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Inevitably, Shiva the Conqueror of Lust and Desire is also known as the erotic ascetic!
The Tantrik tradition uses the Shiva Energy very heavily and many of the texts of
Tantra are lectures that Shiva gives to his spouse who may be Kali or Parvati, but
actually is a representative of all the Divine Feminine energy in the world.
Shiva's sexuality inevitably brings us to the Shiva lingam, the supposedly sacred
phallus. Contrary to popular perception, the Shiva lingam has a world of meaning
attached to it and it is not just the obvious one of phallic symbolism. Most lingams
are representations of Shiva who is never worshipped in the form of an image. Popular
mythology holds that he was cursed so by an enraged rishi. The lingam is an abstract
stand-in for the Howler who must never be named. The entire process is an elaborate
avoidance of naming the dread name by substituting something else, which is also
a creative and generative force.
Under Tantrik influence, the lingam placed in a yoni base - which means exactly
what it sounds like - became a frank avowal of the ultimate origin of new life,
it was fertility symbolism at its best. Educated Hindus tend to be over-apologetic
about this aspect, though the average Hindu lives in a curious innocence about the
nature of the Lingam. This was typically expressed in Gandhi's naïve confession
that he had to read foreign authors before he realized that there might be anything
sexual about the lingam.
According to Swami Vivekananda, not just the lingam but also the entire external
image of Shiva is an elaborate symbolical construct. In his view, Shiva is a personification
of the entire Vedic fire sacrifice. Thus the ash with which his body is smeared
is the ash of the sacrifice. (Ash is also what's left when everything is destroyed
and it does not decay. So too with god, what is left when everything is gone. Shiva
covers himself with ash because he is the only life form in the Universe who is
aware of this truth at every moment.) The white complexion of Shiva is indicative
of the smoke of the sacrifice. The animals He is associated with indicate the animals
tied to the sacrificial posts and so on. The Shiva linga, in Vivekananda's view
is actually a feebly recalled Yupa Stambha, the Cosmic Pillar that is the
center and support of the Universe, The Axis Mundi, in fact. This
yupa stambha is always represented in all fire sacrifices and it is permanently
installed in temples in the form of the linga.
If prayers could not be offered to images of Shiva, then the temples could be covered
with depictions of scenes from his ancient life. So great was the Shiva factor in
Indian art forms that it almost obscures the other gods. The temples and their sculptures
run riot. Khajuraho, Ellora, Elephanta, Rameshwaram, the Chola temples, the Bhuvaneshwar
and Madhya Pradesh temples, and the great dancing Shiva temple at Chidambaram, it's
a universe drunk on the creative energy, fertile and fecund with originality and
beauty that is not as well regarded as it should be, merely because there is too
much of it. If there were only one such temple in India the world would have gone
mad with appreciation. As such, you can actually overdose on beauty, the Beauty
that is the transcendent state of the Truth that is Shiva, expressed in the famous
formulation Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram.
The mythologies surrounding Shiva are immense. It must be remembered that the Shiva
story has been going on for five thousand years now and they only too obviously
reflect the concerns of people at the time they were being composed. Shiva Himself
is a composite god today, involving many local area gods and little tradition mythologies
into his all-embracing grasp. Shiva is more or less what you want Him to be, as
in Him all contradictions casually coexist. The notion of Shiva as exclusively a
Wild Man of the forests and mountains, traveling with a band of ghosts and ghouls
as their leader, Bhoothnath, is a recent phase of his worship. For while He was
always capable of peculiar behavior, Shiva used to live outside of society not because
He had rejected it but because He had transcended it. Shiva is repeatedly
described as the Supreme Master of all the Arts, and that indicates a highly socialized
being, the Nagarika of ancient India, not a rustic.
To those who did not understand this aspect of the lord, to those who still had
on their defensive shell of sophistication and cynicism, Shiva was Bholenath, the
Simpleton God. Yet, traditionally India has regarded Shiva not as any of these roles
but as Vishwanatha - the Lord of the Universe. That is why in all the old temples
you find him represented as a king, decked out in lordly robes with crowns and jewels.
This homeless-wanderer recent incarnation of Shiva was perhaps a reflection of a
culture that had lost its moorings and was reeling under alien domination.
Yet even at this much reduced level, Shiva seems to appeal the most powerfully,
of all the gods of India, to the collective unconscious. Since most Goddess worshipers
also acknowledge Him as the divine spouse of the Goddess, Shiva may easily have
the most devotes in sheer number alone. He is laughed at as an old man by devotees
with the affection that comes only with comfort. Yet in some corner of the old limbic
brain he lurks, Rudra-Shiva, the old god of India, the source of the songs of the
Rig Veda.
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