In Final Fantasy VII, Shiva is the name of a "summon" monster connected to the Shiva summon materia. When summoned, a woman all of blue showers the battlefield in ice. It is also worth noting that Shiva appears as a summon of some kind in most of the Final Fantasy games, though FFVII is the one which uses a "materia" mechanism.
Shiva is an ice element materia. This means that when it is paired with the elemental materia in either weapons or armor, the character either attacks or defends with ice. If this pair is equipped in armor, all ice attacks on the character will be absorbed or drained; if equipped in a weapon, every attack with the weapon will deal all damage as if an ice attack were made.
As with many materia in FF7, Shiva has different levels, five to be exact. It starts on level one, with subsequent levels requiring increasing amounts of AP:
- Level 2: 4000AP
- Level 3: 15000AP
- Level 4: 30000AP
- Level 5: 50000AP
For a summon materia, 50000AP is small. The biggest materia in the game, Knights of the Round, requires 50000AP for level 2 (500000AP for level 5). Shiva is the second summon materia that can be found in the game.
Equipping a Shiva materia will cause the following status changes: