Shiva- Hindu GodDeity"The Destroyer"

The Great Yogi

Shiva sits in meditation on Mount Kailash. Ash from the cremation grounds covers his body, serpents coil around his neck, and he sits on a tiger skin. The Shiva Purana tells how the tiger skin came to be his seat: jealous sages once conjured a tiger to kill him during meditation. Shiva skinned it alive and sat on its hide. He is the Adiyogi, the first yogi, who transmitted the science of yoga to the seven sages and through them to the world. As Dakshinamurti, he sits beneath a banyan tree and instructs the four Kumaras in the highest wisdom through silence alone.

Nataraja

As Nataraja, the Lord of Dance, Shiva performs the Tandava. One foot crushes the demon Apasmara, the embodiment of ignorance. His upper right hand beats the damaru drum, whose rhythm is creation itself. His upper left hand holds fire. Around him burns a ring of flame. The Tandava takes many forms: the fierce Rudra Tandava performed in wrath, the gentle Ananda Tandava performed in bliss.

The Third Eye

Shiva's third eye, set between his eyebrows, holds both transcendent vision and devastating power. When the gods needed Shiva to marry Parvati and father a son who could defeat the demon Taraka, they sent Kamadeva, god of desire, to awaken him from meditation. Kama shot an arrow of flowers. Shiva's third eye opened and reduced him to ash in an instant. Kama was later restored at Parvati's request, but the Linga Purana holds that if the third eye opens fully in wrath, it will destroy all creation.

Sati and the Origin of the Shakti Peethas

Shiva's first consort was Sati, a manifestation of Devi, who married him against the wishes of her father Daksha. Daksha despised Shiva's wild appearance. When Daksha organized a great fire sacrifice and deliberately excluded Shiva, Sati attended uninvited. Humiliated by her father's insults, she threw herself into the sacrificial fire.

Shiva retrieved her body and performed the Tandava of destruction. The cosmos shook. To calm him, Vishnu used his Sudarshana Chakra to dismember Sati's body. Her parts fell across the subcontinent, and each site became a Shakti Peetha, a place where the goddess's power gathers. There are fifty-one. Sati was later reborn as Parvati, daughter of the mountain king Himavan, who won Shiva back through years of fierce austerity that rivaled his own.

The Elephant-Headed Son

While Shiva was away on one of his long meditations, Parvati fashioned a boy from turmeric paste and the scrapings of her own body, breathed life into him, and set him as guardian at her door. When Shiva returned, the boy barred his way. Shiva severed the boy's head with his trishula.

Parvati's grief shook the cosmos. She threatened to destroy all creation unless her son was restored. Shiva sent his ganas to bring back the head of the first living creature they found sleeping with its head facing north. They returned with an elephant's head. Shiva placed it upon the boy's shoulders, breathed new life into him, and declared him Ganesha, lord of the ganas, to be worshipped first among all gods before any undertaking.

The Churning of the Ocean

During the Samudra Manthan, the devas and asuras churned the cosmic ocean of milk using Mount Mandara as the rod and the serpent Vasuki as the rope. Many treasures emerged, but so did Halahala, a poison so potent it could destroy all creation. Its fumes spread. Gods and demons fell unconscious. Shiva stepped forward. He drank the entire poison. Parvati pressed her hand against his throat to prevent it from descending into his body, and the poison stayed there, turning his throat blue. From this act he earned the epithet Neelakantha: the blue-throated one.

The Descent of the Ganga

King Bhagiratha performed severe penance for generations to bring the celestial river Ganga down to earth, seeking to liberate the souls of his sixty thousand ancestors who had been reduced to ash by the sage Kapila's wrath. Brahma granted his wish but warned that Ganga's unbroken descent from heaven would shatter the earth. Only Shiva could bear her fall.

When Ganga descended in full fury, Shiva caught the raging torrent in his matted locks and tamed her into gentle streams that flowed across the plains. This is why the Ganges is called Shiva's river and why his iconography always shows water flowing from his jata. Varanasi, the city where the Ganga flows past Shiva's most sacred temple, became the place where death itself brings moksha.

Destroyer of the Triple Cities

Three asura brothers, sons of Taraka, obtained boons from Brahma and built three flying cities of gold, silver, and iron that orbited the sky. From these fortresses they conquered the three worlds. The cities could only be destroyed by a single arrow when all three aligned. The gods fashioned a cosmic chariot for Shiva: the earth itself was its body, and Vishnu became the arrow. At the precise moment of alignment, Shiva released the shot and incinerated all three cities. He is thus Tripurantaka: ender of Tripura.

Nandi and the Jyotirlingas

In every Shiva temple, Nandi the sacred bull faces the inner sanctum. He is the eternal devotee, always waiting. Devotees worship the lingam, an abstract cylindrical form, in temples across South Asia. Twelve Jyotirlingas mark the sites where Shiva appeared as an infinite column of radiance: Somnath on the coast of Gujarat, Kedarnath high in the snows. On Maha Shivaratri, the great night of Shiva, devotees keep all-night vigils and chant Om Namah Shivaya.