Agni Has Seven Tongues - Do You Know About Them?

Homa is a very important part of mantra sadhana.
Unless you do homa, you will not get siddhi in mantra.
The general rule is that if you chant a mantra one lakh times, then you have to give 10,000 ahutis with the same mantra.
Then only you get siddhi in the mantra.
Then only the mantra will achieve the desired result.

Meaning, you may have deeksha in a particular mantra. Let us say panchakshara mantra.
The mantra shastra would talk about a prescription like:
Do 3000 ahutis of homa with pancha gavya for health.
Even if you do the homa as prescribed, unless you have siddhi in that mantra, it will not get you the result.
Or someone who has siddhi in that particular mantra has to do it for you.

In homas, agni is the most important.
There is a lot of difference between fire and agni.
If fire is clay, then agni is the sculpture that you make out of it.
There is a piece of metal, iron – a lump of iron.
Unless you make it into a knife, you will not be able to cut with it.
This is the difference between fire and agni.
The regular fire is called laukikagni.
The agni we use in sadhana or rituals can be shrautagni, smartagni, there are so many forms.

In mantra shastra, how we look at agni is different.
One aspect we will look into now.
The agni can be of three types, even in homa:
Satwika, Rajasika and Tamasika.
Say you are doing homa with ashtakshara mantra, 'om namo narayanaya' – your purpose is only that your devotion towards the Lord should be stable. The purpose is satwik.
Say you are doing homa with kubera mantra. You want to get a lot of wealth. This is rajasika.
There is an enemy who is troubling you. Let us say a neighbour king has attacked this country.
You want to destroy him. You are doing homa with kalika mantra. This is tamasika because destruction is involved.
Mantra shastra will not say whether it is good or bad to do this.
Mantra shastra will only say if you do homa with this mantra, this material, this will be the result.
It is a statement of fact like, if you throw somebody into fire, he will burn and die.
It is just a statement of fact.
Mantra shastra will not tell you to do it.
It is like science teaching how to make a nuclear bomb.
Science will not tell you to use it.

So, the entire procedure will be based on the nature of the result that you want to achieve.

For example, agni has seven tongues.
The flames are the tongues of agni.
They are identified by their color.

These seven tongues are different for each kind of homa – satwika, rajasika and tamasika.

The meaning of the name of a particular tongue will show its nature.
Hiranya will be golden colored.
Rakta will be red colored.
Dhumini will be smoke colored.
Sphulingini will have sparks.

It is such a deep shastra. Everything matters.
You cannot just buy a havan kunda from an e-commerce site, start doing havan and say that it is not working.
Even the firewood that is used matters, depending on whether it is satwik, rajasik or tamasik.
For satwik karma, the firewood also should be satwik.
For tamasik karma, the firewood also should be tamasik, like trees having thorns or poisonous trees.

I am not saying that otherwise it will not work.
There may be 20 such factors.
When all of them are correct, you will get hundred percent result.
If eighteen are missing, then you get only 10 percent.

Why I mentioned about the agni tongues is,
Before you do homa, you have to worship agni and agni’s flames.
Then you have to use the corresponding nama mantras.
If it is satwik agni,
Then 'hiranyayai namaha', 'gaganyai namaha'.

If agni is rajasik, then
'padmaragayai namaha', 'suvarnayai namaha' — like that.

Ramaswamy Sastry and Vighnesh Ghanapaathi