Sai Raya's Year

Happy new year! It is now 3341 according to the Chelouranyan date.*

3341 is Sai Raya's year! Sai Raya is the Janya of health & life, the Janya most closely associated with our Mother, the Solar Principle. As such, she is associated with all the same things that the Sun and Sun Goddess figures are associated with: the solar disk, the bright sunny colors (orange, gold, white), the invigorating principle seen in how sunlight helps plants to grow.

The Daughters of Shining Harmony wrote of Sai Raya:

As a principle governing terrestrial life, Sai Raya’s influence (the word “influence” means, originally and literally, a “flowing-in” from the “stars”, or celestial beings) is the most expansive and positive of all. Among the attributes of this influence are generosity, wealth, health, radiance and pride (pride in the negative sense is also the earthly perversion of the Stream of Sai Raya).
                   --from The Seven Great Angels

Sai Rhavë's influence for discipline, self-control, and steadfast nature was very clear over the course of the past year. As time went on, we naturally reached more toward Sai Raya in our hopes for a better future, toward trying to overcome our difficulties: may she guide us well this year!

While I definitely do hope for a good future, I do not expect this to be a year of a miraculous reversal where everything is fixed. There is a lot to go through this year and in the coming years, a lot of learning and discovery to reach a place where we find a sense of normalcy again. Maid, as those with choice, can always decide to choose wrongly; those around us may choose differently than we do, and their choices affect us adversely (and our choices also affect them). Though this year is blessed with Sai Raya's guardianship, we mustn't sit back and assume that everything will solve itself.

A lot of us have felt disconnected over the past year -- from the world, from each other, from the ritual year. And while the disconnect we feel from our secular environment is only natural, the ritual year, the cycle of feasts and fasts and the Divine Drama it tells, depends on us to interact with it to receive its benefits. Small prayers, small actions, whatever is within our grasp: these things must be done to help us reconnect with it this year. Without effort on our part to re-enter the ritual year, we may needlessly prolong the sense of disconnect, of drifting anchorless. Grounding ourselves through observing our ritual year will also help lessen the drifting feeling we have in other areas of our life.

I wish you all a very happy Easter and a happy new year! May this year be full of blessings and joy for you and yours.

~x~

*Or: 163 a.L., 5124 I.A., 3753/3121 T.A. See this post for an explanation of the different year numbers in use in the Filianic community today.