Today Hindus will commemorate the festival of Maha Shivratri, which literally means “The great night of Shiva”. Shiva is regarded as one of the three major aspects of Brahman, that pervades all creation and the uncreated. These are “Brahma” that creates, Vishnu that sustains, and Shiva into which all creation returns in immense cycles of time amounting to billions of years. As a very ancient way of life, Hindu practices are replete with symbolism, explained by a very sophisticated system of semiotics. As such, there are always levels of meaning found in the seemingly mundane customs that have been passed on through the ages.
Most mundanely, “Shivratri”, or “night of Shiva”, is celebrated on the 14th day of every month of the lunar calendar. But once a year, in late winter in the northern hemisphere, Maha Shivratri is celebrated to commemorate the oncoming summer. On this night, the northern hemisphere of the planet is positioned in such a way that there is a natural upsurge of energy in a human being. This is a day when nature is pushing one towards one’s spiritual peak. It is to make use of this that, in this tradition, we established a certain festival which is nightlong. To allow this natural upsurge of energies to find its way, one of the fundamentals of this nightlong festival is to ensure that you remain awake with your spine vertical throughout the night.
From one perspective, this momentous change is essential for our survival on this planet; it is explained on this night that Lord Shiva performs his cosmic dance, or ‘tandav’. We now know that the universe is sustained through movement from the subatomic level to the furthest galaxies formed at the beginning of the last Big Bang, or creation, that the new James Webb space telescope is revealing to us. But the vast emptiness that holds them does not come into everybody’s notice – we call this “dark matter”. This vastness, this unbounded emptiness, is what is referred to as Shiva. Today, modern science also proves that everything comes from nothing, and goes back to nothing. It is in this context that Shiva, the vast emptiness, or nothingness, is referred to as the great lord, or Mahadeva.
Of the 12 Shivratris observed in any given year, Maha Shivratri is considered especially auspicious. From our level of existence, it is also the night of convergence of Shiva and Shakti, which in essence means the masculine and feminine energies, the inert male principle and the feminine power that balance the world. In Hindu culture, this is a solemn festival that, as in almost all the others, reminds us that ‘overcoming darkness and ignorance in life’ needs us to play our roles as are necessary at different times and eras.
From a ritual standpoint, every Hindu is asked to perform worship to the formless “Linga” that symbolises Shiva. This is done by pouring various specified liquids, such as water and milk, etc, each representing various aspects of our being, over the linga to merge with it as is our goal of our atma or soul to merge or receive moksha or liberation with the Divine Soul. These offerings will be made at four intervals or “prahaars” through the night.
