The Chinese Lantern Festival

This March the 5^th, is the start of the Chinese Lantern Festival for 2015.



'Retro-modern' Shanghai lanterns

Now those of you who don’t consult the Feng Shui man for guidance and direction during the year on important matters such as your prosperity and your good fortune, will hardly give any thought to this.

But for those of you who sometimes delve into the Eastern or Asian Mysteries - and any other occult folklore for that matter – you will be interested in the significance of this year’s Chinese Lantern Festival.

At the heart of the Lantern Festival is Taoist religious belief and conceptions about how the world is run, and what the motivations are that lie beneath the surface of all things human.

On the whole, Taoism as a philosophy is not at all well-loved or well-favoured by Chinese people generally, although they adopt as cultural novelties the charming frivolities and idiosyncrasies that genuine Taoists tend to exhibit during, and concerned with, various celestial ‘Seasons.’

The Lantern Festival is in almost all respects the same as the Western popularisations of Christmas – the deity of the North Polar Star comes down to Earth and sets simple puzzles and riddles for children and adults, the solving of which ensures that he will give you gifts.

But this deity has a slightly more serious and important role in Taoist culture, because he is regarded as ‘the Chief Official of Heaven,’ and he vanquishes evil demons, and provides great prosperity through his squadron of powerful spirit beings – which may be seen, if you are favoured, in the evenings or night-time, by the gentle light of candle-lit paper and cellophane lanterns.

Hong Kong supermodel QiQi, @
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There has been no adequately propitious time for this great deity to have come down formally and benefitted Mankind during any of the last fifty years or so, and there are a great many Taoist scholars who even believe that the world has thus been in the grip of demonic forces since around the time Kennedy was murdered.

But this all changes this year on March 5.

In his hand, the deity carries a jade sceptre, called in Chinese a ‘Ruyi’ – which literally means ‘as you wish’- and this is to indicates that it is by the intent and desire of this deity, that particular things happen according to its will.

However, before you charge into the equities markets, it should be noted that the Lantern Festival presiding deity has a frivolous attitude towards paper things or anything that can be lifted by breezes and blown away, whereas alternatively, he carries a special – large and deep - iron basin in which he has an endless supply of gold that he is able to make by turning iron into gold by the mysterious power of his magical sceptre which he always carries with him.