The mountain · The meaning of the festival

Why Karthigai Deepam is celebrated: the stories behind the flame

The pillar of fire, the six nursing mothers, the Goddess’s penance and the old Tamil festival of lamps: four stories, all alive on the same night at Tiruvannamalai, and what the two flames of the festival mean.

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Ask ten people at Tiruvannamalai why Karthigai Deepam is celebrated and you will hear at least four different answers, each told with complete conviction. One will tell you about the pillar of fire. Another will tell you about Murugan and six nursing mothers. A third will speak of the Goddess and her penance. A fourth, perhaps a grandmother lighting clay lamps on a doorstep, will simply say that on this night you light lamps, and the house is safe. They are all right. This is a festival that has gathered stories over two thousand years and never thrown one away.

1. Shiva as the infinite column of fire

This is the story that belongs to Arunachala, and the reason the great flame is lit on this hill and not any other. In the Shiva Purana, Brahma the creator and Vishnu the preserver quarrelled over which of them was greater. Between them rose an endless column of fire, with no top and no base. Vishnu took the form of a boar and dug downward; Brahma took the form of a swan and flew upward. Vishnu returned in honesty and admitted he could not find the base. Brahma, in the telling most people know, claimed to have found the top and produced a flower as a false witness, and was humbled by the lie.

The flower is called the ketaki in some tellings and the thazhampoo (screwpine) in others; the details differ, and that is normal. What does not differ is the turn at the end: the fire was too great to approach, so out of compassion Shiva cooled it into the form of the hill. Arunachala is the column of fire, banked into stone so that people can walk around it. On Karthigai Deepam the fire is allowed to show itself again. We tell the full story, with its sources, in the legend of the column of fire.

2. The six Krittikas and Murugan

The festival takes its name from a star. Krittika (Karthigai in Tamil) is the cluster of stars we call the Pleiades, and the Tamil month of Karthigai is the month when the full moon stands in it. The star has a story. In the Kanda Purana, the demons Surapadman, Tarakasuran and Singamukhan had won boons from Shiva, and the gods needed a warrior to defeat them. Shiva sent forth sparks from his six faces. The wind and the fire-god carried them to the Ganga, and the Ganga carried them to the Saravana lake, where each spark became a child.

Six women, the Krittikas, found the children and raised them. The Goddess Parvati then gathered the six into one, the six-faced Kartikeya, whom Tamils love as Murugan. The Krittikas were rewarded by being made eternal stars. This is why Karthigai Deepam is also a great festival for Murugan, and why in Kerala the same night is called Thrikarthika and is celebrated for the Goddess. Murugan’s temples across Tamil Nadu light lamps on this night.

3. Parvati, and the half-and-half Lord

The third story belongs to the Goddess. Tradition says Parvati came to Tiruvannamalai to perform tapas, and that Shiva, pleased, took her into himself: half of the Lord became her, and the Lord stood as Ardhanarishvara, half male and half female. One telling says the Goddess was sent to do penance after a playful quarrel; another simply says it was her tapas. The accounts differ on the details and agree on the ending, which is union.

The temple keeps this story alive in a ritual. At about 6 PM on Deepam day, just before the flame is lit on the summit, the Lord is shown in this half-and-half form, and temple sources describe it as the only time in the year. The lighting of the fire comes straight after. The order is meaningful: the festival moves from the quarrel and the fire to completion and union.

4. An ancient festival of lamps

Underneath the legends sits something plainer and older. Karthigai Deepam is one of the oldest festivals in Tamil culture. The Sangam anthology Akananuru is cited as one of its earliest references, along with the poet Avvaiyar, and the festival is remembered in Sangam literature as the Peruvizha, the “great festival.” (The scholarship rests on secondary sources, so treat the exact poems and dates with care.) In Tamil homes, rows of clay lamps are lit at dusk. The belief is human and simple: lamps drive away the dark, bring prosperity and protect the household.

The custom spread wherever Tamils went. It is observed in Sri Lanka and across the Tamil diaspora, and in Kerala as Thrikarthika, when lamps are lit after sunset, decorated with coconut and mango leaves and set on banana stems. You can keep the festival yourself; see how to celebrate Karthigai Deepam at home.

What the two flames mean

At Tiruvannamalai the ritual itself carries the meaning. At about 4 AM, the Bharani Deepam is lit in the sanctum: five lamps lit from a single flame, which devotees read as the one becoming many (some also relate the five to the five elements, with fire being Tiruvannamalai’s element). At dusk the many return to one. A single great flame is kindled on the summit, in a vast copper cauldron of ghee and a cloth wick, and it is seen from the whole plain. It burns for several days and is topped up with ghee, and afterwards the soot from the cauldron is traditionally given to devotees as prasad.

For those who follow Ramana Maharshi’s teaching, the reading goes one step further. The hill is the Self, and the flame is what the Self looks like when it is allowed, for one night, to be seen. You do not have to hold that view to feel what the festival is doing: a whole population gathers, in the dark, to look at a light.

The same full moon, other festivals

The full moon of the Karthigai month is a festival in many places, which is a useful way to see how the Tamil celebration fits the wider tradition.

It is also not Diwali. Diwali is celebrated at the new moon, for Rama’s return and the victory of light over darkness; Karthigai Deepam comes on the full moon, a couple of weeks later in 2026, with its own stories and its own flame. Both use lamps against the dark, and that is where the likeness ends.

Last updated 8 November 2026. Legends are told as tradition, in our own words; where tellings differ, we say so. Dates and timings follow the sources named on the page and should be confirmed against the official Arunachaleswarar temple (HR&CE) announcements.