Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha, homage to Ganapati (Ganesha), is recited at the start of undertakings, since Ganesha is both the placer and the remover of obstacles and is invoked first at the opening of rites, journeys, studies and new ventures. It is built on a standard and highly productive pattern of Hindu mantra: the primordial Om, a seed syllable (bija), here gam, the seed associated with Ganesha, the deity's name in the dative case (to Ganapati), and the concluding namaha, a word of homage and self-offering.
The bija is the technically interesting element. Seed syllables are not abbreviations of words and do not translate; the tradition holds that they are the sound-bodies of deities, and tantric analysis breaks them into components each carrying a cosmological value. To recite the mantra is therefore understood not merely to name Ganesha but to sound his presence. Its everyday use at beginnings, above a shop, before an exam, at the head of a ceremony, makes it one of the most frequently uttered of all Hindu formulas, and a clear illustration of the bija-plus-name-plus-homage structure that underlies a great many deity mantras.