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17. SAIVISM
".... Sometimes he danced lasciviously; sometimes he uttered cries. He wandered around the hermitages like a beggar. ... Despite his strange appearance and his tanned colour, the most chaste women were attracted to him. ... They let their hair fall loose. Some rolled on the ground. They clung to each other and, barring [Rudra's] path, they made wanton gestures at him, even in the presence of their husbands.
The sages cried, this Shiva who carries a trident has a body of ill omen. He has no modesty. ... He is naked and ill-made. He lives in the company of evil spirits and wicked goblins."- (Shiva Purana, quoted in Daniélou p55-56).
"The world shall not find peace until a receptacle is found for my sexual organ. No other being except the Lady of the Mountain may seize hold of my sexual organ. If she takes hold of it, it will immediately become calm." (op cit, p63)
In The Linga Purana, Brahma himself instructs the sages in the reverence of Shiva's phallus:
"As long as this phallus is not in a fixed position, no good can come to any of the three worlds. In order to calm its wrath, you must sprinkle this divine sexual organ with holy water, build a pedestal in the form of a vagina and shaft (symbol of the goddess) and install it with prayers, offerings, prostrations, hymns and chants accompanied by musical instruments. Then you shall invoke the God, saying 'You are the source of the Universe, the origin of the Universe. You are present in everything that exists. The Universe is but the form of yourself, O Benevolent One! Calm yourself and protect the world."
"Having severed the head of the Creator and killed the guardian of of the house of the Sustainer of creation, Bhairava had cut through all fetters. Horrendous, abject, naked, or in rags that emphasized his nakedness, self-contradictory and consistent with his unspeakable being, with an entrancing smile on his lips he bared his fangs. The images of the Lord show him young and in glory as Bhiksatanamurti, the Supreme Beggar.
They show him as Kankalamurti, carrying the impaled by of Visvaksena; or emiacated and deathlike in his image as Bhairava; or stern, bloated, his matted hair surrounded by flames, fiercly ponderous, and black as Kala or Mahakala."- Stella Kramrisch, The Presence of Siva
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