Aghori - The Aghori ascetic is himself a symbol of the God Shiva in Shiva’s form as Bhairava. The main symbol which makes him distinct from other sadhus is the skull cup he uses as a begging bowl. He goes naked or wears the shroud of a corpse, covers himself in the ashes of the cremation ground and always has his hair disheveled or in matted dreadlocks. If an aghori uses a corpse as part of his ritual worship, the corpse upon which he meditates, it is a symbol of his own body and the corpse-devouring ritual is a symbol of the transcendence of his lower self and a realization of the greater, all pervading Self that is universal consciousness. Another symbol of the aghori, which ties him to the affiliation of Bhairava and links aghoris together with other Saiva and Sakta traditions, is the trident. The three pronged trident staff in Tantric Hinduism, which aghoris follow, is a symbol representing the three constituents of which Shiva and/or Shakti first creates the universe: iccha shakti (power of will/desire/intention), jnana shakti (power of knowledge - the preconceived architectural design of the universe), and kriya shakti (the power of action). The staff part of a trident in Hinduism represents the human spinal cord, of which the sushumna nadi runs along. The sushumna nadi is the main nerve current, or meridian, in the human body which is the track that the kundalini energy rises up, bringing the aghori or yogi, or meditation practitioner into full spiritual enlightenment, nirvana, or more precisely nirvikalpa samadhi.
