" Do ALL these tales of the Devas contain lessons on how energy moves when doing practices associated with said Devas?"

Yes they do,, in one way or another..

For instance the tale of Ganesha, Parvati and Shiva cutting his head off --

Ganesha (the muladhara and sound of om) guards the door to his mothers abode, where she is bathing, naked. In that state she is just full of raw power as the kundalini. But Shiva (the eternal, formless) does not always recognize forms, even his own son and beyond all of that, well - you just better respect the big guy.. he is the man! hehe

It shows how Siva will eventually take our head.. Suddenly - we can only protect that power for so long and then WHAM suddenly the power is revealed and we have to lose our head. But we can just get another,.. it was not really ours to begin with.

That is a sort of general interpretation,..

hey, Chaz --

Devi/Shakti has many faces/identities, it's true. but so does Shiva the Absolute Silence...

through Her, he manifests as the entire creation, including the G-O-D triune of Brahma-Vishnu-Maheshwara (form of Shiva). the Generator, Operator, Destroyer. then each of THOSE has a particular Shakti, like Saraswati, Laxmi, Durga..... the Shakti is the operating principle, the action, of the Silence. there's also an enormous difference between Paramashiva (transcendent, unformed) and the Shiva in form as part of the gunas. and the 11 rudras, the forms of Shiva.

and, yes, before he marries Parvati/Durga, there was Sati. but the key to Her story is beyond the death scene -- when Shiva is grieving for Her loss, he refuses to take care of the creation, he is so heartbroken by the loss. Vishnu and Brahma get upset, realizing that if Shiva doesn't pay attention to the souls (it's his job!), the whole creation will die. they conspire to get him out of his despair, his numb grief at her death.

Vishnu first uses the Sudarshana Chakra (his ultimate weapon to break illusion) and hurls it at the body of Sati. her body breaks into 64 pieces, which form the major Shakti Peethas of India today (major power spots where the Mother is accessible).

THEN they find Parvati and send her to Shiva.

well, about your question doing Shiva practices. my first response is this: WHY are you doing Shiva practices? what do you hope to gain through those practices? what is the goal?

in my experience, doing Shiva practices means you're attracting the Mother Divine energy. they're inseparable, interwoven, energy polarities. wherever He is, She is.

it's a smart way to win the Mother, actually, to go through a Shiva channel. less bumpy and turbulent and fraught with Illusion than trying to win Her directly.

so -- I wouldn't say that the stories about the Mother in Her various forms are 'lessons of how Shakti will appear' (even though that's partly true), they are outright embedded illustrations of Her energy and how it operates in this creation, and in the human system, IN the dance with the Shiva energies.

well, the Ramayana has many esoteric meanings. you've written a short-hand for one of them. it's an operating manual for the human energy system, for enlightenment, for supernatural experiences, for understanding the macrocosm and the microcosm of this creation and its mechanisms.

and I do understand that yes, there is more to the stories than meets the eye at first (or even fiftieth) read. the saints who created those epic stories, like the Shiva Puranas, or the Maha Bharata or Ramayana, they were embedding the code, the supernatural mechanisms, IN the characters and interplays in the stories.

all of the epic scriptural stories from India function on a much much deeper level than mere stories. they are the blueprint of this creation and how it operates. but it depends on how clear your own consciousness is, when reading them -- to grasp the inner workings of the supernatural and the energy systems, it really takes being a saint to interpret them correctly.

for instance, in Maha Bharata, the five Pandava brothers represent the Five Elements. also the first Five Chakras in the human torso. they are married to ONE wife, Draupadi, who is mostly pretty ill-used in the Maha Bharata epic. She represents the Kundalini Shakti, the Mother Divine. the enemies on the other side of the battlefield, finally, the Kuravas, the cousins of the Pandavas, are the 101 top negative characteristics or illusions that human beings carry.

ahhhhh, so the battle begins -- the battle of consciousness, between the Five Elements and the illusions/blocks that we all carry. Krishna presides over the whole thing -- he represents the G-O-D, the primordial guru, helping the elements purify so that the souls are liberated and become jivan mukti.

I've heard my own master in India say that if you knew how to read the Maha Bharata properly, ALL of the siddhis are embedded in the tales. all of them.

so, yes, the rishis encoded the stories with the deep mechanisms of this creation. (which are, partly, the siddhis.) the trick is to understand how to read what we're reading, and to grasp it at the soul level.

Alx

Shiva is the Realised Self as Voidness.
His wives are Shaktis, energies of Void Self-Realisation or nirvikalpa samadhi.
Ganga arrested in the top knot is the Vindu-dhara (semen flow caught in the dread-locks), When a yogi passes through brahmarandhra out of head the brain-juices come out to form dreads. Immense knowledge happens to the yogi in this state. ganga thus signifies Wisdom also, Jnana-Ganga.
Parvati i the daughter of the mountains. The right lobe is Mt Mandara, the left lobe is Mt Kailasha, and the raising energy above-head is Mt Sumeru. The practices of these three are ordained as the Mahamudra (64 savikalpa / alaya-vilaya samadhis) and Atiyoga( 84samadhis including mahamudra samadhis and 20 (niralaya / nirvikalpa samadhis). The 'daughter' is the effect of these samadhi-'mountains', Parvati, the spoantaneous nature, The Mother of all Accomplishments (Ganesha) and Applied Will (Karttikeya). She can take any form sygnifying knowledge of any form: Beyond Time (Kali), The perfection of speech (Saraswati), The Bounty of Aesthetics (Laxmi), Power of cutting off obstacles (Durga)..............................................all women for all times as they are mirrors for the The Shiva-yogi. ; )