Faerie's Lantern: Light a Candle for Diwali

In Eorzea, we celebrate the tenth moon of the year with All Saint's Wake. It's a time of frights and delights, of pumpkins for munchkins, and of a little void magic to bring us a little thrill as we meet autumn's chill. Really, it's a great way to celebrate autumn alongside the early harvest festivals and other cultural institutions like A Feast Reborn. But All Saint's Wake isn't the only autumnal tradition on the Star.

I grew up in a very culturally mixed household. My mother Rheya is Limsan to the bone with brine in her blood and a big fish story for every occasion, but she's got a little of that All Saint's Wake voidsent voidsensibility in her. My mother Rommie is proof you can take the rat out of the Brume but you can't take the Brume out of the rat; she's an out and proud Shivite with a Dravanian rosary around her wrist, but she's also an adopted daughter of Thavnair. To say nothing of the dozens of aunts - the ladies of the Bandee Pakshee - who helped raise me. 

Between the Pakshee's Hannish cultural leanings and Mom Rommie's Hannish citizenship, though, it was the culture of Thavnair that probably raised me most. In particular, three celebrations were mainstays of my youth: Holi, the spring festival of colors; Raksha Bandhan, the summer festival of found family; and Diwali, the autumn festival of lights. As you can guess from both the headline and time of year, Diwali is the thing that's interesting me right now. 

And yes, you're supposed to light a particular kind of lamp. Good luck finding one in Eorzea. You can be forgiven for using any source of flame at your disposal, I'm sure.

I took my daughter Ruby to Radz-at-Han for Diwali this year, my lovely Aunt Laqa (the actress and tawaif Mahlaqa Jain, whose name will be relevant later) took us around the city to explore the fireworks, elaborate candle and torch displays, and amazing sand artwork. Ruby's four, which is roughly the age where cultural connections like this start making a real impression on her, and in getting to see her first Diwali through her eyes I couldn't help but remember all the times in my childhood at the Bandee Pakshee where I wrecked my mom's sand mandalas and ate tons of fried festival food. One day, the meaning will impact Ruby. I don't think today was that day. 

One thing I always enjoyed about Diwali was that it was really the earliest festival of lights of the year. Festivals of lights are common in early winter, around the longest nights of the year. I've heard things like the Starlight Celebration and Wintersknell and Yule described as 'halfway out of the dark' festivals. The joy and brightness needed in the darkest time of the year. Diwali absolutely belongs alongside those events - it meaningfully celebrates the light defeating the darkness, but it comes as much as two full moons earlier.

Honestly, on those themes, it always impresses me it hasn't caught on more in Eorzea, which loves stories of light versus darkness exemplified by its eagerness to christen heroic figures as Warriors of Light. Diwali is such an old holiday in modern-day Thavnair it means different things to different people, and its meaning has likely evolved from its early Jainist origins (Jainist, Jain, Aunt Laqa has a hell of a lineage), but one of its core themes is the defeat of a demon of darkness by a champion of light and the release of 16,000(!) girls the demon had held captive for general demonic things, presumably. It's all about light and darkness, good triumphing over evil.

It also has meaning to the Gyr Abanians, and in particular for the ananta, as it venerates the goddess Sri Lakshmi, who has origins in classical Hannish faith. As an adult, visiting Radz-at-Han for the festival, it always strikes me how rare it is to see an ananta here celebrating. As a child, my family lived and worked alongside the ananta, a small clan led by Mahdvi of the Pakshee. Their veneration of Lakshmi had always been a part of what Diwali meant to me. For a mercy, Bandee Pakshee isn't celebrating Diwali until the second of the Sixth Astral Moon, so I'll be able to show that element of the festival to little Ruby, and how ananta arts and beauty are a part of Diwali as I knew it my whole life.

But here in Radz-at-Han, the wealth and wonderment represented by Lakshmi's veneration is divorced from the ancient deity now hailed by the ananta, though it does still exist. Diwali used to also mark the end of the year in the traditional Thavnairian calendar, so things like fortunetelling and gambling continue to bring the theme of wealth and prosperity forward. I even gave Ruby a hundred gil to bet on a children's game being held in the aetheryte plaza. The idea is to test one's luck and fortune for the upcoming year, rather than as the ananta would argue, to venerate Lakshmi. 

Aunt Laqa explained that according to Jain tradition, it wasn't a matter of simply warding off the darkness or celebrating something akin to a Warrior of Light that brought about the candles synonymous with Diwali, but rather transcendence. A sort of ascension beyond the Atherial Sea into true knowledge and bliss. Something we might scientifically associate with Ancients and aetheric density perhaps, was and still is a major factor in the faith of the Thavnarian people. Aunt Laqa taught Ruby about the legend that when a Jain achieved this transcendence in the Fourth Astral Era, the lords and kings of the Near East each lit a candle in memory of the beautiful light she gave the Star. Eighteen candles in total. From this, the Jainist tradition explains, the candles of Diwali find their origin.

I think it sounds a little self-serving coming from someone whose name is literally associated with the traditions and faith, but it feels like a good story regardless, which is what makes faith important in the end. In any case, a four-year-old Ruby was totally entranced. 

We encountered a storyteller, a popular feature of Diwali celebrations, who had the task unenviable to my mind of trying to reconcile all these different interpretations of Diwali into one cohesive narrative consistent with the modern Hannish faith worshipping the three Sisters. He wove some of the most common elements of Diwali together, attributing them to different Sisters. To Cinduruva, the Sister of Wisdom, he attributed elements of the Jain tradition, the seeking of wisdom and a glance beyond the cycle of souls. Lakshmi he syncretized with Sanduruva, the Sister of Prosperity. Minduruva, the Sister of Inginuity, he gave as the voice to guide the defeat of darkness by the light of Hannish heroes. 

As an adult, who grew up with the disparate meanings of the holiday presented as real, equal, and meaningful, it was a piece of revisionism that both awed and annoyed me, but this is unfortunately how faith and culture grow. The modern cannibalizes the old. We see this at home, with Azemya being an Eorzean idea born of a Meracydian goddess. To Ruby, who lacks the nuance, background, and credulousness of an adult, this synchronization and recontextualization of Diwali was just one more story, like Aunt Laqa's or Aunt Madhvi's or my own. And through her eyes, perhaps I can really understand what Diwali really is. 

At the end of the day, the diversity of meaning of Diwali can be distilled to a small set of themes interpreted in different ways: righteousness, self-inquiry, and the importance of knowledge. No matter if it venerates the evolution of the self, the attempt to understand one's own fate in the year to come, the liberation of thousands of enslaved women, or a simple tale of triumph over evil, Diwali signifies the light of wisdom defeating the darkness of ignorance. 

What else can we ask from a festival of lights?

My mother's penchant for a schedule too busy by half means the Bandee Pakshee has yet to hold its Diwali celebration. You can light your candle of inquest and discover the knowledges of tomorrow in the Cuchulainn neighborhood of the Goblet, Ward 14 Plot 19, on 11/2 at eighth evening bell.