Namaste everyone,


I am new to this forum and also to Hinduism. For the past 6 months I’ve found myself immensely drawn to Santana Dharma and now feel a strong need to start som sort of actual ritualistic practice, in my own absolute beginner’s way. I have started to put together a home shrine for Ganesha and am looking to buy a picture to hang on the wall for worship.


I have actually already ordered one but yesterday I read the book ”Loving Ganesha” from Himalayan Academy which has a section regarding the position of Ganesha’s trunk.
Other sources I’ve read sates that it is very difficult to worship a Ganesha image with the trunk to the diety’s right, so called Valampuri Pose, and that you should never keep this in your home for worship.


According to the description in the book I am afraid the picture that I ordered is Valampuri. I cannot post the link because it disappeared when I ordered the picture.
But below is a list of links with images of the trunk in the exact same position. Actually this was the absolutely most common kind that I found on eBay (even though the book sates that Valampuri is very rare) The first link is to the online book Loving Ganesha and the section is at the very bottom of the page. My image would be the closest match to the example to the very last one in the Valampuri section (down right corner)


Does anyone have any input on this topic? I though the way the whole trunk initially is ”heading” would be what defines the direction but according to this book it seems more like it doesn’t matter if the whole trunk totally swings to the left, as long as the very tip is ”curled” to the right it is Valampuri?


I just had to ask this question because A LOT of images when googling Ganesha has the whole trunk (sometimes just slightly) in left direction and then the tip curled to the right, and the Valampuri pose was supposed to be very rare. And I just wanted to hear someone else’s view on this and maybe someone can point me to other sources on the subject that could provide some clarity? It’s hard to find anything on google as elaborate as this book, more than that the trunk should ”be to the left”, it doesn’t get much more detailed than that. It could be nice to have different sources to confirm what the book says, so any help would be highly appreciated!






Link to the book:


https://www.himalayanacademy.com/media/books/loving-ganesha/web/ch05.html#lev2






Examples of images that I found:


https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BILD-pict...04fa%7Ciid%3A1




https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BILD-GANE...04fa%7Ciid%3A1




https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BILD-Gane...04fa%7Ciid%3A1




https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BILD-GANE...04fa%7Ciid%3A1


https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BILD-Gane...04fa%7Ciid%3A1