Das Mahavidya -the Ten Wisdom Goddesses

 Worshiping Shakti -the divine power in feminine form as Devi -the Goddess is called Vidya -the wisdom. The Devi-Shakti -the supreme divine Goddess manifests in ten great manifestations and they are called Das Mahavidya -the ten great wisdom Goddesses. Together these ten wisdom Goddesses project the entire creation and the cycle of life here in material world now and beyond, and we need to invoke the Wisdom Goddesses for protection, empowerment, and joy and happiness.

The Das Mahavidya, is a distinctive group of ten Wisdom Goddesses, and their ultimate reality is one. That one ultimate reality is the Mother Goddess who is the source of all existence and resides in all life as consciousness, mind, matter, and energy. She is the vibrant energy that makes everything alive. Her true nature is beyond mind and matter and she is not bound by any limitation. At the highest level she is formless but appears in forms having distinct attributes. Her intense manifestation in form is the dimensionless point and she is the source of divine principles and values, and personification divine consciousness.

The literal meaning of Das Mahavidya is; ‘Das’ means ten, ‘Maha’ means great, and ‘Vidya’ means wisdom or knowledge. They are (1) Kali, (2) Tara, (3) Tripurasundari (Shri Vidya), (4) Bhuvanesvari, (5) Bhairavi, (6) Chinnamasta, (7) Dhumavati, (8) Bagalamukhi, (9) Matangi, and (10) Kamala. They are the ten transcendental forms of Goddess Parvati, the Adi Para Shakti -the supreme being, the Mother Goddess who is one and she is absolute. Each of the ten forms has her respective attribute and worshipping them all as one is referred to as Mahavidya. The forms and attributes of Das Mahavidya are different but their divinity is a single reality. Rig Veda teaches us that “Truth is one; the wise call it by various names.”

The ten cosmic forms of Supreme Goddess are the epitome paradigm of entire spectrum of spirituality. They together personify ten aspects of the Supreme Goddess who eternally guide us to live a divine life here on earth. The ten Goddesses having individual role are the different states of our inner awakening of our own being to whom we approach for our own emancipation. Each of the ten Goddesses represents one form of the liberating wisdom which helps us to overcome the illusion we live with and go across the world of suffering -the Samsara.

Each Mahavidya is an expression of different aspect of the same Goddess, and each one is a facet of a multi-faceted Great Goddess and that each facet contains all the others. Each Mahavidya, being the different aspect of same Divine Mother, is worshiped in her own right within and outside the context of Das Mahavidyas. However, Dhumavati, Bagalamukhi, and Matangi, who lack cognizance outside Das Mahavidya, they are worshipped within the context of Das Mahavidya. Based on Vastu -the science of dwelling, each Mahavidya has specific direction in which they reside, like, Kali and Tara in North, Bhairavi, Bagalamukhi, Matangi and Kamala in South, Bhuvanesvari in West, Chinnamasta and Dhumavati in East, and Sodasi (Tripura Sundari) in Ishan -North-East.

The wisdom we gain from Das Mahavidya is once we have realized our identity with the Divine, we experience our own perfection. To know the consciousness in its unconditioned oneness is to attain ultimate purity beyond the limitation of thought. When we experience absolute oneness, where there is no second, the duality disappears and all imposed delusion vanishes in the radiance of unconditioned righteousness.

Worshipping Das Mahavidya -the ten wisdom Goddesses fills the life of devotees with peace, prosperity and happiness. They provide protection against all evils, grants good health and wealth, and wisdom to live divine life in harmony within, across societies and nature.

Of the ten Das Mahavidya, seven of them; Goddess Kali, Goddess Tara, Goddess Tripurasundari (Sodasi), Goddess Kamala, Goddess Bagalamukhi and Goddess Matangi are associated with different ruling planets of twelve birth signs to which one should be aware.

With right understanding and unfaltering devotion to Das Mahavidya, one finds the path for enlightenment and spiritual bliss.

1.            Goddess Kali

Goddess Kali personifies the power of consciousness.  She is supreme power of ultimate reality. She represents empowerment and transformation destroying what is evil to restore righteousness and she is the Goddess who enables the process of transformation from human to being divine. At the highest form the power of consciousness and consciousness itself are one. Her consort is Kal-Bhairav.

Goddess Kali appears in many ways and when she is manifested, she assumes the ultimate reality. The form and manner in which she appears to us depends on our own level of awareness and the situation we are in.

Devimahatmya presents Goddess Kali in wrathful form as the personified wrath of the Goddess Durga in which form, she destroys the demons Canda and Munda -the embodiment of veiled and unclear vision of limited selfish consciousness.

In the same form Goddess Kali destroys the demon Raktabija – the embodiment of fleeting thought and desire. Raktabija is an invincible demon as it has the power to recreate another equally powerful demon from every drop of its blood that falls on the ground. In the battle with Raktabija, the Goddess Kali metaphorically drinks every drop of blood coming out from the wounds in his body for not letting it fall on the ground. On the surface this appears to be a grisly tale, but it symbolizes profound insight. The replicative ability of the demon Raktabija symbolizes the human mind’s ordinary state of awareness. Our mind is constantly in motion, and one thought begets another in an endless succession.

Rightly one should understand the Goddess Kali as the power to restrain our mind’s endless modulations, and stop it altogether. The state of our being when our mental activity is ceased, it is called the state of Yoga consciousness when our mind is resting in its own infinite peace and bliss domain. In that state of ultimate absorption, the soul regains knowledge of its own original divinity. Hence the physical battle scene of Goddess Kali with Raktabija represents the resorption of fragmented human awareness into transcendental wholeness.

Away from the battlefield Goddess Kali assumes benign forms as Dakshina Kali in the sublime presence of Shiva who is absolute consciousness, ever blissful and glorious. Goddess Kali is consciousness in motion—the active principle of that absolute consciousness. With their presence together, Lord Shiva and Goddess Kali, we understand consciousness and its power are one and the same reality.

As Dakshina Kali, with four hands, she is gloriously beautiful and blissful. With her lower right hand, she displays Varada Mudra, the gesture of boon-giving and her upper right hand displays Abhaya Mudra, reassuring not to fear. The upper left hand wields the sword of knowledge calling us to cut through all appearances and perceive the underlying reality, and rise with Viveka -the power of mental discrimination, the ability to differentiate between the real and unreal, eternal and temporary, self and non-self, material pleasure and bliss which are essential to spiritual growth and enlightenment. From her lower left hand dangles the severed head of a demon. This represents the human ego—the false sense of individual selfhood that binds us to Samsara which is our crippling limitation. Once ego is out of the way, awareness expands to infinity. We become one with the divine and liberated.

The nakedness of Goddess Kali signifies purity and her boundlessness. Infinite she is. Her free-flowing hair represents freedom, freedom from social convention, and all the conditioning that are imposed on us and that we impose on our own minds. Our true nature is unconditioned consciousness -Nirguna Caitanya. The girdle of severed human arms around her waist represents her divine power to severe the bonds of karma to which we are bound. This power is inherent in our being but in latent form, and we have the freedom of choice how we live our life.

The necklace of skulls Goddess Kali wear symbolizes impermanence telling us all created things pass away. Samsara is nothing but vibration of energy causing everything to constantly change with time. Time is Goddess Kali. Supreme nonduality is she and the duality we live with is also her expression. All the dualities of life are united and reconciled in Goddess Kali.

From the Absolute to the relative and from the relative to the Absolute, Goddess Kali represents the power of transformation. For us, who wrongly think ourselves to be mere mortals, she holds out the promise of transformation from human to divine.

Goddess Kali is associated with the planet Saturn which is the ruling planet of those having the birth sign as Makar Rashi (Capricorn as Zodiac sign) and Kumbha Rashi (Aquarius as Zodiac sign).

2.            Goddess Tara

Goddess Tara is the embodiment of compassion and protection. She is savioress -the savior deity and all gracious liberator who liberates all us from suffering. She is Samsara Tarini -the one who takes us across the worldly existence -Samsara, and relieve us from the burdens of Karma. Her consort is Tarakeshvara, the Aktshobhaya Shiva whose mind is unagitated to whom benevolence to one and all is the reason to live and thrive and keep everyone free from harm.

Goddess Tara manifests as Eka Jata or Ekajati to unite the ordinary beings with the Absolute Supreme Being removing the existence of duality. In her wrathful form, as Ugra Tara, she grants protection from unforeseen harmful events and miseries. As Nila Saraswati, Goddess Tara imparts Jnana -knowledge, skills and wisdom for living a divine life.

Goddess Tara closely resembles Goddess Kali. So close are their forms that often their identities blurs and in their Sahasranama (thousand names), they shares many common names. Like Goddess Kali, Goddess Tara also manifests in both Ugra -wrathful and Saumya -gentle forms.

Similar to Daktshinakali form of Goddess Kali, Goddess Tara is depicted having four hands. She holds a sword in her upper left hand and a severed head in the lower one. The sword called Jnana khadga -the sword of knowledge which symbolizes the power of consciousness that cuts ignorance and whatever is misleading, divisive, and fragmentary.

Our ordinary awareness is in a constant swirl perceiving physical objects and forming thoughts, ideas, opinions, and concepts. In every perception our mind creates, the unenlightened awareness of ours, the selfhood -the ego is seated. That ego is represented by the severed head.

In her upper right-hand Goddess Tara wields a pair of scissors, which symbolizes her power to cut off attachments to Samsara with which we all suffer. Her lower right hand is often shown holding a blue lotus, said to represent her open heart.

Goddess Tara is seemingly of younger age than Goddess Kali and she is bejeweled, signifying her beauty and infinite wealth. There is nothing lacking, for she is absolute perfection. Her complexion is dark blue like the night sky which signifies her boundlessness. Not only she is infinite; she is all-knowing and her three eyes signify her knowledge of past, present, and future.

Unlike Goddess Kali, whose hairs are free flowing, the hairs of Goddess Tara are dressed in coiffed topknot -Jatta. While the free-flowing hairs of Goddess Kali represents absolute freedom from constraint, the hair of Goddess Tara carefully dressed in coiffed topknot is a symbol of yogic ability to manage and direct the movement of mind, to achieve self-knowledge through self-mastery.

Goddess Tara, unlike Goddess Kali who is completely naked, wears a tiger-skin around her waist. This is a symbol of her liminal character who stands at the edge of civilized order, who could still be wrathful, wild and uncontrolled. Her minimal clothing represents either the last stage before liberation.

The state of Saccidananda (Sat Citta Ananda) is the true nature of Goddess Tara and of ours too. In the stillness of Saccidananda state of consciousness, only pure awareness remains, the experience of undivided, nondual wholeness. When consciousness ceases its activity at Saccidananda state, it ceases to be modified as thought-waves projecting the contents of consciousness.

Goddess Tara appears on the body of Lord Siva who is the substrate foundation of her being, and she is dynamic making the play of Prakriti -the entire nature possible. Shiva and Sakti are not only mutually dependent, they are a single reality. Consciousness and its power are not just inseparable; they are one. Without Siva, Sakti would have no being, and without Sakti, Siva would have no expression.

The presence of Akshobhya serpent on the head of Goddess Tara reinforces the oneness of Shiva and Shakti. Goddess Tara, in her supreme glory, is the consciousness-in-itself, the Akshobhya Shiva, motionless and unperturbed self-luminous reality.

Goddess Tara is associated with the planet Jupitar which is the ruling planet of those having the birth sign as Dhanu Rashi (Sagittarius as Zodiac sign) and Mena Rashi (Pisces Zodiac sign).

3.            Goddess Tripurasundari

Goddess Tripurasundari is depicted sitting on a lotus emerged from the recumbent body of Shiva who is the absolute consciousness-in-itself, the sole reality and support of everything that has name and form. On that sole support sits Tripurasundari, who is no other than Sakti. This graphic illustration reinforces that consciousness and its power are one. Without Shiva, Sakti would have no being, and without Sakti, Siva would have no expression.

Goddess Tripurasundari -the most beautiful one is also called Shodasi, for she possesses all the sixteen supernatural powers. She is also called Kameshwari for she nature desire. She is the source of desire, for desire is the psychological seed which governs both individual and collective existence. Even Moksha -emancipation starts with a desire in the human heart, until finally, one transcends all desires. Her other names include Lalita, Srividya, and Rajarajesvari each emphasizing particular attributes. She personifies prosperity and beauty and her consort is Tripurari, the Panchavaktra Bhairava.

The first word of her name ‘Tripura’ denotes pure consciousness beyond speech, senses and mind, and that pure consciousness exist deep within us to which the outer world is only a reflection, of which our experience is a recognition. The second word of her name ‘Sundari’ denotes divine beauty.

Goddess Tripurasundari personifies the state of awareness characterized by “I am this”, the outward flow of consciousness. In our ordinary state of consciousness, Tripurasundari is the beauty that we see in the world around us. Essentially Tripurasundari represents the supreme beauty of the pure perception. Her presence in our being dissolves all the undesirable and unattractive qualities within ourselves.

Goddess Tripurasundari is she who pervades all the three aspects of our being: i) Tamas: it is construed of the elements of destruction, including inertia, ignorance, ego, anger and lust; ii) Rajas: it is the dynamic aspect of our being and it keeps changing. With it we are in consistent pursuit of shellfish sensual desires propelled by passion and attachment. It is result oriented and it is ever-transforming, and iii) Sattva: It is pure intelligence with no polarity or duality. It is transcendent and inseparable from Tamas and Rajas as intelligence is needed to perform even the bad action. In our being all the three; the Tamas, Rajas and Sattva are inbuilt.

Goddess Tripurasundari is the active energy aspect of Sada Shiva -the highest form of Shiva, the root-cause of creation. At the time of dissolution, it is in Tripurasundari the Tamas and Rajas elements are dissolved and the nature of Sada Shiva is such that the process of recreation begins with whatever is dissolved in him. At that state, the unmanifested, Shiva is known by the name Sada Shiva.

Goddess Tripurasundari has four arms, and holds a noose, a goad, a bow, and five arrows. The noose indicates the captivating power, the power of attachment that binds us to material existence that cause us sorrow and grief. The goad represents her ability to dissociate us from ego-based attachment. The bow represents the mind and the five arrows represents our sensory faculties.

The ornaments adorned by her symbolizes splendor and abundance indicating the world is a place to be savored and enjoyed.

The cosmic law is such when the nondual reality, the infinite one, manifests as finite and many, the infinite one though transcends us and inherently present in us gets hidden from our individual awareness. But when we raise our awareness and take it beyond the appearance and division of name and form, we experience the ineffable divine unity, the same infinite one. That infinite one, the non-dual reality is our true being.

Perfection is in unity and wholeness, and that is in the heart of our awareness. We are enlightened when we are fully aware of the beauty being the assemblage of diverse constituting parts. For this reason, we being ignorant perceive beauty but feel also the pain of its fleetingness. That full awareness of what makes beauty and perfect is Goddess Tripurasundari.

Rising to the conviction that nothing is alien to ourselves, we seek the blessings of Goddess Tripurasundari to purification of our awareness -cleansing the mind of unworthy thoughts and the patterns of thinking that underlie them.

Goddess Tripurasundari (Sodasi) is associated with the planet Mercury which is the ruling planet of those having the birth sign as Mithun Rashi (Gemini as Zodiac sign) and Kanya Rashi (Virgo as Zodiac sign).

4.            Goddess Bhuvanesvari

Bhuvanesvari is personified with the manifest world and our experience of it. Her name is construed of two syllables: Bhuvana -this living world, a place of dynamic activity and more, encompassing entire cosmos; and Isvari -the sovereign and supreme female divine being. As this living world exhibits dynamic phenomenon, Bhuvanesvari embodies all its characteristics and their interactions. She is the ruler of this living world and the universe at large and the source of creation. Her consort is Bhuwaneshvara, the Trayambaka Bhairava.

In the Vedas Bhuvanesvari is known as Aditi, the Great Cosmic Mother, infinite and indestructible, the origin of all manifestation, the primordial space. She is the Goddess of the manifest universe embodying creative power. She invites us to cultivate an attitude of universality because reality that exists beyond this world and the scope of our mind cannot to be perceived and named. That divine, being the cause of all causes, rules over the process of cosmic manifestation. She rises in the space of our heart, the center of awareness, the very essence of consciousness, who being sun of knowledge dispels the darkness; and causes everything to shine.

Goddess Bhuvanesvari is the complementary aspect of Goddess Kali who creates the events in time -manifesting time, and Bhuvanesvari creates the objects in space. She is Mahamaya –the divine power that makes the phenomenal universe cognizable to the sense. The expanse of her divine power and prowess are beyond any imagination. She is Sarvarupa -she whose form is all and she is Visvarupa -she whose form is the universe or she who appears as the universe. She is consistently associated with all that we experience in this life.

Goddess Bhuvanesvari exhibits nurturing maternal nature and she sustains all that she has given birth to, and her attitude toward all is gracious. The snooze in one of her four hands means the Prakriti -the nature, has captivating power and that the Samsara casts ignorance by which we mistake appearances for reality. Also, it represents the five sheathes that conceal our spirit soul -the Atma, which are physical body, life-breath, perceiving mind, determinative faculty, and the sense of individuality. The goad in her another hand symbolizes her liberating power. With goad she enables us to see the reality through the veil of ignorance and overcome obstacles of evil elements born in us that conceal our true divine nature. With the other two hands she makes the gestures of Abhaya Mudra -casting away the fear and Varada Mudra -the gesture of offering the divine blessings. In some iconography she holds lotus in upper hands symbolizing growth and energy with which we attain spiritual perfection through sincere and ardent practice and perseverance. The three eyes of her are the sign of her complete knowledge of the manifested worlds.

Goddess Bhuvanesvari is associated with the planet Moon which is the ruling planet of those having the birth sign as Karka Rashi (Cancer as Zodiac sign).

5.          Goddess Bhairavi

Goddess Bhairavi is the manifestation of divine wrath, the most frightful form of Goddess Durga. She is Chandika -the supreme power that crushes evils indiscriminately, who is narrated d in Durga Sapta Sathi. The impulse of her fierceness manifesting in wrathful form is solely for the destruction of ignorance and everything negative that binds us to Samsara and cause suffering for us. She is the latent energy of awakening -Kundalini inherently present is us. Her consort is Daktshinamurti Bhairava. When she is inebriated with knowledge, she takes the form of Goddess Saraswati.

Goddess Bhairavi embodies the flame of the conscious self and the supreme power of light and heat, which is the ultimate purified fountain of knowledge. The intense heat of her being consumes every sensual desire and attachment. The light that radiates from her is the light of conscious awareness and it is through that light of conscious awareness we gain knowledge of our existence and we experience our own existence. Just like Goddess Tripura Sundari, she resides in three planes: awareness, existence and eternal bliss.

The divine light that radiates from Goddess Bhairavi sustains the created order in the realm of duality. The pure radiance of her creates a state of spiritual illumination in us in which we have no more individuality and no more limitation.

Goddess Bhairavi is the power to know and to experience the divine innate to every person in latent form. It is Goddess Bhairavi who incites self-purifying discipline, austerity and enthusiasm for being pure, passionate and happy. She incites every form of passion, but she also grants the power to control it. That power is called Yoga.

As we practice austerity, Goddess Bhairavi burns all our impurities, limitations, and illusions of our egoistic self and prepares us for enlightenment. All of us want to be enlightened but we are afraid of losing our cherished individuality as we cling to our imperfect selfhood out of fear. But with repeated attempts to rein our mind directing it toward enlightenment we make progress without being esoteric.

Goddess Bhairavi is one who has maximum and widely divergent forms and there is no single iconography to define her. At a common ground, Goddess Bhairavi too has four arms. With two of her hands, she holds the sword of knowledge and the demon’s head that represents the destruction of ego. Her other two hands display the Abhay Mudra, urging us to have no fear, and the Varada Mudra, the gesture of granting blessings. Sometime she holds Japa-Mala -rosery, signifying devotion, and a book, signifying knowledge. The trident she holds represents the pervasively threefold nature of her manifestation.

Goddess Bhairavi gives us courage and confidence in our mind that enables us to live in peace and harmony. She guides us to accrue good Karma that reduces the level of our sufferings, and remove sins. She is the affectionate mother who directs us to concentrate on benevolent activities. Being the consort of Kala Bhairav, by worshipping Kala Bhairav in the Shiva temples, she becomes happy and grants us a happy and prosperous life.

6.            Goddess Chinnamasta

Goddess Chinnamasta is She who holds her own decapitated yet smiling head in her hand. The blood spurting from her neck flows in three streams; one into her own mouth and the others into the mouths of her two female attendants, Dakini and Varnini. In this frame, she stands on a body of a female who is copulating with a male beneath her.

Goddess Chinnamasta epitomizes the sacrifice for sustenance and benevolence. Her consort is Kabandha Bhairava -the Chinnamastaka.

At the highest level, the consciousness and the power of consciousness are one and the same reality. Mind is not body. Mind away from the body embodying senses and sensual desire, puts us on spiritual track. The severed head of Goddess Chinnamasta symbolizes the highest sacrifice for highest good, and her nudity means freedom and infinity which cannot be contained by any garment.

Goddess Chinnamasta stands on the copulating couple, Kama -the desire and Rati -the union, either on a lotus or on a cremation pyre. It represents her control over creativity, the power of nature and the dominance of creative power of the nature.

Her two attendants the Dakini on her left is black, the Varnin on right is red and herself in the middle is white. The three colors represent the three gunas of the nature as rajas is red, tamas is black and sattva is white.

The blood spurting from the neck is the Prana, the life force, the cosmic energy that animates the universe and sustains all life. The first stream flows into her own mouth sustaining herself, as she is self-existent and dependent on no other. The streams that flow into the mouths of her attendants Varnin and Dakini represent the life-force sustaining all living creatures as all life is nourished by the mother, the Mother Nature.

The frame in which Goddess Chinnamasta is depicted, tells us that a selfless act doesn’t hurts. A false sense of I is ignorance -the Maya that keeps us imprisoned by our own false sense of who we are. By this frame Goddess Chinnamasta tells us to relinquish a smaller, powerless identity for one that is infinitely greater and all-powerful showing us the nature of Self and telling us to gain Self-knowledge that by its virtue grants liberation.

Goddess Chinnamasta is the Power -Shakti of the Sacrifice and she rules over the five great sacrifices -Pancha Maha Yajna, that that every one of us are indebted to enforce at every occasion. The five sacrifices -doing what is righteous, are our moral duty for continual expressing of gratitude to all those who facilitate our existence, which are: i) sacrifice for the ancestors -Pitṛi Yajna, ii) sacrifice for the gods -Deva Yajna, iii) sacrifice for the Supreme -Brahma Yajna, iv) sacrifice for fellow human beings -Manuṣya Yajna, and v) sacrifice for the elements and animals -Bhuta Yajna.

Goddess Chinnamasta tells us to get rid of all kinds of false identifications and emotions and go beyond our limitations and break free. She teaches us to remove fear, self-pity preoccupied with one’s own troubles and forget the pain of death. Her being naked means she wants us also to be free from being bound by ego and false designations.

Goddess Chinnamasta, in a single frame, makes a stunning presentation of self-control, sacrifice and benevolence of nourishing others, and the joy of transcending the body and not the pain of losing it and of giving up the ego to attain wisdom.

7.      Goddess Dhumavati

While Goddess Bhairavi represents overwhelming brilliance, Goddess Dhumavati personifies the dark side of life. She is emblematic of the worst facets of human existence. Life in Samsara can be exhilarating, joyful, and pleasant; something we all want to embrace and live to the fullest. But it can also be sorrowful, painful, depressing and frustrating to which one would respond with pessimism, sadness, anxiety, and anger, and no longer want to embrace life. It is at that sorrowful hopeless state of life Goddess Dhumavati. She personifies the dark side of life and tells us to be aware of it and strive for not be victimized. She is the only one of Das Mahavidya without a consort as she personifies herself as a widow.

Before Das Mahavidya came in the main stream of Sanatan Hindu Dharma, there were three deities who are loosely considered architype of Dhumavati as her predecessors. They are Nirriti, Jyestha and Alakshmi.

The early seers of pre-Vedic era envisioned a principle of cosmic order and universal moral law that they called Rita. The moral dimension of Rita later came to be called Dharma. They also envisioned the negation of Rita and called Nirriti. While Rita denotes order, growth, abundance, prosperity, harmony, well-being, and the goodness of life, Nirriti is the opposite of what is Rita. Nirriti personifies disorder, decay, poverty, misfortune, dissension, sickness, and the whole array of life’s ills, culminating in death. Nirriti was not worshiped in the same sense as other Vedic deities; rather she was ritually appeased so as to be warded off. In the Rig Veda the hymn that refrain her mentions; “Let Nirriti depart to the distant places.” The idea was to deliberately ward her off and keep her far away.

Another Vedic deity closely related to Nirriti is Jyeshtha, whose name means “the elder.” She too represents the state of decline that comes with old age, and naturally she is depicted as an old woman. She is instinctively drawn to households in which there is strife and like Nirriti, she too is propitiated to keep her at a safe distance.

An epithet of Jyeshtha is Alakshmi. This epithet indicates that she is everything that Lakshmi is not. She is Lakshmi’s dark mirror image. It is Alakshmi who brings misfortunes to the homes of the unrighteous and she is the embodiment of poverty and bad luck and all the miserable things that can happen to people. All three; Nirriti, Jyestha and Alakshimi are the inauspicious goddesses and they are projection of Dhumavati, who has similar nature and iconography.

Iconography of Dhumavati like her associate processors exhibits poverty, need, hunger, thirst, quarrelsomeness, anger, and negativity. She is portrayed as an old and ugly, with sagging breasts and crooked with missing teeth and dressed in filthy rags. From her iconography two references are drawn: first is that the unpleasant experiences of life will eventually engender a sense of disgust that will turn us toward the Divine. The second is that the Divine is present everywhere, even in what one ordinarily considers ugly and unpleasant.

Unlike her Nirriti, Jyestha and Alaxshimi, Goddess Dhumavati has positive aspects. She is portrayed as a widow which distinguishes her from her predecessors. She sits on a cart to which a bird is yoked to the cart which is unable to pull the sorrow laden cart of a widow. In Sanatan Hindu Dharma, the widowhood is an unenviable state of life. Projecting the sorrowful misery, Goddess Dhumavati reminds us the misery that may befall on us and bless us with wisdom to keep life’s inevitable suffering at bay. As wisdom goddess, the very intent of Goddess Dhumavati is to help us in evading unhappiness in life.

Goddess Dhumavati creates awareness in us that we should be able to see things, good or bad, as they are and see through them and beyond, and consider the present state as stepping stone for better future. She represents the erosive power of time that robs us everything and by nature everything is transient and she forces us to face all the darkness inherently within us with divine power which is also inherently within us.

Goddess Dhumavati holds a bowl of fire in one hand and a winnowing basket in the other. The fire symbolizes inevitable cosmic destruction: all things shall pass away. The winnowing basket represents Viveka -the mental discrimination between the permanent and the fleeting. Also, her cart without the horses to pull tells us that our external life goes nowhere. Goddess Dhumavati ultimately empowers us inwardly to reach for the highest, and there is nothing to stop us once we are resolved.

8.      Goddess Bagalamukhi

Bagalamukhi is Pitambari -the goddess dressed in yellow. She rules over evils by ceasing the action and she is worshipped for paralyzing the enemies and removing the obstacles on the spiritual path. She is the Goddess who ceases all actions of the evils. Her consort is Brahma Bhairav.

Goddess Bagalamukhi is the power of delusion, and she uses delusion as a weapon to confuse and confound. She is the power that transfixes everything into its opposite. She is the secret presence of the opposite and to see the failure hidden in success, the death hidden in life, and the joy hidden in sorrow is the way of understanding her reality.

During turbulence in nature, Bagalamukhi is invoked for she has the power the quell the storms. The storm can be the storm in mind, where mind fights hard to find out what is right and what is not right. A realized mind is always beyond dualities but an ordinary mind is always struggling to find a solution.

In nature everything transforms and passes through the state that is just the opposite and Bagalamukhi is that power of transformation without discrimination. The transformation could be both positive and negative. Because of it she is feared and her worship is esoteric in the Tantric realm.

Goddess Bagalamukhi is the embodiment of power that stuns and stills all mental modifications with a loss of memory. For this the blessings of Goddess Bagalamukhi is sought to win the arbitration, legal dispute, and the process of negotiation, because with her blessing the opponent’s intelligence and speech are stunned, and faculty that facilitates all forms of expression is paralyzed.

Bagalamukhi is Stambhana -the power to immobilize the enemy and she is depicted pulling out a demon’s tongue. Tongue, the organ of speech and taste, is regarded as a lying entity, concealing what is in the mind. It is an organ of mischief, vanity and deceitfulness. The wrenching of the demon's tongue is therefore symbolic of removing the evils associated with speech.

Across the spectrum of consciousness, there are four levels of speech: i) the divine speech that illuminates all of our experience. ii) the speech at visionary stage, the urge and the intent for self-expression which occurs with an instantaneous flash of awareness. iii) the intermediate, formulative phase. As the ideas become more and more definite, they assume a form expressed in language. iv) the level of articulate speech -the expression of our consciousness in physical sound. With this reality, Goddess Bagalamukhi symbolizes our innate power to go within and take control of our own awareness. Only by having control of the activity within our awareness we experience the peace and joy, and glory of our own true nature.

Goddess Bagalamukhi is worshipped for removing delusions and misunderstandings, and to have a clear course to follow in life. She removes the problems being endured by her devotees. Goddess Bagalamukhi having unlimited ability is revered as the guardian of virtue and the slayer of all evils.

People turn to Goddess Bagalamukhi to silence their enemies and prevent their wicked schemes from operating against them. She shields her devotees from all of the world’s wicked powers and the enemies are no longer a threat to her devotees, which let her devotes to concentrate in living a divine life.

Goddess Bagalamukhi is associated with the planet Mars which is the ruling planet of those having birth signs as Vrishchik Rashi (Scorpio as Zodiac sign) and Mesh Rashi (Aries as Zodiac sign).

9.      Goddess Matangi

Goddess Matangi is the quintessential Tantric form of Saraswati. She governs speech, music, knowledge and arts. She is repository of sixty-four different skills which are essential arts of living and mastering them all is seen as the path to true authentic and cultural refinement. They are considered to be the qualities that define the ultimate divine being, and they represent the highest ideals of human character and behavior.

The difference between Goddess Matangi and Saraswati is that the energies of Goddess Saraswati are centered outwardly on learning, academics, language and arts while Goddess Matangi’s energies are relating to or existing in mind or thoughts, on ability to apply knowledge, experience, understanding or commonsense and insight. She is the Goddess of knowledge, skills and arts. Her consort is Ekavaktra Bhairav.

Goddess Matangi is the embodiment of inner thought and wisdom, and she is associated with the ability to listen, which impacts on accurate understanding from which comes great thoughts. She bestows power of perception, learning, reasoning, natural ability and skillfulness.

In iconography both, Goddess Matangi and Saraswati, play Vina and hold a book and Japa Mala -the prayer beads. Vina represents creativity, and the power of consciousness to express itself. The Japa Mala represents the power of Mantra -motivational prayer, and the book stands for the knowledge and wisdom.

Goddess Matangi is the patron of left outs and the outcast societies and she embodies what is beyond the boundaries of mainstream society at the periphery of the civilized society. Once Shankaracharya was walking along a lane in Varanasi and saw an untouchable outcast coming by, and ordered the poor outcast to get out of his way. But the lowly fellow responded with a discourse on the oneness of Self and the intrinsic worth of all human beings. Shankaracharya was so humbled that moved him to declare that the divine Self shines forth equally from the high-born and the untouchable. This is what Matangi tells us in all her forms and denominations.

Goddess Matangi embodies the residual substrate, the residue that is left over after things perish and the transgression of social norms considered inauspiciousness. She tells us that one in a polluted state of being or an outcast has access to goodness and she enables everyone to progress on spiritual path and rise to a higher state of being irrespective of their present state of being. She instils the faith that all existence pervades naturally and there is nothing that is outside the divine design and within her there are no distinctions between pure or impure. On this principle she demands left-over or partially eaten food called Ucchista as the offering to her and no fasts or rituals to purify oneself before worship is necessary.

In Vedic way of life, ritual purity of food implying to highest standard of hygiene is vital and inevitable. The food that is to be offered to a deity is prepared with strict rules of physical and mental cleanliness. It is then a portion is offered to the deity and the rest is rendered blessed by the divine grace. Any leftover food scrap is called Ucchista and is immediately regarded unclean and rendered ritually impure.

Disregarding Vedic norm and standard for being pure, Goddess Matangi demands Ucchista food as offering opposing the rules of ritual purity of Vedic norms and dismantles the danger that the idea of purity could become an end in itself.

Demanding Ucchista food Goddess Matangi is neither transgressing the Vedic norm nor establishing the irreverence but jolts the indoctrination of ideas about what is proper and what is not. It only stops our sense of right and wrong from becoming devoid of compassion. People who run around being conventionally pious all the time are usually unaware of their own failings and can easily become deluded by the pride of their own perceived moral excellence. In Ramayana, Shabari, belonging to a hunter’s family of low cast, offered the Ucchista food (fruits) to Lord Rama which only exhibited her deepest love and devotion seeking virtue.

While the Vedic line of worship, adheres to the pious line, Tantra doesn’t differentiate good and evil but see things as they are. Tantra is absolutely impartial and holds everything on a single platform as everything has its good and bad aspect, and together makes a whole. Tantric teaching speaks of eight fetters of which Sila is a mental attitude that imposes its influence on us and impinges on individual freedom. Our ordinary awareness is heavily conditioned by Saguna -manifested attributes and our inner consciousness, that is our divine nature, has entirely unconditioned Nirguna -unmanifested attributes.

The distinction of purity and impurity imposes a dualism on the way we view the world. As opposed to dualism, in Tantric teaching the true nature of impurity is not the ritual pollution we have been trained to fear but our own existential limitation. In Tantric teaching the word for impurity is Mala which arises through the association Self with Maya -the illusion, the Divine’s own power of limitation. The imperfection of our being is a contracted form of the perfect, infinite universal Self. Mala -the impurity of our finitude has three forms: Anava Mala, Mayiya Mala and Karma Mala.

The impurity called Anava Mala is the consciousness of limited individuality: “I am small (Anu) in my own sense of separateness, lack, and inferiority.” It is also the root impurity that gives rise to the other two impurities: Mayiya Mala and Karma Mala

As the sense of individuality evolves into a sense of separation, it produces the sense of “I and other.” This further condition of impurity is known as Mayiya Mala “I am apart from what I experience around me.” Mayiya Mala plunges us into the world of duality, and our mental activity gets caught up in a process of contrast, comparison, and exclusion. Focusing on the diversity around us, we are distracted from the unity within which is our original, divine nature.

The third impurity involves the interaction of the limited interior I and the multiple exterior other. This is Karma Mala, the bound and binding state of human action: “I act out of necessity, driven by my own sense of want.” Our actions are never free and spontaneous; they always bow to the conditioning that binds us, and their effects in turn prolong the bondage.

As long as the Malas -impurities, influence our awareness, they hold us captive. As long as we chase after the conventional notions of purity and piety (piousness) and shun their opposites, we are caught up in a reactive chain. It is through this Tantric teachings Goddess Matangi teaches us to face our false notions head on and be free.

Goddess Matangi is associated with the planet Sun which is the ruling planet of those having birth signs as Simha Rashi (Leo as Zodiac sign).

10.    Goddess Kamala

Goddess Kamala is the Goddess of wealth and abundance, the embodiment of auspiciousness, generosity and virtues for inner and outer prosperity. She is the bestower of joy here and now, and liberation hereafter. She grants spiritual abundance and development at all states of being. In Tantric tradition she takes the abode of Goddess Laksmi. She is also referred as Kamalatmika which means the one whose nature is that of a Lotus.

Goddess Kamala is the creative force and with her blessing we see beauty in everything. In us Goddess Kamala epitomizes the commitment to spiritual path, the spirit of giving, receiving graciously and gratefully, instead of with greed. She tells us that true wealth is measured by generosity, spiritual depth and freedom from ego driven by desires. Her devotees worship her to manifest creative vision, eliminate poverty and deepen spiritual understanding and experience.

Goddess Kamala is depicted in her resplendent Saumya -gentle form in a gesture of giving blessing but she can manifest in wrathful form as she embraces both the light and the darkness of life on earth. Seated on a lotus she holds lotus blossoms in her two upper hands while other two hands are in Abhaya -fearless and Varada -blessing Mudra -posture, and she is flanked by two elephants. The lotus on which Goddess Kamala sits represents cosmic order, purity, and spiritual authority. The elephant showering water on her represents fertility, growth, well-being, and wealth. If any consort name is referred it is of Shiva in the form of Kamal Bhairav. Kamal -the lotus is one of the forms of Shiva.

In the beginning of the Vedic time, there was a Vedic deity named representing divine resplendence, power, and abundance. Literarily Shri means prosperity, auspiciousness, and divinity. Shri was worshipped as the Divine Mother who bestows bliss and plentitude. With passage of time Shri was assimilated with Goddess Laksmi and Kamala. While Goddess Lakshmi is immediately identified as consort of Lord Vishnu, Goddess Kamala is not and remains a Tantric deity. Shri had connections with the consorts of male gods like Indra, Kubera and others, while Laksmi is not.

Goddess Kamala shares similar nature within and outside Mahavidya with Goddess Laksmi. But in Tantric tradition Goddess Kamala holds unique position for being the Goddess of material wellbeing, what is here and now, that binds us to the Samsara as well as the goddess of spiritual wellbeing hereafter enabling us to see her beauty in everything.

Goddess Kamala is the Goddess of consciousness, perception and creation. She is the state of consciousness overwhelmed by the material wellbeing and security. She represents the unfolding of the inner consciousness into the richness of creation. Her devotees pray to her for all the good that life has to offer and for creation of urge in us to strive for the well-being of all and for moral excellence leading to Self-realization which is the ultimate goal of human life.

The best thing we can do in our life is devotion to divine and with the divine blessing of Goddess Kamala, we realize divine quality in us. As we deepen our devotion, Goddess Kamala unfolds her divine nature in the realm of our perception and aspirations, and support worldly activities and grant blessing for their accomplishment for living a fulfilling life.

Goddess Kamala is associated with the planet Venus which is the ruling planet of those having birth signs as Tula Rashi (Libra as Zodiac sign) and Vrishabh Rashi (Taurus as Zodiac sign).

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