Navratri is one of the biggest auspicious Hindu festival celebrated by keeping fasts for nine days to honor Goddess Durga – the most powerful female god.
The word Navratri is a union of two Sanskrit words, nav means new and ratri means night. The goddess of power, Durga is worshiped during these nine sacred days. Durga is an epitome of fear, motherly love, care and beauty.
The goddess loves and takes care of its children who follow her and also those who do not believe in her. If you offer your prayers to her with clean and pure heart, she will be happy at you and remove all the black shadow of bad luck and failures from your life.
t is believed that whenever the tamasik, cruel people overpower the innocent people and trouble them; goddess takes incarnation in some form to reinstate Righteousness. This is believed that during the auspicious period, the goddess becomes a thousand times more powerful than she is any other day.
The importance of these nine days is mentioned in Hindus holy books also, like in tenth Mandal of the holy Rigveda, the sadhnas of Shakti are written in detail and also “Devi Sukta” and “Usha Sukta” is dedicated to the Sadhana of Shakti while in Samveda, “Ratri Sukta” reads all about Devi Shakti.
Many people think “Why mother is worshiped and not a father?”. Actually, Hinduism is the only religion in the world, which gives so much importance to the mother aspect of God because we believe that mother is the creative aspect of the absolute. We believe that the cosmic energy of god and his sensitive nature along with a powerful form of protecting kids, can best be depicted as the motherhood aspect of God.
– If one is not aware with the proper rituals, then should recite mantra and chant god’s name, Goddess sees only the inner feelings not the expenses you do in the name of her.
– Many people light akhand deep in the temple of their house for nine days, pour ghee daily and take care of it so that it does not blow off with air and in case if it blows out because of the wind or due to lack of oil or carbon formation etc. those causes should be corrected and the lamp should be lit again.
– On the day of breaking fast; which is the ninth day or some people do on the eighth days of Navratri, Prasad of halwa and poori is made along with other dishes as per your choice and the pot is immersed in running water along with the germinated seeds.