A simple birthday tradition carries a deeper meaning than many of us realize. In this Drops of Light, Vish explores the Vedic wisdom behind birthday candles and how each flame can become a reminder to honor your own inner light along with the sun that sustains all life.

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Thank you, everyone, who joined Bending the Light last week, the first ever episode, my inaugural episode, and as I mentioned, I was on the heels of my 50th birthday, and for my first ever Drops of Light episode, sort of the mini drops of wisdom and insight in between the full episodes. I wanted to share something about birthday candles. Have you ever wondered why, when it's your birthday, there's a cake, you put a candle on it, you usually put the number of candles or the number of years you are, especially when you're a kid, so if you're turning five, you put five candles. If you're turning 10, you put 10 candles. Of course, in adults, we start to say, "Okay, there's just too many candles, so let me just put two candles to represent two decades or whatever it is. But why do we put candles on a birthday cake? Well, there is an explanation within Vedic astrology.

So, I'm a Vedic astrologer, and one of the things we do in Vedic astrology is we evaluate these nine planets that determine the karma that we're going to receive. So there's nine planets that each deliver certain karma to us, and each of these planets is responsible for something different, and the primary sort of light-giving, quote unquote, planet is called the sun. So, even though the sun is not technically a planet, in Vedic astrology we call it one of the planets, called a graha. The Sanskrit word graha means a grasper of consciousness. So, the sun is one of the main graspers of consciousness. It is referred to in English as a planet, and the sun is the plant that gives life to all the other planets, so it is a source of energy. So, when we evaluate the sun in somebody's birth chart, we're evaluating the vitality, life force, power of the soul in a way through the sun.

So, the sun is your willpower, your overall health and vitality the light that your soul is trying to shine in the world. If somebody has a very strong sun in their birth chart, they will shine a very bright light on the world. If somebody has challenges with the sun, then their light doesn't shine. They may have challenges in self-confidence or willpower or manifesting their will, and when we are born, the sun is at a certain location in the sky, a very specific location, and in Western astrology, wherever the sun was, whatever sign it's in, they say, "Oh, when you were born in July, maybe you're a Cancer or a Leo, depending on the sign, depending on the time of month.

In Vedic astrology, what we do is we calculate exactly where the sun is when you were born, and that is a very specific degree location in the sky, and every year the sun returns to that exact same spot, so every year on your birthday the sun goes back to the exact same place in the sky that it was at the moment you were born and therefore every year we celebrate what is called a solar return, the sun has returned, the solar energy has returned to where it was when you were born and every year we celebrate that solar return. So, when somebody turns 40, they say, "Oh, I've had 40 solar returns. The sun in the sky is a ball of fire to honor the sun and to honor the light of the sun. We light a candle. When we light a candle, we are creating a little bit of fire in front of us that connects us to that great ball of fire in the sky, the sun.

So every candle you put on your birthday cake is a remembrance of that solar return, that sun coming back to the same spot. So the reason we light a candle on our solar return, light a candle on a birthday, is to honor that light and vitality of the sun's energy, so on your birthday, when you light a candle, you should light a candle. You would say a prayer of gratitude to the sun, say, "Thank you, sun, for providing the life force energy of our universe. Thank you for providing the life force energy that infuses all of the plants that we end up eating either directly or through other animals. And thank you for that light and vitality and energy that you provide to me. And I hope that my soul shines in the brightest way possible in this year ahead.

That is why we light a birthday candle on our birthday cake every year. Now, how to bring this practice into your life on a daily basis. In many ancient traditions, if you have an altar, you light a candle at the altar, and when you light that candle, your intention is, may this light infuse my altar, may this light infuse. My home may this light connect the light of my soul, so every time you light a candle at an altar or at a church or a temple or synagogue at any or any religious ceremony, when you light that candle, you're activating the light of fire of the sun, actually you're bringing in that vitality, that soul connection at the deeper level of your being, that connection to the life force giving energy of the sun. So next time you light a candle, think about may this candle connect to the sun, the giver of life, the giver energy, the giver of vitality. May this candle light up my soul, and may this candle light up my life.

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 audio recording. The links are in the show notes.