Welcome to the month of Aries, a month of opportunity and transformation.
Aries (Nissan) is the first month in the zodiac year and the seed of what is to come. It begins the period of what we call the male months, the time when we plant the seeds for our year. Rosh Hashanah, which occurs later in the year in the month of Libra (Tishrei), begins the six female months, the time of manifestation and harvest of the fruits from those seeds.
Sixteenth century kabbalist Rav Isaac Luria explained the specific technology of this month is that each of the first 12 days corresponds to one of the 12 months of the upcoming year. For example, the first day corresponds to the months of Aries, the second, Taurus, the third, Gemini, and so on. Our consciousness and behavior on these 12 days actually create the experiences we will have in the months ahead. These 12 days, then, are a time of testing, and they contain opportunities to transform ourselves and to carve out a new destiny. It is as if we have a 12-day cosmic window to "walk through the fire," so to speak, in order to bring the world and ourselves to a higher spiritual vibration.
The 15th of this month of Aries is Pesach (Passover), which is a cosmic window through which we can receive a massive infusion of spiritual Light. This is the time when the Creator, by His own hand, took the Israelites, who had descended into the 49th gate of spiritual negativity, and brought them to freedom. For us, too, it is the night when we, too, can be freed from our own bondage.
The Hebrew letter that governs this month is Hei. The letter Hei appears twice in the Tetragrammaton (the 4-letter Name of God). One Hei represents the world we live in, the Lower World, known as Malchut. The other Hei represents the Upper World, Binah. Because the letter Hei is simultaneously connected to both worlds, it carries the energy of regeneration, growth, and rebirth as well as the ability to change patterns and alter even those things that were perhaps set in stone.
In the biblical portion of Lech Lecha, the Creator changes Abram’s name to Abraham and Sarai’s name to Sarah by adding the Hei of Malchut to each one. With the power of the Hei, Abraham became virile and Sarah fertile, and they were able to bear children. The Hei that governs this month therefore gives us tremendous power to transform. Aries heralds a time of new beginnings along with the power to give us rejuvenation, strength, and the capacity to change.
The spiritual tools of this month and the energy that is available will allow us to go beyond where we are today and to come to the next month, purer, better, and with a higher spiritual consciousness. We can also come to the understanding that everything around us is there to help us grow our spiritual nature and draw closer to the Creator’s Light, so that the physicality we must deal with in our daily life will not blind us to what we need to do to create a better world for all of us.
This article was previously published in 2020.
