Wednesday, May 13, 2026

Pasadena Hindu Temple Plans Its First Shanti Path and Fire Ritual, Open to All

The Rosemead Boulevard nonprofit will host a free Vedic ceremony on May 17 combining group chanting, sacred fire offerings, and a communal dinner

Thirty-two devotees will sit together inside the Pasadena Hindu Temple on Sunday afternoon and chant sacred mantras 108 times — the opening act of a multi-part Vedic ceremony the temple says it has never held before.

The ceremony combines four elements: group Shanti Path chanting, a Maha Yagya fire ritual involving Vedic mantras and offerings, Navagraha blessings invoking the nine planetary deities of Hindu tradition, and a concluding Aarti followed by Maharprasad — a communal dinner of food considered blessed.

The event, known as a Shanti Path and Navgrah Maha Yagya, begins at 4:00 p.m. on May 17 at the temple’s home on Rosemead Boulevard. It is free and open to all, according to the event’s organizers.

The Pasadena Hindu Temple, operated by the Hindu Temple and Heritage Foundation, is a nonprofit that traces its origins to a living room gathering in 1986, according to a May 2025 Pasadena Now report. The foundation was incorporated in 1998 and the temple was established at its current Rosemead Boulevard location by a group of 10 Southern California devotees, according to the temple’s website. For more than two decades, it has served as both a house of worship and a cultural center, hosting weekly classes in Hindi, North Indian classical music, and traditional Indian dance, along with annual health fairs and yoga workshops.

In a Navagraha ceremony, mantras are chanted for each of the nine celestial bodies recognized in Hindu astrology — the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, and the lunar nodes Rahu and Ketu — followed by offerings into a sacred fire. The number 108 holds particular significance in Hindu devotional practice and is a standard count for mantra repetition.

Head priest Pandit Jagdish Rajgor has described the temple’s reach as extending well beyond Pasadena. “Every Sunday we have people drive from over forty miles to come here,” Rajgor told Pasadena Now in May 2025. He has also emphasized the institution’s open-door philosophy: “Anybody can come and everybody is welcome,” he said at that time.

The temple’s programming extends into secular community engagement. Its youth association conducts volunteer projects including sandwich drives for the Downtown Women’s Center in Los Angeles. Rima Madan, the temple’s events coordinator, said in 2025 that the institution works with the Pasadena Boys and Girls Club and is “very well assimilated with the local community, not just the Indian American community.”

The event will be held at the Pasadena Hindu Temple, 676 South Rosemead Boulevard. For more information, call Dr. Manju Kumar at (626) 533-9709 or Pandit Jagdish Rajgor at (626) 679-8777, or visit PasadenaHinduTemple.org.