Among the oldest objects found in the Indian subcontinent is a small seal from the Indus Valley, more than four thousand years old, showing a horned figure seated in what looks unmistakably like a yogic posture, surrounded by animals. Scholars have long called it the Pashupati seal, after a name of Shiva, the lord of beasts. Whether or not the identification holds, it points to something true: the worship of a great ascetic god, lord of yoga and of wild things, runs as deep in this land as anything we can trace. ## The god of opposites Shiva is the most paradoxical figure in the tradition, and that is the key to understanding him. He is the supreme ascetic, smeared with ash, seated in meditation on Mount Kailash, withdrawn from the world. He is also the householder, husband of Parvati, father of Ganesha and Kartikeya. He is the still point of absolute calm, and he is the dancer whose dance destroys and recreates the universe. He is the destroyer among the three great gods, yet he is called Shiva, the auspicious, the benevolent. These are not contradictions to be resolved. They are the point. Shiva holds together what seems irreconcilable: stillness and motion, destruction and grace, the renunciant and the lover. He is the reminder that the divine is larger than our categories. ## Nataraja and the dance The most profound image of Shiva is Nataraja, the lord of the dance, refined to perfection in the bronzes of the Chola period in the south. In it Shiva dances within a ring of fire, one foot raised, the other pressing down a small figure of ignorance. Every element carries meaning. The drum in one hand beats out creation, the rhythm by which the cosmos comes into being. The fire in another hand is dissolution, the destruction that clears the way for renewal. One hand is raised in abhaya, do not fear; another points to the lifted foot, the place of release. The dance is the universe itself in motion, creation and destruction held in a single eternal rhythm, with Shiva calm at its centre. Few images anywhere capture so much in one form. ## The linga and the formless Shiva is most widely worshipped not as a figure at all but as the linga, the simple upright form set in the yoni base. It is easy to misread, and worth understanding rightly. The linga represents the formless, infinite reality of Shiva, beyond image and attribute, while the base represents the creative ground, Shakti, from which all form arises. Together they are the union of the unmanifest and the manifest, consciousness and energy. That Shiva's commonest form of worship is an aniconic one, a shape that deliberately refuses to be a portrait, says something about him. He points beyond the personal to the absolute. The twelve Jyotirlingas, the great self-manifested lingas of light, are his holiest shrines. ## How he is approached Shiva is, for all his vastness, the most accessible of gods, famously bholenath, the innocent lord, easily pleased by sincere devotion and simple offerings: water poured over the linga, bilva leaves, the chanting of Om Namah Shivaya. He asks for no elaborate wealth. He is the god of the ascetic and the poor as readily as of the king. Monday is his day, Maha Shivratri his great night, and the panchakshara mantra, Om Namah Shivaya, the five syllables, his constant remembrance. ## What he stands for Shiva teaches that destruction is not the opposite of creation but its partner, that what must end makes room for what must begin, and that at the centre of all this motion there can be perfect stillness. He is the god of yogis because he embodies the goal of yoga: to be utterly at peace within the turning of the world. Har Har Mahadev. ## Related reading - [Maha Shivratri: The Great Night of Shiva](/sanatan-katha/maha-shivratri-vigil) - [The Twelve Jyotirlingas: Shiva's Pillars of Light](/sanatan-katha/twelve-jyotirlingas-guide) - [Ganesha: The First Among the Devas](/sanatan-katha/ganesha-deity-profile)