The Chinese New Year culminates every year with the celebration known as the Lantern Festival, the holiday marking the first full moon of the year. Streets are decorated with lanterns, often with riddles on them to be solved for small gifts. People nosh on sweet rice balls as they watch dragon and lion dances and set off fireworks displays. The lanterns symbolize the letting go of the past as they welcome the new year, but also the honoring of the dead and the welcome of the Spring Season.
The Lantern Festival can be traced back 2,000 years, but there are numerous stories surrounding its origin. One such story was during the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220) when some monks lit lanterns in their monasteries on the 15th of each month to honor the Buddha. Having been advocate himself, Emperor Hanmingdi ordered lanterns to be lit in all the temples, royal palaces, and households thus gradually evolving into a bigger, more flamboyant occasion.
Another story states that this was all due to a crane being killed, the Jade Emperor’s favorite one actually. He became so enraged that he decided he was going to burn the village of the people who were responsible on the 15th of the month. His daughter felt so awful that she went ahead to warn the villagers, suggesting that they hang red lanterns in their homes to make the Jade Emperor think that the village had already been alit. He was fooled, and the villagers rejoiced. They then made this an annual thing, later becoming the festival that we see celebrated all over Asia today.
Full Snow Moon
The full moon in February, also known as the Snow Moon, will reach peak illumination at 1:30 PM EST on February 5. We call it the Snow Moon for obvious reasons. However in the 1760s Jonathan Carver, a captain serving in a Massachusetts regiment during the French and Indian War, made a controversial expedition to map areas of the interior parts of the United States. At some point during his travels he met up with Dakota and wrote that the name used for this time was the Snow Moon, “because more snow commonly falls during this month more than any other in the winter.” Carver never achieved acclaim for any of his studies until after his death in 1780. It was until 1909, when his original journals were discovered, thus providing validity to his book, Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America: 1766, 1767, 1768.
It’s the Eagle Moon or Bald Eagle Moon to the Cree, the Bear Moon to the Ojibwe, and the Black Bear Moon to the Tlingit. This being the time when bear cubs are born. It’s the Racoon Moon to the Dakota, the Groundhog Moon to the Algonquin, and the Goose Moon to the Haida. The Cherokee call it the Month of the Bony Moon or the Hungry Moon, a silent nod to the scarcity of the time, when food has historically been difficult to come by.
Express Yourself
The Lion, the glyph for Leo in the zodiac, is all about expression, of making the contents of the mind visible. He says yes to this life, often jumping in headfirst. “The Lion must accept the essential absurdity of ego, then revel in it, letting ego flow unselfconsciously into the world” (The Inner Sky, Steven Forrest). When the moon finds itself walking across this fire sign, it highlights the ways we have hidden certain forms of self-expression, those parts of ourselves that we fear putting out into the world. Leo, however, is not scared of being laughed at, for he is as creative and charismatic as one can get. The lion knows how to be happy, how to live in the moment, how to celebrate oneself. Tomorrow is never guaranteed, but this moment can be captured and all the joy can be had.
The corresponding Leo New Moon was July 28, 2022, and it had me looking at all the ways in which my worth got wrapped up in my productivity. I have spent that last six months actively trying to learn how to rest. I know that sounds completely bass-ackwards, but this is where I am these days. Rather than pushing myself until I crash, I am catching myself before I fall. This looks like checking in throughout the day to ask myself how I am feeling. As someone who has been taught to put other people’s feelings in front of their own, this is a big fucking deal. I have learned to give myself permission to take a break without feeling guilty, to say I can finish this tomorrow, to play a game instead of work because I don’t have the capacity to do anything else.
Spoon Theory illustrates that fact that we only have so much that we can give on any given day, and once you are out you are out. We can look to the Seven of Cups as our support for this time, reminding us that we can do it all, just not all at the same time. “Life presents you with so many decisions. (Brittany Murphy) A lot of times, they’re right in front of your face and they’re really difficult, but we must make them.”
Mad love, Jenna
deck credit: Rider-Waite Tarot Deck, drawn in 1909 by Pamela Colman Smith under direction of Arthur Edward Waite
