- Kartikeya, referred to as Muruga in Tamil Nadu, Subramanya in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh and Skanda in North India, is also seen as the God of war. The most miraculous thing about Kartikeya, Shiva’s son, is the fact that his body is a combination if six beings. Let me let you how it all took place.

- Even though Shiva has been referred to as the symbol of virility, no human woman could give birth to his children as their womb could not hold his seed. This made him spill his seed into a Homakund, a sacrificial laboratory for the Rishis where they created many things.  Form the Homakund, six kritikas, who were fairies, not human and did not belong to this planet, implanted Shiva’s seed into their womb. They held it within them for three and a half months with six fetuses developing within them.

- Soon after, the kritikas could not hold the fetuses any further as they found it to be too hot to resist. Hence, they took out these half developed children from their wombs, dropped them and left.

As for Parvati, who could not produce Shiva’s child herself, did not want this opportunity to go a waste. She took these partially developed fetuses, wrapped them in lotus leaves and merged them into one using her tantric qualities, thereby embedding six beings into one single body. This is how Kartikeya was brought into existence. Kartikeya is even referred to as ‘Arumuga’ meaning six-faced. Such was his strength that at the tender age of 8, he had already become an unbeatable warrior.

- Kartikeya Leaves Shiva

Once upon a time, Ganapati and Kartikeya got into an argument. Kartikeya was very proud of his vehicle which was a swift-flying peacock. Both the brothers challenged each other to see who could go round the world and return to Kailash faster. The winner would be awarded with a special mango from their parents. Kartikeya quickly flew away on this vehicle to take the round of the planet but when he returned he saw Ganapati was already there enjoying the mango which he had gotten as a reward from their parents. Kartikeya got damn annoyed as he knew that his brother had not even set off from there, then how could he be the winner. What Ganapati had done was he went around Shiva and Parvati thrice, taking their circumambulation, as he said that for him his universe was his parents, so why should he run around the planet. Shiva was so impressed by this that he awarded Ganapati with the mango. As for Kartikeya, he considered it to be great injustice done to him by his father and hence left home as he did not want to be near Shiva any more.

Kartikeya headed down South and began his fight against injustice as he thought that his parents had been extremely unjust towards him. So he fought battles after battles, conquering kingdoms not to rule but as a revolutionist and activist in an attempt to create justice for people. He even assisted sage Agastya who brought spirituality to the South. He was the one who taught Kartikeya the art of warfare and even mellowed down his anger into a means for enlightenment.

Kartikeya finally rested in a place called Subramanya. He gave up on fighting as he understood that it was futile and it could not change the world in any manner. He washed his sword at ‘Ghati Subramanya’ in Karnataka and sat down to meditate at ‘Kumara Parvat’ where he attained Samadhi in a standing posture. Such was the power and energy of Kartikeya that it keeps reverberating in that place and even the stones around it have gotten shaped into six faces.