THE COSMIC NOOSE
According to the Vedic texts, the primary characteristic of Varuna is his power to bind: He serves to bind the visible universe and everything in it by means of his cosmic noose (pashu), which may be compared to a noose wrapped around the neck of a domesticated animal.
In devanagari script (script of the gods), the letter va is written in the form of a noose attached to a pole.This noose represents the upper mass of light, the loka-aloka barrier, which serves to create a universal space (loka) in the otherwise realmless space (aloka) of consciousness. It is within this created space that the universal sun (the visible form of the universe) moves and revolves. The Rig Veda states: “The royal (reddish) Varuna verily established a wide space for the shining Sun to follow in its course, a realm in the realmless.”2
As the lord of the cosmic boundary, Varuna may be described as the Lord of the Noose (Pashu-pati), a term that is often used to describe Shiva and that takes us back to our earlier discussion regarding the universal form of Shiva.