Agathiyar asked me to come to his path and told me to worship Lord Ganesa, Lord Shiva and the Siddhas in 2002. Worship of Siddhas was new to me. But Agathiyar paved the way for me to learn the worship of Siddhas from Nadi Nool Aasan Sentilkumar. He taught me to chant the names of the Siddhas.
Later hungry for more information on the worship of Siddhas, I came to read and learnt from the many books that Thavathiru Rengaraja Desigar had published on Siddha worship. The few books I could lay my hands on at the local book shops, helped me too. I began extracting some of the songs and prayers from these materials and compiled a book of hymns or praises to the Siddhas for my daily use during prayers.
After coming to know Tavayogi Thangarasan Adigal, he asked me to start doing the Homam or the ritual of lighting the sacrificial fire at my home. He told me it was sufficient to just recite the names of the Siddhas during this ritual. I expanded my book to include more songs for this ritual.
Tavayogi who was conducting the annual Vizha for his Sri Agathiyar Gnana Peedham, moved on to include the ritual of conducting the Maha Prapanja Yagam beginning in 2010 to cool down Mother Nature, who had gone on a spate of wrecking. Soon the ritual evolved into the 108 Sarva Dosa Nivarana Yagam in 2012, that included removing the Dosas and bringing new hope to the devotees who chose to participate.
When Agathiyar came in the form of a bronze statue in time for his Jayanthi celebrations in January of 2010, he asked us to conduct libation for him with nine items on that day. We continued doing it every Thursday, and Pornami and Amavasai days. We performed the libation on days of celebration for the deities too, dressing Agathiyar accordingly.
When I asked Mataji Sarojini Ammaiyar for an appropriate song to accompany the libation, she gave me a compilation of stanzas for 19 items. We selected 16 stanzas, hence began to perform libation using these 16 items from the original 9. We were happy to learn later from Velayudham Karthikayan Aiya's blog "Siththan Arul" that the Siddhas conducted libation to Lord Siva with 16 items too.
Over the years Agathiyar sent many lovely souls to join me in my worship and prayers. We have held the annual Guru Puja and Agathiyar Jayanthi following Kallar ashram and the rests of the Agathiyar's ashram all over in India. Since 2017, for unknown reasons, Lord Muruga switched the date of the annual celebrations to fall in the Tamil month of Thai.
After years of conducting the Homam and Abhisegam for the Siddhas, we were invited by Tavayogi's guru Chitramuthu Adigal to place the pictures of the 18 Siddhas and 7 Rishis and conduct a Yagam at the Thanneermalai Sri Thandayuthapani Alayam, in Taiping. It was a great honor for us to conduct the puja with Tavayogi leading us. Tavayogi led us on another Yagam that we performed at his Paramaguru Sri Jeganatha Swamy's Alayam in Tapah. It was another honor for us. This was in 2016.
We asked to conduct libation for Agathiyar at the the 80 year old Sri Maha Mariamman temple in Carey Island, but ended doing it for Lord Ganapathy and Lord Murugan too. http://agathiyarvanam.blogspot.com/2018/02/agathiyar-in-carey-island.html
When Lord Muruga asked us to conduct libation for him to cool him down and make him happy at his sannadhi at the same temple later, we were delighted. He had specifically mentioned 7 items to GK in his Nadi. GK was to lead the puja too.
When "Ma' came to conduct libation herself for Agathiyar, she asked for only 3 items. Taking these as cues we began to conduct the libation for Agathiyar accordingly: 16 items on Pournami; 3 on Amavasai and 7 on Thursdays. Learning from them, we began to reduce the time allocated for these rituals from two hours to only forty minutes.
After Lord Muruga forced me to "sit down" freezing my movements, giving me a back pain, I was contemplating on doing away with rituals and instead spend that time in meditation. But members from the AVM family told me that they needed it. Then just when we thought that we would slowly wean away from doing it, that it was sufficient to just give a water bath on Thursdays, 3 during Amavasai and retaining the full range of items for Pournami, "Ma" came, asking us to cool her down and make her happy. She asks us to carry on doing whatever we did ... now daily! And she asked us never to stop the rituals until they tell us to!
Fearing that we might have made mistakes in our worship along the way, I asked her for guidance. She told us that all our three Gurus: Tavayogi Thangarasan Adigal, Supramania Swami and Agathiyar shall guide us. This made us very happy knowing that the former two gurus who have gone into samadhi were still with us guiding us closely with Agathiyar.
Then "Ma" assured us that when I make mistakes it is a lesson to be learnt from. My lessons will become other's wisdom, she tells me. She tells us that the Siddha path is in itself a learning (process), assuring us further and comforting us, and giving us the motivation to move on irrespective whether we make mistakes along the way. We began to realize how comforting and compassionate Erai is then.