As the emblem of Pāśupata identity, representations of the deified teacher called Lakulīśa (the ‘Lord with a Club’) became a prominent feature of the expanding Śaiva religious landscape in early medieval northwest India. This study works to recover some of Lakulīśa’s historical contingency by reading his appearance in both text and image as a reflection of or response to particular concerns of the developing Śaiva religious community. The significance of Lakulīśa’s literary debut in the Nepalese recension of the early Skandapurāṇa is examined first. I then explore the visual representations of this figure by considering patterns in Lakulīśa’s iconography and the place of his images within sanctified spaces. Since temples were vital loci of interaction across a wide spectrum of social groups and religious communities, even ostensibly Śaiva centres would have accommodated a range of deities, religious practitioners, and devotional repertoires. Given the multivocality of these sanctified spaces, I propose that Lakulīśa images would have been subject to multiple ‘readings’ or interpretations. With his attributes signifying power, fertility, and protection, I suggest that Lakulīśa functioned not only as a potent sign of Pāśupata identity, but as a multivalent persona, facets of which would have resonated with a broader religious community.