What is the significance of Homa in Tantra and Siddha? ?
The sacred fire represents the Kundalini fire within. Kundalini pervades the worlds and engulfs the entirety of cosmic space. Sri Tirumular Siddha explains in Tirumantiram, Tantra 4:
Becoming the Light within the Light that from sacrificial pit arises, you attain the power to create and dissolve worlds twice seven…The head and face will glow in a halo of light, on the hand, fire will appear, if so they will the glowing body trembling and shaking, will give forth the shining Linga. Good indeed is worship of sacrificial fire pit. Thus said Sakti Divine.
Kundalini is ‘Sakti’, the divine feminine. She is vibration that is living consciousness. The sound of fire is ‘Shiva’. He is the state of unity to which we will return by our devotion and practice of the sacred ritual of fire.
Sri Tirumular says, the sacrificial fire is blessed by Sakti. Even as the tongues of fire dance within from the sacrificial pit, like the nagas of the eight directions, the Kundalini too flames within the yogini and yogi and shoots upward to awaken interior light:
The sacrificial pit takes the shape of shining bow and crescent moon; the tongues of Fire shot forth like mythical serpents from directions eight; and Kundalini too with its petals four in me flamed, filling my inside with radiant light.
As the internal fire rises, it attains divine consciousness. Siva is visualized with his feet atop the Siddha’s head. Kundalini streams into his feet and continues upward until it merges with Siva’s third eye.
The Fire reached Feet of Dancing Siva, it flowed as water of worship at His Feet. It reached the mighty arms eight of the Dancer that fills the universe entire; it reached the fire in the Forehead eye of Lord.
Homa is holy, and it is magical. The sight of the dancing flames, the spontaneous forms the fire takes on as it leaps, the scent of the vapors of sacred substances, the sound of the mantras – all induce an acute awareness of timeless reality. This is our true nature. The consciousness that is burning within us, yearning to rise up and unite with cosmic light.
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