In the hindu narrative of the cosmos. The world exists in a never ending cyclic journey of creation existence and destruction. The trimorti the three primary hindu devinities regulate this cosmic cycle. Brahma the creator brings this cosmos into it’s being, Vishnu the preserver ensures the world continues on it’s path until the cycle comes to it’s close. Then Shiva the god of death and destruction skin smeared white with the ashes of the cremated dead.
When the world age comes to a close when the perfect creation so consumed by corruption and vice shiva’s job is to rpess the restart button and send the cosmos into a firey configuration. From the 3rd eye on shiva’s head comes a firey stream emulating the cosmos and rising from the ashes the cosmos is born again. In this form shiva embodies not only cosmic destruction but also creation the whole cosmic cycle wrapped up into one form ensconsed in a firey nimbus or an oreal of fire licking the air above him.The oriel of fire surrounding shiva beautifully captures the notion of cyclic creation of creation and destruction, you cannot have one without the other. Creation begets destruction which in turn begets creation and fire both symbolises both desctruction and creation.
The desctructive force of fire is ready apparent but as a creative force imagine when a fire burns down a forrest eventually from those smoldering ashes on the forrest floor new life begins to shoot forth. Fire also produces something new and different, a new state of matter.The form of shiva nataraja has multiple arms, generally four, each has a specific symbolic function. In his upper left palm he holds a single flame in ti’s apparence here it represents the foce of destruction.
Oppostite destruction in his upper right hand he holds an hour glass shaped drum which he uses to beat out the rhthem of life and creation. The drum also stands for sound which is related to the primordial element of ether. Before there was anything else there was ether and from ether all the other elements, earth, air, water, were created, and from that the cosmos was formed.
