NEW YORK (RNS) — About a minutes sooner than midnight on Wednesday (Feb. 26), below the strobe light of the dance flooring of a Queens bar, a individual dressed as the Hindu deity Lord Shiva done the Tandava — a filled with life dance meant to evoke Shiva’s religious realm: the cosmic cycles of advent, preservation and dissolution. Onlookers steeped in liquor and weed smoke perceived to scrutinize the divine as they watched with wonderment and confusion.
The old ritual of Mahashivaratri, or “the large night of Shiva,” has long been notorious by ingesting bhang — milk infused with cannabis — and pulling an all-nighter to access the upsurge of cosmic energy that’s believed to pour from the heavens attributable to an alignment of celestial our bodies.
At Thamel Bar, a Nepalese hangout in Woodside, Queens, the veneration of the god of destruction and advent, one amongst the supreme deities of Hinduism, had taken on some aspects of a rave, with a D.J. playing American pop hits and soundtracks from Nepali movie classics, while out assist a team of revelers handed round a chillum, a clay pipe of a variety passe by sadhus, or Hindu holy men, for the reason that 18th century to smoke marijuana in the pursuit of larger consciousness and ananda (divine bliss).
At the stroke of midnight, the event’s curator — a local named Hemant Shahi — led the intoxicated crowd in a chanting of “Om Namah Shivaya” 21 times. The out of the ordinary mantra, which manner “I bow to Shiva,” is meant to cleanse the mind the more it’s a ways repeated.
Legalize Nepal founder Hemant Shahi at Thamel Bar in Woodside, Queens, Novel York, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025. (Photo by Gomez NYC)
In Hindu lore, Shiva is frequently depicted smoking cannabis, which many followers, including Shahi, negate allows them to scenario fact and retain away from attachment to worldly issues. “It’s one amongst his approved vegetation,” acknowledged Shahi, the founder of Legalize Nepal, an group seeking to legalize cannabis use as a seek data from of religious freedom, pointing to its religious significance in the Hindu religion.
“When we smoke, it triggers the receptors to gain excessive,” acknowledged Shahi. “We’ve got old Indian instruments and skills to thunder off them, like the sounds and the mantras and the rituals and the daily life. Here’s like magic.”
Not all the team’s devotions to Shiva depend on the “magic” of marijuana. Earlier in the evening, hundreds of Hindus, including Shahi and his company, done rituals for Shiva on the nearby Divya Dham Mandir, an endless temple with bigger-than-life statues of the gods and yards of flashing garland lights. Devotees from all substances of South Asia poured milk, honey and water over the lingam — an abstract illustration of the deity phallic in form — in a more old ceremony.
Hindus celebrate Mahashivaratri, or “the large night of Shiva,” with old rituals, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025, at Divya Dham Mandir in Queens, Novel York. (RNS picture/Richa Karmarkar)
But even here, beside the lingam, stood a minute cannabis plant, the contribution of local marijuana entrepreneur Mohammed Khan, who hoped the proximity to praying worshippers would assist the plant’s effectively being. “It became roughly struggling a little bit,” he acknowledged.
Shahi, who moved to Queens from Nepal in 2002 at age 18, has lived a “crazy daily life,” he acknowledged. A salesman who has held many jobs, Shahi acknowledged his fixed hustle became repeatedly aimed at one thing bigger, in his religious beliefs and his leisure cannabis use. The two miraculously merged at some level of the COVID-19 pandemic, when, Shahi acknowledged, he had “no different but to scrutinize within.”
“The last bliss became within, I figured out, and I’ve been chasing myself in verbalize that I might perchance fragment it with the remaining of the realm,” he acknowledged at Thamel on Wednesday. “The ananda is accurate.”
Hashish is a challenging part of the culture of Nepal, which Shahi called the “Amsterdam sooner than Amsterdam.” The country’s executive became the first on this planet to license a cannabis shop, and marijuana has contributed carefully to the economic system thanks partly to the Westerners on the “Hippie Path” of the ’60s.
Mohammed “Ganja” Khan at Thamel Bar in Woodside, Queens, Novel York, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025, (RNS picture/Richa Karmarkar)
“Their cannabis culture pioneered half the realm’s, in verbalize that they must always medicate,” acknowledged Khan, who counts Shahi as a shut wonderful friend, as he rolled a joint at Thamel. “It’s their sacramental ceremony.”
In 1976, nonetheless, the plant historically authorized as drugs and a holy offering for Shiva became declared illegal.
A Guyanese American, Khan acknowledged his family had been taken by power from India by the country’s British colonial energy to work in the Caribbean. Despite the truth that raised Muslim, he learned from his father that his paternal grandfather had been Hindu sooner than converting to marry a girl he cherished. Now, an “observer of God,” Khan attends each and each a mosque and a mandir. He moreover appears to be on weed as a connection to his Indo-Caribbean ancestry. His cannabis firm, Enthusiast, is branded with Hindu imagery.
“I’m honoring my ancestors by lighting up and figuring out the headspace they were in assist in the day,” Khan acknowledged. “There’s no person that can disgrace me for it.”
Mahadev Tripathi, dressed as Hindu deity Lord Shiva, performs the Tandava dance, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025, at Divya Dham Mandir in Queens, Novel York. (RNS picture/Richa Karmarkar)
Despite the truth that marijuana is an actual substance in Novel York, taboo quiet surrounds cannabis users, acknowledged Crecent Carvajal, a graphic clothier who lives in Queens and uses marijuana medicinally for power irritation. But marijuana has moreover allowed Carvajal to salvage team by procedure of social cannabis golf equipment, where she has reach to grab Legalize Nepal supporters.
Carvajal, of Ecuadorean heritage who acknowledged she is now not religious, has nonetheless attended a sacred weed blessing at a Hindu temple, as effectively as volunteer occasions with the Hindu activists. “They’re breaking the stigma, most frequently, and the understanding of the lazy stoner,” she acknowledged. Carvajal acknowledged her contact with the team has attuned her sense of gratitude for the plant, which has entirely alleviated her symptoms while aiding in her “self realization.”
“I present an explanation for to the understanding of the usage of cannabis to connect with your internal self or your knowledge,” she acknowledged, “and to now not be laid low with the implications, but correct to be more connected to, like, nature.”
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