Of the sacred, III: saliva redux

When Tinnanar decided to clean his Lord up and to feed him, he did so in complete ignorance of the Agamas and acted as an infatuated Untouchable hunter would. He brought to the linga pig’s meat that he chewed in order to find the tastiest morsels, water that he carried in his mouth, and flowers that he stuck in his hair. He then performed puja in ways that the Agamas rank as defiling. He brushed the linga off with the sandal on his foot, he bathed it by spitting water over it, he dropped the flowers from his head onto Siva’s, and he fed him the saliva-drenched pork. He did this for six days.

In the meantime, Kalattiyappa explained to a Brahman who served the linga while Tinnanar was away hunting why he enjoyed Tinnanar’s abominable ritual, a lengthy explanation summed up by one example: “The water The water that he spits on us from his mouth, because it flows from the vessel made of love called his body, is more pure to us than even the Ganges and all auspicious tlrthas. Anpu is the normal experience we have when our feeling, thinking, and speaking are unified in an attentiveness to another that we call infatuation, but infatuation for Siva may carry one far beyond normal moral boundaries.

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Humans come in all shapes and sizes, qualities and kinds — and it appears that at least in this Indian example, the divine is prepared to bless the human “where the human is at” — in a manner according with his own nature.

If we can understand this, perhaps we can understand also the curious paradox by which the book Wild at Heart by the Colorado Springs evangelist John Eldredge, becomes part of the “Bible” of La Familia, the Mexican narco-terror group, how the deceased Mexican bandit, now a folk-saint, Jesus Malverde, receives prayers like “Lord Malverde, give your voluntary help to my people in the name of God. Defend me from justice and the jails of those powerful ones” — and how more generally, terror groups with a strong religious ideology can easily number petty criminals and the like among their enthusiastic members, without ceasing to draw on religious motivation.

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ADDENDUM regarding the illustration at the top of this post:

A wrathful deity is characteristically wrathful in the sense of Malachi 3.2:

And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire…

Speaking generally, the purpose of the wrath is purification. It may be helpful to bear this in mind as you contemplate the full image of that wrathful Tibetan deity which heads this post:

Full image of Tibetan wrathful deity seen above

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