Lantern Love: Blooming by Moon
The darkness is profound. So rich that it feels like cool velvet pressed gently against our skin. Someone stumbles over a stone lying in the grass, and muffled laughter breaks out. I turn slightly towards my right and capture his hand in mine. He squeezes my fingers, and I imagine him smiling at me, even although I cannot see his lips.
I feel him tug lightly at my arm, and I realize that he has stopped. I turn to face him, and I strain to see his profile darkly silhouetted against the night. ‘Here,’ he says, and I nod, even though I know he cannot see me. But we both know that the place where we will light our lantern has been chosen.
Crouching low, the grass tickling our ankles, we hold between us the lantern that we bought earlier. I can hear the sound of his cheap plastic lighter as he tries to ignite the wick. After a couple of attempts, a small flame sits atop the lime green plastic lighter, and the lower half of his face is illuminated. He is smiling, just as I imagined.
My own smile broadens as he passes the light from the lighter to the lantern, and a beautiful, orange glow envelopes us both. We can feel the air beginning to warm the palms of our hands placed against the thin paper, and soon we can feel the light pressure of the lantern’s desire to touch the sky.
Looking into one another’s eyes, he nods, almost imperceptibly, and then we take our hands away. The lantern hovers for a moment, poised in the gap between me and my love, and then it slowly begins to rise. The inky blackness is now punctuated by a diffuse light that travels across its deep shadows.
He catches hold of my waist and pulls me close as we watch our lantern join hundreds of others all across this New Year’s night.
On the 23rd of January, millions of people began their celebrations for the Chinese New Year, a date which alters each year according to the Gregorian calendar, as it is determined by the Chinese calendar which is lunisolar (a combination of lunar and solar dating system). From the new moon, the festivities will continue, culminating in the Lantern Festival, held on the first full moon of the New Year (7th Feb).
The lanterns are said to guide wayward spirits home, or to celebrate the coming of the sun, or to commemorate narratives of survival against a coming threat. In Singapore & Malaysia it is also a festival which celebrates romantic love, and it was this interpretation that I wanted to draw upon, the Lantern Moon arriving just a week before the western celebration of St. Valentine’s Day.
You may wish to use this cycle to explore your beliefs around romantic love and your concept of romance. It might be a good time for you to develop some romance rituals, such as the one described in this interpretation. Or, indeed, it may be an opportunity to romance yourself: buy yourself flowers, treat yourself to a bubble bath, and maybe a movie or two.
Start the year surrounded in the loving light of the Lantern Moon…
To receive a moon guide in your inbox on each new moon of 2012, which includes an introduction to the cycle, 4 interpretations (like the one above) and 20 journal prompts, sign up to Bloom by Moon 2012.
