Shiva

Mahadeva, the Great God

The supreme reality of the Shaiva traditions: the auspicious one who creates, sustains, and dissolves; worshipped as Nataraja, as the formless linga, and across the twelve jyotirlingas.

A quick reference entry. For the full account, follow the guides below.

Guides and journal

Who is Shiva? Deities
It is the seed of the later Aṣṭamūrti , the eight forms in which the tradition came to see Shiva everywhere, the five elements together with the sun, the moon, and the sacrificer.
The Twelve Jyotirlingas Temples
The pillar no one could fathom The story the tradition tells about Shiva does not begin with a temple.
The Subtle Body: Nadis, Chakras, and Kundalini Yoga
This is the region of the first cause (Brahma-loka) … in whose effulgence Parama-Shiva and Adya-Shakti reside." The sahasrara is the goal.
What the West gets wrong about chakras Journal
The chakra chart pinned up in yoga studios across the West, the one with seven centres running up the spine in a tidy rainbow from red to violet, each tied to a…
Sahasrara: The Thousand Petals Treatise
Other texts do count it as the seventh. The Shiva Samhita lists seven outright.
The City of Light Treatise
There is a god, Shiva, who is said to whisper the crossing into the ear of the dying, and a fierce guardian who settles the accounts, and a river that turns north to face its own source, and a burning ground wh…
The Goddess Who Would Not Be Forbidden Treatise
…and invites the gods, but he pointedly does not invite his son-in-law Shiva, whom he despises, nor his daughter Sati, Shiva's wife.
Shiva's Emblems: The Trishula and the Damaru Deities
Look at almost any image of Shiva, dancing or seated on his mountain, and two objects keep his hands company.
The Great Night Treatise
There is a fast, a lamp, and a long night spent awake before a form that has no face. This is Maha Shivaratri , the Great Night of Shiva.
The Lingam Explained Deities
Neither reached an end. The pillar was infinite, and the pillar was Shiva.
Varanasi, the one city you go to die Treatise
The god who is not afraid of death Every claim needs an authority behind it, and the authority behind Kashi is Shiva.
The never-forsaken Treatise
It is the name of the ground that Shiva is said never to leave, and it carries, folded inside it, the promise that whatever else falls, this place will not.
How Shiva lost his city Treatise
It is the story of how Shiva, the lord of the city of liberation, came to lose that city to a mortal king, and of the long, patient, faintly comic campaign by which he won it back.
The magistrate of death Treatise
He is Shiva himself, in the form the tradition reserves for its darkest and most necessary work.
The daughter of the mountain Treatise
Shiva stood beneath the falling river and let her come down onto his head, and caught the whole crushing torrent of her in the coils of his matted hair, his jata , and there she wound and slowed and was gentled…
Dakshinamurti: Shiva as the silent guru Deities
Walk around the inner sanctum of almost any old Shiva temple in the south of India, keeping the shrine on your right, and you will pass a niche cut into the outer wall of the sanctum on its southern face.
Arrival at Kailasa Treatise
…ns, and on it, seated in unbroken meditation, the great ascetic god — Shiva, the lord of yogis, motionless, his eyes half closed, absolute stillness at the summit of a silent world.
The Lord of the Hosts Treatise
The ganas are the host of attendant beings who surround Shiva — a rowdy, deformed, animal-faced multitude drawn largely from the cremation grounds and the wild…
The Bull and the Beetle Treatise
Two of Shiva's closest attendants, in particular, hold between them almost the whole significance of the idea we are tracing: what it means to stand near the divine, and how one can get it right or catastrophic…
The Fierce Guardians Treatise
We have walked the court of Shiva and found it a school of devotion.
The verse that was never about mantras Treatise
The four lines from the *Rāmcaritmānas* quoted everywhere as the charter of *śābara* mantras are, in their own setting, a poet's argument for his own book. They…
The consort and the union Treatise
The masculine is Shiva , the still ground of being, pure awareness that does nothing and contains everything.
The Mahamrityunjaya Mantra Worship
He goes to the shrine of Shiva, wraps himself around the linga , the emblem of the god, and begins to chant.
The Pancha Bhuta Sthalam: Five Element Temples Temples
Each one enshrines Shiva as one of the five elements that the tradition holds the whole material world is made from: earth, water, fire, air, and the space that holds them.
What is Shaivism? Lineages
The word the Veda uses to coax this god, the softening word, the please-be-kind word, is shiva .
Who is Ganesha? Deities
It is not the personal name of an elephant-headed son of Shiva, who is nowhere in the Rigveda at all.