Chhathihar
Every question on the site tagged Chhathihar, each answered from a timestamped source rather than a summary written from memory.
Notes from our sources
Showing a newborn to the world before the Chhathihar invites nazar and tantra
The speaker says a birth in the house provokes jealousy simply because the line has grown, more so for a boy than a girl, and today people upload the baby to Facebook, stories and WhatsApp status before even the mother has properly seen it. This he calls the biggest mistake: everyone knows the rule that when a child falls in Sataisa the father should not see its face, but not the rule that until the chhathihar the child is to be kept hidden and not shown to the world. Fifty people looking at the child put Nazar on it; very few are truly glad, most feel a stab of envy behind their congratulations, and among them are your enemies, who then get something done and come to the Chhathihar with the baby's clothes already worked on. If no puja-path for the protection of the house has ever been done, he says, trouble in the house follows.
Precautions for a newborn until the Chhathihar
The speaker says that whoever comes, do not hand the baby to anyone to hold, take away or play with; refrain, because a line grows only by great grace, so learn to keep the rules. He says wise wives scold their husbands over this and in earlier times mothers kept the baby hidden, whereas today the baby is given to the dhol players for a video and handed happily into the laps of the transgender visitors who come; his rule is "give your blessing, brother, but from a distance", and why put the child in anyone's lap at all? A newborn's Aura is very pure and very sensitive, which is why it suffers most, and it cannot say what hurts; it can only cry. The harm may show at once, or what was set on the child, a pret or pishach done against it or against the line, may come to dominate two, four or eight years later and trouble it from childhood.
How long does a birth sutak last, and does it attach to the yantra?
Suppose a child is born in your house: the sutak of birth attaches, the shauch attaches. Until the chhathi is done, and in any case at least a paksha does not pass — ten days, twelve days, as it may be; ten days is taken as the norm — you will begin the pujan only after twelve or fifteen days. Sutak, he says, will not attach to the yantra and kavach as such; but since we are going to touch them, the purification here is really our own.
The earth's own rajaswala parva, like the newborn's face before the shashthi, was meant to be kept secret
When this earth observes the Ambubachi parva, in which it is said that Jagadamba — the earth being a form of Bhagavati Jagadamba — becomes directly rajaswala, that too is a form of tantra. But all these things were kept secret, and today that secrecy is being broken: people now make videos of a child actually being born, and forget the shashthi, before which in some regions it is current that even the father should not look at the face.
What did the father formerly do before looking at his child?
In earlier times, until the nakshatra pujan had been done according to the nakshatra, and in some cases the daan such as chhaya daan or oil daan, the father would look at his own face first by seeing it in the oil, complete all that daan, and only after that look at the face of his own offspring. In the present time, the speaker says, all these things have thoroughly ended.
Until when should a newborn's face not be publicised?
Until the shashthi is done, and until all the initial karmas are done, the face should not be highlighted everywhere; many kinds of suffering can come to the child. In particular it is six days in one place, twelve days in another, thirteen days in another, and if the nakshatra falls in the mool and so on, twenty-seven days. In tantra this has importance.
Why is a newborn not touched before the chhathi?
Because sutak is in force, he says; that is why there is a prohibition on touching the child before the chhathi has taken place.
Surviving to see the face of the sixth day is itself the grace of Bhagavati Shashthi Parameshwari
The grace of Bhagavati Shashthi Parameshwari is upon you, he says, and that is why you are alive today and are listening. If her grace were not there, if you had done some wicked karma, you would not be able to see the face of the sixth day; you would be told beforehand to move on. As with the niyam of the sadosh vrat — in the Shri Mahapuran there is the account of Bhadrayu, he says, though he cannot recall the name correctly, in which his mother did not perform the vrat properly, and it is described how deaths followed in various ways.
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