Makara Samkrama Pooja and Makara Jyothi

The most auspicious Makara-samkrama Pooja is performed on the day when the Malayalam month Dhanu gives way to the next month Makaram (mid-January). The Melshaanthi who receives the Thiruvaabharanam just before the auspicious event, takes the ornaments inside the sanctum sanctorum. The radiant idol of the Lord is now resplendent being decorated with the Thiruvaabharanam. Then follows the Deepaaradhana, the most auspicious worship with camphour flames.

Thus culminates a glorious period of pilgrimage that bestows spiritual reinforcement to millions and solemnizing the occasion a holy pit of camphor is lighted from the heights of Ponnambalmedu, a mountain range about fifteen kilometers away, facing the shrine. Millions of pilgrims immerse themselves in spiritual ecstasy seeing this sacred Jyothi that reminds them of the Eternal Light of the Spiritual Presence within, symbolized by the divine form of Lord Ayyappa, who is the very Source of Time and Space and who illumines the millions of galaxies, the Source behind the formation, maintenance and dissolution of the universes and the evolution of life and its pilgrimage to spiritual Freedom.