The Five Faces Tantra Gives to Ganesha

There is a small Ganesha by the door of almost every Hindu house.

He is round and cheerful and he is holding a sweet. Children touch him on the way out. He removes obstacles and blesses beginnings, and nobody in that house has ever thought of him as frightening.

Now picture a different image. Five heads. Seated on a lion rather than a mouse. And beside him another form again, whose worship deliberately breaks the purity rules that govern every temple you have been in.

Same god.

The tradition worked out thirty-two of him.

The people who did it

In the centuries after the Gupta era, as Tantric practice spread across India, a sect grew up called the Ganapatyas.

They did something the household never does. They put Ganesha at the top.