Shaivas affirm Shiva as the supreme deity, at once the great ascetic and the cosmic dancer whose rhythm creates, sustains, and dissolves the universe. In Shaiva theology Shiva is the ground of all being, both the transcendent absolute and the intimate Lord who bestows grace and liberation; he is worshipped in image and, characteristically, in the aniconic linga. The tradition ranges from the intense devotion of the Tamil saints to the sophisticated non-dualism of Kashmir Shaivism, which sees all reality as the self-expression of Shiva-consciousness.
Shaivism itself spans sharply different philosophies. Shaiva Siddhanta, the classical South Indian school, holds a realist, broadly dualist metaphysics in which the individual soul, though ultimately dependent on Shiva, remains distinct from him even in liberation, and its temple worship and ritual grammar shaped Tamil Shaivism for over a millennium. Kashmir Shaivism, by contrast, developed a rigorous non-dualist philosophy, elaborated by thinkers such as Abhinavagupta around the turn of the eleventh century, holding that the entire universe is nothing but Shiva's own self-expressive consciousness. The devotional wellspring for much of Tamil Shaivism is the Tevaram, hymns of the Nayanar saints, sixty-three canonised devotees active from roughly the seventh to ninth centuries.