Lord Shiva - the Primal One.

It was said of Him that he was God Himself, the Primal One. 
He was said to be the timeless Lord of the mountains and the men he so loved. 
He was Shiva, the auspicious. Shiva, whose very presence was able to transmute humans into demi –gods. He was supposed to be the ultimate spiritual alchemist. 
But whatever he could see of himself , was plainly human.
He felt like a human , always contemporary , always in the present, always fond of the forest life . And like all the other creatures that roamed in the forest , always looking forward to more of it.

Yet, legend insisted that he was no ordinary Forest dweller, He was the supreme in the midst of all beings. He was God, they said, ultimately, of all things.
Women sang of Him while they wished to get married to someone else, because He was supposed to be, among many things, a God who lavishly bestowed boons on them to find a suitable Groom.
He was much married Himself and the name of His eternal beloved Parvati, was always fused into His own, as were reportedly, their hearts. So often was He referred to as ‘Shivaparvati’, that this plural had become synonymous for togetherness.
But it was His presence as singular that got Him accredited with some contrary attributes.
The most popular belief had Him listed as The Destroyer.
The ancient Indians , who propitiated many gods, had three principal deities at the Helm of affairs. Brahma, the creator of the Universe, Vishnu, who handled its running, and then ,
there was another amazing aspect that no one really understood- The ancients had said emphatically that there existed a God who destroys the Universe at the end,
and that God was Shiva. So it was, that He shared Godhead with the other two.
No one really understood why God would need to destroy the Universe, yet horror stories abounded about how Lord Shiva would always signal the end of time for each creation.
And though this was a little strange, because , no one, surely would have seen the end of a universe and live to tell of it, yet graphic details about the divine holocaust were chanted in fervent whispers, as though etched in a collective memory. Details of how Shiva literally snuffed out all life. It was whispered that He stomped His feet upon the Earth in such furious a manner that sent massive tremors through the cosmos, and that all this was a dance. The last dance called Tandav that, always beginning from Prithviloka, ended all things that had ever come into existence. Ending, as it were, existence itself.
This was the great mystery, when did the endearing mountain dweller become a cosmic hard stepper, the avatar of destruction? And, why?
Ancient seers sensed an enthralling story here.