South Indian temples are a rich and vibrant experience. Many of them are like large towns with all kinds of activities taking place within their enclosures. There is always a market at the entrance where one may purchase a plate of assorted offerings to request specific rituals inside the temple. Local artists and craftspeople support themselves through this market.

Certain shrines are particularly efficacious for their healing powers. Metal talismans embossed with a body part (featured left) may placed as a votive offering within the shrine to heal, strengthen or protect them. They have a very high rating of efficacy among millions of Hindu devotees. Petitions such as the sale of a home, help in an examinations, or the successful marriage of a son or daughter are also invoked in the temple.

Entering a temple is always a conscious step into the very heart and mystery of life. There is, after all, only one life: the divine life. Hindu temples are constructed in a way that generates a distinctive vibration, one that causes you to move out of everyday consciousness and open up to a deeper reality. The temple entrance serves as a portal into this cosmic wholeness.

Elephants are symbols of Lord Ganesh, the divine power that removes obstacles. Every Hindu honors Ganesh as the first among Gods by breaking a coconut before entering any temple or undertaking any journey. Symbolically, the hard shell of the ego is broken to reveal the true, inner self. Temple elephants at the entrance of a temple often offer a blessing by placing their trunk on the devotee’s head.

Elaborate temple chariots (like the one on the right) are used during religious festivals to ceremoniously transport deities around the temple and in the surrounding streets. This is done with great fanfare. Hundreds, even thousands, of people line the streets to offer their respects to the Gods or Goddess on procession.

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