Karthika Somavara - Trithiya 2025 Date

About Karthika Somavara - Trithiya

The third Monday of Kartika masa, when 'Soma' is read two ways — the Moon on Shiva's matted hair, and 'sa-Uma', Shiva together with Parvati. The Skanda Purana names these Mondays as the prime vrata days of the year's holiest lunar month.

The classic Kartika Somavara vrata is not just a fast. The observer rises before dawn, bathes at twilight, and then honours a married devotee couple as living forms of Parvati and Parameshwara — feeding them first, and only afterwards taking a single meal (ekabhukta) for the day. By the third Somavara the vow is well into its rhythm, and it sits inside a larger Kartika practice: a daily pre-sunrise river dip that runs from Sharad Purnima all the way to Kartika Purnima. The third Monday is also the penultimate Somavara of the cycle, leading the devotee toward Vaikuntha Chaturdashi — the night when, by tradition, Vishnu himself worshipped Shiva with a thousand lotuses, blurring the line between the two great sects.