In coming through a dream in 1988, Lord Siva had me put on hold for some 14 years, my question as to whether God was indeed loving, compassionate, and kind after seeing many around me suffer.
In revealing karma in my Nadi reading in 2002, Agathiyar answered my doubts regarding the above and put them to rest for good. In revealing my past karma, I understood the reasons for the sufferings of others, too.
I understood why he told me that, besides the karma I brought on myself, too, he had pushed me to do things so that I could have those experiences.
In asking me to come to the worship of the Siddhas in 2002, he sent me to Tavayogi in 2005, who, on the very onset, had me drop my hold on him even before it germinated and had me hold on to Agathiyar instead. Tavayogi had me drop my hold on the many "accessories" I had on me, like the nine gem-studded gold ring on my finger, the mercury bead or Rasamani, and finally the Rudraksa bead, even before the desire arose in me. He had me believe solely in Agathiyar instead.
Both he and Agathiyar then brought me from Sariyai to Kriyai, giving me the ways, the means, and the methods in carrying out rituals, and officially brought me to Yoga by having Tavayogi give me practices, and having me carry out acts of Dharma, as in doing charity, which began to have a hold on me and my home that came to be known as Agathiyar Vanam Malaysia (AVM) since 2013. He finally had me put down these tools, too, asking me to go within, beginning in 2019.
In having Mahindren sit with pencil and paper, he revealed the nature of the Body or Udal, Breath or Uyir, and the Soul or Atma, clearing the air and confusion arising from the term Soul and Spirit, which I saw was often used interchangeably.
I came to understand the effort he has put in on molding and making me into one of his kind when he took the cane to remind me that his hard work should not go to waste.
If Tavayogi spoke about Maya at the onset, Lord Muruga came to warn me about it a couple of years back.
In having me send his bronze statue that was commissioned and made in Swamimalai in 2009, away to the home of another devotee post-pandemic, he had me drop my hold to his form too. This, coupled with his asking me to even drop my hold on him later, brought me out of Dvaita or external worship to Advaita, with him telling me that we were one. He then asked that I know my soul or Atma and know the source, Sivam.
In questioning how it is said that there is no Adharma under God's governance, when we see Adharma taking place all around us, a friend and a reader in expounding on the Saiva Siddhantam cleared the air. He spelled the states of Pati, Pasu, and Pasam clearly as follows.
"Not that Adharma does not exist in the experience of the Pasu. It does — painfully and consequentially. But in the governance of Andavan — in Shiva's own administration from the level of the Suddha Tattwas — there is no Adharma, because there is nothing that falls outside His grace. There is no soul He has abandoned. There is no action whose consequence He has not already incorporated into the redemptive curriculum of Niyati and Kaala. There is no darkness that His light has not already surrounded."
"That even their own failures — their own moments of Adharma, their own darkest hours — were held all along within Shiva’s love, and were never, not for a single moment, outside His grace."
I have come to accept it all as God's will and doing, as his play and Lila. I am at peace with myself and the world around me, knowing that not for once are we not loved by him. It is love that drives him to come to our aid and help, nurture and mold us.
As I was about to wind up this piece and post it, this reader and friend, Siva Thondan, passed me another enlightening piece. The saints we come to know never refuted what was accepted by mankind, but tend to see them from a different perspective, as we come to learn from "The Kolaru Pathigam."
"First, the hymn operates from an acknowledgement of planetary reality. Sambandar does not compose a hymn saying 'planets are imaginary' or 'astrology is false.' .... Sambandar's response was not to deny the reality of the planetary configuration. It was to compose a hymn that recontextualized its significance entirely....He takes the Jyotisha diagnosis seriously. This is not the dismissal of planetary influence; it is its theological reframing."
We come to learn the reason why we are asked to take the hands of the divine in trying times. We understand why Tavayogi brushes the sufferings, pain, and misery aside, telling us that "Agathiyar is there." If Lord Muruga asked for complete surrender, Tavayogi, too, like Thirugnana Sambandar, taught us "the mechanism of Sharanagati — complete surrender."
"What it promises is that the devotee who is anchored in Shiva-bhakti — whose soul is oriented toward Pati rather than contracted around its own Prarabdha — will not be bound by what the planets deliver. The experience may still occur. Its binding power will not."
My friend in clearly defining what Saiva Siddhantam teaches:
"that Karma is real, that planetary influence is real, that they must be engaged and not bypassed — but that Arul operates from a level that neither Karma nor planets can constrain." Like Sambandar and Tavayogi console us, my friend in writing, "Instead, the devotee brings the planetary situation into the field of Bhakti — into Shiva's presence — and there the cosmic arithmetic is reconstituted,"
brings us hope of a change. I understand now why Tavayogi told my daughter there was no need to do the remedies that Agathiyar had listed in her Nadi reading. She had come under their custody and care. Agathiyar, till this day, speaks to her privately, helping chart her life.
Transcending Karma, Not Denying Planets
Kolaru Pathigam
An Analysis of Cosmology, Astrology, and Spiritual Liberation within the Saiva Siddhantam Tradition
The Kolaru Pathigam as a Living Example
Historical Context and the Child-Saint
No text in the Tamil Shaiva canon demonstrates the philosophy articulated above with greater literary vividness and theological clarity than the Kolaru Pathigam — 'The Decade That Destroys Planetary Afflictions' — composed by Thirugnana Sambandar, who stands among the most revered of the sixty-three Nayanmars and whose Tevaram verses form the opening of the Thirumurai, the sacred canon of Tamil Shaiva hymnody.
Sambandar's biography, as preserved in Sekkizhar's twelfth-century Periyapuranam — the hagiographic masterwork of the tradition — presents him as a child who received divine initiation directly from Shiva and Parvati in his infancy. According to the narrative, when his father Sivapadahridayar left the infant Sambandar unattended at the Sirkazhi temple tank and returned to find the child with milk on his lips and divine knowledge shining in his eyes, the miracle of Gnana-pal — the Milk of Wisdom given by the Divine Mother — had already occurred. Sambandar composed thousands of verses from this state of awakened devotion, beginning in early childhood.
The Kolaru Pathigam was composed in a specific circumstance that makes its message all the more striking. Sambandar arrived at the sacred town of Sirkazhi (Saykali/Brahmapuri) during a period that Jyotisha identified as deeply inauspicious — a severe planetary configuration that would, according to classical astrological reckoning, portend misfortune, disease, or calamity for the region and its inhabitants. The people of the town, following standard astrological counsel, were in a state of anxiety and apprehension. Sambandar's response was not to deny the reality of the planetary configuration. It was to compose a hymn that recontextualized its significance entirely.
Structure and the Core Theological Statement
The hymn consists of eleven verses (Pathigam format — decade with one additional mangala verse), each addressed to Shiva at a specific sacred site in Sirkazhi, and each naming one or more of the troublesome planetary configurations before declaring their transformation through devotion to Shiva.
The Kolaru Pathigam's refrain, which appears in each verse with structural variations, states the central theological proposition with directness: the planets — all of them, in whatever configuration — become 'pure good' (Nanmayae Aavaarkal, நன்மையே ஆவார்கள்) for one who has taken refuge in Shiva at Sirkazhi. This is not a promise of astrological correction — a better chart, an improved Dasha. It is a statement about the ontological transformation of the soul's relationship to cosmic forces.
வேய்ந்த வெண்பொடியர் மேவிய சீர்காழி
ஆய்ந்த நாவலர்கோன் அருளால் — நல்லதோர்
தீயிலா வினைகள் சேரா, கோளுமே
நோயிலா வருவார்க்கு நன்மையே.
The Tamil tradition's textual transmission of the Kolaru Pathigam has numerous verse forms across manuscripts, and specific lines vary between recensions. The theological substance across all versions, however, is consistent: Shiva's glory at Sirkazhi, received through the devotion of a true Bhakta, transforms the planets from afflicting forces into benefic ones. It is important to flag, in scholarly precision, that the exact manuscript history of individual verses within the Kolaru Pathigam is complex, and individual lines should be verified through the Thirumurai critical editions rather than cited as fixed in any single rendering.
Theological Analysis: What the Hymn Actually Claims
Three precise theological claims are encoded in the structure of the Kolaru Pathigam, and each one maps directly onto the philosophical framework examined in preceding sections.
First, the hymn operates from an acknowledgement of planetary reality. Sambandar does not compose a hymn saying 'planets are imaginary' or 'astrology is false.' He names specific planets in specific adverse configurations — Shani in difficult positions, Rahu and Ketu at sensitive junctions, the Moon in inauspicious Nakshatras. He takes the Jyotisha diagnosis seriously. This is not the dismissal of planetary influence; it is its theological reframing.
Second, the transformation the hymn promises is not primarily material — it is soteriological. When the text says the planets become 'pure good' for the devotee, it does not promise that Saturn will suddenly cease to deliver its characteristic difficulties, or that Rahu's nodes will produce unexpected windfalls. What it promises is that the devotee who is anchored in Shiva-bhakti — whose soul is oriented toward Pati rather than contracted around its own Prarabdha — will not be bound by what the planets deliver. The experience may still occur. Its binding power will not.
Third, the hymn is implicitly a teaching on the mechanism of Sharanagati — complete surrender. Sambandar's own bhakti is the operating factor in the hymn's promise. He does not address an administrative appeal to the Navagrahas, asking them to relent. He addresses Shiva directly and declares the consequence of devotion. This reflects the Siddhantam's precise theological priority: the devotee's relationship is with Pati, and Pati's Grace operates at a level that encompasses and transcends the Pasa order of which the planets are a part.
The Kolaru Pathigam in Living Practice
The hymn continues to be chanted in Tamil Shaiva temples across Tamil Nadu and the Tamil diaspora — particularly during periods of Shani Sade Sati (Saturn's seven-and-a-half year transit over the natal Moon), Ashtama Shani, or any planetary period identified as Krura (harsh) by the Jyotishi. The practice of its recitation is itself a living enactment of the philosophical principle: the devotee does not ignore the astrological warning, nor does the devotee capitulate to fatalism. Instead, the devotee brings the planetary situation into the field of Bhakti — into Shiva's presence — and there the cosmic arithmetic is reconstituted.
Traditional Shaiva Acharyas have consistently interpreted this practice as expressing what the Siddhantam teaches: that Karma is real, that planetary influence is real, that they must be engaged and not bypassed — but that Arul operates from a level that neither Karma nor planets can constrain. The Kolaru Pathigam is not magic. It is sadhana — it reorients the soul's fundamental posture from anxiety about cosmic forces to trust in the sovereignty of Shiva. And in that reorientation, the planetary machinery — still running, still delivering its consequences — ceases to be the defining reality of the soul's experience.
Conclusion
What emerges from this analysis is a picture of unusual philosophical sophistication — one that refuses the false binary between fatalism and denial. Saiva Siddhantam takes karma seriously enough to have built a precise and systematic account of it. It takes planetary influence seriously enough to situate the Navagrahas within a coherent cosmological hierarchy. And it takes liberation seriously enough to insist that neither karma nor cosmic alignment constitutes the soul's final condition.
The tradition's genius is its insistence on precise ontological address. The planets belong to Maya Mala — the domain of cosmic materiality. Karma belongs to Karma Mala — the domain of accumulated volitional residue. Both are real. Both are powerful within their domain. And both are, in the most fundamental sense, subordinate to the third and deepest Mala — Anava Mala, the primal contraction of self — which is itself the target of Shiva's Grace through the Guru's transmission. When Anava Mala loosens, the soul does not escape the cosmic order; it transcends its bondage to that order. The planets continue their rounds. Karma continues its delivery. But the soul that has been touched by Arul no longer inhabits its fate from the inside of a contracted self.
Thirugnana Sambandar's Kolaru Pathigam is the devotional crystallization of this philosophy. Composed in the face of genuine astrological apprehension, addressed to Shiva at a specific sacred site, naming the planets by name before declaring their powerlessness over the devoted soul — it is at once an act of cosmic theology and an act of Bhakti. It does not argue its case abstractly. It demonstrates it through the fact of its own composition: a child saint, established in Shiva-consciousness, looks at the most adverse planetary configuration and sees, through that consciousness, that the planets have no case against a soul that has surrendered to the one who holds the planets in their courses.
This is what Saiva Siddhantam means when it speaks of liberation not as an escape from the world but as a transformation of one's relationship to it. The cosmos remains. Its order remains. Its instruments of karma — the Navagrahas, the Nakshatras, the turning of Dashas — remain. What does not remain is the misidentification of the soul with its Prarabdha. And in that dissolution, which is the work of Grace alone, the planets that once signified bondage become, as Sambandar sang without hesitation, pure good — Nanmayae.
சிவமயம் — Sivamayam