The Rig Veda, a collection of very early hymns composed around 1500 B.C.E., includes mentions of Shiva, a god of ambiguity and inconsistency, and also the three-eyed god his eyes represent the sun, moon, and fire, and reveal all that is of the past, present, and future with a crescent moon, symbolizing knowledge and mystical vision, in his wild, matted hair.Supta Matsyendrasana Pose Yoga He embodies opposites, is both male and female, and one glance from the third eye situated in the middle of the forehead is powerful enough to incinerate the universe. Around Shiva’s neck, the kundalini, or serpent energy of the shakti, located in the spine, is coiled.Supta Matsyendrasana Pose Yoga Sometimes, Shiva is considered a god of destruction, though to his worshipers he is the great creator and maintainer, as well as destroyer, of the cosmos.
He is iconographi-cally portrayed most commonly as the Lord of Yoga, meditating in the Himalayas, with the Ganges River cascading from the crown of his head; as a family man with his goddess wife, Parvati, their sons, Skanda and Ganesha, and the bull Nandin, a sacred symbol of sexual energy; as the four-armed Lord of the Dance, cosmic creator and destroyer, dancing on the dwarf of ignorance surrounded by a circle of flames; and as Shiva linga seen with the linga, a representation of a phallus within a vulva, meant to represent the male and female creativity and the union of Shiva with his shakti.
