Diwali New Moon Blessings! light a candle and welcome Sri Lakshmi, Goddess of Prosperity, Beauty and Power
she sits on a pink lotus flower, golden coins endlessly pouring from the vase at her lap, heralded, nay trumpeted, by a pair of white elephants… beauty and abundance
One of the seasons great fire festivals, hey, nearly the cheerful bedlam of Lewes and the 5th!
not my spiritual tradition? well, true, but auspicious to acknowledge the goddess in this bountiful, benign form… gold and pink, pink and gold
the main pic is an impromptu, but long standing (3 years), mini shrine plonked down at one end of the dining table…
my daughter came back from india, a gift of the sticker, a mini buddha and tibetan prayer flags
i leaned lakshmi against a jar full of old pound coins, next to a holey hag stone from the beach and, yep, choula hot sauce(!)…
things tend to flotsam wash up in my life, often to stay
this morning, up early, a beautiful golden light, a sky of profound blue… so to pedal down to the beach for the first proper winter swim of the year
a calm cold ocean, after the recent turbulence of storms. air which nips! those smoke plumes from the lips… yet a sun replesdent with majesty and warmth
floating on my back, looking shorewards, heave of sea, burnished gold, dappled squirm of liquid, the colour a reflection from the sand honey cliffs above
after, see-ee-the of sea as it sucks back through the plenitude of pebbles, eye follows the snake writhe of wave along the shoreline
this trickster mind, thoughts struggle with the clamour… qualm, hunger, scarcity… yet, ha, we dwell midst might, mystery and … a glut of profound abundance!
lakshmi in sussex! preposterous? yet sipping my flask of Rose petal tea, pondering out to sea…
reflect on the myth of her birth… gods and demons tug of war churning the sea of ambrosia, lakshmi arising full formed, beautiful from the waves
the birth of venus, likewise emerging from shell and the sea… lawks with sun sign, mercury and venus, all in cancer, i’m bound to be somewhat curious of the ocean
at pompeii, astonishingly, they discovered a statue of lakshmi, the Romans traded with India, academics postulate on a syncretic Venus-Lakshmi cult…
Romano-Celts on pebble sussex beaches
deffo nuff waffle! oh and dratt, i never even got around to diwali in mysore in the late 80’s
The Attenborough is from hove lawns… lots of postman paste ups on the yellow bins, many fitting the rigid gold and pink hegemony
As a nerd youth (quelle suprise) i was intrigued by Alexander the Great… obviously by dint of brute conquest, such the mores of teh ancient world… but imagine an empire that, just about, spanned vedic india to ancient egypt!!
knowledge fusion of the highest order… there are statues of buddha sculpted in a classical greek style! i’d probs have been a temple dancer tho
Botticelli: Birth of Venus
