The Trayodashi tithi

a birth on a Trayodashi tithi, in either fortnight

What the tradition reads

Trayodashi is the thirteenth of the fourteen shared tithi names, one of the three Jaya tithis, a class myzodiaq.in reads as raising confidence and courage, favouring competition, legal contest, promotion, aggressive marketing, surgery and public speaking, while cautioning against marriage or sensitive discussion on the same day. Clickastro.com names Manmatha, the god of desire also called Kama, as Trayodashi's ruling deity, and reports that the tithi bestows victory or success, favouring the commencement of a new business, architectural work, music education and the wearing of new clothes and ornaments. The two readings agree on triumph as the tithi's central theme, but where Jaya's victory is combative, Manmatha's is the subtler triumph of attraction and desire, so that Trayodashi comes down through the tradition as a day suited equally to a bold commercial start and to the quieter, more personal success of appearance and adornment.

The story

Manmatha, or Kama, the deity clickastro.com names for Trayodashi, is sent by the gods, Indra chief among them, to break the meditating Shiva's austerity and turn his attention to Parvati, so that a son strong enough to defeat the demon Taraka might be born. Approaching with his bow of sugarcane and his arrows of flowers, Kama disturbs Shiva's focus just enough that the god feels a flicker of desire, but Shiva recovers instantly and opens his third eye, whose fire reduces Kama to ashes on the spot. His grieving wife Rati's devotion moves Shiva to relent, and he promises that Kama will return not in his old form but as Ananga, the bodiless one, present in the world though never again visible. A deity whose victory cost him his very body, and who returns transformed rather than restored, fits Trayodashi's own reading of triumph as something that changes whoever wins it, success in the tradition's telling never quite the same shape as the ambition that set out to win it.

Written from

Corpus key tithi:Trayodashi.