|| Auspicious Signs ||
|| Laxmi's Footprints: Auspicious Presence ||
Stop across the doorway from any mud-walled, thatched village hut in India and you see tiny, delicately drawn female footprints on walls and thresholds. These stylized foot prints drawn in white and vermilion are an ancient graphic design depicting Laxmi, the goddess of luster and good fortune. Particularly on festive days, women draw these small, auspicious footprints on thresholds at twilight to welcome Laxmi, who bestows wealth and wisdom, health and good cheer.
A new daughter-in-law, entering her matrimonial home, is welcomed with Laxmi's footprints drawn over the door. This symbol of the footprint is used during all sacraments which concern women. Particularly during her Segment, a pregnant woman walks over Kumkum or vermilion powder and leaves her footprints around the house as she walks on that auspicious day. It is a practice in many communities for the husband to give her gifts in return for these footprints which promise fortune and long life to the coming child
|| Purna Kumbh: Living A Full Life ||
Throughout history, man has passionately yearned to conquer death and the slow but sure degeneration of his strength and power
Similar to the mythologies of many other countries, India's ancient literature also contains myths about sages and wise men who spent years in harsh penance and solitary meditation to master the secrets of immortality. Many Himalayan herbs were said to possess the magical quality of reviving a dead person. Epics like the Ramayana or the Mahabharata contain stories about the use of Sanjeevani, a herb of great life-reviving qualities. While physical immortality and everlasting youth remained only a mythical dream, Indian thinkers contemplated a great deal about life and how to make it a complete experience. They sought, through wisdom, experience and the concentration of all mental and spiritual energy, to add certain richness to life, a wholeness which would take human beings closet to the dream of immortality. This concept of fullness, of total self contentment, has been symbolized in Indian thought and art by the graphic figure of the Poorna Kumbh or the full pot. According to mythology, the gods, wanting to find the nectar of everlasting life, churned the cosmic ocean and obtained from its rising waves the kumbh or pot of nectar. The pot contained within its rotund shape the fullness and the richness of life. Bitter wars followed for its possession but none could gain the nectar completely.
The pot, however, became a symbol, and is even today used widely in religious rituals. When entering a new home, an Indian family ceremonially carries the kumbh decorated with mango leaves and a coconut. In weddings and death ceremonies, the full pot features constantly as a reminder of the human desire to achieve completeness in life. A pot filled with the water of the sacred river Ganga is often worshipped in household shrines. Such a pot of water is associated with fluidity and life-giving energy. Often the pot is decorated with a swastika, the symbol of the sun's energy.
Quite naturally, the kumbh has become the theme of several magnificent festivals held in India around the time Jupiter transits through Aquarius once in every 12 years. Millions of enthusiastic bathers gather in Hardwar and Allahabad near the sacred Ganga and in Nasik and Ujjain on the banks of the Godavari and the Kshipra, for their ritual drenching, making these festivals the greatest assembles of bathers in the world
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