ब्रह्मण्याधाय कर्माणि सङ्गं त्यक्त्वा करोति य: |
लिप्यते न स पापेन पद्मपत्रमिवाम्भसा || 5.10||
brahmaṇyādhāya karmāṇi saṅgaṁ tyaktvā karoti yaḥ
lipyate na sa pāpena padma-patram ivāmbhasā
Those who dedicate their actions to God, abandoning all attachment, remain untouched by sin, just as a lotus leaf is untouched by water. – Bhagwat Gita, Chapter 5, line 10
The lotus is an aquatic plant that grows in flood plains of slow moving rivers, and delta areas. The lotus flower typically only blooms for a few days. It blooms in the daytime, and at night, it closes, and goes into the water, only to emerge back up again the next day, clean. The lotus is an ever present symbol in Hindu mythology, with Brahma being born out of a lotus that emerged from Vishnu’s navel, Lakshmi sitting on a Lotus. It is not a symbol of any one Deity, but rather, associated with all of them, becoming instead, a symbol of divinity itself.
The traits of the lotus flower, the way it grows in environments that can be hostile to people, the way it hides in the water every night, and blooms once again the next day, makes it a fitting symbol for a nakshatra that sits in the sign of Scorpio, the sign of death and rebirth. Scorpio rules occult knowledge, tantra, and taboos, it is the murky water where Anuradha, the lotus flower, grows. And, despite the saying that the lotus remains untouched by water, it is, in fact, the murky and muddy waters of Scorpio, of taboos, of occult, that nurtures Anuradha.
Anuradha is the nakshatra of taking muck, and transforming it into beauty. The purity of this nakshatra remains, regardless of what taboos they practice, what sordid activities they get up to. Rather, the more taboos they practice, the more pure they become. Just as the lotus is nourished by and part of the musk, Anuradha is nourished by the world. Worldiness does not make them impure, but rather, the deep understanding they gain from the world is what makes them pure.
Anuradha is a nakshatra that is uniquely suited to participating in, and even celebrating taboos. It celebrates the beauty that exists in what is ugly and shunned by society at large. This nakshatra understands a deep fundamental truth. That impurity is lack of knowledge, and purity is knowledge. When it comes to taboos, Anuradha seeks to understand why there are taboos, what these taboos tell us about ourselves, and how to remove the impurity that exists within us.
Taboos are taboos for a reason, but, the problems that the taboo can lead to can be avoided, if approached with a pragmatic mindset. If you can participate in an act without becoming dependent on the action. When a particular action is approached from a perspective of non attachment, when pleasure is not a primary goal, or the goal at all, it becomes Nishkam Karma. When anything is approached that way, even the impure becomes pure. Scorpio is the sign of discomfort, dread, fear. For Anuradha, dealing with taboos is not about hedonistic pleasure, but rather, a way to confront their fears, and to learn respect and appreciation for what they are afraid of.
Coming back to Anuradha as a symbol of divinity, we see that it is love and respect for all parts of the world, even the undesirable parts, that makes one divine. Anuradha is the nakshatra of spiritual understanding, where it learns to parse the correct knowledge of the divine (vidya) from the incorrect knowledge knowledge of the world (avidya). The world is an illusion created to trick us, but that same world is what holds the secrets of the divine. Learning those secrets is what the occult is ultimately about.
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