Aniruddha & Usha – photo credit Wikipedia
Another love-story among Siva’s meditations …
Rohit’s Notes: Aniruddha the Son of Pradayumna
“This is yet another Krishna clone, except for his extreme youth. He was only sixteen when he heard the thousand armed King Bana had a daughter who had fallen in love with him. He set off to win her, getting into all sorts of trouble from which he had to be rescued by Krishna and Pradayumna. The volatile impetuous nature of extreme youth and extreme emotional susceptibility is what is sought to be conveyed here. A very young Krishna type, hurtling along a river bank in a chariot, with a beautiful girl alongside him, would capture the card.”
..
Rohit’s Notes in The Sacred India Tarot book:
“The Dwara reveals: Aniruddha, grandson of Krishna and son of Pradhymna, is the archetypal dashing romantic hero. He was a favourite of the royal palace at Dwaraka, and consequently he developed extreme confidence and panache. Being abundantly talented and able, his high opinion of himself was not entirely unwarranted. By the age of seventeeen, he was already one of the most desirable matrimonial catches of ancient India. Usha the daughter of the neighbouring King Bana, seemed especially susceptible to his glamour, without even having seen him.
That was superfluous, as she had dreamt of him and got her friend to draw his accurate likeness!
“The helpful friend inflamed Aniruddha with accounts of Usha’s fathomless love and certain languishing decline, if she did not soon wed him.
“The young man sets off without even bothering to inform his family. Usha and Aniruddha get married by the Gandharva ceremony – a marriage without the consent of parents, and solemnised by an exchange of garlands – for they are in a hurry to enjoy connubial bliss.
..
“When Bana comes to know his only daughter is hiding a young man in her room, he quite justifiably flares up. The happy couple flee precipitously, but Bana, blessed with supernatural powers by Siva – a thousand arms being the least of them – overtakes them. Aniruddha puts up a decent fight but is outclassed and taken prisoner. Krishna and his father have to rescue him and reconcile Bana to the situation.
“Bana has no real objections, once he cools down, but this heedless haste and dazzling disregard of the social proprieties makes his wrath excusable, as Krishna kindly points out to the young couple.”
..
Lord Krishna
..
Sacred India Tarot Archive, The Chariot – detail
Jane’s Notes
The god Krishna, in the Vishnu lineage, enters the Sivaic Lotus Suit here, much as Vishnu and Siva interact among the snowy peaks and passes of Himalayan Garhwal – sources of the upper Ganges. Krishna’s divine task is “to restore the Dharma” – he descended with the forces of order through the epic chaos of civil war in the Mahabharatha. Vishnu sustains Cosmic law. Other offshoots of the Vishnu Archetype include Gautama Buddha and Yeshua son of Miriam.
Krishna was Aniruddha’s grandfather. The elder generation are brought in as mediators: the parents were too close to the emotional situation and “the done thing”, for clear sight.
Rohit’s interpretation of this card goes on to discriminate genuine new stages of emotional growth from muddled or scatter-brained romance … in other words, truth from delusion. “Love or romance comes unasked into life.” Neither of the ardent young couple in the chariot are looking where they are going – they have eyes only for each other! (See below)
Yet they are instruments of destiny, as they intuited before they even met. The headlong force of destiny is captured in the river which flows down the valley from the mountains. They awaken within the Lotus bud of the gods.
The marriage of Siva and Parvati in the Suit of Lotuses, eroticized the landscape on Earth among princes and fair maids. A powerful mutual attraction generates much Karma and Drama, and rocks the boat – a task for the gods to sort out, indeed!
..
The Sacred India Tarot – Page of Lotuses: Aniruddha the son of Pradayumna – the completed card.
..
What is the message here? What Consciousness, or elixir, through the flow of events?
..
..
Sketch of Stella Kramrisch – JA 2012
Rudra Plunges into the Waters –
by Prof. Stella Kramrisch, Princeton University Press 1981
A Commentary on texts from the Mahabharat, Rig Veda and Linga Purana. Here are some further extracts from Chapter Six of Stella Kramrisch’s scholarly and visionary work, The Presence of Siva. (See in this series, Creation of Sacred India Tarot Archive – Ace of Lotuses and 6 of Lotuses). Raudra Brahman, or RUDRA the Wild Hunter, was the original Vedic form of the god Siva and his fiery derivatives. “He Emerges from the Poem of Ancient Power”. A profound and paradoxical cosmic philosophy is reflected in Kramrisch’s cyclical style.
Rudra is primaeval. The Presence standing behind the Myths of Siva, is woven through the stories of Siva and Parvati’s courtship in Sacred India Tarot’s Suit of Lotuses.
On Tao and Time – Child Rudra-Siva
..
“TIME HAD been the antagonist of Rudra, who was at the very beginning the hunter and avenger. But for this, the arrow of the hunter would have struck its target as soon as Rudra had noticed the Father’s behaviour. The union of Father and daughter would have been prevented, and no seed would have been shed.
“In another sense, time cooperated with Agni-Rudra, who had prepared the seed – its purpose being to be shed – whereas time antagonized Rudra. Time interposed itself between the intention of the hunter and his target, and made the arrow hit the target at the most vulnerable moment, so that some of the seed was spilled and fell down to the earth. Rudra, guardian of the Uncreate, partakes of its timelessness, but insofar as he played his part, time itself meted out his actions. Time carried his arrow at its own speed. The guardians of the timeless Uncreate were overtaken by the delaying action of time.
“The transition from the Uncreate into creation, from timelessness into time, is a danger zone. The wound that Rudra inflicted causes havoc among the gods – from aeon to aeon. But when Brahma was about to consume in a holocaust the cosmos he had created, the moment had come for Rudra to confront time and to infuse it with his being.
“Although time does not appear as a persona in the myth of the creation of death, its presence lurks in the urgency of the fire of total extinction born of Brahma’s wrath.
..
“STHANU the motionless pillar, moved – although quiescent – by pity for the creatures of Brahma threatened by total extinction, begs him to grant them renewed life and the activity arising out of and alternating with death and quiescence. For them, time will not end with death: they will return after a period of quiescence in a new birth. Time will carry them through repeated births and deaths to the end of the aeon. Rudra’s time is a form of the Great God’s compassion for all creatures.
..
[STHANU is the motionless pillar of all being. Sthanu out of the quiescence of his stance, prevailed on Brahma the Creator of time and space. Death and rebirth thenceforth came to be interwoven in the pattern of time, due to Sthanu’s compassion for creatures.]
STHANU gives death its place in the renewal of life, a transpersonal life carrying the here and now in indefinite repetition to quiescence and a new beginning, until the Great God absorbs in his dance of annihilation the uncounted rhythms he has released. Charged by Brahma to create living beings, Rudra created immortals of deathless vitality before he turned into a motionless pillar, self-contained in stillness.
Vastospati as Jyotish Guru; Swan of Brahma
..
“According to another tradition however, the Great Yogi carried out Brahma’s command to create living beings by plunging into the water and then by castrating himself when asked to produce creatures. Saying at first that he was unable to produce creatures, Rudra plunged into the water. He practiced tapas, austere in creative fervour, over a long time. Rudra, deeply immersed in the water, was absorbed in the task to which he had responded according to his yogic nature, believing that one without fervent austerities is not able to create creatures. Full of expectation, Creator Brahma waited all that time. Nothing happened, and Brahma turned to another being whose name was Daksa. Brahma made Daksa the creator of all living beings. Seeing Rudra immersed in the waters, Daksa his substitute created living creatures. As soon as they were born, they ran toward him. They were hungry and wanted to devour him. Daksa turned to Brahma to protect him and to assign food for them. Brahma gave the living creatures herbs and plants, and gave the weaker creatures as food for the stronger. Brahma, the Puranic version of Prajapati the Father, in creating Daksa, recreated himself.
“At last Rudra rose from the waters and saw the living creation. At the sight he became angry, tore out his phallus and caused it to fall into the ground, since no purpose would be served by it. By his ardent exertion he had diffused his splendour into the waters, created the plants and healing herbs for all creatures. The plants would multiply like those whose food they were to be. Without them, the living beings would have died. Cheerless and in rage, Rudra went to the foot of Mount Mujavat to practice asceticism.
“Rudra the Wild Hunter is Agni, Fire. He plunged into the waters where life was generated by his heat, by the fervour of his asceticism. The waters are Agni’s resting place, his secret refuge when he – like Rudra – is charged at the sacrifice with an onerous task to perform. His flight from the sacrifice into the flowing waters is a withdrawal from action, a merging of himself in himself.
..
Rudra Immerses
..
“Agni hides in the waters, but at other times he is seen, a shaft of light from on high speeding to the shiny plane and resting there, the pillar of heaven glowing like the sun. It is the leg of the sun. With its one foot it steps out of the beyond. Thus its name is Aja Ekapad, the uncreate One-Foot. The light from on high plunges into the waters – as Rudra did – and shines forth, vibrating from the body of Rudra in solar and lunar rays. Agni and the uncreate One-Foot merge the images of their light with that of Rudra. Rudra, who is the very self of yoga, is often described in terms of effulgent light. Light is the progenitive power. Bathed by the water, Rudra the young ascetic kindles the water with his creative fervour (tapas) and life stirs. Plants grow from the contact. The plants will be the food of living creatures moving about on earth.
“When Rudra entered the waters, he was like that great wondrous presence that strode in creative fervour on the crest of the sea. That mighty presence was a consecrated celibate, as Rudra is, young and ardent. Absorbed in creative fervour, he stood in the sea, in the ocean. He shone on the earth. He glowed with utmost inner exertion, the heat of creation.
Primrose Path – 1987
..
“These are likenesses of Rudra. They are identical with him. Agni and the uncreate One-Foot are cosmic figures. The world of man however, lends the human figure to the consecrated celibate, a student who fervently exerts himself in mastering, transmuting and transcending the psycho-physical body. Rudra had sprung from the wrath of the Creator, from the fury of his frustration. … Though he was Brahma’s mind-born ascetic son, he accepted the paternal mandate and created life, though not through procreation. He plunged into the water, where the plants derived their nourishment from his presence. They pass it on to man. Rudra is “the food of the living beings everywhere.”
Stella Kramrisch,
“The Presence of Siva” – Princeton University Press 1981
..
• The plant soul is pure, less individualised than those in the animal kingdom.
• Brahma is the Puranic form of Prajapati the Vedic Creator Father
• The immersion of Rudra’s fiery seed in the feminine waters harbingers the yogic intercourse/stillness of Siva and Parvati together as Ardhanarisvara, lasting a thousand years.
• The daily Vedic chanting at Ramanasramam includes as it did in Ramana’s lifetime, the NANAKAM, the Hymn to Bhagavan Rudra. English translation is available in booklet form from Ramanasramam.
• Mythology has no rigid defining line. Stories change a little with each generation of the telling, and through different angles of vision, as water flows into itself.
J.A.
* See Ace of Lotuses: for the mythology of the Father, the Dawn, and Rudra’s arrow – He comes from the Poem of Ancient Power.
..
..
..
**
For other Sacred India Tarot posts, look under Recent Posts, Search button, or Archive of All Posts in the title bar.
Rohit Arya
Rohit Arya is an Author, Yogi and Polymath. He has written the first book on Vaastu to be published in the West, {translated into five languages} the first book on tarot to be published in India, co-authored a book on fire sacrifice, and is the creator of The Sacred India Tarot {82 card deck and book}. He has also written A Gathering of Gods. He is a corporate trainer, a mythologist and vibrant speaker as well as an arts critic and cultural commentator. Rohit is also a Lineage Master in the Eight Spiritual Breaths system of Yoga.
Earlier posts about the deck, including the first 15 Major Arcana archives are in http://aryayogi.wordpress.com The deck is copyrighted (c) 2011 to the publishers, Yogi Impressions Books pvt, and available also on Amazon and internationally.
Jane Adams
My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.
This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.
All original art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/
janeadamsart 