Seven secrets of Shiva

by Devdutt Pattanaik

Amongst Shiva’s followers are mendicants who seek to emulate Shiva’s inability to be bound by anything cultural. Like Shiva, they stay in crematoriums. Like Shiva, they eat anything that comes their way, even human flesh. While cannibalism is taboo in culture, it is not so in nature. Many animals eat members of their own species and so Aghoras, as they seek complete disruption of social rules, indulge is such practices. They even indulge in sexual activities with the dead, and follow habits that society considers vile and inappropriate. The word ghora means frightening while Aghora means one who is not frightening. From a cultural point of view, the Aghoras behave in a frighteningly subversive way as they reject all notions of propriety and auspiciousness. But the Aghoras do this not to frighten anyone. They seek to be indifferent to the cultural gaze. They are on a quest to break all social conditioning that divides the world into appropriate and inappropriate, auspicious and inauspicious. They seek to be as transcendental as Shiva.