Friday, Shukravara

a birth falling on a Friday

What the tradition reads

Friday, Shukravaram, is the sixth of the seven varas, ruled by Shukra, Venus, the same name given as the day's presiding deity. Astrosurkhiyan's tradition assigns the day the quality of rajas and describes it as a day of love, pleasure, fine art, harmony, luck and happiness, favouring the acquiring of beauty, socialising and enjoyment more generally, including the purchase of jewellery, the arranging of a marriage and other entertainment. Wikipedia's account of the Surya Siddhanta's hora sequence, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon, places Venus fifth; the weekday order this cycle produces, Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn, places Venus sixth, matching Friday's own name. Shukra's long standing role in the tradition as a teacher of resourceful, clever counsel fits closely with the day's own favour for the arranging of pleasure, beauty and advantageous social bonds.

The story

Shukra, Wikipedia's article records, is first portrayed in earlier texts as teacher to both the devas and the asuras together, before later tradition settles him firmly as purohita, priest and counsellor, to the asuras alone, the Mahabharata even describing him as dividing himself in two so that each side of the old cosmic struggle might have its own share of his knowledge. His most celebrated gift is Sanjeevini Vidya, the knowledge of raising the dead back to life, granted to him by Shiva after Shukra's own long penance, a power he uses again and again to restore the asuras his devas rivals have struck down in battle. That single gift, resurrection given freely to the losing side of an old war, is what keeps the asuras in the fight at all, and it is this same generous, partisan cleverness the tradition reads into Shukravara, a day for beauty, pleasure and advantage pursued with real skill, whichever side of a contest happens to ask for it.

Written from

Corpus key vara:Friday.