Your guide to reliable sources of Indian Occult.

A practitioner's personally chosen or worshiped form of the divine — the deity whose sadhana, rites, and remedies apply to that practitioner specifically.

The base and water-channel surrounding a Shivling, through which abhishekam offerings drain away.

A powerful, fierce spirit formed from a Brahmin whose life or rites went unfulfilled — of many distinct types, some causing direct affliction and others simply blocking success, and pacified or bound (not exorcised) through Shiva's grace.

A ritual of waving a lit lamp or flame before a deity's image, performed here at the close of Deepdan once the lamps begin to burn down.

An epithet of Shiva, "the great god";

The repeated recitation of a mantra — the act that generates the energy dedicated to a worshipped entity, whether divine or otherwise.