DiwaliDiwali, also known as the "Festival of Lights," is one of the most celebrated Hindu festivals and typically falls in October or November. Originating in India, Diwali has deep roots in Hinduism, but it’s also celebrated by Jains, Sikhs, and Buddhists, each with their own interpretations.
The festival spans five days, with the third day, Lakshmi Puja, being the most significant. Homes are cleaned and decorated with rangoli (patterns made from colored powders, rice, or flowers) and oil lamps or candles to welcome prosperity and positive energy. Fireworks are often part of the celebrations, symbolizing the triumph of light over darkness and good over evil. Diwali is also a time for exchanging sweets and gifts with family and friends.

Beltane is a festival with Celtic and Gaelic origins. Traditionally, it’s a time to celebrate the union between the god and goddess, symbolizing the earth’s renewed fertility.
Ancient Beltane customs include lighting large bonfires, which are thought to purify and protect. People and livestock were sometimes led around or between these fires as a blessing. Maypole dancing is also associated with Beltane, symbolizing the intertwining of male and female energies. Beltane is still celebrated in many neo-pagan traditions today, including Wicca, often with gatherings, bonfires, and rituals to honor nature.

Samhain, pronounced "Sow-in," is another Celtic festival, celebrated from October 31 to November Traditionally, Samhain was considered a "thin time" when the veil between the living and the spirit world was at its thinnest, allowing for communication with ancestors and spirits. Offerings of food and drink were left out for visiting spirits, and people wore costumes to protect themselves from harmful ones—a practice that has influenced modern Halloween customs.
Bonfires were also central to Samhain celebrations, symbolizing protection and community. Today, Samhain is observed by neo-pagans and Wiccans, who honor their ancestors and reflect on the cycle of life and death through ritual, meditation, and gatherings.
In essence, Diwali celebrates light and prosperity, while Beltane and Samhain center on seasonal transitions and the cycles of life, growth, and death, each inviting people to connect with nature and their communities in unique ways.

Hold the people and the planet in radiance, joy, and peace
by envisioning harmony and uplifting your vibration. 
​~ Cedar

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ET will give us holographic representation of our complete history.

My mom, Ethel Skakel Kennedy, passed peacefully into Heaven this morning. She was 96. She died in Boston surrounded by many of her nine surviving children and her friends. God gave her 34 grandchildren, 24 great-grandchildren, and the energy to give them all the attention they required. He blessed her with a rich and eventful life. Even as she declined in recent months, she never lost her sense of fun, her humor, her spark, her spunk, and her joie de vivre. She wrung joy from every moment, but for 56 years she has spoken with yearning of the day she would reunite with her beloved husband. She is with him now, with my brothers David and Michael, with her parents, her six siblings, all of whom predeceased her, and her “adopted” Kennedy siblings Jack, Kick, Joe, Teddy, Eunice, Jean, Rosemary, and Patricia. From the day she met my father, her new family observed that she was “more Kennedy than the Kennedys.” She was never more enthusiastic about the afterlife than when she considered that she would also be reunited with her many dogs, including 16 Irish setters — all conveniently named “Rusty.”

The cognitive dissonance that allowed her to keep two inconsistent truths in her heart at the same time without budging made my mother a collection of irreconcilable convictions. Among these was her ironic combination of deep — nearly blind — reverence for the Catholic Church and irreverence toward its clerics. She was at once starstruck by America’s presidents, all of whom she came to know personally, and at the same time skeptical of government and toward all figures of authority. She balanced her contempt for pretension and hypocrisy with a boundless tolerance for error and mistakes in others.

God also endowed her with a perpetual attitude of gratitude that fueled her taste for adventure and an irrepressible buoyancy in a life beset by a continuous parade of heartbreaking tragedies. Her sunny optimism eventually brought my shattered father back to life following the assassination of his brother and then helped her children to thrive after her husband’s assassination five years later.

Among her most defining qualities were moral and physical fearlessness. She was a peerless equestrian and held the high jump record on horseback, jumping 7′9″ on a Quarter Horse. Critics named her among the best female amateur tennis players, and she was a competitive diver. But she did every sport well — from football to skiing, waterskiing and kayaking. Her disciplined stoicism and her deep faith in God enabled her to endure over ten years of pregnancy without complaint. She also suffered the murders of her husband and Uncle Jack, and the early deaths of two of her children. Various air crashes killed both of her parents, her brother, her sister-in-law, and her nephew John. She never enjoyed flying, but her worry never stopped her from boarding a plane. While giving short shrift to her own monumental suffering, she always showed intense compassion for others.

My mother invented tough love, and she could be hard on her children when we didn’t live up to her expectations. But she was also intensely loyal, and we always knew that she would stand fiercely behind us when we came under attack by others. She was our role model for self-discipline, for resilience, and for self-confidence. She deeded to each of her 11 children her love of good stories, her athleticism, her competitive spirit, and the deep curiosity about the world, and the intense interest in people of all backgrounds, which caused her to pepper everyone she met — from cab drivers to presidents — with a relentless cascade of questions about their lives. She also gave us all her love of language and for good storytelling. I credit her for all my virtues. I’m grateful for her generosity in overlooking my faults.


@RobertKennedyJr on X
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My page on death, grief and the afterlife on Instagram 
https://www.instagram.com/cedar.rivers/