During festivals and religious occasions, we take part in ceremonies that our ancestors have practiced. These are called traditions. Traditions can involve many rituals.
While tradition is the passing down of customs and beliefs from one generation to the next, rituals are a series of actions performed as per a prescribed order. These are usually embedded in religion or philosophy.
For instance, we have a tradition of celebrating birthdays. But when we blow out the candles on the birthday cake, it is a ritual. Likewise, getting married is a tradition in which walking around the fire or the exchange of vows is a ritual.
New rituals can emerge at any time. However, they become part of a tradition only when they a larger community understands and replicates them.
Grand gestures alone are not rituals. Some can be very simple, like the way we make our morning tea or coffee. We can find rituals all around us. But why do we have rituals?
Why We Have Rituals
Rituals play a key role in human communities. There are many reasons for this.
Firstly, rituals can reduce our anxieties, especially when we are going through uncertain times or a crisis.
Rituals also help us to feel that we have control over our surroundings. For instance, rituals that welcome a newborn infant into the family and community help the parents feel that they’ve done everything they can – including invoking supernatural protection – to protect and ensure their child’s wellbeing.
Secondly, rituals help bring people together to celebrate important milestones in life, like weddings, births, graduations, and deaths. All over the world, such events have their own rituals and traditions. These events offer us a time and place to gather and help people to renew their bonds with loved ones.
These bonds can make a huge difference during periods of bad luck. This probably acts as an incentive to maintain them.
Lastly, rituals help us to remember and share a lot of cultural information. By learning a pattern of behavior through a ritual, we can absorb information and remember it more easily on a later occasion.
Why Rituals Will Endure
If there were no rituals or traditions, we may not have reached our current state of development, both cultural and technological.
They have been instrumental in gathering and sharing information, maintaining bonds over large geographical areas, and helping us endure difficult times.
Though we are now dealing with very complex technologies, rituals continue to be very important. They act like a social glue that binds communities.
Rituals in Astrology
When someone faces problems in life, they may visit an astrologer and seek remedies. The astrologer might go through the birth chart of the person and prescribe certain rituals to appease the planets that are causing trouble to the individual.
In Vedic astrology, rituals are powerful instruments that help us align with the forces of the universe and access cosmic energy. Rituals are very integral to Vedic Astrology and include planetary remedies, Homam/Yagnas (fire sacrifices), or chanting Mantras.
They help us communicate with the divine and attain higher states of consciousness. Through rituals, one can create a sacred space to communicate with cosmic forces and use their energy for protection, healing, and empowerment.
Rituals cannot be dismissed as mere symbolic gestures. They are acts of devotion and intention that possess the power to transform our lives in significant ways.
Kinds of Rituals in Vedic Astrology
Indian Astrology prescribes many rituals. Their purpose is to rectify karmic imbalances and planetary influences. Astrological remedies like wearing gemstones, vrat/fasting, chanting Mantras, and performing Poojas and Homas/Yagyas can pacify malefic Grahas/planets and boost the positive effects of beneficial ones. During a Pooja or Homa, people offer prayers and make offerings to the deities associated with planetary energies. Mantra chanting is the repetition of sacred sounds or phrases, which is another powerful ritual that helps invoke divine blessings and align our consciousness with divine frequencies.
Pooja
Pooja (worship) is a central practice in Hinduism. It involves making offerings and receiving blessings. It can include elaborate temple rituals or simple home practices. The frequency, scale, and precise details of the Pooja will depend on the deity’s nature and location, the particular texts or ritual manuals, the intention of the worshippers, and the occasion for the Pooja. Home rituals do not usually need the expertise of a priest. But worship at a temple is very elaborate and involves more people, including a Purohit or temple priest.
Pooja rituals include ‘seeing’ the deity (darshan), chanting Mantras, playing instruments, burning incense, ringing bells, prostrations, gestures, walking around the deity’s altar, and making offerings (food, flowers and light produced from ghee-soaked wicks, or Aarti). If the Pooja is held at a temple, the worshipper gets sweets (Prasad), a thread tied to their wrist, sindoor, chandan, etc., that symbolize the deity’s blessings.
Homa/Yagna
During a Homa/Yagna, symbolic materials like ghee, grains, and incense are offered to a special fire pit. A priest is an important part of the ritual. Fire rituals are mandatory for many Hindu ceremonies. Astrologers may prescribe them as remedies to please certain deities who can protect the devotee from problems caused by planets.
Mantra
A Mantra may comprise words, sentences, or phrases and is usually in Sanskrit. Mantras are composed in prose or verse. They are chanted or recited during a ritual. One can speak them softly, loudly, or mentally. Mantras supposedly have transformative power.
Prasad
Prasad is part of a worshipper’s offering, believed to contain the deity’s blessing. It is offered to the deity first, who blesses it. After a while, the worshipper receives the blessed Prasad. Fruits like bananas, coconuts, sweets, flowers, and milk products can constitute the Prasad.
Seva/Service
Here, one serves the needs of someone or something that is seen to be part of the divine. One can do service to idols of deities (mūrtis), one’s Guru, guests, parents, animals, or to the entire community. The entity that is served determines the kind of service provided. “Gauseva,’ for instance, refers to the service rendered to cows. People feed cows as it is auspicious to do so first thing in the morning. Cows are seen as holy, as all the gods and goddesses reside in their bodies.
Do Rituals Work?
The efficacy of performing astrological rituals is often debated. While some believe they work, others feel that they don’t always work. The most important element here is intent. Performing certain rituals to protect ourselves from the consequences of our sins is not really the best reason. Sometimes, even with the involvement of the best pundits and expensive ceremonies, the desired results may not come. On the other hand, when a person performs a simple ritual with true devotion and pure intent, results can manifest. Perhaps the best and simplest ritual that one can perform on a daily basis without spending exorbitant amounts to attract divine blessings is doing a good deed. Good karma is the most powerful remedy to counteract the effects of adverse planets and your own sins.
