How can Shiva puranam and Vishnu puranam be interpreted?

Question

I would like to know how have those things happened as stated in the puranas. For example,

In Shiva Puranam, we talk about mother Parvathi's kalyanam (marriage). How did it take place? Did both Shiva and mother Parvathi take the shape of a humans like Lord Rama and Goddess Sita? Mother Parvathi is considered nature and Shiva is the energy which operates that. Now how can we imagine their marriage?

And how can I imagine Goddess Shakthi getting into fire and Lord Shiva removing the nose of Goddess Saraswati and punishing several other gods for not doing anything?

Answer 1

The Puranas are Smriti they are not Sruti. The Puranas are first meant to teach us lessons, whether you accept them as historically true is unimportant. If they conflict with Sruti they should be rejected. Smriti was written by man, Sruti by God. Ramakrishna Paramahamsa said: "The one thing you need to do is realize God. Why do you bother so much about the world, creation, 'science', and all that? Your business is to eat mangoes. What need have you know how many hundreds of trees there are in the orchard, how many thousands of branches, and how many millions of of leaves? You have to come to the garden to eat mangoes. Go and eat them. Man is born in this world to realize God; it is not good to forget that and divert the mind to other things. You have come to eat mangoes. Eat the mangoes and be happy."

Answer 2

If you have read Shiv Purana, you must have got your answer. There are stories in the book that says that Shiv is present in both physical form (kind of human form that lives on Kailash parvat) and the other form is the invisible form having no shape, etc. Similar are the forms of Shakti as well. The stories of marriage, death, etc are related with the physical form.