Kartik Nahan, Snaan or Snan 2010-The Cleansing!

Meady's Musings Production does not hold the rights to this picture and it is republished from this site.

Since UCP's existence we've explored the festival or Kartik year after year as you can see here:

1.Kartik Snan, Kartik Snaan or Kartik Nahan? Either Way an Ode to the Great Element Water!

2. A Pligrimage in the Month of Kartik

However just as ceremonial bathing on Kartik cleans us afresh to start anew...year after year on UCP we like to explore religious festivals from a new point of view...afresh...as if like babies we were exploring it for the first time...for as Jesus says you must make your heart like that of a child...then and only then can you enter the kingdom of his father! :)

So this year...2010...we've been exploring the Kartik Nahan again...looking at it this time from the point view of it being a ceremonial bath...for cleansing of sorts not really so much of the body but of the heart, soul and to some extent perhaps the mind...at least on the psychic level.

In one of the legends of Kartik it is said that when Lord Vishnu took the form of the Dwarf Brahmin Avatar or Vaman Avatar and then grew to large proportions after being granted three steps of land as dakshina with one step he then covered the whole earth and by the second step the entire material universe piercing the roof of the cosmos really with no where else for the third step to go so that King Mahabali in order to fulfill his promise offers up his head for the third step and is crushed by Lord Vishnu thus obtaining immortality for his benevolence in fulfilling his promise...as sides to this story if is said that through the hole in the universal roof Mata Ganga flowed finally entering the earthly plane! (See video below where the water that Bramha pours on the feet of Vaman Avatar can been seen as Ganga.)


So to touch her (Ganga) in her watery form is said to indeed be a very powerful thing for the devotee. Her water can cleanse devotees of all their sins...however even if you don't take this in the literal sense and only in the symbolic sense...let's still consider this today...if the water did have magical powers and so you could start over afresh and anew...freeing your mind of the past...how would you feel?...how would you be? Please consider this today as we here at UCP celebrate Kartik Nahan 2010!