Agni on ram
As the god of fire, Agni is central to Vedic mythology, representing renewed life and purification through the sun, hearth fire, and funeral fire. A messenger god who mediates between humans and deities through the sacrificial fire, Agni is the first word in the first hymn of the Rig Veda, and approximately 200 of its 1,028 hymns celebrate him. Only , his twin brother, is mentioned more often in the Rig Veda. The god of fire, created from the rubbing together of two sticks, is said to have consumed his parents when he was born.
Agni is usually depicted as red in color with multiple faces, seven tongues, flame-like hair, and three legs that suggest the sacrificial, nuptial, and funeral fires. The sacred fire is central in Hindu wedding ceremonies, in which the bride and groom circle the fire four (or seven times) and then take seven steps around it, acts that sanctify the union. The nambudiri sect of Brahmins, in Kerala, still perform a complex 12-day ritual to Agni that includes oral recitations of Vedic mantras, blood sacrifices, the drinking of soma (a sacred liquid pressed from a mountain plant), and in an act of purification, the burning of two altars constructed for the ceremony.
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