Keezhapoongudi Brahmapureeswarar Temple

A five-tiered gopuram with the temple tank in front of it is what you see first at Keezhapoongudi. In the sanctum is Brahmapureeswarar, whom the village calls Sundareswarar. The goddess is Brahma Vidyambikai: Meenakshi to the village, and by an older, fonder name, Poongudiyal.

The temple legend goes like this. Brahma once had five heads, as Shiva did, and because he was the creator he came to think himself greater than Shiva. To humble him, Shiva nipped off the fifth head. Brahma saw his error and went from shrine to shrine worshipping Shiva for forgiveness, and Poongudi was one of the places he prayed. The Lord who took pity on him here is Brahmapureeswarar.

The temple also has its own tie to Uthiradam. The star list begins with Aswini, but the temple's tradition reads "adam" as "the one that appeared first", and on that reading Poongudiyal is the goddess of Uthiradam, at whose feet the goddesses of the other 26 stars offer worship. Vinayaka, the god of beginnings, is named as the star's presiding deity, which fits the same idea.

In time the old temple fell to ruin. When the village built it again, they gave the deities Madurai's names, Sundareswarar and Meenakshi, and the link has held: the divine wedding here is celebrated on the same day as Meenakshi's wedding in Madurai.

The image to look for is Nataraja, in his own shrine, with his matted hair gathered up as if he is about to begin the dance. Lingodbhava, in the niche behind the main sanctum, gets special puja on Thirukarthigai and in the third watch of Shivaratri night. There are also shrines for Kannimoola Vinayaka, Dakshinamurthy, Murugan with Valli and Deivanai, the Navagrahas and Bhairava, who is worshipped specially on every waning-moon Ashtami. The sacred tree is the kadamba and the tank is the Brahma Theertham.

No inscription has come to light that dates the first temple. What stands today was built fresh after the old temple was lost, and that rebuilding is when the deities took on their Madurai names. Worship in the five-gopuram temple follows the Shaiva Agamas.

People born under Uthiradam come on their star day to pray for doshams to clear and for their lives to move forward, and Shiva receives special puja on that day. Many pray to the goddess for a child or for harmony at home. When a prayer is answered, they bathe the Lord and the goddess in abhishekam and dress them in new cloth, and some offer a sandal-paste covering (santhana kappu). These are devotional practices; no result is promised, and questions of fertility need a doctor's advice as well.