Who Kartikeya is
Kartikeya is the son of Shiva who was born to kill a demon. In the north he is Skanda or Kartikeya, the general of the gods; in the south, and above all in the Tamil country, he is Murugan, the young and beautiful god of the hills, and one of the most loved gods of all.
His birth is famously strange. Shiva's seed was too hot for anyone to hold. Agni carried it, then the river Ganga, and it came to rest in a forest of reeds, where six babies were born and were nursed by the six stars of the Krittikas, the Pleiades. Parvati gathered the six into one child with six faces. He was six days old when he killed the demon Taraka.
He rides a peacock and carries the Vel, the lance his mother gave him. In Tamil Nadu his great enemy is Surapadman, whom he split in two at Tiruchendur by the sea, and forgave, so that the demon became his peacock and the cock on his banner. He has two wives, the hunter girl Valli and Indra's daughter Deivanai.
He is also a teacher. At Swamimalai, as a boy, he explained the meaning of Om to his own father.
Om Saravanabhava: the six syllables of Murugan, named for the forest of reeds where he was born.
His devotees carry the kavadi to him, an arch hung with peacock feathers, on festival days, many with their cheeks and bodies pierced with small lances. From Tamil Nadu his worship has gone with Tamil people to Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius and South Africa, and at Thaipusam the crowds at the Batu Caves outside Kuala Lumpur run to more than a million.
