The Hindu God Ganesh Represents Wisdom and Success
A couple of years ago I finally met someone I had known for many years, but only on the Internet. I noticed that she always wore the same pendant, a strange figure of a man with an elephants head and wondered why such an elegant lady would be so attached to what looked like a funny plastic figure. When I finally got round to asking her about it, I was ashamed of my ignorance. It was the first time I had heard of the Hindu God Ganesh. To a western eye, Ganesh looks really strange; an almost comical figure who has a man's body (and a bit of a paunch) an elephants head, four hands (at least), only one tusk, and spends his time riding around on a very small mouse. But Ganesh is not a clown and to see him as a joke is to misunderstand centuries of belief and symbolism. He is highly revered in the Hindu religion, where the same attributes, looked at in a different way, make him the embodiment of wisdom and learning, the patron of science and the arts, the remover of obstacles, and