St Patrick’s Day/Green Tara Blessings from Tara Greene

Green TAra Buddhist Deity

HAPPY ST. PADDY’S DAY

to all you Irish Bards and lassies. Yes its March 17  the wearin’ ‘o the green in honor of St. Patrick the Patron Saint of Ireland for instituting Catholicism over the traditional Pagan Celtic Druid spirituality, mythologized as St. Patrick banishing the snakes { a Goddess symbol} from Ireland. 

Saint Patrick is associated with the green shamrock, but the shamrock, a native species of clover, was originally an ancient Celtic/Druid symbol. The trefoil since time out of mind was always associated with the Divine feminine, the Triple goddess, as she was seen to be embodied as the three phases of the Moon, and the three worlds, sky earth and human consciousness. The Shamrock in Celtic folklore was considered to ward of evil, as it invoked the power of the Triple Goddess. That belief has carried over into modern times with the four-leaf clover motif as being lucky. Christianity always had to merge the ancient belief systems in order to capture people’s devotion by overlaying their own patriarchal beliefs such as the Holy Trinity over the ancient ways. Old habits die hard.

Ireland is also known for the High Kings of Tara and county Tara. But the name Tara doesn’t come from Ireland at all, it originated from India thousands of years ago. Tara is a Goddess worshipped by Hindus and Tibetan Buddhists to this day, but her worship is so ancient and was so strong and powerful that it spread from India all the way to Ireland and her name remained there as proof. Her identity changed over the thousands of years and she became known as one aspect of the Goddess.  Her original Sanskrit name is Sitara, yes that is the same as the  instrument that George Harrison of  The Beatles learned from Ravi Shankar in India and brought to the Western worlds attention in 1965 when he first introduced it in the song Norwegian Wood on the album Rubber Soul. Sitara means the stars. So the sitar is the music of the stars, cosmic music, music of the spheres etc. All names associated with stars Astronomy, Astrology, asterism, derive from the Sanskrit root word Tara.

Green Tara shown above in one depiction of Her,is a Female Buddha, known as the Mother of Liberation she is a highly venerated In Tibetan Buddhism. She is the buddha of enlightened activity. She is a Goddess, a protectress, saviour, mother of mercy and compassion. She is equivalent to Kwan Yin in Chinese Buddhist teachings . Her green colour also signifies to me, Mother earth or nature feeding her children.  She is worshipped with mantras, spoken chants in praise to her. The prayer to Tara is OM TARA, TU TARA, TURE SWOHA in Sanskrit.

So I thought it’d be nice to connect all the green dots and wish you a Happy St. Patrick’s Day via Green Tara associated with Ireland.  St.Patrick’s day was originally a religious holiday and not a drown in green beer drinkathon. so take a moment and think of Green Tara and receive Her Blessings along with St. Patrick if you can handle the duality.

Here’s a link to a video of a green Tara chant by Lisa Thiel  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgiTNGUjT6M

BTW my name Tara is my spiritual name and is an exact translation of my given middle name at birth, Esther. So there is also a Hebrew/Sanskrit connotation as well. Esther/Astarte, Ashera all ancient Goddess Biblical names.