Ganesh/Janus, and the Lost Hindu/Vedic Secrets of
Christmas and New Year's Eve

original article by Jeffrey Armstrong

During the months of December and January, much of the
world observes the transition from one year to
another. It is no accident that Christmas and the New
Year Holiday celebration takes place in the last days
of December and on the first day of January. In our
modern times, many of the original reasons for these
seasonal observations have become lost or obscured by
the historical changes in our world. This article
aims to excavate some of the older and deeper meanings
of Christmas and the January 1st celebration. Our
digging into the history of these days will take us
back to ancient Rome and finally back to even more
ancient India.

Our story begins with the imagery we are most familiar
with, a Winter Solstice on December 21st or 22nd
followed by Christmas, a historically more recent
celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ on December
25th. It is now widely accepted by scholars of the
Bible that Jesus was not born on December 25th and was
probably born four or five years earlier than is
currently observed and more likely in springtime
rather than winter. But his birth was and is
celebrated within a few days of the much older Winter
Solstice celebration, the longest night of the year.
Following that night, each day is a little longer
until six months later we reach mid-summer night's
eve, the Summer Solstice and longest day of the year.
Since the Winter Solstice is the return of the Sun, it
appears that the birth of the "Son" was scheduled to
coincide with the much more ancient celebration of
that important solar day.

Returning to New Years Eve, the word January is
derived from the Latin word Janus, who was known in
Rome as the God of beginnings. Janus was also known
as the God of gates and doors. He was also referred
to as the God of change, transition and progress. He
often represented the transition from rural to urban
civilization. He was known to have introduced money,
laws and agriculture. He was thought of as the
guardian or custodian of the universe and specifically
the protector of Rome. He was worshipped at the
beginning of all things, planting time, harvest,
marriages, births, the first hour of each day and the
morning's first prayer were dedicated to him. His name
comes from the world "janua" meaning gate or portal.

The temple of Janus in Rome had two gates, one facing
East and one facing West. Janus was depicted as
having two heads, one looking toward the future and
one toward the past. In the later Roman Empire, the
face of Janus often appeared on coins depicted as a
two-headed man facing in opposite directions. Because
Janus was considered the protector of Rome, he was
worshipped for success in war. It is said that when
Rome was fighting a war the gates to the temple of
Janus were left open and only during peace were they
closed. The gates were said to be closed only once in
the history of Rome.

But the two heads of Janus were not originally those
of a man. His previous form consisted of a man and a
woman facing in opposite directions. They were known
as Janus Geminus (twin Janus) or Janus Bifrons. Prior
to that he was depicted with four heads and was called
Janus Quadrifons or the four-faced form of Janus. The
two-faced Janus depicted a male and female head, who
shared a single crown. The man held a scepter in his
hand, the woman a key. There is also a legend
regarding Janus, that he once gave shelter to Saturn
who was being pursued by Jupiter.

Janus is also supposedly related to the earlier
Etruscan deity named Ani, from which our English word
annual is derived, as well as the word anus. Like our
own body, the year has a beginning and an end, the
mouth and the anus are the two gates pointing in
different directions, just as January and December are
the beginning and end of a year cycle which itself is
a kind of circle or gate in time through which we are
passing. Obviously Janus has a relation to Ani and
annual.

The next step in understanding Janus requires a little
linguistic understanding. It is a well known
historical fact that much of the wealth of the Roman
Empire was spent in buying luxurious items from India,
which at that time was the wealthiest culture in the
world. What many modern people don't know is that
both Latin and Greek as well of course as most
European languages including English, are based upon
the most ancient classical language of India known as
Sanskrit. The final form of the Sanskrit grammar was
published in India during the year 800 BCE. Many of
the key root words in the European languages, Latin
and Greek can be traced back to their roots in
Sanskrit. Modern scholars have obscured this fact by
referring to a nonexistent and theoretical language
they refer to as Indo-Aryan. This only distracts us
from understanding how much was borrowed from India
and Sanskrit in the forming of Greek and Roman
culture.

By this point in the article, anyone with a knowledge
of Indian culture has probably guessed the obvious
connection between Janus and Ganesh, the elephant
headed deity who is known as the "eesh" or lord of
"ganas" or guardians. Ganesh is the historical source
of Janus, which the Romans learned of in their many
visits to India. This also is why there is no mention
of Janus in the Greek culture, which preceded and was
the source of much of Roman culture and religion.

The many similarities between Janus and Ganesh are
worth mentioning. First, Ganesh was created by his
mother Parvati or Mother Nature from Her own body, in
order to guard the gate or door to her bath house.
One of the benedictions that was eventually given to
Ganesh was that he would always be worshipped first
before any of the other gods. As the Lord of the
Guardians, he is considered the head of all the
protectors or guardian angels. Many Asian cultures
believe that every house has a Gana or guardian spirit
which is often depicted as a face on the front door.
Ganesh is viewed as the master of all those guardian
angels.

As for the notion of change, transition and progress,
this usually proceeds through the removal of some
impediment or obstruction, or through solving of some
problem. Ganesh is, of course, also known as the
remover of obstacles. In this way he is popular with
everyone, for who does not wish for their obstacles to
be removed. He also leads us from unsophisticated
thinking to more subtle thought by challenging our
imagination. He also represents the present as
compared to the past or future. Just as Janus was said
to have invented money, the word "gan" is the root of
"ganit", the Sanskrit for mathematics or the art of
counting. For this, Ganesh is known as the Lord of
"hosts" or the mass of people and the Lord of success,
related to counting and money.

By trying to understand his having the body of a human
and the head of an elephant, our imagination is
challenged to develop from gross to subtle, from the
known to the unknown. In the words of the scientist
Albert Einstein, "Imagination is better than
knowledge." And so as we make the transition from
rural and rough to urban and civilized, we progress in
our sophistication. As for Ganesh (Janus) introducing
money, he is also worshipped in India as the God of
mercantile success or financial betterment and is
often depicted in the company of Lady Luck or Lakshmi,
the Goddess of Wealth and wife of the maintainer Lord
Vishnu.

On a more subtle level of understanding, why would
Janus/Ganesh be worshipped as the old year leaves and
the new one begins? What is a year? It is time.
Then who is old man time? Time is Saturn, whom the
Greeks called Chronos, hence the word chronology. It
is well known in India that Saturn, who in Sanskrit is
called Shani, is the Lord of time and also the placer
of obstructions or impediments. In time, things that
once served us become rigid or fossilized and then
become obstructions on our path. We then need to
throw them out and make some new resolutions. We need
to remember to be child-like again, like a baby,
worship the baby with an elephant's head,
Ganesh/Janus, to remove the obstacles and give us a
fresh start so we can make more progress.

In the extreme, the poor man's method of forgetting
the past has been alcohol, so we see it is used and
often abused in ringing in the New Year. The wearing
of masks to celebrate New Years is related to our
removing the layers of not self that may have
accumulated over the year. It is related to the masks
or faces that Janus/Ganesh presents to us, asking the
question: "Who are you really? Then why do we
celebrate Janus/Ganesh in the aftermath of the Winter
Solstice? What is the meaning of the longest night of
the year and it's opposite the Summer Solstice, the
longest day? The ancient thinkers called those two
days the gates of the year. If you include the
Autumnal and Vernal Equinox in March and September,
you can see Janus/Ganesh Quadrafons, the four headed
Ganesh. But the two gates in June and December are
the most famous.

In India it is believed that the two solstices divide
the year into two parts, the time from December to
June when the days are increasing and the days from
June to December when the nights are increasing. From
this perspective, the two solstices are "gateways" to
the realms of dark and light. The two times of year
are called in Sanskrit the Uttarayana and the
Dakshinayana, or the Northern way and Southern way.
It appears that the "yana" of Sanskrit is the same as
the "Jana" of Latin. The other name for these two
times of year is Devayana and Pitriyan.

The Devayana or realm of light, is the place where the
Angels or Devas, the Divine helpers reside. In the
material world you could call this place Heaven. It
is closer to God or Brahman the Divine light. The
apex of Devayana is Brahmaloka, the golden planet of
the Creator. This path leads back to the eternal,
spiritual and transcendental realm. The gate to the
realms of Light opens the day of the Winter Solstice
and remains open until the night of the Summer
Solstice. At that moment the Dakshinayana or dark
gate opens. The path into darkness is called Pitriyan
or the path of the ancestors. The implication is that
one's ancestors are often still bound in darkness
resulting from previous actions that have produced
negative consequences. As a result they still reside
in Pitriloka or in material places within the darkness
of matter.

In the Vedas it is said that a yogi who leaves their
body during the time from the Summer Solstice to the
Winter Solstice cannot achieve liberation and must
take birth again. Conversely, those who leave their
body during the time from the Winter Solstice to the
Summer Solstice can achieve liberation by going out
through the Deva gate. In the Mahabharat there is a
well known story that the great warrior Grandfather
Bheeshm lay for days on a bed of arrows waiting for
the Winter Solstice gate to open before he would leave
his body. He had been given the power to leave his
body at will and so waited for the Northern gate to
open and then ascended to the Deva realm.

These then, are the two gates that Janus/Ganesh is
looking at and guarding with his two heads. The two
heads in their original form of Janus Geminius also
conceal a further mystery. That form was a male and
female face wearing a single crown. This form of
Ganesh is often depicted in the spiritual art of
India. The male and female are Shiv and Parvati, who
are Father and Mother God as well as Father and Mother
Nature. Shiv is also called Mahadev or the Greatest
of the Divines and Yogesvara or the Supreme Yogi. He
is the ruler of the Devayana path. Parvati or Durga
is the Mother matter and place of birth of all beings.
She is Mother Nature and the keeper of the dark
material energy, the Womb of Life. Thus she is the
ruler of the Pitriyan path, of birth and our ancestral
relations. It is those relationships that we
celebrate during the festivities of the Winter
Solstice/Christmas.

According to the Vedic knowledge, the two Persons of
the Divine are an inseparable couple who love each
other endlessly and are perpetually embraced. Like
the yin/yang symbol of the Taoist philosophy, Shiv and
Parvati, the light and dark of this world are
elaborately intertwined. In India, their conjoined
form is depicted in many ways. In one of these, they
share one half of each other's body. That form,
called Ardineshvara shows the upper quarter of Shiv on
the left with the upper quarter of Parvati on the
right. On the lower quarter, Parvati's leg is on the
left, beneath Shiv's torso and his leg is the quarter
on the right beneath Parvati's upper body. They are
shown as dancing together, becoming each other and yet
retaining their distinctive identity and
individuality. They have two heads with one crown.

Often this cosmic form is depicted with Ganesh's face
on the front, between the faces of Shiv and Parvati.
In that way he represents the transitions or gateways
between the various states within matter, light and
dark, past and future, birth and death. In other
words he is worshipped first at the beginning of every
new thing or phase of being. He is Janus/Ganesh, the
Lord of transitions or progress as we move through
time which presents itself as a series of portals or
new opportunities which requires us to move on and
forward from what we were in the past. In our New
Year current celebration, we say good-bye to the old
man (the same Saturn Janus gave shelter to) of the
previous year and usher in the baby of progressive
possibility through Ganesh/Janus. That Janus gave
shelter to Saturn is due to his being the remover of
obstacles and whereas Shani (Saturn) is the placer of
them. In fact, both Shani and Ganesh are angels
(Devas) according to the philosophy of Hinduism but
they have different functions.

At another level, Ganesh is depicted in the Yoga
Philosophy as the deity in charge of the first chakra
of the seven chakras that are depicted within our
body's energy system. That chakra is called Muladhara
and is related to the earth element. The earth
element passes in through our mouth while carrying the
light or life force (in our Northern gate) and then,
after giving us life, passes out through the Southern
gate (our anus). This is Ani again or the annual
circle of living. The year cycle is replicated in our
body as the two gates of our cycle of life. In the
cosmic body it is the same. In India it is said that
the cosmos is actually a great person or form of God,
called the Jagat Purusha or Cosmic Person. We are the
microcosm and He/She the Jagat Purusha are the
macrocosm. On January 1st, Ganesh/Janus guards the
gate or transition from the first chakra where we
begin as a baby on the earth, toward our ascent
through the six chakras until we ascend to Heaven at
Midsummer Night's Eve, the Summer Solstice. The
seventh chakra is the 7th Heaven, where Mahadev and
Mother Parvati live surrounded by all the Devas and
holding their favorite child Janus/Ganesh.

There are of course, many more such mysteries and
whole volumes in the Vedas, related to Ganesh, Shiv,
Parvati and their relation to our lives, the cosmos
and beyond. This article has just been one small
exploration into the origins of the Hindu/Vedic
origins of world culture that have become shrouded in
the mists of time. Many of our now unconscious
rituals and actions and most of our speech and ideas
have their origin in the great cultures that preceded
us. Rome was one of those cultures and India which
preceded Rome and Greece is a rich storehouse of
ancient wisdom that is still relevant today.

Fortunately for us, the culture of India is still
intact, so a study of the world in the light of its
teachings and history can reveal the roots and depth
of meaning behind many of our now forgotten beliefs
and customs. May Janus/Ganesh make the way straight
before you, remove the obstacles to your progressive
unfoldment and open the gate to your Divine
aspirations. May you pass safely through the solstice
gate and find no obstacles as you cross the threshold
of the New Year.

End of forwarded message by Jeffrey Armstrong as posted to Divine
Tantra Worship by Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi.

Om Shanti,