Skanda Shasthi

karittikeya....also known as Murugan. on the first night of the 6 day festival, i dreamt of the history of the event.

[Vinayaka]

Thanks. Murugan is something else. There are 6 major temples to him in Tamil Nadu, and collectively they are called Arapadaveedu. There is a sacred pilgrimage to all 6, in a particular order. My wife and I were able to complete it about 5 years back. We tried to spend a couple of days at each, but that wasn't quite accomplished, as we fell ill for some of it. Still it defined a pilgrimage purpose. On the beautiful Indian island of Mauritius, the Tamil immigrants there thought (some still do) that He was God, period, such was their devotion, and what happened with indentured labour sugar diaspora.

Palani Hill temple in the western ghats is probably the most famous, and it has many legends attached. It would be my favorite temple in India. Another temple of yore is Kataragama in Sri Lanka.

http://hinduism.about.com/od/godsgoddesses/p/kartikeya.htm

this site told me he is otherwise known as Murugan. i get very confused with deities name changes. so it was Murugan I met in my dream and not karittikeya? i dreamt of a gold diety coming out of the ocean with a weapon of sorts. there was more to the dream. from the research i did, Indra was golden in the earlier stage of Hinduism. later he became known as karitekeya. then this site says he is now known as Murugan. i am just trying to understand if i dreamt of the 6 day festival or other deities.

That is neat that you guys get to do this stuff. Too bad you got ill, perhaps next time you two can finish.

in my early twenties i dreamt of a temple that floated on water, it was in India. not sure if an island or not. a white tiger was on the temple along with her cubs. she allowed me to hold one of them.

[Vinayaka]

All the same God. In the north, Kartikkeya is His common name, but in the south it's mostly Murugan. In Karnataka he's known as Subramanyaswami mostly. Senthil, Balamurugan, Vadivela, Skanda, Palani are also common. All the gods have many names. There are lists of 108 names, (astottaram) and also 1008 names that priest recite during pujas for most of them.

At Palani, he is known as Palaniandavar.

At most of the temples, He has a local name with some kind of story attached. Even all the lingams in all the great ancient Siva temples have particular names.

Oh, we finished the pilgrimage, just didn't stay as long as originally planned at the last two. Tiruttani, and the last one with the very long name...

Nice dream you had.

so all the same god, all different names with different stories.

[kris]

Originally Posted by Gracey

i get very confused with deities name changes.

http://kris10846902.tripod.com/id20.html

[Vinayaka]

Originally Posted by Gracey

so all the same god, all different names with different stories.

There are two kinds of stories ... Puranas and myths and tales about the God in general, and then the local stories particular to each temple, and why that God is named what he is in that temple. It's like the Hindu wedding ... there is the overall story of how a Hindu wedding happens, and then there are millions of individual stories. Hindu temples, especially in the old days have an origin, often in a vision of someone. For example a farmer man see a vision under a tree, sets up a small shrine, then over time it gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger, until it becomes an amazing stone temple.

Originally Posted by kris

http://kris10846902.tripod.com/id20.html

Thanks Kris, for the link. It explains a lot for me.

And thank you Vinayaka.