….Then the God of luminous splendour saw the sun on Sunrise Mountain, and he saw the lordly moon entering the sun.

…The God of the Hundred Sacrifices saw the dawn covered with blood-red clouds, and the lord observed that Varuna’s ocean was bloody. The fire was taking the oblation that had been offered with manifold spells and was entering the sun.

…After having performed according to the rules, an isti oblation into the well-kindled fire, the great spirited priests offered the oblation to all the Celestials. The Adbhuta fire was summoned from the orb of the sun, and the sovereign Fire came out and appeared, restraining its speech, according to the rules. Entering the ahavaniya hearth, into which the priests had offered with the requisite spells, the Carrier of the Oblation accepted the manifold offering from the seers, O best of the Bharatas, and proffered it to the Celestials.

As the Fire came out, he saw the wives of the great-spirited priests –who sat in their own hermitages-while they were bathing themselves at leisure, radiant like golden altars, spotless like a digit of the moon, glowing with the glow of fire, all marvellous like stars. Watching the wives of these Indras of priests, Fire became excited in his senses, and, his heart lost to them, fell under the power of lust. But he thought further: “It is not proper for me to be excited, for I am lusting after the good wives of eminent brahmins, and they are without passion. I cannot watch and touch them without cause-therefore I shall enter into the household fire and look at them perpetually”. Touching all these golden women, as it were, with his flames, and watching them too, Fire rejoiced in the household hearth, while he lived there and entrusted his heart to the beautiful women under whose spell he was. But then, when he did not obtain these brahmin wives, Fire’s heart was sick with love, and he set his mind on abandoning his life, resolved to abandon his corporeal form, he left for the forest.

Now Svaha, the daughter of Daksa,had been in love with Fire before, and for long the radiant girl had been looking for an opening, but yet the blameless woman had found none in the ever-vigilant God. When she learned that Fire had truly departed for the forest, and was indeed sick with lust, the radiant girl thought, “I shall assume the shapes of the wives of the seven seers, and when he has been deluded by their shapes, I shall make love to lust-plagued Fire. This done, he will be pleased, and my love will be satisfied.”

Markandeya said:

Now Siva was the wife of Angiras and endowed with a fine character, beauty, and virtue. It was her body the Goddess assumed first, my lord of the people, and the beautiful woman went to Fire and said, “Make love to me, Fire, I am ablaze with lust. If you will not, be sure that I shall die. I am Siva, O Eater of the Oblation, the wife of Angiras. I have come only after deliberating this decision with my friends”.

Fire said:
How did you know that I was sick with love, how did all the others you mention, the beloved wives of the seven seers?

Siva said:
You were always dear to us, but we were afraid of you. When we came to know your heart by your gestures, they sent me to you. I have come to lie with you here, now quickly make the love we want: the mothers are waiting for me to return, O Fire.

Markandeya said:
Thereupon Fire most happily and joyfully lay with this Siva; and overcome by pleasure the Goddess took his seed in her hand. She thought, “If people see this body in the forest, they will tell of the brahmin wives’ faithlessness with Fire. Therefore, in order to prevent this, I’ll become a Garuda bird, so I’ll escape easily from the woods”. She became a fair-winged bird and left the vast forest, and she saw Mount Sveta, all covered with reed stalks. The mountain was guarded by wondrous poison-eyed and seven-headed serpents, and peopled by Raksasas, Pisacas, and terrifying bands of ghosts, and by Raksasis and countless game and fowl.

She went to the inaccessible mountain ridge and hurriedly threw the seed into a golden basin, a golden lake on the peak of the White Mountain guarded by Rudra’s hosts. She assumed the guises of the other wives of the great-spirited seven seers, and then made love to Fire. But she was not able to assume the shape of Arundhati, because of the power of her austerities and her faithfulness to her husband. Six times did she cast down the seed of Fire,O best of the Kurus, did the loving Svaha, into the mountain basin, on the first day of the lunation. The spilled seed, gathered together in heat, engendered a son who was worshiped by the seers; and the spilled seed became Skanda. .


…Markandeya said:
The seers, however, upon witnessing terrifying portents of many kinds, were upset, and, being prosperers of the worlds, performed rites of appeasement for the worlds. The people who lived in the forest of Citraratha declared, “This Great calamity has been fetched to us by Fire, when he lay with the six wives of the seven seers”. Others, who had seen the Goddess at the time go about in that guise, said of the Garuda bird: “You have brought on this disaster!”. Not a person knew it had been the doing of Svaha. When the Garuda bird heard it said that Skanda was its son, it went up to him quietly and said: “I am your mother”. And upon hearing that a mighty son had been born the seven seers divorced the six wives, excepting the divine Arundhati. The forest dwellers called him the son of the six, but Svaha told the seven seers that he was her son. “I know it. The rest is not true!” she said again and again, O king”.

Some time later the six sages’ wives came to Skanda and told him that their husbands, thinking that Skanda had been born of them, had abandoned them. They begged Skanda to let then dwell for ever in heaven, and by his grace they became the constellation of the Krttikas, considered the mothers of Skanda. Then Svaha married Agni.

From The Mahabarata Book 3:The Book of the Forest trans.by J.A.B van Buitenen and Siva:The Erotic Ascetic by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty

Picture above of buxom Joi Ryda