What are family deities?

What is their legacy?

How does the concept of family deity concur with science?

The family deity is one who protects the family and the lineage. It is also the most powerful of all deities. One can get the blessings of family deity easily and also it fetches blessings of other deities. Its power cannot be measured. Lord Yama (God of death) too must obtain permission from one’s family deity to take away one’s life.  Family deity consists of the divine souls of one’s forefathers. Those souls are capable of protecting those who are of their descent.  Hence, these deities are specially called as family deities.

Kula devatas are capable of removing effects of karma. Nowadays our lifestyle is such that we don’t know the names of our forefathers after two generations back. The deity who was worshipped by our paternal forefathers is our family deity. When closely observed one can feel that there is a big discipline in this paternal lineage. It is a lineage of a sage. This is an important thing regarding discipline. When one stands in the sanctum of the family deity, we are standing in the family lineage. In this lineage one could have gathered bags of piety and another could have even gathered sin. But when we worship that special force standing there, our ancestors bless us as godfathers.

Who decides the gender of the baby?

Scientifically, this was designed with future vision. The gender of a human embryo is decided by the male. We know that the human DNA consists of 23+23 chromosomes. We also know that 23 come from the father and 23 from the mother. In this the gender deciding chromosome comes from the father. The mother has XX chromosome.  But, the father has XY chromosome. It is scientifically proven that if the Y of male andX of female combine, the resulting embryo is male and vice versa for X of male and X of female. This Y chromosome is handed down to male child only from the father and not to the female child hence the lineage grows. This is protected and handed down generations from great grandfather, grandfather, father, son, grandson, great grandson etc. Knowing the importance of this, our ancestors made the male child as heir and female child as gem of the family. Usually, a male child to be born is not possible after 13 generations as the Y chromosome becomes weak. Hence, marriage among blood relations is avoided to reduce chances of hereditary diseases.

Kula devata for married Women

Women, in general worship two family deities. One is of the family in which they were born and another of the family of their in-laws which they start to worship after marriage. Women usually stop worshipping the deity of the family in which they were born after marriage. If they continue to worship even after marriage, it will facilitate a problem free married life for them.

If anybody has stopped worship as mentioned above, they should worship at least during festival times. Worship of family deity is very important if one’s family lineage is to grow and take roots. The blessings of other gods cannot be obtained if there is family deity Dosha (blemish). It is doubtful as to whether the full benefit of visiting a temple or doing a fire sacrifice can be extracted, without the support or permission of the family deity. Hence, make it habit to visit the temple of your family deity at least once in a year. Do anointments and worships. Donate to that temple.