Ganesha
He goes first. There is a reason for that.
Festivals
The beloved elephant-headed god returns to water each year.
3 min read · Festivals
The beloved elephant-headed god returns to water each year.
Ganesh Chaturthi is Ganesha's birthday - celebrated
on the fourth day of the bright fortnight of
the month of Bhadrapada. In Maharashtra it is a
ten-day public festival of extraordinary scale;
in South India it is more often a one-day or
three-day household celebration.
The structure of the festival is this: a clay
murti of Ganesha is installed, worshipped for
one, three, five, seven, or ten days - and
then immersed in a body of water. The murti
dissolves. Ganesha returns to the formless.
The dissolution of the clay murti is not the
ending of the festival - it is the teaching of
the festival. The murti was always clay. You
worshipped Ganesha through it - the form was
a vehicle, not the destination.
Ganesh Chaturthi as a large public festival
was revived in the 1890s by the independence
activist Bal Gangadhar Tilak as a way to
bring Indians together in public during
British colonial rule. The festival as we
know it today has both deep religious roots
and a specific political history.
Let the idea move immediately into prayer or temple ritual.
On Ganesh Chaturthi, opening with a prayer of invocation to Ganesha - even the brief one at the start of any puja - is the correct beginning for the day.
Keep the context connected rather than isolated.
He goes first. There is a reason for that.