Valentine’s Day is round the corner. Love is in the air. 

Simple lines. No let us complicate them!

What is Valentine’s Day all about? Yeah I know, the Facebook culture has totally taken the thing in a certain direction. But even before that, there were “valentine cards” and “valentine chocolates” and valentine whatnots — you know, the unmentionables people wear beneath their clothes…

There was “be my Valentine” and “Valentine song collections” and sundry Valentine mush.

But truly, what is Valentine about? And I am not talking about the “culture”. I am talking energy.

Valentine’s comes as a harbinger of spring. After the thaw, when the Sun starts to put in an appearance every day, and when people start dumping their woollens for lighter clothes, and the mind unfreezes and the plants start putting on leaves and buds. Take a deep breath, fill your lungs with the fresh air of spring…

Aaah. So what happens when you do that? When you fill your lungs with the fresh air?

Why, the chakra of the heart gets activated. Energy courses through it. All winter, you were huddled up indoors toasting your toes at the fire (if you are lucky). But now, you can go outdoors without your nose turning blue, and you can actually take a deep breath without shrivelling your lungs.

So what happens when the heart chakra gets activated?

For starters, you “experience” the energy of love. No, not carnal love, not emotional love. Just love.

And with your breath, that energy of love spreads throughout the body. It goes into each and every cell of your body. It enervates all the sleepy corners of your body, and you get a spring in your step. 

They say love makes the world go round. So what you are experiencing is actually the fuel that keeps the world going (no, not earth. world; same difference as house and home).

Ok, cut the comedy, let us get down to brass tacks. The energy of love is the energy of the Preserver. What is in esoteric terms called the Second Logos. In Indian tradition, what is described as Lord Vishnu. In the Egyptian tradition, Isis, and in the Christian tradition, God the Son. The aspect of God that keeps the entire operation going, the ‘O’ in G.O.D.

Sounds very serious and impressive. So what has all this got to do with Valentine’s Day?

Well, everything. Valentine’s, if you look behind all the flowers and cards and chocolates, is about love. In fact love is about saying it with flowers, and even doctors acknowledge that the taste and smell of chocolates stimulate the brain to produce more pheromones, the chemical that gives us a sense of wellbeing.

It doesn’t say anywhere that it is about boy loves girl and gives her a bouquet. You can give your mom flowers, and your dad chocolates (or vice versa). In fact it doesn’t say anywhere that it is about humanity at all — you could easily give your dog its favourite treat to celebrate Valentine’s. 

That is just our cleverness, moulding a universal occasion to suit our mood (which is all for a spot of carnality after a spell of winter…).

Valentine’s Day, simply put, is an occasion to celebrate, because love is in the air, and Love is what keeps the world going (or makes the earth more than a rock, makes it a world). We are not confined to loving our family alone, we can love everyone. We can tell anyone we see, “Happy Valentine’s Day!” and get a similar greeting in return (unless you happen to be living in parts of the world that are mortally scared of all this promiscuous love, and bans all interaction between the genders (and even within the same gender) as injurious to religious sentiments. But fear is another story, it deserves exclusive treatment). Valentine’s is about celebrating God’s love for His Creation — including us.

So let us come to the second sentence. Love is in the air. Why is love in the air? What air?

Here is where it gets interesting. 

Valentine’s Day comes on the 14th day of February. Plumb in the middle of the month, but three-quarter of the way into the lunar month of Aquarius.

Aquarius, symbolised by the Water Carrier, is an Air sign, astrologically speaking. With spring unfolding, all of God’s creation gets into the mode of participative creation, so to speak (Seen the cartoon Bambi? If you haven’t, go see it. You’ll get the idea). And the energy spreads IN THE AIR. 

It continues well into the next month, which has the star sign of Pisces, and things start to get a little fishy. But Pisces is a Water sign, and water symbolises emotions, so the Love that was in the Air gets, by this time, more dense and coalesces into emotional attachments. Boy meets girl, boy gives flowers, girl blushes, blah blah. If it had been animals, they would have already done something about it.

To continue this tale further, the next month, Aries, a fire sign, tinders passion, and by the time Taurus, an earth sign, comes in May, any courtship that might have been “in the air” in February might be confidently expected to have “materialised” into something. With rabbits, for instance, you can expect to see a hutch…

Call it God’s creative cycle. He didn’t create marriages, we did that all by our little selves, to keep the property intact.

No wonder the moral police are alarmed. They may not have figured out the energy behind all this, but in India they have no objection to the wet and rowdy Holi celebrations in the water month of Pisces (which could be expected to bear equally suspect results) — but that is apparently not contrary to our religious “sentiments”.

Anyway, Love is definitely in the air. You just need to sniff the air, you can smell it! 

Happy Valentine’s Day, all.