he was a danger of the animals, he climbed a tree and stayed in that tree all night. But he knew he needed to stay awake to be able to respond to whatever threats might come. So he had the idea to pick leaves off the tree and to, let each leaf fall to the ground as he said the Shiva mantra. So this was his practice during this dark night, as we said, basically there isn't any Moonlight on this 14th lunar day. And so through the journey of the night, this hunter picked and dropped many. leaves, perhaps a thousand leaves. And in the morning, or as that, just before the dawn was rising, Lord Shiva himself appears to the hunter, because unbeknownst to the hunter, there is a Shiva lingam underneath the tree. And also the hunter did not realize he was in a bael tree in a, I think we call it a stone apple tree in English. It's a tree that has these kind of almost trident shaped leaves, like three individual leaves off the stem. So it's closely associated with Shiva because of that number three and the trident shape. And these are the leaves to offer to Shiva. So all through the night while remembering Shiva, this hunter has dropped these leaves onto a Shiva lingam and sure enough, here is Lord Shiva ready to offer a boon to this hunter. 

So it reminds us that, when we are afraid, we can turn to Shiva mantras to take us through the darkest night. And even if we don't fully realize what it is that we're doing, that protection is there.

But when we got together on Monday for meditation an even cheekier version of this myth was shared, which has instead of a hunter as its main protagonist, a thief who has decided to rob a temple. And goes to the temple late in the afternoon, assuming that no one will be there, but there still seems to be many people practicing their devotion. While milling around the crowd, he realizes he's going to have to wait and decides to climb a tree and just wait out this festival because the Sun is nearly setting surely everybody's going to leave the temple. And he climbs up into the tree. And night falls and the festivities and devotion just keep occurring.

So he's stuck up in this tree, very uncomfortable. He's been trying to stay still, but finally he just can take it no longer and he has to move position. And as he does that, he unsettled several leaves of the tree which fall to the ground. And he finds a more comfortable position and is prepared to wait. He can't, surely cannot go much longer this festival. And then the hours pass and the hours pass and he can't help it. He really has to eat something. So he reaches out to grab a fruit from this tree. but falls to the ground as well. 

 The festival just keeps going and keeps going. And he's there and before too long, he cannot. He cannot hold on any longer and let's just say that liquid from his body, maybe he sweats a lot also falls to the ground. 

And right then and there Lord Shiva once again appears and calls to this man to come down. And the thief, very sheepishly standing before Lord Shiva and Lord Shiva asks, Are you the person who has dropped leaves, dropped food and dropped liquid from the tree and he admits that he has and sure enough, all of those offerings fell on the Shiva Lingam. They're exactly what we want to offer on Maha Shivaratri. The bael leaves, these trident leaves that we talked about. The bael fruit the stone, the wood apple or the stone apple fruit. And then we have also added liquid to the Shiva Lingam. And so Shiva, grants also this thief a boon because his karmas were all ripe and all extinguished. 

And it reminds us that even when we don't really know what we're doing, these practices of offerings, a chance to fast and mantras can be helpful.

And it's hard for us as Westerners to get our heads around that because we like cause and effect and we like to feel like the doer, don't we? We want to feel that we've done something with intention. And I think that is all good and keep having that intention. 

But it's beautiful when myths remind us of the grace that is here for us. And that sometimes As we find in "The Greatness of Saturn", the planets move and grace comes into your life and that can happen at any time. And we just humbly do the best that we can in the darkness. That's what many of these Maha Shivaratri stories are telling us, aren't they? To do our best in the darkness.

And if we take that darkness as a symbolism for ignorance, we just do our best in the ignorance to make our offerings and make our devotion. So some beautiful stories to share on this very special day and night. 

[00:25:20] Astrological Insights for Maha Shivaratri 2024

[00:25:20] FionaMarques: Now, the final thing that we might like to think about today on Maha Shivaratri is all the planets that we have involved in this situation.

So this Lunar Day is happening, this Maha Shivaratri is happening right in that Aquarius and Pisces space. And we talked about this in the previous episode of the podcast. They are the last two signs of the Zodiac. They're very beautiful signs. The 11th sign, Aquarius, is all about the things that we let go of in order to attain Moksha in Pisces, the 12th sign of the Zodiac.

So just like that very famous song, you can't take it with you when you go, that is what Aquarius is about, is what can we contribute to the wealth of humanity before we go? How can we contribute our learning and our physical talents to create resources that improve all humanity? How can we be one with everyone? And Pisces is that sign of transcendence. The only zodiac sign whose archetypal imagery doesn't have feet. The animal, the fish, has left the Earth. It's no longer got its feet on the Earth. And Pisces is a very ether kind of space. It's almost something that we can't conceptualize. It's almost it's like antimatter or through the other side to a parallel universe. Pisces it's operating at such a subtle and etheric kind of energy. 

And we have here at the moment, as we have the Sun and the Moon, that's what we're talking about, that we're coming up to a New Moon in Pisces. But we know also that we have Saturn in Pisces. We have Mercury there as well. And not far behind and certainly getting going to get wrapped up in this whole Solar Eclipse, which is the next thing that's happening, Venus and Mars. So we have a lot of planets at this time. 11 and 12 in the Zodiac. And these planets don't necessarily get on that well with each other. So there's tension, there's conflict about different approaches to life. And when we think about what is going on in the world right now, we have a lot of conflict and this arrangement of planets that are coming through on a very special night, like Maha Shivaratri, and then moving over the next two weeks towards the Solar Eclipse positions. They are going to test us in that way that we might feel around premenstrual tension, they're going to, everything's going to feel more difficult. Everything's going to feel more irritating. 

However, the blessing is that it is happening in Pisces, a water sign, so it is giving us the grace, the most grace that, that it can. But we're possibly in for some bumpy interactions.

So I think that this Maha Shivaratri today and International Women's Day today are a great reminder that there are times when some times are more difficult than others. And Maha Shivaratri gives us a practice to be as graceful as possible as we can through these irritating and bumpy times. That there are many planets in the same sort of area of space with many different approaches to life. So the takeaways from Astrology right now are to acknowledge that there are times of more tension. This could possibly be one of them. There's a lot that can be gained from being graceful. Surrendered to the experience of what it is to be human in 2024, and where can we find that grace? And this might be a time where we do our Shiva mantra and we pick those thousand leaves to keep us focused on what we can do around peace, around harmony around grace that help us ride out these times. So I think that's what's very beautiful about Maha Shivaratri this year, is that the very lessons that it's trying to teach are exactly the lessons that we may need to employ right now. 

[00:30:13] Conclusion and Invitation to Join the Community

[00:30:13] FionaMarques: So I hope that you have found this interesting. And I invite you to join us over on Patreon. I really appreciate your support. It's what makes this podcast work and I love having that community there to interact with, to cross pollinate ideas. So I'd love for you to come along and be part of our podcast team and community. Best wishes with this Maha Shivaratri and look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the Vedic Astrology Podcast.

Bye for now.