How many arms does Shiva have?
- Walter McEntyre
Alternate:
Shiva has 6 arms
Current:
Shiva has 4 arms
The auspicious one
There is a 20-metre tall statue of Lord Shiva performing the tandava outside CERN.
It was unveiled on June 8th, 2004 as a gift from the Indian Government. All current images and references show this, and other statues as having 4 arms, but many experiencing the Mandela Effect remember 6. This is particularly interesting since there has been a connection between the Mandela Effect and the particle experiments of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN for some time now.
Often confused with Kali, who has 4 arms, Shiva is one of the principal deities of Hinduism.
Westerners aren't too familiar
Most Westerners aren't familiar with the intricacies of non-Western gods, deities and idols. Although aware that non-human, or humans with extended attributes as seen here, have been part of religion since at least the ancient Egyptian times, they'd more likely conflate one from the distant past with one from the latest Marvel superhero movie. This ignorance isn't intended as a slight, since few would have encountered any in the West unless brought up in these ways.
Shiva
Shiva is one of the main 3 gods in Hinduism, and is known for causeless auspiciousness. He became human in order to teach them how to achieve enlightenment, and is therefore known also as the first guru. The right side of the body is male, and the left is female. Shiva concentrates solely on meditation to find perfect happiness, and never indulges in any other form of pleasure. He has a blue neck which became colored that way when he swallowed a poison to save the universe, and a third eye on his forehead. One aspect of Shiva that will be familiar to Westerners is that he is the patron saint of yoga.
Here's an image showing Shiva with 6 arms:
Many references
There are many references to controversies connected to Shiva:
Addams family
Here's some residue from the original Addams Family TV show: