Shiva is the oldest deity of the Vedic male trinity (Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva) fashioned in an effort to simulate the older female trinity. Like the Great Goddess whose son, lover, and victim he was, Shiva was called by scores of names. Occasionally he was a trinity by himself, or a triple-headed god, possessor of the trident (triple phallus) which made it possible for him to make love with the Triple Mother.
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Shiva was "in a state of actualization because he is in bodily contact with his own universal energy, the Shakti, the Goddess, the feminine active principle, the efficient and material cause of the universe, the Maya that evolves the differentiated elements and beings. Sakala Shiva bears on his head the crescent of the moon."
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Shiva was described as the Lord of Yoga, i.e., of the "yoke" that obligated him to the Goddess. He was also Lord of Death, called Shava, the Corpse, face down under the feet of Kali as she devoured his entrails - a Hindu parallel of the dead Osiris shown as the Still-Heart, a mummy, dead and yet alive.
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Some of Shiva's many other designations such as Lord of the Dance, Great Lord, God with the Moon in His Hair (Candrasekhara), Lord of Cattle (Pasupati), Beneficent One (Sankara), Lord Who Is Half Woman (Ardhanarisvara), He Who Belongs to the Triple Goddess, He Who Gives and Takes Away, Consort of the Goddess Uma, Condemned One, Destroyer, Howler.
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Tantric yogis contended that their Divine Shiva was the only god, and every other god were just lesser impersonation of him. He was unquestionably more ancient than the Vedic heaven-gods. A holy being like Shiva was shown under the feet of a Kali-like squatting Goddess on Sumerian cylinder seals of 2300 B.C.E.5 Societies of Sumerians and the Indus valley inhabitants were in acquaintance at very early periods of time. Worshippers of Shiva may have been precise in vetting other gods as more modern imitations. A number of their scriptures asserted that. Brahma and Vishnu were so weak that they couldn't even comprehend the boundaries of Shiva's cosmic lingam (phallus).
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As a sexual god, Shiva embodied the Tantric principle of maithuna, assuring the orgasmic pleasure of his partner while keeping his own in check, to involve himself in her sexual force. He supported the female-superior position also favored by such Middle-Eastern Goddesses as Asherah, Hecate, and Lilith - the posture by and large banned by patriarchs.
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The Brahmana Purana
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said the female-superior sexual arrangement was a "reversed" sexual practiced by Shiva and lusted after by the "daughters of the sages" of old; but proper Brahmans should deem it as a perversion.
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Vedic myths reveal hostility between Brahma and Shiva, although the two were in due course regarded as parts of the same trinity. Shiva's priests argued that Brahmadeva (Brahma-god) was no more than a servant of Shiva under his antiquated identity of Rudra Mokshakala, "Liberated Black Rudra." Brahmans struck back by deriding Shiva as "an evil yogi," whose sect was only "worship of the lingam"; if Brahma was Shiva's servant, at any rate the servant didn't take up the same "self-indulgence" or "hideous activities" as the master. Like western alternative gods, Shiva was effortlessly demonized because he was already the Great Black One (Mahakala), obscured with Yama and Ganesha, the Lord of Hosts, who lead to his re-embodiments on Maya-Kali.
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As Lord of the Dance, Shiva symbolized one of Hinduism's most understated beliefs. He imitated Kali's Dance of Life, leading and controlling by its rhythm the continual movement in time and space of all material things. Shiva performed this dance in a location called Chidambaram, the "Center of the Universe"; but the locality of this place is within the human heart.
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The mystics inferences were that
(1) the heartbeat is the rudimentary pulse and pace to which all human music is related, because it is heard even by the unborn infant in the paradise-state of being inside the womb, and it is never lost; and
(2) each human being in private looks upon his own heart as the center of the universe without a doubt, as a result the god is found within the foundation of man's own self.
Shiva was infrequently portrayed alone, for his power relied on his union with Kali, his feminine energy, without whom he could not act. The puzzling vision of Shiva as Shava the Corpse, under the Goddess's feet, illustrated the "doctrine that Shiva without his Shakti can do and is, so far as the manifested is concerned, nothing." Yet joined to the Goddess, he became the Bindu or spark of creation. Every human orgasm was believed to share in this creative experience as an "infinitesimally small fragment and faint reflection of the creative act in which Shiva and Shakti join to produce the Bindu which is the seed of the universe." 12 A Tantric yogi in sexual union with his yogini or Shakti could attain the experience of yoga, "linking" himself with godhood, and in his ecstasy exclaim Shjvaham - "I Am Shiva." 13
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