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Drops of Light: Honoring the Ancestors Who Came Before Us · Bending The Light: Vedic Wisdom for a Brighter World

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  Vish Chatterji: Welcome to another Drop of Light. This week's short episode is all about ancestors. You see, this week marks the beginning of a very big festival in Indian culture, in Vedic astrology culture, which is called Pittripaksha, and what this means is the fortnight of the ancestors. So every year around September, there's a very specific full moon, and the day after that full moon, as it starts to wane, it is said that the veil between our living world and the ancestral realm is very thin. So we'll find a lot of times in this time of year, in towards the end of September, October, in
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  these two weeks of the waning Fortnight of the Moon, we feel a lot of connection to the departed ones. Whether it's you know in your family lineage or friends of yours or people that were special in your life that have passed on, this becomes a very important time of remembrance, and typically in India, very serious rituals are performed to make offerings to the ancestors, and hopefully in return get blessings from them. And you know, this time of year, this sort of fall time, happens in many many traditions. In in Mexico, there's the Día de las Muertos, which is celebrated around the same
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  time, actually, in October, and families create altars for their deceased ones. In Japan, in August, there's an Obon period where ancestral spirits are honored. In China, there's Tomb Sweeping Day that happens usually in the springtime, though. And even in Christianity, November there's an All Souls Day that the Catholics pray for the departed. From a spiritual point of view, what I recommend is oftentimes I have clients that show up. In fact, today I had a client with very difficult, unexplained issues happening in life. There's either some odd blockages where you're trying to make
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  something happen, and there just seems to constantly be something in the way. There may be issues where you're repeating patterns of your ancestors, your you know grandpa did this, great grandpa did this, my dad did this, and I seem to be doing it. There can be generational trauma where your grandparents, great grandparents, even parents may have faced a very severe trauma, and somehow you're sort of feeling the effects of that trauma. All of these intergenerational traumatic patterns, these you know strange ruptures in the family where all of a sudden family members are not talking to
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  each other, not supporting each other, or there's trouble having children and continuing the family line, inheritance issues, just sort of these odd relationship issues where you have the same relationship issues that your ancestors had. All of these usually suggest some kind of lineage issue, and this time of year is a very potent time. It's almost like a portal to heal those issues. We in the Indian tradition believe that whatever your ancestors were trying to do and felt unfulfilled in that burden, responsibility falls on the living members of that family lineage. So suppose your
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  great grandmother wanted to have her voice heard, but she was always suppressed or not able to express herself. You now have a responsibility to express that voice on her behalf, and so you know there's there's a lot of complicated ways to try to understand this. But one of the simple things we do in Vedic astrology is start to perform rituals in this specific time of year. So here we are, starting this Saturday at september 26, for about a two week period. So you you kind of think about the full moon you're going to see in the sky probably Friday night. Saturday it starts to wane, and
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  for 14 days will continually wane until the day of the new moon. And for these 14 days, what we do in India is typically start to make offerings to ancestors. And when we say the word ancestors in the spiritual traditions of India, we're talking about your lineage. So anybody in your family line that has passed away. So this can be parents, grandparents, great grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins. But ancestors also include anyone who might have been a teacher to you that has passed on. Can also include any friend of yours, anyone that was dear to you in your life that has passed on. And we
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  also add anyone that has ever been an ancestor to you in any previous lifetime.
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  So that all of a sudden opens up a massive amount of people that we would call ancestors from all the 1000s of lifetimes you had prior, and it also includes anybody who is a spirit guide or an angel or a guide or or semi divine being in your life. And so, what we do in this time of year is we set up an altar, an ancestral altar, and this is separate altar to where you put any kind of deities. So, if you have an altar that has angels or crystals or Jesus or deities, you know Shiva or Lakshmi or or any of these deities, this would be a separate altar. This would be a fresh, let's say, small
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  table that you set up. Put a cloth on the table. Typically in the southwest corner of a room or southwest area of your home, that is the direction of the ancestors. It can also be south or west facing, and on that altar you would put pictures of people who have near and dear to you who have departed in your life. Put some pictures of them up. You can put mementos, tokens that remind you of them. So images, tokens, mementos, anything like that. You kind of set up ancestral altar, and what you do is every morning for these 14 days, you sit at that altar and say a prayer, say whatever
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  prayer of your tradition, and we usually offer water. So we offer a little bit of water, and we basically say, "Hey, dear ancestors, I offer you this water to quench your thirst on the journey that you're on, wherever you're on, whatever realm you're on, whatever place you're in, we're offering water to quench your thirst on that journey. And in the Indian tradition, typically what we do is we take water mixed with black sesame seeds. They're especially calming for those ancestral energies, and we take that water, and usually we take a teaspoon. Take the spoon of water mixed with black
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  sepsis seeds. Pour it into your right hand, and then out of your right hand, pour it into another container. And typically, we pour it kind of. Imagine if you have a puddle of water in the center of your palm. You're twisting your right palm so the thumb goes downwards, and the water sort of follows that thumb, and we use a mantra which you're welcome to use: Om Pitri Bhyo Namaha. Om Pitri Bhyu Namaha. Pittri is similar to the word Patar in Latin, Father. So these are all male ancestors. Om Pitri Bhyo Namaha. I'm offering water to all male ancestors of my lineage, of all lineages that came
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  before me, and of all people that are important to me, I'm offering this water to quench your thirst. And we also do Om Matre Bhyonamaha, Om Matre Bhyonamaha, Om Matre Bhyonamaha, and Matra is some of the Latin word for mother. It's a Sanskrit word, and it is the maternal line. So I'm offering this water with black sesame seeds to all of my ancestors that are of feminine on feminine line. And you you do that, and then after you you could do it three times, or six times, or nine times, however you feel. Ompitri Bhyonamaha, Ompitri Bhyana Maha, Obihona Maha, and again you're pouring water in
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  your palm and moving your thumb downwards. Ommatri Bhyonamaha, Ommatri Bhyonama, Ommatri Bhyonah, and you're again pouring it out of the same right hand into some other container. You can then offer flowers to those photographs. You can offer incense. You can light a candle. I definitely say flower incense candle would be very good. You can, of course, you've offered water through your hand, and then you're offering, you know, your love to them, saying, "I I hope you're doing well. Whatever realm you're in, I offer you this water to quench your thirst. Then close your eyes and pray and say,
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  please, in return for my offering, offer me your blessings. Help me through my challenges. Help me through following the destiny that I need to follow. I ask for your help, and then that's the end of the ritual. And then you take that water and you pour it in the southwest corner of your property, so either a flower pot or on the soil or on the road outside.
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  Just pour that water in the southwest corner, and that's the end of it. So this should be a two to three minute, maybe five minute ritual that you do on a daily basis for these two weeks. And you'll notice after these two weeks are over, you should notice a real transformation. Any sort of odd blockages, patterns that you have not been able to tackle up to this point. I wish you the best during this fortnight of the ancestors. Get your personal karmic blueprint-a 10-minute Vedic astrology mini reading, where I personally explore your birth chart, share key insights, and send you a private
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  audio recording. The links are in the show notes.