Muruga

Muruga

In the southern states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the sons of Shiva (Ganesh and Skanda) are worshiped as Shakti (power), they are the manifestation of the Shiva force embodied in the daily and spiritual world. In all mythologies, "initiates" have sought to write the teaching of their practices in such a way that they are accessible to all but truly understood by researchers. We also find this symbolic way to disguise truths in the West in legends and stories for children.

The Indian rishis symbolized their knowledge to explain the phenomena resulting from the work on the Self and the opening of the different chakras because it is a teaching allowing the disciple to reach the realization of his self. For the simple reader, the literal reading of this mythology allows us to see only a pantheon of gods and goddesses, subject to the pangs of daily life in his desires, jealousy and anger.

The mythology of the Shiva family, Parvati and their offspring is an important symbolism in this yoga work. Starting from the sacrum, the energy rises along the kundalini, awakening the various chakras and finally reaching the top of the head to allow to unite with the divine.


Our Western understanding retains only the sexual aspect of these practices, which gives us these Freudian explanations of the symbolism of Shiva lingam and a drift from the practice of tantric awakening. If originally, it is a path based on the control of personal energy, its "sexual" connotation suggests that it is a control through the sexual act whose aim is to live a euphoric level of consciousness for the couple, which is irrelevant and can not be called yoga.

Son origine est dravidienne,  Skanda était vénéré sous les Gupta dans l'Inde du nord où il était la divinité tutélaire des Chalukya. Il est surtout populaire en Inde du sud sous le nom tamoul de Murugan (le garçon) ou encore Subrâhmanya, Shankamukha, Pāvaki, Saravanan/Saravanam (Bois de Roseaux), Velan (le porteur d'épieu), Sheyyan ou Sheyyavan (le rouge).


Les premières références à Kârttikeya dans la littérature sanskrite remontent au premier millénaire avant Jésus Christ. Il y est fait allusion dans l‘Arthashastra de Kautilya sous le nom de Subrahmanya ; dans les ouvrages de Patanjali ; dans le poème épique Kumarâsambhava et dans l'Atharva-Veda ; à trois reprises, aussi, dans le Mahâbhârata ; enfin, le plus long des Purâna, le Skanda Purana, lui est intégralement dédié. Son culte constituait l'une des six principales sectes de l'hindouisme du temps d'Adi Shankara (début du IXe siècle).

Au nord de l'Inde, on l’imagine comme un célibataire considérant toute femme comme sa mère, aussi les femmes ne le vénèrent-elles pas, craignant qu'en prenant son darshan, elles ne tarderaient pas à devenir veuve…


En revanche, en Inde du sud, on dit qu’il a deux épouses : Devasena, fille d’Indra, le roi des dieux, qu’il obtient en reconnaissance de son courage, et Vallî, une jeune fille d’une tribu qui gagna son cœur alors quelle se trouvait au milieu d’un champ de millet appartenant à son père. Aussi, Kârttikeya est-il très couramment vénéré par les femmes de l’Inde du sud
Shiva is one of the Trinitarian gods (Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu) who is the origin of the world and surpasses the duality to which the divine pantheon is subject. The origins of his birth are impossible to imagine for the one who is from eternity and who, by his existence, we exist. All the other gods acquired immortality only thanks to the Amrita, nectar collected after the churning of the Milky Way and are subjected to a permanent opposition with demons who are striving to shake this order to dominate the three worlds .

Shiva intervient en tant que destructeur favorable à une transformation ou à la naissance de quelque chose de meilleur. Dans le ménage Shiva - Parvati, il faut dépasser la notion du couple en tant que géniteur pour celle de complémentaire qui sont deux moitiés d’un tout. Si la naissance divine de Ganesh eu lieu de par la volonté de Parvati, le second enfant, son frère, Skanda, naquit de par la volonté du Père. Même les deux enfants du couple sont complémentaires : l’un permettant de triompher en détruisant des obstacles matériels et l’autre en détruisant des esprits démoniaques. On constate toutefois que leur rôle de destructeur/rénovateur est plus orienté vers le monde matériel et spirituel alors que le celui de Shiva est plus global et entier. Dans les différentes versions de sa naissance, l’énergie créatrice de Shiva (semence) ne peut être maitrisée par les dieux, son énergie est bien trop forte et inapte à "s'incarner dans la matière". Elle passe donc par différentes étapes qui ont pour but de l'accomoder et d'en atténuer sa puissance.


De nombreuses histoires existent sur sa naissance mais elles sont similaires dans le déroulement.


Nous trouvons La naissance de Skanda dans le Mahabharata : Livre III (IX-43) :


6 – Autrefois, de la semence émise par le Mahesvara (Shiva) tomba dans le feu et Agni, qui dévore tout, ne pût la bruler, car elle était indestructible.

7- Le lumineux porteur d’offrande (Agni) en fut illuminé et fortifié. Mais il ne put porter cette semence faite d’énergie.

8- Le maître du sacerdoce (Agni) s’approcha alors de Ganga et y déposa cette semence divine, lumineuse comme le soleil.

9- Et Ganga, à son tour, ne pouvant porter cette semence, la déposa sur la belle montagne Himavant, louée des immortels.

10- Et là, le fils du feu, grandit, tournant le dos aux mondes. Les Krttika virent alors ce nouveau né à l’aspect flamboyant,

11- Ce glorieux fils du dieu du feu (Agni), dans une forêt de bambous. Et elles s’approchèrent toutes le voulant pour fils, en disant : « Il est a moi ! »

12- Il comprit leur envie d’être mères, et but leur lait de ses six bouches.

13- Les Krttika, ces déesses au corps divin, furent remplies d’étonnement à la vue de la force de cet enfant.


Nous avons trouvé d’autres variantes dans nos recherches qui donnent la paternité à Agni et Ganga mais nous ne conservons que celles qui sont les plus proches du Mahabharata.
Second version:

The Gods, in a state of indescribable distress, following the humiliations of the Taraka demon, knocked on the door of Lord Shiva to ask for help. Shiva told them, "What happened must happen, but whoever can take my seed will have the power to put that Asura to death."

Only Agni, the God of the sacrificial fire, could seize it and swallow it but being the sacrificial mouth by which all the other Gods are nourished, all the Deities were afflicted with the same sufferings and terrible pains. Shiva allowed the fire god to vomit his seed, which broke into pieces and unknowingly penetrated the bodies of the Shaktis (female powers) of the original 7 Rishis (Celestial Sages) as they took a ritual bath in the Ganges. .
3rd version:

The gods wanted Shiva to give birth to a child, because only the son of the Great God would be able to destroy the horrible demon Taraka who mistreated the inhabitants of the heavenly realms. But at that time, Shiva had just lost his wife, Sati, who had flung herself into the flames of a firewood lit by her father, Daksha. Shiva had devoted himself to loneliness and the most austere religious practices. So the gods decided, at first, to resurrect Sati under the appearance of Parvati to recreate the couple and thus gave offspring. When she was old enough to marry, she devoted herself intensely to religious practices in order to be worthy of a great God. But Shiva was not interested in family matters and preferred to continue meditating.
New paragraph
The gods, then, conspired with Kama, the Lord of Desire, to launch on Shiva, a flower arrow, to stir up his desire for Parvati. When Kama's arrow reached Shiva, he noticed Parvati but also Kama. Understanding the stratagem, He opened his third eye and reduced the god of desire to ashes. Following the entreaties of Rati, Kama's wife, he brought back the god of desire to life but he would keep his body visible only for his wife, remaining invisible to anyone else.

Parvati was then able to unite with his divine spouse and obtained from him his divine seed in the form of a seed which it gave to the Gods. Her energy was so ardent that she burned the god of Fire Agni and Vayu, the god of the wind to land in the Ganges that she boiled. The seed set fire to the shore and when it had gone out, the six Krttika (the group of Pleiades stars), found a six-headed child under the embers, inside a lotus. They fed the child after having named him Karttikeya, that is to say, "Son of Krittika".

Women are excluded from her worship because of her strict abstinence.
OTHER NAMES

Kârttikeya has other names, such as:

Skanda: "Come from the sperm", "Jet of sperm", in reference to its origin.
Kumara: "The Adolescent", "the Prince", in the case where we consider this God as a perpetual adolescent; It should be noted that Kumara is an epithet that is sometimes associated with other deities such as Agni, or the five boys born of the spirit of Brahma.

Subrâhmania: "Dear to the Brahmins".

Agnibhû: "Born of Agni" because other legends give him for father Agni and Ganga for mother.

Gangabhû: "Born of Gangâ".

Shanmukha: "the six-headed God". He is the boss of thieves. One often sees statues of Kârtikkeya Shanmukha in Tamil Nadu where he is very revered.

Arumugan: "He who has six heads" in Tamil.

Murugan: "the Boy", in Tamil. It is a local deity of youth and war in Tamil country, belatedly incorporated into the gods of Brahmanism as similar to Karttikeya. He is the leader of the heavenly armies. He is the warrior instructor, a destroyer of demons. His personified lance Velan dances for him among the mountaineers and destroys the enemies. He is the champion of the Dravidian gods. It is identified with the cobra and is shown mounted on a peacock with the tail extended, armed with a spear and a bow (sometimes with several armed arms). He had two low-caste wives named Dewanei (= Devansenâ) and Walliamei (Vallî). Murugan corresponds to the Hindu divinity Karttikeya and is most often confused with the son of Shiva, Subramanya

Mahasena: "the great General" because he is the god of war and the leader of the army of the gods, thus supplanting Indra.

Shaktidharan: "The Bearer of Sakti" because it is endowed with immense strength, and uses as weapon a spear, or rather a javelin named Sakti or Velan, which returns in his hands after it has reached its goal.

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