Shakti and Shiva sittin' in a tree
My kitten is named Shakti, for the feminine divine. In Hindu mythical imagery she is usually pictured as a voluptuous female human, often with four arms, sometimes with a sword, sometimes riding a lion. Shiva is the masculine divine, the blue guy wearing leopard or tiger fur, with a snake in his hair or around his arm. The cosmic union (or sacred marriage) of the two is often seen as one person, half blue god and half brown goddess....though sometimes the images are more sexually explicit, with Shakti sitting in Shiva's lap, his legs folded in lotus while hers are wrapped around him. No explicit sexual images here, but I did find some interesting stuff.
Sometimes Shakti is blue, wears a necklace of skulls and holds a bowl of blood and a demon's head.
When Shakti is combined with Shiva, she is usually holding a lotus blossum, and he is holding something that looks like a salt shaker to me. Can anyone tell me what it is?
SHAKTI
--destroyer of the demons
--force, power or energy
--The Divine Mother
--the active, dynamic principles of feminine power
--embodies active energy & power of male deities (Purushas), ex: Vishnu in Vaishnavism, Shiva in Shaivism
--Vishnu's shakti counterpart is called Lakshmi
--Parvati is the female shakti of Shiva
--the Shakti mudra is supposed to be calming and help with good sleep
--practice the mudra 3 times a day for 12 minutes each
Last but not least, here's a sculpture of Shakti in the lap of Ganesha instead of Shiva. Does this count as cheating?
