Masik Shivratri
The Chaturdashi of the Krishna paksha every lunar month — the night of Shiv. Unlike most vrats the worship belongs to the night rather than the day, and is done ideally in nishita kaal around midnight. The Phalguna one is Maha Shivratri; the other eleven are kept the same way on a smaller scale.
Next date: 2026-09-10
Deity: Shiv
vidhi
Bathe at sunrise, take the sankalp, and keep the fast through the day on water and fruit.,Bathe again in the evening and set the puja up after sunset — the whole vrat is a night worship.,Do the abhishek on the Shivling with water and panchamrit, closing with water, keeping the stream slow and unbroken.,Offer bel patra, dhatura, aak flowers, white flowers, chandan, bhasma and akshat; light a ghee lamp and dhoop.,Chant the Mahamrityunjaya mantra, or Om Namah Shivaya, one hundred and eight times.,Those who can, do the puja in four prahars through the night — a fresh abhishek and offering in each quarter, from sunset to sunrise.,Keep the jagran with bhajan and Shiv katha, and take the paran the next morning after sunrise, before the Chaturdashi has ended.katha
A hunter, deep in debt, went into the forest and by evening had killed nothing. Night came — it was the night of Shivratri, though he did not know it — and, afraid of animals, he climbed a bel tree beside a pond and settled on a branch to wait for a deer to come down to drink. To stay awake he plucked leaves from the tree and dropped them, one by one, through the night. Under the branch, hidden in the undergrowth, stood a Shivling; every leaf fell on it. Three times a deer came to the water, and each time it asked to be allowed to go and finish its duty to its family before returning to be killed, and each time the hunter, who had eaten nothing all day and drunk nothing, let it go. So without meaning any of it he had kept the fast, the night vigil, and the offering of bel patra on the ling. By dawn something in him had changed and he could not kill at all. The deer came back with its whole family, offering themselves as promised, and he refused them. Shiv, pleased by the unintended vrat and more by the compassion it had produced, appeared and granted him liberation. The katha is not told to praise accident. Its point is the character of this particular night: on Shivratri even the smallest thing offered with a wakeful mind is taken in full, and no one is turned away for having come to it late or by mistake.mantra
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Water, Gangajal, and panchamrit — milk, curd, ghee, honey and sugar,Bel patra, dhatura, aak flowers and white flowers,Chandan, bhasma, akshat and black til,Ghee lamp with enough cotton wicks for a long night, dhoop and camphor,Fruit, milk and a white sweet for bhog,A rudraksha mala and a woollen asan for the night japaUpcoming dates
- 2026-09-10
- 2026-10-09
- 2026-12-07