#navratri https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbaZoOmpVhw
नवरात्र का तीसरा दिन | मां चन्द्रघंटा की आरती | #Maa #Chandraghanta #Aarti
#navratri
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjpcc1nsODU
चैत्र नवरात्रि का दूसरा दिन - जय ब्रह्मचारिणी माँ
11 hours ago ... चैत्र नवरात्रि का दूसरा दिन - जय ब्रह्मचारिणी माँ - #Maa #Brahmacharini #Aarti - #Navratri 2nd
9 April, 2024 Tuesday Pratipada Royal Blue Ghatasthapana, #Shailputri Puja
In Hinduism, the nine days of Navratris are believed to be very auspicious and fortunate. During these nine days, we celebrate the 9 unique forms of Maa Durga. According to the Hindu calendar, the Hindu New Year starts from the Chaitra Shukla Pratipada date. The new Vikram Samvat 2081 will start from there as well. Chaitra Month is also known as Madhumas. Each month of the Hindu calendar is named after the Nakshatras [constellation] and Chaitra month is named after the full moon of Chitra Nakshatra.
This year, the Chaitra Navratri will begin on 09 April 2024 and will last till 17 April. It is believed that during the nine days of Navratri, Maa Durga comes from heaven on a horse to reside on Earth. During this time, whoever worships her with true and pure intentions gets rid of all their life troubles and their wishes are fulfilled as well.
Every year, Chaitra Month comes during March and April. In some parts of northern India, it is also known as #Ram #Navratri because Lord Ram was born on the ninth day of this Navratri, a festival named Gudi Padwa is also celebrated in Maharashtra and Ugadi in Andhra Pradesh.
In Chaitra Navratri 2024, more than one auspicious yoga is being celebrated, which has increased the honor and prestige of this Navratri even more.
Significance Of Chaitra Navratri
The significance of Chaitra Navratri goes back in time when an Asura named Mahishasura had defeated all the Gods, so, lost and worried, all the Gods went to Lord Brahma, Lord Vishnu, and Lord Mahesh {Shiva} for help and then from the collective energy of the Trinity, Maa Durga took birth. The main idea behind celebrating Chaitra Navratri is the victory of good over evil.
Lord Ram was also born on Ram Navami i.e; the ninth day of Chaitra Navratri and he killed Ravana on Vijayadashami, on the tenth day of Sharad Navratri. Chaitra Navratri holds great importance in Hindu religion and this festival is celebrated with great splendor throughout the country. During Chaitra Navratri 2024, some auspicious yogas are also forming to especially favor certain zodiacs. This blog will further tell you about the auspicious and rare yogas that are forming on this Navratri.
Auspicious Yogas Amidst Chaitra Navratri 2024
During Chaitra Navratri this year, Amrit Siddha yoga, Savarth Siddha yoga, Shasha yoga, and Ashwini Nakshatra are forming a union. According to Vedic Astrology, after 30 years, these yogas are being formed on Chaitra Navratri.
These auspicious yogas are going to especially favor certain zodiacs and the problems of their lives are going to end and will also get the support of luck in all of their works.
So, come, let’s walk you through the fortunate zodiacs benefitting from the auspicious yoga forming during Chaitra Navratri 2024.
#Aries
The Aries zodiac sign is the first among the zodiacs who are going to get the auspicious results during Chaitra Navratri. The natives will get the special blessings of Maa Durga. You will witness an increase in your comfort and amenities in your life. Apart from this, you will get financial prosperity and there will be no shortage of money. With this, you will be able to easily fulfill yours as well as your family’s needs.
If you were struggling with financial problems so far, you can now expect those problems to be solved. There are chances of progress for employed natives and the natives otherwise will achieve great success in their career. You are highly likely to meet with sudden and unexpected financial gains. Apart from this, your married life will also be good during this period. Love and mutual coordination between the natives and their partners will increase.
#Taurus
Chaitra Navratri 2024 is going to be extremely favorable for Taurus natives. During this period, the natives will get to hear great news from everywhere. Maa Durga will bless you which will help you get success in all your endeavors. You will be successful in all your work and it will also enhance your self-confidence to a great extent. This time is extremely favorable for employed natives as they will touch new heights in their careers and if any of the natives is expecting a promotion or an increment then this wish will come true now. On the other hand, the self-employed natives will also make good profits in their business during this period.
#Cancer
The Cancer natives are going to get the extreme support of their luck during Chaitra Navratri 2024. Whatever they were waiting for to happen for a long time, will turn into a reality now. The work that has been stuck or pending for a long will now get accomplished, and your financial condition will also get better. New income sources will be generated and new opportunities will await the employed natives and they will be satisfied with them. The unemployed natives will now get new and advanced job opportunities. Also, there are strong chances of financial gains. Apart from all of these, societal respect and honor will be increased.
https://lotusocean.bandcamp.com/album/prathami-spring-navratri
1.
The Beginning - Sacred Drum Initiation 05:25
2.
Sunset Ritual 01:31
3.
Phorce Dance at Dusk 09:45
4.
rePrise 04:44
5.
Into The Sacred Night 01:11
6.
For Devi Shailputri (The Sweetness of Divine) 07:30
7.
The Rising Phorce 05:35
8.
First Night Of The #Goddess 03:53
9.
Charge Transmissions 05:55
PraThami #Spring #Navratri, by #LotusOcean
#Happy #Navratri - #Goddess is #Mahagauri.
As the nine nights represent the nine planets, we will be focussing on Navaratri and the nine planets with an account of one or another the planets for nine nights. For the eighth night of Navaratri, we will take the planet #Rahu. The colour for the Eighth day of Navaratri (Ashtami) is purple, so we scribe in #PURPLE for this eighth day observance of Navaratri. The Goddess is Mahagauri.
Today is the eighth day ( #Ashtami) of the Navaratri celebrations which are held for nine nights. All festivals are meant to remind mankind that they should cultivate noble qualities by engaging themselves in activities beneficial to one’s own self and society. Sai Baba made this reference to Navaratri and the Nine Planets:
As part of Navaratri celebrations, people worship different forms of divinity. You should develop sacred feelings and experience divinity. What is the inner meaning of Navaratri celebrations? These nine nights represent nine planets. Each planet has its own significance. However, these planets are not outside, they are within. If your feelings are impure and unsacred, the result also will be the same. You are responsible for the good and bad you think and experience.
Rahu
Rahu is a shadow planet that interrupts the delivery of light to and from the mind, the body, the spirit – as shadows block luminosity, light. The Moon (presiding deity of the mind) is one of the two natural luminaries, the other being the Sun. In Vedic myth, Rahu was formed when the cunning demon Swarbhanu attempted to obtain the nectar of immortality and was beheaded for his efforts. The head is called Rahu, the headless body is called #Ketu. The head is forever seeking, desiring wholeness and this explains to us how Rahu is significator of desire, and fraud; Rahu fraudulently sat among the gods to receive the nectar and his deception was exposed by Sun and Moon. Hence the eternal animosity of Rahu to #Sun (causes #eclipses) and #Moon (bedims Moon).
At a glance, Rahu is called the North Node, is exalted in GEMINI #ARDRA , co-lord of Aquarius (with Saturn) and has digbala (directional strength) in the 10th house. Rahu magnifies the effect of its Lord, and that of any planet it is conjunct. Rahu is of vata (airy) nature and rules the astral and possessions. Medically, Rahu is giver of incurable chronic diseases, snake bite, difficulties in breathing, chronic illness and mental illness.
Rahu signifies worldly desires, foreign lands, use of drugs and alcohol, separation, harsh and grating speech, insanity, fear and adversity, and the status of Rahu is out-caste. Rahu is said to be self-seeking, a deceiver, manipulator, ambitious and generally dissatisfied with life. There is always more, and Rahu, chalakaraka, (giver of fraud) will obtain more by any means possible. Rahu is always dissatisfied and seeks validation, higher status and office. Rahu – by fair or foul means – will take possession of any instrument that will empower the ego. Position, pride, greatness. In these affairs, Rahu cannot control himself. With Rahu, Station in life is nearly always improperly obtained and cannot be sustained as fraud is usually exposed soon after.
We began saying Rahu signifies desires. In fact, due seeking of desires, Rahu is the one planet that is said to cause reincarnation, which happens when desires remain unfulfilled. Desires are due discontent, seduction (of the mind) and mental delusion. There are the haves and have-nots in this world, and Rahu – who wants what he sees – goes around the rules, disregards boundaries and is always hungry for more. Rahu always surges with desire for the next thing, unhappy with anything that has been obtained. Think of cars on the highways and byways that have to overtake you and are disconsolate to stay on the speed limit and follow the laws of the road – unhappy at any speed – and you get an idea of Rahu.
Goddess Mahagauri
The name Mahagauri means extremely white, as she was white in colour and very beautiful (Mahā=great; Gaurī=white). Mahagauri is usually depicted with four hands, the hands holding a trident, lotus and drum, while the fourth is in a blessing gesture. The lotus is sometimes replaced with a rosary. She rides a white bull, usually shown wearing white clothes.
It is believed that the 16 year old unmarried Goddess Parvati wanted to marry Lord Shiva and, as such, did rigorous penance (tapasya) for a very long time to please him. Because of this, she ended up facing a lot of hardships and her complexion turned dark with dust, heat and starvation. Lord #Shiva, however, was pleased with her penance and agreed to marry her. Using the Ganges water flowing out of his matted hair, he washed her clean. Consequently, her white clothes and fair complexion started glowing radiantly again. Since then, she is known as Mahagauri.
#Mother #Gauri is #Devi, #Shakti or the Mother Goddess, who appears in many forms, such as #Durga, #Parvati, #Kali and others. She is auspicious, brilliant and protects the good people while punishing those who perform evil deeds. Mother Gauri enlightens the spiritual seeker and removes the fear of rebirth by granting salvation.
Significance of Navaratri
“Men are prone to exhibit rajasic (active, excitable) qualities like anger and hatred. They are menacing manifestations of Durga. The extolling of the Divine in song and poetry and the pleasing vibrations produced by them indicate the power of Saraswati. The pure qualities that arise in man such as compassion, love, forbearance and sympathy are derived from Lakshmi. When people worship Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati externally in pictures or icons, they are giving physical forms to the subtle potencies that are within them. The unfortunate predicament of man today is that he is not recognising the powers within him and developing respect for them. He goes after the external, attracted by the physical forms. The relationship between the material and the subtle has to be understood.” Sai Baba, SS, 11/94, p. 284
#Happy #Navratri Day 4 – #Mercury
As the nine nights represent the nine planets, we will be having a planetary observance of Navaratri with an account of one of the planets for each of the nine nights. The fourth day of Navaratri is marked to #worship #Goddess #Kushmanda. The Fourth planet is Mercury. It is said that one should wear royal blue on this day, as it is considered good for health and wealth. Our colour for this day is #Royal-Blue!
Today is the fourth day of the Navaratri celebrations which are held for nine nights. All festivals are meant to remind mankind that they should cultivate noble qualities by engaging themselves in activities beneficial to one’s own self and society. Sai Baba has told that Navaratri, the nine nights, represents the Nine Planets.
In Hindu mythology, Navaratri celebrates the victory of Goddess Durga over Mahishasura, the buffalo-headed demon. She fought for nine days and nine nights before emerging victorious on the tenth day. Goddess Shakti in the nine forms is worshipped during the period for knowledge, wealth, prosperity and auspiciousness. Knowingly or unknowingly during this period we also recognise the primordial source of energy (Shakti), which manifests in all living and nonliving.
Sai Baba went on to say that each planet has its own significance. However, these planets are not outside, they are #within. So we take the opportunity to examine the energies of the planets within, and examine how the #Divine #Mother is related to these energies.
Mercury
Mercury is also known in #VedicAstrology as #Budha, the awakened discriminating #intellect – the part of us that knows. Mercury owns two signs, Gemini and Virgo. Mercury is exalted in Virgo at 15 degrees, and debilitated in the opposite sign, Pisces. Where the Moon is the innocent mind, Mercury is the intellect that discriminates between benefic and malefic ideas, or good and evil. Mercury is adept at dealing with duality.
Mercury does not have a distinctive personality of its own; it takes on features of the planets which are associated with it. Mercury, planet of communication, articulates and expresses whatever influence it receives from other planets. For this reason, brilliance of expression, adjustment and flexibility are common traits of Mercury. Mercury traditionally has the function of Messenger of the Gods; Mercury functions to take messages from Gods to Man and from Man to the Gods.
Mercury develops intellect. Taking duality, it enables the subjectivity of an idea to be objectified, and helps to understand the inner reality of external phenomenon. A favourable disposition of Mercury renders perceptive, clever persons who are good debaters, who can argue either side of a question and thus, we can often find that Mercury is strong in the chart of lawyers. Mercury is intellectual and careful with details.
Day Four
Goddess Kushmanda
Kusmanda – She Who brings #happiness
Kushmanda is a Hindu goddess, credited with creating the world with her divine #smile. Legend has it that Lord Vishnu was able to begin the creation of universe, when Goddess Kushmanda smiled and receded. She represents that form of Durga which is the source of all. Her name signals her main role: Ku means “a little”, Ushma means “warmth” or “energy” and Anda means “cosmic egg”.
Kushmanda is worshipped on the fourth day of the festival of Navaratri and She is believed to improve health and bestow wealth and strength. Goddess Kushmanda has eight hands and because of that She is also known as Ashtabhuja Devi. It is believed that all the power to bestow Siddhis and Niddhis are located in her japamala (rosary beads).
Legend has it that Goddess Durga gives birth to the universe in the form of Goddess Kushmanda. She is also sometimes depicted as pregnant with the Brahmand or universe. It is believed that the eternal darkness ended when she smiled. And this led to the beginning of creation. This form symbolises that Shakti is the primordial source.
Mercury and the Feminine
Vedanga – Jyotish ( #astrology texts) – tell us that Mercury is hermaphrodite, meaning s/he is bearing signification of both genders. It is more appropriate to say that Mercury is androgynous, neither male nor female. Androgyny is also known in this day and age as intersex.
Just as the Creation narrative has Kushmanda and Vishnu at the cause of Creation, so also we see the emergent glance of the androgynous Mercury, encapsulating this act of creation with the dual genders.
We have clues to the important role and function Mercury has with regard to the mind, the intellect and duality. #Shakti is the prime force behind all dualities and Shakti can be found linking subject and object, in the glance of Mercury. The mind is an energy field of Shakti with neuronal impulses and connections, creating an elaborate web of knowledge and self interest (referring to the autonomic nervous system and instinctive responses of the body.) The mind is a bundle of thoughts bound together by the shakti of memory. Thinking is guided by the intellect – which is called buddhi in Sanskrit. The buddhi is nearest the Soul and derives over 90% of its illumination from the Soul.
Significance of Navaratri
“During these sacred nine days (Navaratri), people go through the sacred texts such as Devi Bhagavatam, Ramayana and Mahabharata. People also worship the deities Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati. Goddess Gayatri is the presiding deity of our senses. Savitri is the presiding deity of speech. All these three are within the same Principle of Truth. Gayatri Mantra begins with ‘Om Bhur Bhuvah Svah’. ‘Bhuh’ means materialization (Body); ‘Bhuvah’ means Vibration (Life Principle); Svaha means Radiation (Atma).
During these nine days, Goddess Shakti (Energy Principle) is worshipped. Truth, righteousness, peace, forgiveness are all expressions of the Principle of Shakti. Truth is the primal cause. There is nothing other than this. All faculties of energy are present in this Truth. So, consider Truth as your mother and follow it. The Vedas proclaim, ‘Satyam Vada; Dharmam Chara‘, which means speak the truth and follow the righteousness. Unfortunately, today people do not follow this. On the contrary they follow Asatya (untruth) and Adharma (unrighteousness)” Sai Baba. SS, 11/98, p. 284
As the nine nights represent the nine planets, we will be focussing on Navaratri and the nine planets with an account of one or another the planets for nine nights. For the third night of Navaratri, we will take the planet #Mars. The third day of Navratri is #Sindoor Tritya. The colour for the third day of Navaratri is #RED, so we scribe in RED for this third day observance of Navaratri. The #Goddess is #Maa #Chandraghanta.
Today is the third day of the Navaratri celebrations which are held for nine nights. All festivals are meant to remind mankind that they should cultivate noble qualities by engaging themselves in activities beneficial to one’s own self and society. Sai Baba made this reference to Navaratri and the Nine Planets:
As part of Navaratri celebrations, people worship different forms of divinity. You should develop #sacred feelings and experience divinity. What is the inner meaning of Navaratri celebrations? These nine nights represent nine planets. Each planet has its own significance. However, these planets are not outside, they are within. If your feelings are impure and unsacred, the result also will be the same. You are responsible for the good and bad you think and experience.
Sindoor Tritiya is observed on the third day of the 9-day Navaratri festival. On this day Maa Chandraghanta is worshipped. This day is of great significance in North India. This is a ritual during Navaratri, which is closely associated with Sindoor – the red powder or #Vermilion – which is an essential part of Hindu ritual and closely associated with Mother Goddess worship.
This day also marks the end of the first three days of Navaratri, especially in South India. The first three days of Navratri are dedicated to Goddess #Durga. The next three days are dedicated to Goddess Lakshmi.
Mars
The Planet Mars is known in #VedicAstrology as #Kuja, the Commander in Chief, son of Bhumi, Mother Earth, (or Bhoomi Devi), and is dispositor or karaka of shakti in the form of energy, will, power and strength. Mars is a planet of strength. The sloka for Mars describes this planetary deity has having the (weapon or instrument) Shakti in his hand. So we may take strength, power, energy and force as signatures of Mars.
So we understand that Mars, with the instrument of Shakti, has power, energy and will. Application of will to physical energy and efforts gives rise to power, concentration and success in the formation of discipline to create human order in human society. Mars, with its command of energy for repetition, practice, drill, gives penetration of mind and intellect to efficient decisions, which create order where disorder and chaos exist.
There are five elements: earth, air, fire, water and ether (space). These represent the different layers of manifestation from the subtle universe to the material, 3 dimensional world. The three gunas (impulses, drives to action or inaction) work through the five elements to form the outer world and sustain the bodies of the individual souls that take birth. There are shaktis of space, air, fire, water and earth within our bodies. Fire, which Mars is a significator of, has the powers to create great heat in furnaces and foundries, to controlled heat in turbines and kitchen stoves, to ripen and to impart colour. It represents electrical energy inherent in space, activated by the air element and gaining luminosity, and thus giving forth the power of light.
Day 3
Goddess Chandraghanta
Chandraghanta is the third form of Goddess Durga. Her name Chandra-Ghanta, means “one who has a half-moon shaped like a bell. Her third eye is always opened and she always ready for war against demons. She is also known as Chandrakhanda, Chandika or Rannchandi. Her worship takes place on the third day of Navaratri. She is believed to reward people with her grace, bravery and courage. By her grace all the sins, distresses, physical sufferings, mental tribulations and ghostly hurdles are eradicated.
Chandraghanta is one who establishes justice and discipline in the world. The color of her body is golden; she rides on the lion that represents dharma (righteousness, right conduct); she possesses ten hands and three eyes; eight of Her hands display weapons while the remaining two are respectively in the mudras of boon giving and stopping harm. Chandraghanta is posed as if to be ready for war. Chandra+Ghanta means supreme bliss and knowledge, showering peace and serenity, like cool breeze in a moonlit night.
Mars and the Feminine
We mentioned earlier that Mars has Shakti as his instrument. The Kuja (Mars) Gayatri speaks of Mars as shakti hastaya dheemahi, that Mars carries the flag of Shakti, which is feminine in nature and represented by Goddess Durga. Mars is the son of Bhoomi Devi, Mother Earth, which also makes Mars vehicle or carrier of the feminine shakti.
Durga is the Goddess of War; Mars is the warrior serving the Goddess. Mars is the General, the warrior in chief. Mars is Bhoomi Putra, Son of Mother Earth. The role of shakti which Mars has – as Son of the Earth Mother – becomes more directed towards transformation. Force, Power and Command may be directed towards understanding, collaboration, devising alternate strategies to negativity, wars and conflicts. This is ParaShakti, the Mother Goddess, in action.
Significance of Navaratri
The term “Devi” thus represents the Divine Power which has taken the Rajasic form to suppress the evil forces and protect the Satvic qualities. When the forces of injustice, immorality and untruth have grown to monstrous proportions and are indulging in a death dance, when selfishness and self-interest are rampant, when men have lost all sense of kindness and compassion, the Atmic principle, assuming the form of Shakti (energy/ power), taking on the Rajasic quality, seeks to destroy the evil elements. This is the inner meaning of the Festival. When the Divine Goddess is in dreadful rage assumes a fearful form, to pacify the dreaded Goddess, her feminine children offer worship to Her with red kumkum (sacred powder). The Goddess seeing the blood-red kumkum at Her feet, feels assured that the wicked have been vanquished and assumes Her benign form. The inner meaning of the worship of “Devi” with red kumkum is that thereby the Goddess is appeased. During the ten days of Navaratri and Dassera the demons in the form of wicked qualities have been routed. Rakshasas (demons) do not mean demonic beings. Arrogance is a demon. Bad thoughts are demons”. (Sai Baba, SS, 11/91, pp. 284 – 285)
#Navratri for the year #2023 starts on Sunday, #October 15th and ends the 9 day festival on Monday, October 23rd.
Navratri is a 9 day festival dedicated to the Hindu deity #Durga which starts on the first day of the Lunar month of Ashwin. In #Sanskrit Navratri broken up mean nine nights.
Days to Navratri 2023
Sunday, October 15th is day number 288 of the 2023 calendar year with 1 month, 2 daysto start the 9 day festival of Navratri 2023.
https://www.calendardate.com/navratri_2023.htm
#Happy #Navratri Day 10
#Dashami
Navratri Parana
31st
March 2023
(Friday)
Chaitra Navratri Parana is performed on the Dashami Tithi of Chaitra Shukla Paksha (bright fortnight of the Hindu month, Chaitra). It is the day when 9-day Chaitra Navratri festival comes to an end.
Though there are contradictory statements in the Shastras to decide if the Parana must be performed on the Navami or Dashami, yet Mimansas (those who have described the Shastras) suggest to perform it on Dashami. They agreed on Dashami Tithi because one can find many texts that suggest keeping fast on Navami.
If Navami Tithi is occurring on 2 days, fast must be kept on the first day and Parana must be performed on the second day of Navami. (It is suggested by the Shastras.)
As it is the last day of Navratri Puja, Bhagwati Durga Visarjan must be performed after Shodashopchar Puja.
After Puja and Visarjan, offer food, gifts, etc. (as per your wish) to the Brahmins. Also, offer these things to the 9 little girls and perform Kanya Pujan.
The Day after NavRatri [the ‘Nine Nights’ of #Goddess #Durga ] is known as Vijaya Dashami / #Dussehra – Victory on the Tenth,the Destruction of Evil.
In many places, the Day is held to commemorate the Victory of Lord Rama over the demon-emperor Ravana. In others, it celebrates the Victory of Durga over Mahishasura. Others still, connect it to the events of the Kurukshetra War of the Mahabarat. The common unifying factor in all of these is, as can be clearly adduced by the name of the occasion, a militant, martially (but also – importantly – piously) attained triumph over the malefic, the a’Rta-ic, the Anaryan.
Now, personally, I tend to fall into the middle camp with my observances. Both due to personal theology and resonance, and because it makes the most sense – to me, anyway – to have this as the effective (post-)culmination of the Nine Nights. Yet with this year’s occasion falling upon a Tuesday (Lord Hanuman’s Day – as well as the day of strong Mangala (Mars)), it is sensible to also have regard for the #Rama relating remembrances, as well.
But those shall not form the focal scope of this piece; which instead seeks to continue the progression of the mythic cycle of Durga as set out through the previous Nine Nights’ worth of commentary – and use this (as well as this lovely devotional (a)art(i) work from Bengal – the original of which is a rather large physical wall sculpture at a Mandir there) as a springboard to talk about the other common feature of Vijayadashami/Dussehra observances, Astra Puja.
I have spoken at some length about both the generalized conceptions of “Dharma-Yuddha”, as well as the more specific struggle against the demon Mahishasur, elsewhere and earlier in the series (in particular, the Katyayani piece, as well as the MahaLaya/Amavasya piece with which we closed Pitru Paksha, to name but two of especial interest); so I shall not seek to repeat much of that material here.
Except to briefly remind readers who may not be so directly familiar with the relevant mythology, that Mahishasur was such a dangerous foe due to a boon he had been granted which rendered him invulnerable to all but a woman – a weakness which he had deliberately chosen (as there had to be some condition to his invincibility, due to the effective nature of Hindu divine legalism in this area), as he has not believed it possible for a female to form much of a martial threat against him.
Which therefore, lead to an escalatingly dire situation for the male members of the Pantheon when They attempted to defend against him … until such point as They invoked the Great Goddess, a most powerful emanation of which – Goddess Durga – took to the field against the demon army, outfitted with panoply of war derived from the customary armaments and iconographic associations of the various (predominantly male) Devas Who had beseeched Her for Aid.
The results of which I have, again, detailed much more expressively elsewhere – but suffice to say, put Mahishasur in a situation wherein his salience upon the battlefield was basically equivalent to “throwing molotovs against Poseidon”. If doing that made Poseidon really, really angry, to the point that Poseidon doesn’t just decapitate the foe, but proceeds to tap-dance vigorously upon the severed head while also continuing to eviscerate the attempting-to-flee spirit of the then-pendingly deceased.
You get the idea.
The core of this element is what’s being depicted in this fine wall-sculpture; with the beautifully enraged Devi Durga, accompanied by Dawon [‘Bravery’ – Her Lion Vahana] lunging at the part-buffalo demonic figure of Mahishasur [likely depicted after he’d … not just figuratively, but literally lost his head – the first one, anyway, with the actual buffalo-ness to it, immediately prior to his extermination via ‘finding himself’ (not via self-realization, but implicit self-destruction through serious arrogance and stupidity) at the [figuratively] wrong end of the Trishula]. The figures around the Combat, are Her Two Sons – Ganesha and Lord Skanda [the martial saliency of Ganesha is often understated – the Gana-Esha, Lord of the Host, epithet is there for a reason; as is the sobriquet around the Remover of Obstacles … via pulverizing and obliterating force, where necessary. Lord Skanda, meanwhile, has a name that rather directly translates as “Assault”, and would perhaps be thought of as our equivalent to Ares]; the two other members of the TriDevi, Lakshimi and Saraswati (Parvati/Durga being the third, as you may have surmised); and looking on from on high, presumably with pride and admiration, Lord Shiva, Moon-Crowned [Chandrasekhara].
Partially, these are standard iconographic accompaniments – especially in the Durga pandalas prominent in Bengal around this time. It is the combination of two of the ‘ordos’ to which Durga is a vital component – the Divine Family of Shiva & Parvati, and the TriDevi that are the Great Goddess(e/’)s Three. Yet it also helps to recall the concept – as considered in far more depth within the ‘Sarva Pitru Amavasya And Devi Mahalaya’ piece with which we presaged NavaRatri this year – that both the manifestation of Durga, and the Victory thusly obtained by the Side of Righteousness against the Anarya, was veer-y much a ‘team effort’, so to speak.
And we shall consider that concept, and how it pertains to exactly why it is that we observe Vijayadashami/Dussehra in just a moment.
Yet before we do, a brief word on two of the relatively more recent symbolic/figurative interpretations of the occasion, derived in no small part in relation to those aforementioned ‘Anaryan’ foes.
The first of these has to be one of the more bizarre spectacles of recent years, and consists of the attempted moves by some minority groups within India to protest against, even to outright block and seek to oppose through legal challenges, the celebration of Durga’s victory over Mahishasur. The reason that they do this, is because they have taken to considering Mahishasura something of a kinsman to them, potentially even an ancestor – and therefore hold that the occasion is, in effect, the glorification of an unmitigated massacre of their forebears by “invading” Indo-Europeans and our War Goddess.
To which I can only retort, that while the Narasimhan et al dna study on ‘The Genomic Foundation Of South And Central Asia’ has yet to conclusively identify a “Demon” haplogroup running around out there in the wild, even if there were somehow a shred of truth to the claims … a) the scriptural materials are quite clear as to just who it was who was seeking to make war upon the heavens, and “indecent propositions” to the Goddess; b) a moment’s consideration will reveal that the appropriate action to undertake, when you find yourself having descended from the monstrosity literally opposing The Goddess at the Heart of the Universe Herself – is a foreswearing of his legacy, a running away from it as fast as possible, and an attempt to live piously and against the grain of his example; not seeking to re-litigate a decisively settled battlefield outcome from an existential war of who knows how long ago, through a series of scattered and basically unsuccessful court actions.
But, then, I’m biased, aren’t I. As, in fact, is the Universe .. Herself.
Anyway, the other somewhat more recent set of developments around the deific and mythoreligious complex in question, concerns the rather more immediate threats posed by historic Islamic invasion, and subsequent British imperial dominion. The latter of which, as we explored in the BHARAT MATA AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN DEIFIC OF NATIONAL IDENTITY, played its part in a bit of a ‘modernizing’ of Devi to more directly link to the emergent Indian ‘national identity’ and nationalist cause of the time [hence Bharat Mata – Mother India; which, to be clear, was an ‘evolution’ veer-y much building upon enduring foundations that were already there, and which had already been ‘developed’ in these directions multiple times, as needed, over the preceding millennia and across the Indo-European-isphere elsewhere in other contexts]; while the former saw the Muslims correlated with Mahishasur, for reasons that ought be obvious.
In both cases, the message was elegant in its complex simplicity: the Nation, as with the Victory, as with the Goddess – is the result of the many, working and pooling together, just as the Gods did when invoking Devi to send/become Durga in Their Midst.
The external threat, the external foe, which could not easily be countered (especially in terms of its cultural impacts and attempted erasure) nor meaningfully subdued through the grand force of the conventional arms of individual soldiers alone (although ShivaJi of the Marathas certainly bucked the trend somewhat on this one – equipped, it must be noted, with the fabled Bhavani Tulwar … the Sword of the Goddess, Herself, given unto him in a manner similar to Excalibur to King Arthur, as a sure sign of Her Divine Favour and his destined re-establishment of Hindu Rashtra [‘Nation’] by fighting back against the Mughals et co.), could be beaten via enduring Piety; via ‘national consciousness’ as a political force (and both this and Heritage as a collective memory); and via the Divine Blessing as seen and secured through the onrolling, unfurling folds of Time. [As a certain Spanish ruler is once said to have remarked – “Time and I, against any other two”. Not for nothing, either, is Kali [‘Time’, amidst other translations .. such as “Death”, “Black[ness]”, “Iron”, etc.], in Hindu terms, reckoned the most fearsome and formidable of foes for the would-be doer of malefic ills]
So how does this relate to the custom of Astra Puja, then, which also occurs upon this day?
Well, at its most obvious, the honouring of weapons [and, to be sure, other implements of one’s societal role and function, too] is the exaltation of the implements, the instruments through which this Victory is attained. And it is an appropriately broad assortment, for an appropriately broad Success. Hence why a journalist may honour his pen, his keyboard, for instance; or an artist, his brushes and easel. And note especially well, for that matter, that Devi also wields amidst Her panoply, a flame with an animal-head therein, to represent Piety, Faith, Sacrifice/Offering/Oblation and Nourishment. Because these are the tools via which the community is protected, exalted, served. And, of course, not forgetting the actual and rather literal weapons also ritually blessed upon this day.
Or, for that matter, that Speech, and all that is entailed and comes with it [learning, communication, thinking, knowledge, conceptry, understanding, shouting roar of divine fury], is the grandest, most mighty weapon of all – and yes, yes we do have the relevant theology to support this statement. Including one of my more fondly recalled instances from the RigVeda in which Brihaspati conjures an orbital bombardment of a demon-dragon via the recitation of a portion of a prayer in the Divine Speech which summons a meteor impact. But again, I digress. Somewhat, anyway – the point is, we exalt this Great Weapon via engagement in the Heritage which is transmitted thence-through, and the utilization, the learning, the uptake, the repetition, and the re-radiance back out again of its forms, role and function.
And this, especially that notion of re-radiance, but also of Speech (Vak), brings us right back to Devi, to Durga, to Parvati, to Shakti.
The course of the NavaDurga Processional, up through the Nine Nights which have preceded this day, is one of Ascension. It begins with Devi as ShailaPutri, newly re-emergent into the World after Sacrifice and Suffering, then arcens back up to the point at which She is once again the glorious World Pillar, the Absolute, the Supreme. This post-ultimate phase is not simply a ‘re-descent’ via emanation, wherein Devi ‘steps back down’ from Her Cosmic (Lion) Throne again … but rather, a tacit and tangible radiating back out of Her Blessings thencefrom, across and into the universal-world. Which, if you recall, is veer-y much the idea contained within the last lines of the justly famed DeviSukta of the RigVeda [RV X. 125. 7-8 , in particular].
To be found also within that same hymnal, of course, are the clear points around both the strong support and empowerment of Rudra especially through His Weapon to make (Holy) war against the enemy of piety; and Devi’s own declaration of Her involvement in such a conflict – both personally, and in terms of rallying and ordering Her (chosen) People in amidst and to the Cause [RigVeda X. 125. 6]; in a suzerainty that is, quite literally, “all-pervading”, from the Summit of the World, down through the worlds, and thence back up again once more to Heaven’s Highest Height.
So on one level, the customs around Astra Puja could be seen as a phenomenon of that wonderful Eliadian concept – the Eternal Return. And they would, of course, be both right and rite. Beyond that particular Vedic verse (which, it must be remembered, also has a rather specific application, as explored in some of the previous commentaries in this series), there are any number of other instances of Astra related rituals to be found within Hindu scripture and broader mythology, after all – including, most prominently, the ’empowerment’ of various arrows and other such weapons to form, as I have occasionally (only somewhat jokingly) termed them, “Ancient Aryan Nuclear Weapons”; as well as, for that matter, the processes via which an aspirant becomes an acknowledged master with his chosen craft of death, and is therefore given a suitably mighty weapon of lore and legend as a result, a symbolic attainment of his greatness as secured through his instrument of will, and to be his instrument of the inscribing of that will across the cosmos in blood and death cracked armour and shards of bone.
And, in a related sense, once we properly and truly perceive the chosen champions of the Goddess as also being Her Weapons – then the notion that we support and empower them in a manner perhaps somewhat symbolically resonant of how the Gods Themselves once did likewise for Her, in Their hour of need, attains additional significance within this spanning sphere of referential perception. As we know from our prior studies in the fields of Myth and Metaphysics, and Meta(physical)Narrativistics quite specifically, the greater the ‘resonancy’ with the greater the ‘concept’, the greater the consequent, contingent, and consecrated the results.
But in the main, I think, and we shall rather rapidly draw things to a close here, so that I may, perhaps (just perhaps) get some sleep before Mandir myself later today … the co-occurrence of Astra Puja and the veneration of MahishasuraMardini [‘Destroyer of the Buffalo[headed Demon’ – a theonym of the Goddess which is directly that of Her role and victory against the aforementioned adversary, Mahishasur] is because they are actually the same phenomenon.
That is to say, Durga, as MahishasuraMardini in particular, is the Weapon of the Gods. The Ultima Ratio Rta’m, so to speak. Against Whom, None can Stand.
She is Called into being for a particular purpose, and ‘wielded’ if you like – on one level, by the combined Pantheon at large Who have invoked Her .. on the greater, truer level, by Herself, especially as Devi (Shakti); and in this age of “Smart Bombs”, and Dumb Politicians, the Weapon which Knows Itself, and is in complete Self Control, is the most formidable prospect, indeed!
The Process of Worship via which She was Called Out To, the Missile Armed [‘Missile’, as in ‘Astra’, which I have quite enjoyed as a word due to its multi-linguistic pun potential with, for instance, “Star” in Latin; although I have also had some resonant success with शस्त्र and शास्त्र – that is to say, weapon/instrument and treatise/field of learning, respectively … except that शस्त्र itself also means “invocation”, “recitation”, as of prayer, thus demonstrating just how coterminous the terms actually are, especially ‘in practice’/actuality/actualization] in multiple senses of the term, some of them rather modern … well, it is exactly that. Astra-Puja. Devi Puja. The continuation of Astral Warfare by any other means.
All things considered, it puts one in the mind of the words of Leonard Cohen –
“I’m guided, by a signal in the Heavens
I’m guided, by this birthmark on my skin
I’m guided, by the beauty of weapons…”
And, of course, to situate things further within the context of Devi – the meaning entailed in the name and form of the Sudarshana Chakra. सुदर्शन, itself, referring to a beatific vision – theophany, perhaps [Darshana], that is radiant .. and, in a weaponized context, radiant in its destruction [ सुदर्शना , with the longer “a” sound upon the end, refers more specifically to a “Beautiful Woman” … other than in application to Devi (Who is Indescribably so), I shall not venture to speculate how that may have eventuated]; while “Chakra”, on one level would refer to the destructive discus-like weapon often associated with Vishnu, on another level, to the Wheel of Time (a truly fearsome weapon, indeed), and potentially also to the circle, the cycle of the universe at large – which is appropriate, considering the Vedic-era symbolism of the Worlds as akin to a chariot-wheel radiating out from the central Axis Mundi; and which therefore underpins part of the Universal Sovereignty concept inherent in “Chakravartin”, as well – She Who ordains the motion of the Wheel that is the World about Her as Its Single Point. [“Guided by The Beauty of our Weapons”, indeed]
But my point is, again, quite a simple one – just as Durga-Parvati, through the Processional of the preceding Nine Nights, had attained once more the World-Axis, the Pleni-Potentiary Situation upon and in-deed As the Summit of the Universe Entire; so, too, does this awesome power thence entail action, an active stewardship and custodian-charge [‘Shakti’ again, in a different sense of ‘power’ … also that Vajra-as-Lightning-Bolt we can see picked out in Gold, there [Which can correlate, interestingly enough, with Vak in certain Vedic contexts, as well]; just as the Trishula, Itself, is the World-Axis, and therefore Her Also. You see? She is the Divine, the Ultimate Weapon, all the way both down and up, still further!].
A “Radiating” out across the Worlds from that Summit [whether as Light, whether as Empowerment(s), or Impartments [e.g. Siddhis], whether as Indirect Efforts through subtle or delicate manipulations, whether as direct issuing of Orders, Edicts, and Directions, or indeed, whether as all that is entailed in the “strong breath like the [somewhat Akashic – Vata] wind and tempest” [RV. X. 125. 8] with accompanying Flight of Arrows, Birds, or Thunderbolts] , and the consequent ‘weaponization’ of that Radiance as a wave-form of Deva-station, Whose ultimate motion is that of one unstoppable, spinning, Dance.
On this day, as we have had ever in our minds for the preceding Nine Nights, we carry out the ultimate Astra Puja. The Request to serve The Gods as Astra; and the Honouring of The Gods for Their Mighty Role Supporting the Ultimate Astra Herself, just as we support Them in Turn.
We Remember the heroic actions of God and Man (a consistent theme with the ‘Sarva Pitru Amavasya And Devi Mahalaya’ which immediately presaged the Nine Nights, also); We Recollect the sparks of inspiration from Heritage and from History to be found even amidst the brighter lustre of Day; We Retrench ourselves, in preparation for the next phase of the oncoming Dharma-Yuddha;
And – above all – We Remember, and thence Re-Immanentize, Why we need It, and why It Needs us.
जय माता दी ॥
जय जय हे महिषासुरमर्दिनि रम्यकपर्दिनि शैलसुते ॥
“We are the Mail about HER Fist…”
https://aryaakasha.com/2019/10/08/the-tenth-day-the-death-of-the-demon-dussehra-vijayadashami/
#Happy #Navratri Day 9
Navami
#Maa #Siddhidatri Puja
Ram Navami
30th
March 2023
(Thursday)
Navratri 9: #Peacock #green
Day 9 is the last day of the Navratri festival. The day is called Navami. #Goddess Siddhidatri is worshipped on this day. Peacock green is the colour of this day. It is believed that one side of Lord Shiva's body is that of Goddess Siddhidatri. Therefore, he is known by the name of #Ardhanarishwar. As per the scriptures, Lord #Shiva attained all the siddhis by worshipping this Goddess.
Siddhidatri Mata is worshipped on the ninth day of Navratri. Her names means: Siddhi - spiritual power & ‘Datri’ - the giver. The goddess is known for removing ignorance and giving knowledge to realize the eternal power, which is running the entire cosmos.
About Siddhidatri
Maa Siddhidatri is seated on the lotus and rides a lion. She has four arms, where one right arm holds the Gada (mace), other one holds the Chakra (discus weapon), one left arm holds lotus, and the other one holds Shankh (conch). She is the Goddess who holds all the Siddhis.
Legend
Lord Shiva worshipped Goddess Siddhidatri to attain all the Siddhis. She made him perfect by giving all what she had and became one with him. Lord Shiva’s half body turned into Goddess Siddhidatri. Since then, he got the name Ardhnarishwara.
Astrological Aspect
Planet Ketu is ruled by the Siddhidatri Maa. Hence, all the ill effects of Ketu can be pacified by worshipping her.
Mantras
ॐ देवी सिद्धिदात्र्यै नमः॥
Prarthana Mantra:
सिद्ध गन्धर्व यक्षाद्यैरसुरैरमरैरपि।
सेव्यमाना सदा भूयात् सिद्धिदा सिद्धिदायिनी॥
Stuti:
या देवी सर्वभूतेषु माँ सिद्धिदात्री रूपेण संस्थिता।
नमस्तस्यै नमस्तस्यै नमस्तस्यै नमो नमः॥
Dhyana Mantra:
वन्दे वाञ्छित मनोरथार्थ चन्द्रार्धकृतशेखराम्।
कमलस्थिताम् चतुर्भुजा सिद्धीदात्री यशस्विनीम्॥
स्वर्णवर्णा निर्वाणचक्र स्थिताम् नवम् दुर्गा त्रिनेत्राम्।
शङ्ख, चक्र, गदा, पद्मधरां सिद्धीदात्री भजेम्॥
पटाम्बर परिधानां मृदुहास्या नानालङ्कार भूषिताम्।
मञ्जीर, हार, केयूर, किङ्किणि रत्नकुण्डल मण्डिताम्॥
प्रफुल्ल वन्दना पल्लवाधरां कान्त कपोला पीन पयोधराम्।
कमनीयां लावण्यां श्रीणकटिं निम्ननाभि नितम्बनीम्॥
Stotra:
कञ्चनाभा शङ्खचक्रगदापद्मधरा मुकुटोज्वलो।
स्मेरमुखी शिवपत्नी सिद्धिदात्री नमोऽस्तुते॥
पटाम्बर परिधानां नानालङ्कार भूषिताम्।
नलिस्थिताम् नलनार्क्षी सिद्धीदात्री नमोऽस्तुते॥
परमानन्दमयी देवी परब्रह्म परमात्मा।
परमशक्ति, परमभक्ति, सिद्धिदात्री नमोऽस्तुते॥
विश्वकर्ती, विश्वभर्ती, विश्वहर्ती, विश्वप्रीता।
विश्व वार्चिता, विश्वातीता सिद्धिदात्री नमोऽस्तुते॥
भुक्तिमुक्तिकारिणी भक्तकष्टनिवारिणी।
भवसागर तारिणी सिद्धिदात्री नमोऽस्तुते॥
धर्मार्थकाम प्रदायिनी महामोह विनाशिनीं।
मोक्षदायिनी सिद्धीदायिनी सिद्धिदात्री नमोऽस्तुते॥
Kavacha Mantra:
ॐकारः पातु शीर्षो माँ, ऐं बीजम् माँ हृदयो।
हीं बीजम् सदापातु नभो गृहो च पादयो॥
ललाट कर्णो श्रीं बीजम् पातु क्लीं बीजम् माँ नेत्रम् घ्राणो।
कपोल चिबुको हसौ पातु जगत्प्रसूत्यै माँ सर्ववदनो॥
Make the best of Navratri’s ninth day and get blessed by Siddhidatri Durga.
Happy Navratri!
dedicated to Ma as SiddhiDhatri – often rendered in translation as the ‘Bestower of Boons’, or words to that effect. And yet, while this is indeed a reasonable direct translation of SiddhiDhatri (‘Siddhi’ having amongst its meanings a ‘Boon’, often in the sense of a Gods-bestowed supernatural power; while “Dhatri” shares a root with English terms like “Dative” and “Donation” – the ambit of which should be immediately apparent), it loses so much as to be arguably significantly distortionary to the actual role, portfolio and characterization of the Goddess in this Aspect as to make leaving the theonym untranslated almost more preferable.
But where would be the ‘challenge’ in that.
Confused? Allow me to explain. There is a prevailing theme in really bad mythtaken theological wishful thinking of construing the Gods (or, indeed, the singular God of the Abrahamic approach) as, to quote a certain tv show, something akin to a fast-food drive-thru menu: that is to say, you place your order, and the asked-for bounty is thus presented to you. This, as many a pious-in-the-face-of-adversity-or-ineffability Devotee will tell you, is not how religion actually works.
Indeed, while there is a justifiable strand of something which might vaguely look like such a thing to be found in both the ancient Vedas, and other comparable Indo-European traditions – in the form of Bhaga, or the ‘Treasure-Friend’ (again, to use a figurative translation rendering, in this case from Germanic languages), or I suppose the concept of ‘patronage’ more generally (which in its older sense where political corruption or whatnot is not implied, requires a Patron, dispensing influence and material support to his people, as part of a reciprocal arrangement of loyalty on upwards and heading back ‘down’ again) … these are not to be compared to some kind of materialistic (even as it functions on a metaphysical nominal basis) “exchange” of putting in the coinage of declared acts of notional piety and expecting the Vending Machine of the Gods to ‘pony up’ with the return ‘favour’.
That is, at its worst, a cynical and manipulative attempt at a consumerist – worse, a capitalist – “interaction”. Value (in the true sense) and passion-free.
Whereas these other examples I have enumerated, are contingent upon something else. An actual bond, a tie of loyalty, of faithfulness, of piety, and often – not at all insignificantly – of parentage. The comparison of these latter forms to the abhorrent one earlier enumerated, as if to make out that they are the same thing, can only be made by those who have not managed to appreciate the fundamental differences of kind rather than mere degree which exist between them. But, then, in an age wherein one’s nine-to-five-in-the-morning middle-management ’employer’ presumably likes to conduct themselves in what they think is a manner befitting a feudal lord (but in actuality is much more closely aligned to the concept of an ancient slave-driver sans the mandatory breaks) … it should be entirely unsurprising then, that we so frequently confuse this with the actual conduct of a liege – a chieftain, a warrior-king, a Lord, with all the noblesse oblige … and/or (depending upon particular cultural inflexion and one’s role in the resultant society) the more equitable distribution of the proceeds of a raid and the mutual sharing of the shouldering of responsibility and active contribution that goes with.
So why am I mentioning all of this in the context of an article on Ma as SiddhiDhatri, and more especially having just connoted the difficulties in translation conveying the meaning of Her theonym when it is far too simplistically rendered ‘Bestower of Boons’?
Probably only partially for the reason you are no doubt thinking.
For yes, it is true that the role and presentation of Ma as SiddhiDhatri is very much more closely aligned with this far more archaic approach to the concept of both a Boon and its Bestowment. And I am obliquely concerned that the simple ‘direct’ approach of translation utterly loses this sense of nuance – these shades of meaning – for the fact that it is being presented to a fundamentally ‘Modern’ audience … with all the unique cadaverization of context and consciousness still less conscience which that entails.
But we’ve got to go DEEPER!
Deepa, too, but that is something we’ll no doubt get to on Diwali 😀
As we shall soon see, it is not at all coincidental that Ma as SiddhiDhatri stands at the end of the NavaDurga processional throughout the course of the Nine Nights. Indeed, stands as one of the array of NavaDurgas Whom we might feasibly say is emblematic of Adi Shakti Herself. But before we get to that … let us indulge in a little definitional presentation!
As remarked capaciously upon above, both Siddhi and Dhatri have a quite a number of meanings – especially once the shifting shades of intonation inherent in Sanskrit ‘puns’ and intentionally connoted double-meanings are taken into account!
Siddhi can indeed very much mean a ‘supernatural power’, but that is not all. It can also mean a completed work of art or artifice (intriguingly – including ‘cooking’, which rather aptly gets across the idea in the sense that ‘a work of art’ (not so much Aarti) perhaps does not with such immediacy), a quality of excellence or efficiency/efficacy, the ‘resolution to a quandary, that emphasis upon ‘completion’, and ‘perfection’ or ‘perfectability’, as well as the idea of ‘liberation’ – especially in its final sense, so to speak. An ‘undertaking’, a ‘fulfilment’, an ‘enlightenment’ – and yes, also, a ‘payment’, a ‘bestowal’, a “boon”. Getting the ‘picture’ yet?
Dhatri, meanwhile, has three (or, three and a half, depending upon how one chooses to count them) stems of meaning. The first and most direct,दातृ , is the one we have already encountered – that of a giver, a gifter, a bestower, a donor (this is a cognate term), and interestingly, in particular, one who ‘gives away’ a female relative for marriage.
The second,धातृ , which is technically speaking something of a homophone due to a slight change of pronunciation on the first syllable, stands for a ‘creator’ – and as one might presume, acquires some relevancy especially with regard to the ‘cosmokrator’ position within the Pantheon. While some might seek to therefore affix it to Brahma, I would once again reiterate what was said about the mid-point in the NavaRatri cycle pertaining to MA as the Hiranyagarbha. How this, too, fits into both the “SiddhiDhatri” rubric I am sketching out, as well as the overarching NavaDurga Mythic Cycle, we shall return to in a moment.
The third, meanwhile, is धात्री, which is once again a slightly differently pronounced homophone – and which has, most interestingly, a meaning-field which includes the notion of both a Mother and the Earth (most appropriate, given Ma as ‘Earth Mother’ in a number of guises – including, as our previous works have discussed, Parvati most directly, and obviously also Prithvi Ma, and a number of others besides!) ; however, the term also encompasses in its ambit of meaning, somewhat ‘surrogate’ Mother figures – ‘Foster-‘ or ‘Adoptive-‘ Mothers, wet-nurses, and even midwives fall under this ambit. Although that last one (indeed, the last two) in particular is of a subtly different shade of meaning which shall be discussed additionally.
Now, those among ye with a certain ‘appreciation’ for the ability to think ‘sideways’ – in the ‘adjacent’, so to speak, when it comes to language and theological conceptry, will already have grasped the general implication of what I am getting at here. Yet we must make it explicit! Somewhat, at least, insofar as such a thing is possible.
ALL of the above and aforementioned meanings for these two particles – both the direct ones which are to be found without further seeking within the terms themselves, as well as the different-yet-clearly-and-evidently-related meanings of the subtly different pronunciations of Dhatri, etc. – all of these are very much deliberately meant within the name SiddhiDhatri.
SIMULTANEOUSLY!
And you thought that the rather ‘broad’ seeming meaning-field of “Kali” was potentially ‘complex’ 😛
The reader can, of course, amuse and/or enlighten themselves by putting back together various English translations from the elements contained within the above paragraph. I shall not enlengthen this piece tooooooooo much by doing so in any great detail myself.
But it is very important to consider a few of the basic ‘mythemes’ going on here, nevertheless.
For “SiddhiDhatri” is clearly not ‘just’ the Bestower of Boons. But also the bestower of Perfection – the bequeather of Liberation, in the sense that such is available to the ‘perfected soul’ … and if you cast your mind back to that analogy of cooking I proffered earlier … it may seem a strange thing to constitute the process of Sanskara, of reincarnation and progressive building upon previous lives lead, as something perhaps akin to “cooking the soul”; and yet, “stick him back in – he ain’t done yet!” does have a certain ‘flavour’ that is rather useful in getting across the idea here.
The Soul as (potentially speaking, at least – and guess what the fulfillment of that potential would be rendered as in Sanskrit 😛 ) a Work of Art … “Self-Cultivation” as the Divinely Supported – indeed: mandated, ordinated, ordained – Project for the Ages, is quite something to think about!
Not least because, when you look back over the course of the NavRatri Processional of the NavaDurgas in Their Mythic Cycle, we see that this is exactly what has been taking place over the span of same. From Ma as Shailaputri (or even preceding this as Sati, come to think of it) – through to Ma as SiddhiDhatri [that is to say, the nascent and neophyte, somewhat, Daughter of the Mountain, through to the Mother of the Earth – a ‘beginning’ to a ‘fulfilment’, a ‘seeker’, to the ‘Truth’, and a ‘rebirthed ember-emanation’ [in multiple senses of the evocative nature of this term – consider just what it was that lead to Lady Sati dying-then-reincarnating … as Princess Parvati as Lady ShailaPutri] right back through Transcending Inferno (recall my commentaries on .. a number of Devi Forms in the course of these Nine Nights, come to think of it) eventually ultimately up to Adi ParaShakti Indeed!
Gaining powers, experience, enlightenment, and the ‘pressurization’ which forms those self-same (so to speak) ‘ashes’ , the ‘carbon’ from which all life [and much in the way of ‘structures’ and ‘civilization’ – and, for that matter, many wildernesses and forest terrain in particular!] we ken is ultimately made , as well as the impressions of so much art and illustration and literature upon the ‘page’ or the ‘cave wall’ or the ‘forehead [in the case of Vibhuti markings] … via which this ‘carbon’ bourne of ashes … is ultimately rendered – ‘transfigured’ [and here I am perhaps emulating a Christian theological term] – indeed into the Diamond .. the ‘perfect form’, the ultimate hardness, the ultimate cutting, the ultimate self-refracting and self-reflecting lattice-work that is therefore ‘complete in and of itself’ … and, not at all coincidentally, one of the mighty translations of “Vajra” – hence and whence the “Vajra” of “Vajrayana” and such in Buddhist post-Vedic developments upon the Term; and why it is an ultimate weapon, and invincibile, indestructible armour [c.f one of the meanings behind the Theonym of Bajrang Bali – Lord Hanuman .. not simply ‘wielder of the Thunder Club’, but The Invincible!] – the ‘flawless soul’, the ‘flawless being’, against whom None in existence can ultimately stand!
All of this is – ultimately, in both senses – the Perfection of the Being, the Essence, the Elements & Energies (indeed, the Universe), the Soul.
Whether you choose to take the ‘growing bonsai mountains’ (a Terry Pratchett reference there, to the rather excellent ‘Thief of Time’) view, of the soul, and one’s life (lived throughout, perhaps paradoxically, many lifetimes), as being ‘self-cultivation’ in the manner that one might attempt to grow and shape a garden (or that aforementioned bonsai mountain) over the span of many years into the shape one finds most pleasing …. or whether you take a rather more ‘removed’ view, which instead chooses to see the ‘self-cultivation’ being an exercise carried out not so much (or at least, not only) by the “self” in question – and instead, an act of Divine Artifice [I recall both something said of/to me by somebody presenting themselves as an oracle, a seer, in that Shaivite instance – that I was ‘carved’ by Mahadev ; or the related maxim “I am a living weapon – crafted by the Hands of a God” ; and, for that matter, the Nordic perception upon some of the various Actions of Lord Odin in a bid to craft better and better warriors for the War At The End Of The World].
Or, perhaps, as a ‘both’ position, something akin to the way in which a child’s growing up entails the active agency of both Mother and Child in the course of guiding and shaping that individual into the person they shall later become. This last, probably, is something closest to the ‘truth’ of it – after all, it’s ultimately ‘our choice’ whether we listen to our parents .. just it is (within the bounds of ..er .. ‘material constraints’, ironically in this case) their choice to a reasonable extent as to what they teach us, what schools or other contexts they place us in … at least in the early (and often most crucial) years.
Yet I have perhaps digressed.
My point is that Ma as SiddhiDhatri can bestow Enlightenment and the guidance that will eventually lead us, too, to Perfection. Liberation, or Moksha (and the two do not always mean the same thing – but that is a metaphysical/theological discursion for another Night!). But also, ‘Empowerment’.
For you see, in the Hindu understanding of such things, that is what many of these ‘Siddhis’ actually are. Outer [or, rather, inner-to-outer] manifestations of a more potent inner radiance. In just the same manner that a furnace, when stoked, shall produce ever more heat, light, smoke, steam, and motion if it happens to be affixed to a turbine.
The soul, the being, the person, the purpose, is the furnace [I may be implicitly referencing the Upanishadic ‘Five Fires’ doctrine here, also]; the ‘Bestowment’ is the process of increasing its inherent ‘energy’ and the self-mastery to safely project these out, through the tools, the outlets which She can give us (like that aforementioned turbine, perhaps – at the dangers of slipping into a sort of teleological “techno-theology”); the “Siddhis” are the actual manifestation and enactment of this increase, this growth and somewhat change in inner ‘essence’.
Taking what was there beforehand [and, to be sure, in a not dissimilar manner to how Ma as Kushmanda provides the Spark to the Sun – so, too, does She provide the initial fire, the initial radiance, to the Purusha .. whether God or Mortal or indeed Material Universe alike], and causing it to grow into what it can, it should, it must be.
And, in the process, unlocking the “ecstasy” – in the Greek-Heideggerian sense, of “ex-stasis” [‘outside of time’ – permanency, but also the complete absorption in Doing What One Was Created To Do … the pleasure of ‘self-realization’ where we seem outside the flow of ordinary events precisely because these are, to us, no longer “ordinary events” in which we are engaged in – they are our Destiny, our Fate, our Calling .. we are Being All That We Can Be – quite literally, at the upper end of the path of which I am speaking]; which surely must correlate with SiddhiDhatri’s ‘Bestower of Bliss’ [Ananda in various, indeed, all senses and levels; for such it is to approach the World-Axis … although this can also entail hanging in torment, perhaps for another period of Nine Nights, in pursuit of such a Siddhi as the Power of a Language-form – Vak, or Runes …. ]
Siddhis – that is to say, the supernatural powers which She is regarded as possessing absolute mastery over – are not only something developed within and bequeathed to humans, however.
They frequently turn up in scriptural and other sources as potencies which other Deities are capable of both developing and manifesting in the course of Their mythic arcs, often in direct proportion to Their Own Pathways ‘back’ upwards toward Their full and fully self-understood (that is to say, enlightened) Divine Natures.
The best example of which, perhaps, is Lord Hanuman – Who is rendered amnesiac about His True Divine nature, and along with it loses His knowledge of the Siddhis which are otherwise intrinsic to His Divinity and ‘Personhood’ – fated only to start ‘remembering’ them, these powers, as He learns to engage in the selfless/serious-minded service of others, and more properly carry out His appointed role within the Cosmos. [Bajrang Bali as mentioned above; also illustrates the core element of Hindu approaches to this phenomenon – the Diamond, as ‘perfected’ and shining forth in radiant splendour, with the potency of the Divine Thunderbolt and similar indestructibility as a result of its correctly arranged internal structure; but also, as applies that Being especially, something my Didi once said about being a divine spark having a human experience – encountering Piety, at least in part, as the effort to remember , be reminded who and what you are]
Curiously enough, another shining illustration for the concept – which also focuses more upon devotional energy, striving and effort [‘Tapas’ – linguistically connected to words for ‘Heat’, ‘Light’, and ‘Flame’, and coming to mean “penance”, “austerity”] in order to attain the Siddhi, the Boon in question, from the Beyond – comes to us from Hanuman’s Father: Shiva-Who-Is-Odin.
This has been spoken about in a little more depth in my previous “To Speak Is To Uphold The Weight Of The Universe” article comparing several Indo-European perspectives upon language; but suffice to say, it is my belief that the attainment by Odin of the Runes – also the culmination of Nine Nights of Tapas-ic conduct, carried out in particular connexion to the Axis Mundi, the World Tree [which, as considered in quite an array of my previous work, is strongly correlated with Devi – theologically, linguistically, and in other manners besides] – represents just such an Attainment of a Siddhi, as we would expect to observe elsewhere in Hindu myth.
I shall quote myself from the relevant previous article –
“Now, before going further with this explanation, it is necessary to but briefly parse the concepts of ‘Purusha’ and ‘Prakriti’ as they occur particularly in a specific Shaivite-Shakta context. A more indepth and, er, ‘accurate’ accounting for these words would take up an article many times the size of this one; for our purposes, we’ll simply run them as ‘Body’ and ‘Spirit’ respectively. [I stress that they can also mean .. other things, especially in relation to each other, including, somewhat peculiarly, almost the other way around] (Male) ‘Purusha’ in a cosmological context referring to the ‘universe’, the ‘world’ itself [and, indeed, there have been some academic comparisons made between the course of the Purusha Sukta and the Slaying of Ymir, in each case for a sort of cosmogonical effect], and Prakriti, here conceived of as the feminine particle, being an investiture of something supernal, a thought-form, an ‘essence’, from beyond/outside it.
So how does this relate to the Runes? Well, we’ll sketch out our thinking in more depth in a later article, but suffice to say that as the Runes are fundamental to reality, indeed precede it in an external sense, as part of Orlog [‘Orlog’ – Over-Law, Supernal, Outside/Above/Beyond-Universe Law – i.e. Rta], Their projection into our reality, to the Male in question [when He had briefly gone beyond, above, via self-sacrifice, tied about the Female World-Tree Axis Mundi] seems very like the above-aforementioned concept of Vak as Prakriti investing into the Universe, Purusha. And would also, as it happens, in a certain sense perhaps typologically mirror the way in which Freyja/Frigg teaches Odin magical secrets; or the famed Devi Sukta of the 10th Mandala of the RigVeda talks about the Divine Queen empowering the Man That SHE Loves & Chooses.”
As you can see, when we consider this in our #NAS framework of belief, the unifying thread of the two Nordic elements drawn from here – the Attainment of the Runes By Odin, and the Teaching of magical potency to Him – is that both are instances of Devi bestowing, donating empowerments to Her Husband.
That particular form of relationship also coming to the fore in another of my favourite Hymns of the 10th Mandala of the RigVeda – the ‘Jnanam’/’Vak’ sukta, detailing the development of language and the granting of its intricate understandings and competencies to the Seers (Rsis): “But to another hath she shown her beauty as a fond well-dressed woman to her husband” [RV. X. 71.4].
This, as I have noted above, goes with an array of the core theme-expressions of the DeviSuktam [RV. X. 125] – which, in amidst an array of other statements about how it is that Devi [as Vak, in some accountings, but I would more properly suggest as (Adi)(Para)Shakti, and thence through Vak, amidst further Devi engagement(s)] supports and empowers the various Gods, those undertaking proper and appropriate pious action, indeed the Universe and the Heavens and the lines of heredity and descent themselves … is this line: “I make the man I love exceeding mighty, make him a sage, a Ṛṣi, and a Brahman.” (variant translation: “whomsoever I choose, I render him an exalted one, make him a ṛṣi, make him Brahman or make him highly intelligent.”) [RV. X. 125.5].
So right there, we have exactly the role and some of the saliency of Devi as SiddhiDhatri – supporting Gods and certain mighty mortals, to carry out their proper and apportioned roles, through the bestowing of their (and Their) relevant Powers [Siddhis]; also encouraging, facilitating, educating even, beings to become more enlightened, more powerful (Power-ful, indeed – in touch with Shakti and thusly imbued … as is the Universe Itself at Its Highest Arc, and thence back all the way down); and rewarding the pious and devoted conduct of those who are making their own eventual journey up the Mountain of existence, of life, the universe, and everything.
Glorious!
But to return to one of the metaphors deployed in the course of them hymnals, and our own #NAS theological explication, we see something that is once again core and immanent to prominent Hindu perspectives around the mightiest of the Gods – the Trimurti – and Their Wives; Who, per this interpretation, are granted to Them by Shakti, as … I hesitate to state “augments”, or “completers of Them”, because that reduces the female ‘component’ to just that – a “component” added to something which already exists, rather than the “other part” which makes something into what it truly is. And if there is anything we should not be doing in a Shakta theological commentary, it is implicitly ‘diminishing’ Woman to a mere adjunct.
The better perspective perhaps, is that elucidated via the quotation around Purusha & Prakriti from my article, as reproduced above. Wherein the ‘encounter’ between Goddess and God is an investiture of essence which makes somethings [plural] that have a prior and somewhat independent existence, into something greater than either is on their own.
In the case of Shiva and Parvati, this is #Ardhanarishvara.
Ardhanarishvara as Ishvara – The Over-God Who Is Both Parts As Over-God, to translate a little figuratively.
Or, phrased another way, and as detailed in some of the earlier articles of this series, the reunification of Parvati with Shiva is the ‘reconstruction’, the ‘reintegration’ via which They resume Their position at the apex of the world. Two halves which make the Axis Mundi whole and turn again. This is also what is entailed in the discussion between Brahmacharini [Who, it should be remembered, is undergoing Tapas – as, after a manner, Shiva has been via His austere forms of living; although He perhaps did not know that He was also, through such, working His way back towards the Goddess … Who was also winding Her way back towards Him] and Lord Shiva wherein Shiva finally realizes/remembers/is convinced that the young aspirant standing before him is infact His Devi, His Wife, His Other Half – for it is a theological debate upon the notions and natures of Prakriti & Purusha … which, in a certain way, helps Shiva to ‘understand Himself’ [‘recollect Himself’] once more [c.f also RigVeda X. 125.6 , coming directly after the line around making the man She loves “mighty”, “a Sage”, “a Rsi”, “a Brahman” – “I bend the bow for Rudra that His arrow may strike and slay the hater of devotion.” Part of what makes Rudra … well … Rudra, is that He is an Archer; a Destroyer – hence, here, the Archery, the Destruction can only really take place via Devi’s investiture and active engagement with and through Him! The Trishula, too, as correlate in symbolism to the Bow, is closely and directly relevant here – as noted in previous commentaries, as the Mountains, the Mountain-Spear, the Axis Mundi within His Mighty Hands, HERSELF!]
The famed sage Adi Shankara phrased it thus in the opening couplets of his Saundarya Lahari [‘The Waves of Beauty’] –
“sivah saktya yukto yadi bhavati saktah prabhavitum
na cedevam devo na khalu kusalah spanditumapi —
“Only if conjunct with ‘Sakti’would ‘Siva’earn the privilege to
become overlord; otherwise the God is not able even to stir.”
[variant translation:
“Lord Shiva, only becomes able.
To do creation in this world along with Shakthi
Without her, Even an inch he cannot move,
And so how can, one who does not do good deeds,”]
The next lines are also highly relevant to consider – as they state that only one who performs noble, meritorious, good deeds, who is pious, is able to engage with Devi.
Which, if you should recall from some paragraphs prior in this piece, is precisely what is entailed via the ongoing life path of Hanuman, as an example; and the general principle which it enjoins of positive deeds and pious expression – the cultivation of both inner light and outer radiancy of its expression, as “Krinvanto Vishvam Aryam” and Sanskara of the Soul to correspond therewith. “Inner Development” and “Self-Cultivation”, therefore, even leaving aside the ‘making whole and illumination of the world around and outside us’ aspect – is a (re-)connection with the Divine inside us, the lighting of something akin to a Diya lamp [the Agni within – the Conduit to the Upplands and Beyond], that almost bypasses the world between us and the Highest (Uber/Over) Heaven. Except, of course, insofar as it radiates back out again; and the ‘golden threads’ between us and It, forming chords [in multiple senses of the term – sonic theology is also veer-y much in affect!] through and to the supernal realm.
So therefore, we have two somewhat related approaches under discussion here. The establishment of a relationship with Devi by … marrying a Goddess; and/or via proper and meritorious, pious conduct, ultimately directed thereup and thereto.
One of these is, for obvious reasons, rather more easily attained than the other. For even the man who otherwise has nothing, can still have Faith. Indeed, it has often been observed that some who are amidst the most brimful in abundance in that regard, are so precisely because or otherwise alongside the fact they have so little else (by accident or by design). This does not mean that poverty and sitting naked on a mountain-top is the only, or perhaps even necessarily the*best* way towards such a state – indeed, I would contend that [and oddly enough, this is somewhat borne out in my reading of the Reunification Myth of Shiva & Parvati], doing so as a “renunciation” of the world is actually almost the wrong way to go, for many – as it abdicates much of the possibility of actually doing the “good deeds” side of things, in favour of a more exclusive focus upon, if not “the self”, then at least, an individual. [In terms of my aforementioned reading of the relevant Shaivite-Shakta myth – Shiva’s retreat to the Mountains in solitude, while necessary for Him in that circumstance, is nevertheless something that has to come to an end, for the good of the universe itself overall]
But in either case, and most especially in the convection-zone that is both [a convection zone, after all, entailing a rise and a cycle of such same, as a direct result of heat, Tep-, Tapas, remember?], one should strive to be worthy; and whether this entails that one actually somehow winds up attracting the attention of a Goddess for a direct interaction or prolongued engagement, perhaps being Chosen by Lady Vak as aforementioned – or whether this simply results in the indirect strengthening of soul to the point that this or that Siddhi, or other manifestation of the superior soul is manifested … well, it shall surely be the result of making one’s self worthy of Divine notice. She, after all, is “the gatherer-up of treasures”; Who also “load[s] with wealth [‘donations’] the zealous sacrificer” [RV. X. 125. 2 and 3, respectively].
And, indeed, one does not necessarily have to be ‘perfect’ to be ‘moving in the right [rite] direction’. A woman will often see the potential and the promise in a man, even if it is not directly realized at that particular point in time – will therefore act, as we have said, to make him better over the course of their engagement. This, too, we can see in those relevant RigVedic hymnals – with especial reference to the notion that it is Devi, in whichever Form, making the male in question mighty and knowledgeable and wise and powerful. Of course, this should not necessarily be taken as a radical statement of egalitarianism – in these cases, it is nevertheless a small and select few who are Chosen in any such manner; building upon pre-existing elemental, essence-ial competencies and characteristics, and fundamental foundations of being in the first place, we can likely surmise. For it is not to be held to be the case that Devi makes an ordinary man Rudra – even though, in an important and significant sense, it is Devi Who makes Rudra Rudra. Rather, it is Rudra Who is made the greater, Shiva Who is made ArdhanarIshvara.
And it is the great man, greater still, who recognizes that his role in life is to live in the best possible imitation of these mythic over-truths – picking up and resounding out their resonances … without seeking to confuse, to delude himself that he is their ultimate source.
The Lesson of SiddhiDhatri for the Devotee, then, is quite simple.
Find Devi.
And go both within and beyond your self, to do so. For there may be a ‘universe’ within you – but more aptly, there is a universe around you, and you are connected within it to the universe above you and even further (t)hence beyond.
Allow Her to help, become Guided; and note that the marble .. chisel .. can hurt a bit in its striking, its sanskara – sculpting.
Become Worthy of Her interest, Her assistance, Her beneficence, Her Support. Her Empowerment [and it is not at all coincidental how we would often translate Shakti into English – nor how the path of Shakti up the spine to the Crown is customarily en-traced out, leading ultimately to the Radiance of the Sahasrara Chakra, the Resoundingness of the MahaNada Sound pealing out across the Cosmos from the First through to the Fabric through to the Last – just as ChandraGhanta represents a crown of both holy light and the pious emanation of the striking of a Temple Bell … so, too, does this concept speak to becoming in-touch with, and a radiator out of what is drawn down from this connexion, this conduit, with the Supreme].
So therefore, who is Devi as Siddhidhatri, and Where can we find Her? Well, some obvious answers have already presented themselves:
In addition to the both obvious and subtle instances of the direct appearance of the Goddess [whether er .. directly, or through what is meant by Vak – ‘divinely resonant’ vocal/linguistic expression; or for that matter, that Mata, through other forms of Darshana] – wives, mothers, Mandirs & Goddess(es), other teachers, refiners of our beings and imparters of wisdom, devotional practices, meritorious deeds, pious action, spontaneous flashes of Divinely Revelated insight [provided that that is actually what it is, in any given case … delusion, too, can look like radiancy to those who dearly, desperately, are Trying To Believe [as, perhaps, contrasted with Fox Mulder’s “Want To Believe” – which implies an active openness, if not necessarily a yearning credulency that would be entailed in “Trying”]].
In all of these, are to be found various and varying directnesses of pathways [back] to Devi.
And this should not at all surprise us. For what is the Role of Devi as SiddhiDhatri?
It is to ‘inspire’ us, to ‘guide’ us, to ‘nurture’ us – particularly if we’re up to listening and taking direction, acknowledging our Ma is, in fact, right … and Has the Right.
But also, to “bring out in us” [hence ,धात्री as ‘midwife’] and ‘put into us’ [hence, धात्री as ‘wet-nurse’, hence दातृ as in ‘donor’] That Which Needs Be There! The INSPIRER OF GREATNESS; the Foundation [दातृ – ‘founder’; धात्री – ‘earth’] and Inceptor of the inexorable rise of the Chosen to the status and faculty of a Great Man, a Sant, a Jivanmukta [which, per this enhanced perspective, is not truly one who is “self-liberated”, any more than there can ever be such a thing as a truly ‘self-made man’. But rather, one who has been blessed and empowered from Above and Beyond by HER to reach his otherwise unparalleled and often semi-near inexplicable state and status of development. It does, of course, retain the other sense of “self-liberated” – as such we should expect entailed in the axiomatic moving “beyond” of the limited nature of an earlier human self].
SiddhiDhatri, is therefore the Perfect Mother .. both insofar as She is the Mother (of All) Who Is Perfection, and also as She is the Mother (Foster Mother, somewhat, also, to the Devotee -for We also have our birth-mothers to acknowledge and regard! As the greatest act of piety, indeed!) Who Is Perfect For and To Us, Her Devotes, Her दत्रिम सुत, Adopted Children. SHE is HiranyaGarbha – the Perfect (Golden) Creator. And even afore SHE as (Maha)Kali brings about the end of it all, SHE also oversees and guides our pathway (our PathiWays) upwards towards, as does any nurturing mother, ‘maturity’ – the superior state, the more full ‘realization’ which is who and how we are supposed to be.
In terms of the Siddhis Themselves, it is as the continuance of what was said in last night’s Ma as MahaGauri piece – that just as ‘white light’ contains within it all other colours, and just as MahaGauri shows that She has the self-knowledge and self-mastery to ‘bring out’ the relevant ‘facing’ as and where and when necessary with reference to HerSelf … so therefore is Ma as SiddhiDhatri the ‘furtherance’ of this. The ‘perfection’ of it, you might even say.
For here, not only are all the Siddhis to be found, but They are so completely mastered (including also as embodiments/qualities/emanations/projections/investments of HER), as to be impartable out to others, at will. Indeed, as Will [this, too, is a somewhat figurative rendering for Prakriti].
SHE Has Power over the Siddhis of Understanding, Piety, Enlightenment, and Knowledge – for She IS Understanding, Enlightenment, Piety, and Knowledge [Especially ‘Self-Knowledge’, ‘Self-Realization’ – for She is your Master and ultimate architect, author, artist, of our being and becoming]. Indeed, building from both of the RigVedic hymnals cited above, She is both the means of communication and examination/realization, and the means via which the results of all of the above are actually incorporated into our selves, our being(s), our perception(s) of the world – and therefore, our worlds, which are thusly also reshaped via what we put back out into them again, in turn. The “convection zone”, as previously noted, is also a “cycle”.
SHE Has Power over the Siddhis of the Material, those of growing, changing, shrinking, shrouding [‘seeing’ in addition to ‘perceiving’], increasing or eschewing entirely the density of, altering the position within space or even time of, one’s being … for SHE IS the Tapestry and Fabric of the Universe [and so much more, beyond, all-permeating, as well], Maha-Maya, and therefore in ultimate command and control of All That Might Transpire Within Her Domain.
Indeed, SHE Has Power over the Siddhis of Command, Control, and Conquest – for SHE IS Command, Control, and Conquest, Itself [c.f RigVeda X. 125.6 , amidst many many other sources].
It is often said, for some reason, that “those who can, do – those who can’t, teach”. This is a ridiculous axiom, as while it does encode the possibility for one who is no longer in a position to “do”, to nevertheless still be in a position to guide, to pass on, to impart important wisdom and learned experience as to how to “do” to those who are about to (i.e. to “teach”) … it completely discounts, especially as it is often or ordinarily employed, the rather high likelihood that those who are teaching, either have been capable of “doing”, and have “done” in the past – or, for that matter, are very much still doing, even now, whether inside or outside of the classroom [and, for a certain sort of teacher, the whole world is a class. Both in the sense of constantly, continually teaching .. and also in the sense of learning, themselves, from all over the place, almost assuredly at the same time].
The Myths of Devi more than demonstrate exactly this principle in action. For while She is unquestionably the greatest possible Teacher – She is also, and not coincidentally, the greatest possible Doer. Both through setting All in motion, and through direct interventions within the Universe thus ‘in motion’.
And woe betide the unutterably unctuous specimine who would forget that.
For they are liable to find themselves … not through a process of self-realization … but rather, on the wrong end of the Trishula.
For such it is, both symbolically as well as literally, to seek to oppose the veer-y Force of Creation, the Universe, Destruction, Herself.
Iconographically, Ma as Siddhidhatri is relatively simply depicted; tending towards having four arms, wielding a Gada [mace – lordship, martial power, justice], Conch-shell [a war-horn, and also a ritual implement utilized to call people for the actions of piety; in either case, a resounding and rallying sound], Lotus [symbolizing purity, endurance, immortality, and rejuvenation], and Sudarshana Chakra [representing Vision, the Wheel of Time, the Circle/Cycle of the Universe, and the Rolling Wheel of Dharma – also therefore Supreme Lordship, Chakravartin]. She is seated upon a Lotus, or more rarely, Dawon, Crowned, Radiant, and often being worshipped directly by various mighty Gods arrayed about Her.
The meanings of the above, ought be abundantly clear, based upon the preceding nearly seven thousand words worth of commentary. They denote the Supernal, the Supremacy, the Eternity, the Powerful, the Pious; the Immanence, the Transcendence, the Active-Exercise of all of the above; Her most august position at the heart of it All.
There are far more complex and ornate depictions of this or that particular form of Devi out there, so it may be asked why – as She is Queen of All – She is not more usually represented in much more ‘expansive’ fashion; say, the eighteen plus arms of some Murtis, bedecked with every implement found in the Armoury of Durga of legendary scripture, and then some.
And the simple answer to this is – how do you really represent She Who Is Everything?
Again, quite simply – She is everything. And so, this symbol is but a smaller placeholder. Beautiful to look at, elegant in its succinctness, but ultimately, with all – and well beyond all behind this iconographic depiction for us to also gaze out at, and up at, in ever-expanding Wonder.
Jai Mata Di ❤
Hail to All And Everything
Jai Jagadamba
Who Is The Mother Of All
Jai AdiParaShakti
Who Is.
जय माता दी ॥
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Vd2NbIbuK8
#Babaji #Ashram | Final 3 Days of 10 Day #Festival | #Indian #Himalayas
17 Jun 2018 ... This #documentary was filmed entirely on an IPhone 7 Plus in 2017 while on a 6 month tour of #India and Nepal. It documents the final 3 days #navratri
#Maa #MahaGauri Puja
29th
March 2023
(Wednesday)
Navratri Day 8: #Purple
Day eight of Navratri is the day of Kanjak. The day is celebrated by feeding small girls who are considered to be the avatar of the goddess. The colour signifies the power of intellect and peace. #Goddess Mahagauri is worshipped on this day, who has the power to fulfil all the desires of her devotees. It's said the one who worships this goddess gets relief from all the sufferings in life.
Mahagauri Mata is worshipped on the eighth day of Navratri. Maa Mahagauri is known for fulfilling all the wishes of her devotees. Her name means: Maha’ - great/immense & ‘Gauri’ - white. As she is quite fair in complexion, she got this name ‘Mahagauri’.
About Mahagauri
Goddess Mahagauri has four arms and rides on a bull. One right arm stays in Abhaya Mudra, whereas second one carries the Trishul (trident); and one left arm holds the Damru (a small hand drum), the other one stays in Varada Mudra.
Legend
The tough penance of Maa #Parvati to get Lord #Shiva as her husband hampered her skin. Due to all the calamities of nature, her complexion got black. When Shiva accepted her, he cleaned all the dust and other impurities from her body in the river Ganga. Hence, her real complexion came out, which was extremely white. Therefore, she got this name ‘Maha Gauri’.
Astrological Aspect
Planet #Rahu is ruled by the Mahagauri Maa. Worshipping her helps in pacifying the ill effects of this planet.
Mantras
ॐ देवी महागौर्यै नमः॥
Prarthana Mantra:
श्वेते वृषेसमारूढा श्वेताम्बरधरा शुचिः।
महागौरी शुभं दद्यान्महादेव प्रमोददा॥
Stuti:
या देवी सर्वभूतेषु माँ महागौरी रूपेण संस्थिता।
नमस्तस्यै नमस्तस्यै नमस्तस्यै नमो नमः॥
Dhyana Mantra:
वन्दे वाञ्छित कामार्थे चन्द्रार्धकृतशेखराम्।
सिंहारूढा चतुर्भुजा महागौरी यशस्विनीम्॥
पूर्णन्दु निभाम् गौरी सोमचक्रस्थिताम् अष्टमम् महागौरी त्रिनेत्राम्।
वराभीतिकरां त्रिशूल डमरूधरां महागौरी भजेम्॥
पटाम्बर परिधानां मृदुहास्या नानालङ्कार भूषिताम्।
मञ्जीर, हार, केयूर, किङ्किणि, रत्नकुण्डल मण्डिताम्॥
प्रफुल्ल वन्दना पल्लवाधरां कान्त कपोलाम् त्रैलोक्य मोहनम्।
कमनीयां लावण्यां मृणालां चन्दन गन्धलिप्ताम्॥
Stotra:
सर्वसङ्कट हन्त्री त्वंहि धन ऐश्वर्य प्रदायनीम्।
ज्ञानदा चतुर्वेदमयी महागौरी प्रणमाम्यहम्॥
सुख शान्तिदात्री धन धान्य प्रदायनीम्।
डमरूवाद्य प्रिया अद्या महागौरी प्रणमाम्यहम्॥
त्रैलोक्यमङ्गल त्वंहि तापत्रय हारिणीम्।
वददम् चैतन्यमयी महागौरी प्रणमाम्यहम्॥
Kavacha Mantra:
ॐकारः पातु शीर्षो माँ, हीं बीजम् माँ, हृदयो।
क्लीं बीजम् सदापातु नभो गृहो च पादयो॥
ललाटम् कर्णो हुं बीजम् पातु महागौरी माँ नेत्रम् घ्राणो।
कपोत चिबुको फट् पातु स्वाहा माँ सर्ववदनो॥
With this, we hope that you will make the best of Navratri’s eighth day. May Maha Gauri Mata blesses you with all the goodness of life.
Happy Navratri!
The Eighth Night of #NavRatri is dedicated to MahaGauri – The Great Beauty, The ‘Great White One’ ;
The Ninth Night of NavRatri, to Siddhidhatri – the Bestower of Boons, The Giver of Empowerment.
Both because I am rather late in my finishing of this piece – but also due to a certain underlying thematic unity … it has seemed only appropriate to consider these Two in the course of the same commentary.
Via way of the Hellenic figure of Demeter – for reasons that shall no doubt prove eminently apparent.
One way to think about the procession of the NavaDurgas is that of a ‘progression of opposites’.
Shailaputri [‘Descended from the Mountain’] becomes Brahmacharini [a figure ascending up the Mountain]; Chandraghanta [associated with the Moon] becomes Kushmanda [the power of the Sun]; SkandaMata [a nurturing Mother] becomes Katyayani [the pitiless War Goddess] … and KalaRatri [‘Black Night’] becomes MahaGauri.
In this instance – just as MahaGauri is the Great Fair Beauty, the Lustrous Jewel Radiant ‘Midst the Heavenly Sphere and a Bestower of Blessings and Boons … so too do we often find KalaRatri described in decidedly the opposite terms – as horrifying, indeed an old and decidedly unalluring looking figure. ‘Black’ as opposed to ‘Light’, a Destroyer and Taker rather than a Giver of Grace.
Yet as is so often the case – the simple is as obscurative as it may perhaps seem initially illuminating. For these are not ‘opposites’ – but rather, in each ‘pairing’ we come to observe a fundamental coterminity.
Shailaputri and Brahmacharini are both Aspects dedicated to the movement Upwards toward Her Telos amidst the Mountains – the Reunification with Mahadev. Chandraghanta and Kushmanda both bestow Illumination. SkandaMata and Katyayani are both that which They are in order to successfully vanquish dire demonic threats.
So it is with KalaRatri and MahaGauri.
In our last night’s piece, looking at KaalRatri directly, we sought to deconstruct some of these insistent misperceptions as toward Her. We quoted the scriptural sectors which helped to show Her in an entirely different light – indeed, quite the opposite to what is so often claimed. ( https://aryaakasha.com/2022/04/09/kalaratri-for-chaitra-navratri-the-black-night-of-unveiling-the-night-of-death/ )
We found Kalaratri described quite directly as the most beautiful female in the Three Worlds; we oversaw Her carrying out the roles of Creatrix and Preserver rather than ‘just’ Destructor; and we saw most enviable Boons bequeathed by Her to Her Chosen.
None of which displaces the fact that yes, yes She is also upon other occasions depicted in far less ‘beneficent’ terms elsewhere – occasionally even in the very same scriptures!
In essence – the ‘simple’ becomes the ‘simplistic’. And one must look deeper in order to divine the truth – aided and availed, of course, by those ‘positional’ relationships between the various NavaDurgas as well, rather than endeavouring to consider each figure entirely in isolation.
Something that ought prove impossible – as They are, after all, all expressions of Her.
As applies the progression from KalaRatri to MahaGauri this is particularly the case – as what we find is MahaGauri tending to be hailed as having directly developed from Kali.
How so?
Well, in general terms, what occurs is that the black exterior form to Devi is departed from Her. Either it is simply washed away via the cleansing of a holy river, or it takes on its own existence as Her Shadow, so to speak, or She is calmed and so Her Wrathful Form instead turns to a more pleasant facing.
This is the general typology – it describes quite a number of distinct occurrences wherein Kali, KalaRatri (and yes, these are frequently coterminous or outright co-identified) is mentioned within the scripture.
It also, as it happens, describes parallel occurrences elsewhere within the Indo-European sphere – the Greek figure of Demeter Erinyes (‘The Furious’) / Demeter Melaina (‘The Black’) reverting to Her more usually accustomed ‘Light’ visage being the clear exemplar. Or, in the Second Homeric Hymn, Demeter discarding Her donned appearance as an old woman in order to reveal Her more radiantly apparent Self. We might further surmise that the figure of Skaði having a ‘Shadow’ theonym could point toward a similar understanding.
Indeed, we might go further – observing some additional points of potential underpinning.
In each of these Indo-European myths there is often a Separation and/or Antagonism between the Sky Father and His Wife. The Homeric Hymnal aforementioned pointedly and repeatedly has Demeter being rather annoyed with Zeus – just as several of the situations in which the darkened complexion of Devi is involved do likewise feature some animosity toward Shiva over the incident.
And most definitely as the ‘Separation’ between Husband and Wife is a theme occurrent in both cases – albeit in rather ‘twisted’ fashion in the Greek, due to the complexities involved viz. Persephone and Her Cyclical exiling from Hades.
Although we should probably add via way of brief clarification – that what I perceive to have occurred viz. Demeter and Persephone is that an originally singular Goddess has somehow become in narrative rendering a Mother and a Daughter. We can tell this, in part, due to those Greek myths wherein multiple iterations of the same occurrence are told … with Demeter carrying out the role in one of these, Persephone in the other – the Mothering of Dionysus via Zeus, for example.
It should seem rather likely that, as we may perhaps observe elsewhere, the ’emanation’ or ‘expression’ of another Form of the Goddess – Devi separating out Her Kali ‘skin’ into a seemingly ‘independent’ figure (that is, in truth, another Form or Aspect of Her) perhaps finding an analogous presentation in Demeter having a Form that is ‘Descended’ of Her in similar manner. But the figurative nature of the ‘Daughter’ relationship becoming steadily eroded with time.
The situation of Skadi’s cyclical half-and-half separation between two Realms (one of these, pointedly, being the Mountains) should seem to suggest we are on the right track here.
And certainly, in the Shiva Purana (VII 1 25 45-46), Devi’s emanation of Her ‘Sheath’ or ‘Skin’ in order to bestow Death – is directly referred to as Her having produced a ‘Daughter’.
Although we must also consider another and even more archaic mythic occurrence to make further sense of the situation.
That is RV X 17 – wherein we find the Wife of the Wide-Shining One (Vivasvan) to disappear from He; Saranyu (the Wife in question) being replaced by … well, at this point it becomes a rather curious question of translation.
My own personal interpretation is that the replacement by “One like Her” is not the full picture – and that ‘Sa-Varna’ has been misinterpreted. That is to say – Saranyu is not replaced by a figure of the ‘Same Colour’ … but rather, by a figure of the ‘Same Quality’, ‘Same Essence’.
To briefly set out some important points of clarification – it is our position that the Surya Vivasvan referred to in RV X 17 is the Sky Father deific. Which we believe for a number of reasons, including the direct concordancy of key elements of the relevant myth (preserved in its later Puranic expressions) with two presentations for the Classical sphere – Poseidon and Demeter Erinyes (Whom we have met earlier …), and Zeus and Nemesis (another ‘Darkened’ figure). We have set out the reasoning, especially for the latter, in several pieces, and shall not seek to repeat such here.
(See, for instance – https://aryaakasha.com/2020/11/07/the-black-avenging-form-of-the-earth-mother-and-the-pursuits-of-the-sky-father-as-solar-horseman-a-comparative-indo-european-typological-evocation-part-one-demeter-erinyes-poseidon/ ; https://aryaakasha.com/2020/11/13/the-black-avenging-form-of-the-earth-mother-and-the-pursuits-of-the-sky-father-as-solar-horseman-a-comparative-indo-european-typological-evocation-part-two-surya-saranyu-and-chhaya-the-shadowy/ )
But what we would seek to draw attention to – is the circumstance wherein in the Puranic era presentation of the mythology, this counterpart form to Saranyu is hailed as Chhaya (or Chaya).
What might ‘Chhaya’ mean, one wonders …
“Shadow”.
Now, again, we have a situation wherein in the subsequent mythology, the distinction between the ‘Shade’ facing and the ‘Light’ facing are perhaps arguably over-emphasized. Various of the Puranic accounts do not agree upon which of the Children of Surya are born to which of these Forms of the Mother, for a start. And the circumstance of Goddess and the Shadow of the Goddess being, well, a shadow – a darkened projection that is of the same essence (Sa-Varna) in this case, a darkened visage perhaps – has become depicted instead as the Shadow being the Sister of the Sauri Devi.
As we had said – the Greek mythology with its presentation of Mother and Daughter might be running upon a similar ‘literalization’ formula which turns complex metaphysical notions of Aspects and Emanations into relatively simple (simplistic) and straightforward instantly familiar familial dynamics.
Yet we are, perhaps, digressing somewhat from our consideration for MahaGauri. Albeit only briefly in terms of distance.
For that ‘Sauri’ theonymic I had deployed there is a rather pointed one. It is ‘Solar’ – and we have long observed the archaic Indo-European world-view appears to hold the Sun and Solar conceptry to stand also for great, eminent Beauty. Consider Helen of Troy, a Goddess (and still worshipped as such by Sparta even into the Classical Age) and Solar via linguistics; or Her Hindu counterpart – Tapati (the name, from the same root as English ‘Tepid’, pertains to the ‘Warmth’ and ‘Radiance’ of the Sun).
We are therefore utterly unsurprised to find such prominent Solar, Stellar, Celestial conceptry deployed to eulogize MahaGauri.
So, for instance, in the Tantrika hymnal of the Bhairavistotra (sung, as one would expect, by Bhairava – although interestingly, to the Goddess as within the Lingam) found in the Srimatottara, we have –
“Victory! Victory (to You) O Goddess (Bhagavatī)!
(You) Who are like the solar orb of the emergence of Supreme Reality!
(You Who are) the star that is the circle of all the directions illumined by the halo of the light of Your Own body!
O plane of stability!
(You Whose) body of enjoyment (saˆbhogadeha) is radiant white (svacchā) and unlimited in all (its) limbs!
O Mahāgaurī (Great White One) !”
If we were to incorporate the various ‘Gauri’ citations for Devi within the Puranic canon there are further attestations to be drawn from; although it should be noted that some of these are for ‘lightning’ rather than ‘solar light’, and in other cases (as with, for instance ‘SvarnaGauri’), there is a pointedly ‘Gold’ saliency that is implicitly Solar yet nevertheless also potentially ‘freestanding’.
One example of the ‘implicit’ Solar conceptry should come to us via the Shiva Purana’s detailing of the situation of Devi following the ‘Sheathing’ (or, we should say, the opposite – the ‘Unsheathing’, the ‘Emanation’, the ‘Drawing’ Out) of Kaushiki (another Black Wrathful Form). Therein, we find that the detachment of the Black exterior reveals a radiant inner figure.
In any case, we can certainly echo the words of Devi in the Lalita Mahatmya (40 106, Tagare translation) –
“To My right is seated Mahāgaurī born of My Eyes. She is the utmost limit of the essence of beauty.”
The text then goes on to add this vitally important (although easily misapprehended) element –
“She is stationed there in the form of Mahālakṣmī or in the form of a Kṛtyā”, which we shall expand upon in due course.
Yet how does any of this help us to more truly ‘unpack’ and ‘explicate’ the meaning of the Form?
What do we find underpinning all of this? Is it ‘merely’ incredible, incandescent Beauty? ‘Light’ and ‘Illumination’ alone?
Of course not.
We had considered at far grander length various of the approaches to MahaGauri in our previous (Sharada) Navratri piece –
( https://aryaakasha.com/2019/10/06/mahagauri-the-eighth-night-of-navratri-eighth-of-the-navadurgas-2/ )
We shall not seek to reproduce all of that (considerable) swathe of material here.
However, what we WILL note is that, as we had stated towards the outset of this piece –
The situation of understanding the NavaDurgas is one wherein each must be considered ‘in context’ as well as to some extent ‘individually’.
KalaRatri, we can most definitely consider – and, indeed, did consider – in somewhat ‘freestanding’ format in this regard. As, while one could approach Her as the blacker, angrier form that develops from Katyayani in the similar fashion to Kali from Durga in the more general typology … that would not facilitate our examination of Her in that truly immensely ‘broad’ cosmological salience. Analyzing Her as ‘Death’ , ‘Darkness’, ‘Destruction’, would be accurate, yet severely incomplete – as we showed at some length therein.
The ‘Context’, such as it is, is the ‘Positional’ relationship between the NavaDurgas – and in this case, it is most definitely an instance of ‘Darkness’ preceding ‘Light’.
Yet that is the thing – the underlying Goddess, the underlying Energy ((Adi) Shakti), is entirely artificial to distinguish in ultimate terms of Essence. Although nevertheless useful to be able to functionally approach in different ‘format’, and with some key points of surface-level distinction between Them.
There are three heavily interleavened elements, I believe, to some of the major significance of the MahaGauri Form, and even the broader Indo-European typology to which this links.
To explicate this, we turn to an instance from the Shiva Purana (VII 1 26, Shastri translation):
“23 Thus requested by Brahmā after duly reminding Her of Her great aspect the Goddess ceased from Her penance.
24-29 Then taking leave of the Goddess Brahmā vanished. The Goddess visited Her parents Menā, Himavat. She bowed to them and alleviated the pangs of Her parents due to Her absence. The Goddess then proceeded to Mandara talking to Her friends about the trees in the penance-grove who had been Her loving companions. “They are shedding tears due to their grief at separation, by their scattering flowers, they are crying in distress by the chirping sound of birds seated on their boughs.” The Goddess was impatient to see Her lord. She kept the tiger ahead thinking him as son born of Herself, out of affection. With the brilliant lustre of Her body She illuminated the quarters. Thus Gaurī reached Mandara where lord Śiva was staying—the Lord Who is the creator, protector and annihilator of the worlds.”
Now we have begun our quotation at that point, rather than the earlier and emphatic statements of the Omnipotence of Devi – “Without [Whom] Rites cannot achieve Results” – for a particular purpose. Namely, that brief mentioning of Devi Herself having been undertaking … “penance” is not a good translation, neither is ‘austerities’, to my mind – Devotions, perhaps, or some other such fitting concept. It has continually amazed me that the closest labelling we seem to have in much of the West for what is known there in the Hindu perspective is an act of (self-directed) punishment – not ‘Service’, nor ‘Self-Cultivation’ or ‘Self Development’; and which, when rendered as ‘Austerities’ focuses so much upon an ‘outer’ correlate of heavy devotional contemplation (its intense focus removing it from much of the world and worldly pleasures as distractions, whilst putting the undertaker through quite some testing circumstances also in various other ways to harden they like the proverbial diamond). But I digress.
The reasoning for this is because, as we have often observed, the situation of various religious acts in the Indo-European world view is one of ‘Mythic Recurrence’ – the taking up of a pattern found eminently within the Myth. And often, for enhanced impetus, a pattern that is not just found within the Myth – but initially engaged in by Gods and then re-enacted as a deliberate and focused ‘resonancy’ entirely interior to said Myth. We are, as it were, completing the ‘third’ phase of it through our continued emanation of the original and secondary principles down here amidst us. And what is said Three Times, after all, is True. !
So – here we find that Devi has undertaken extended ‘Devotions’ in order to attain a Boon. Alongside this, curiously enough, a Tiger has shown up in the course of Devi’s undertakings and has, through Her Grace, gone from wishing to devour what had appeared to be a woman alone and at prayer (i.e. rather distracted), through to wishing to serve Her and protect Her from interruption by other denizens of the forest. This, too, is referred to by Devi (in the course of Her conversation with Lord Brahma) as being an instance of somebody undertaking Devotions toward Her – and for which a Boon shall indeed be bestowed !
Amusingly, this eventually sets up an instance that, to paraphrase in terms of modern cliches (always a risky thing to do !) , when Devi eventually does return Home to Kailash once She has made Her Point to Lord Shiva via Her Absence … She is accompanied by this great intimidating Tiger, and effectively asks Her Husband “Can We keep him?” ‘Potnia Theron’, indeed !
However, for our broader cosmological point (and that of the comparative mytho-theology) – it is necessary to observe another set of (entirely related) principles.
First and foremost, as Brahma Himself observes –
“What can a man of virtuous rites achieve without depending on Your behest? You alone are the unborn, intelligent, ancient Goddess. […] There is no greater Śakti than You. Without You rites cannot achieve results.
You alone constitute Śakti of living beings. Himself incompetent to do anything [without Your empowerment] what will a mere agent do?
It is only Your behest that is the cause of acquisition of prosperity and glory by Viṣṇu, by Me or by any of these—Gods, Dānavas or Rākṣasas. […]
O Goddess of the Gods without propitiating You the fourfold arms of life cannot be acquired by all of Us. […]
You are the primordial and eternal Śakti of Śiva the great soul, the lord of the universe, the Śakti without beginning, middle or death.
For the functioning of the universe You assume some form or other and play about in different aspects. Who knows you factually?
Hence let this wicked tiger (vyāghra) too attain the great Siddhi by Your blessings. Nothing can prevent it”
(Shastri translation)
Now, how does this pertain to that which we are seeking to sketch out here?
Consider the situation that prevails upon this Earth when Demeter withdraws Her Blessing. It is a circumstance wherein, per various of the Classical comparanda, She might fairly be described as rather wroth toward certain male God(s) (specifically, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus – dependent upon the telling). And what results?
Famine. Well .. Death, we may say – and how does this ensue? Due to the ’empowerment’ of the Goddess no longer being present within the natural world to bring about the flourishing of life.
The description given in the Second Homeric Hymn phrases it thusly:
“But golden-haired Demeter sat there apart from all the blessed Gods and stayed, wasting with yearning for Her deep-bosomed Daughter. Then She caused a most dreadful and cruel year for mankind over the all-nourishing earth: the ground would not make the seed sprout, for rich-crowned Demeter kept it hid. In the fields the oxen drew many a curved plough in vain, and much white barley was cast upon the land without avail. So She would have destroyed the whole race of man with cruel famine and have robbed Them who dwell on Olympus of Their glorious right of gifts and sacrifices, had not Zeus perceived and marked this in His heart. First He sent golden-winged Iris to call rich-haired Demeter, lovely in form. So He commanded. And She obeyed the dark-clouded Son of Cronos, and sped with swift feet across the space between. She came to the stronghold of fragrant Eleusis, and there finding dark-cloaked Demeter in Her temple, spake to Her and uttered winged words: “Demeter, Father Zeus, Whose wisdom is everlasting, calls You to come join the tribes of the eternal Gods: come therefore, and let not the message I bring from Zeus pass unobeyed.”
Thus said Iris imploring Her. But Demeter’s heart was not moved. Then again the Father sent forth all the blessed and eternal Gods besides: and They came, One after the Other, and kept calling Her and offering many very beautiful gifts and whatever right She might be pleased to choose among the deathless Gods. Yet no One was able to persuade Her mind and will, so wrath was She in Her heart; but She stubbornly rejected all their words: for She vowed that She would never set foot on fragrant Olympus nor let fruit spring out of the ground, until She beheld with Her Eyes Her own fair-faced Daughter.”
(Evelyn-White translation)
Earlier in the Hymnal we also find the following –
“But grief yet more terrible and savage came into the heart of Demeter, and thereafter She was so angered with the dark-clouded Son of Cronos that She avoided the gathering of the Gods and high Olympus, and went to the towns and rich fields of men, disfiguring Her Form a long while. And no one of men or deep-bosomed women knew Her when they saw Her, until She came to the house of wise Celeus who then was lord of fragrant Eleusis. Vexed in Her dear heart, She sat near the wayside by the Maiden Well, from which the women of the place were used to draw water, in a shady place over which grew an olive shrub. And She was like an ancient woman who is cut off from childbearing and the gifts of garland-loving Aphrodite, like the nurses of king’s children who deal justice, or like the house-keepers in their echoing halls.”
(Evelyn-White translation)
To phrase it more succinctly – we have Demeter variously described in terms that are ‘Black(ened)’, that are ‘Shrouded’ or ‘Cloaked’, and that of a rather prominently aged old woman. If we cast our minds back to some of the descriptive conceptry for Kali / KaalRatri – we find that these are close matches.
What is also a close match is that notion of a generally pervasive Death. Which, as we can see, is the result of Her withholding Her ’empowerment’ – Her ‘Shakti’ to the otherwise-fertile earth.
And even though Zeus Himself commands Her through various approaches, even He cannot secure Her to do the vital thing to make the land bloom, and enable life itself to continue.
Nor can, it would seem, Zeus carry out the relevant undertakings Himself – as otherwise potent as He might so happen to be. Even the Rites carried out by Men to attempt to secure the revitalization of the earth bear – literally – no fruit in Her absence of engagement.
What can change the situation? Only granting what She demands.
At which point, as we have seen, the ‘dark’ visage and mytho-literal cloak fall away to reveal a beautifully radiant, ‘fair’ Goddess.
There is a ‘presaging’ of this earlier in that same Homeric Hymn, when She reveals Herself to Queen Metaneira:
“When she had so said, the goddess changed her stature and her looks, thrusting old age away from her: beauty spread round about her and a lovely fragrance was wafted from her sweet-smelling robes, and from the divine body of the goddess a light shone afar, while golden tresses spread down over her shoulders, so that the strong house was filled with brightness as with lightning.”
(Evelyn-White translation)
Another presentation of the same underlying Indo-European myth (albeit with some different manifest particulars) is that found in Pausanias:
“At first, they say, Demeter was angry at what had happened, but later on She laid aside Her Wrath and wished to bathe in the Ladon. So the Goddess has obtained two surnames, Erinys (Fury) because of Her avenging anger, because the Arkadians call being wrathful ‘being furious,’ and Lousie (Bather) because She bathed in the Ladon.”
(Jones translation)
Again – if we recall the situation of Kali / KaalRatri, we find that She undertakes to bathe in order to remove Her Black and Furious state – and thus become the ‘Golden’, ‘Light’, in a word, ‘MahaGauri’ Form once more.
We may figuratively suggest that the (Dark) Kali Form presiding over desolation and death, returning to the ‘implicit’ rather than ‘actively prominent’ phase through Devi’s bathing – is also a symbolic representation for the dessicated state of the world being brought to an end through the appropriate conduct. The ‘re-activation’ for the Shakti in the life-giving (rather than death-dealing) and positive sense. [Although we must, of course, emphasize that elsewhere in the Shakta scriptural corpus, we find support for Kali Herself also having just such a life-bestowing role; and, further, that the representation for Death is more of a ‘necessary thing’ meted out against those figures (the demon-lords, usually) that are actually responsible for the ecological crisis in question through general disruption of the cosmic laws as best as they are able.]
In the context of the Demeter-Persephone narrative, it is tempting to speculate that in a certain sense, Demeter becoming reunited with Persephone is a case of Her (re-discovering) some temporarily suppressed or detached element to Her True Nature. And therefore, that is partially why the Earth is thence allowed to bloom again – and why Demeter no longer feels so woe-strickenly ‘incomplete’.
‘Atonement’, we might suggest – in its true etymological sense of ‘At-One-Ment’ … the state or situation of being made One and Whole once more.
So – as we have said: the situation of MahaGauri as a Bestower of Boons is one that is best considered ‘contextually’. The ‘Empowerments’, the Gifts, the Siddhis, even – these are received following devotional efforts undertaken to propitiate Her.
Curiously, as we have seen, in the course of the Shiva Purana’s accounting (VII 1 34-35, Shastri translation) – this also applies to Her, evidently, carrying out acts of devotion to Herself:
“Brahmā said:—
34 O Goddess, why did You perform a severe penance for this purpose? Was not Your Wish alone sufficient for that? Indeed this is only Your sport
35 O Mother of the Universe, Your play too benefits the Worlds. Hence some benefit pleasing to Me may be sought through it.”
That benefit, as it happens, is Her fixing one of His … questionable (yet predictable) actions –
“36 Two Daityas, Śumbha and Niśumbha to whom I had granted boons have turned arrogant. They are harassing the Gods. Their destruction is only through You.
37 Do not delay. For a short while be steady. The Śakti that is to be released now shall be their death.
38 Thus requested by Brahmā, the Goddess, Daughter of the Mountain, cast off Her outer skin and became white.
39 The outer sheath thus cast off became Kauśikī Who is known as Kālī, the virgin with the lustre of the black cloud.”
Now there is much more which we could say upon this exchange between Brahma and Devi (in particular how Devi’s reply to Brahma is a subtly communicated point about how Her reasons are Her Own and somewhat ineffable … which Brahma then immediately appears to apprehend as Her noting that She has undertaken the ‘penance’ in this manner precisely so that there ‘just happens’ to be a ‘sloughed off’ Darkened Form of Her available at just the right time where such a figure is called for – something that would not have occurred had She simply taken the more ‘direct’ route and with a snap of Her Fingers changed colouration, etc.), but we ought move back to the main thrust of our positioning.
The situation of this ‘reconciliation’, ‘atonement’, whatever we wish to call it – it sets the stage for the world to once again be nourishing and life-bearing. How and why? Because the Goddess has Willed It To Be So. And, perhaps, slain some troublesome demon-lords that have sought to suppress the natural order of things and correspondingly thrown the ecological world out of whack (viz. the situation of Durgamasur as my usual go-to exemplar here – particularly due to his slaying at the hands and twanging bowstring of Shakambhari Devi ! ).
In essence – the ‘Shakti’ of the World, of the natural world, plants, and life, and weather : it has become (re-)activated, and is therefore empowered to do what it is there to in Her Blessed Hands and Mouth and Mind.
This is partially what had been entailed via that ‘Kritya’ hailing we had aforementioned from the Lalita Mahatmya. Which, as we have said, is an easily misapprehended purport. Here, we take it to mean not the semi-demonic female figure that is often thought of – but rather, it is the more direct meaning to the term. Which, to be sure, does heavily underpin the other usage aforementioned.
Kritya ( कृत्य – also anglicized as ‘Krtya’, or ‘kṛtya’ if we are being proper) effectively means ‘Action’; and is from the same ultimate root (Sanskrit ‘Kr’ ( कृ ) – referring to ‘doing’ or ‘making’; itself from PIE *kʷer- that means likewise) as ‘Karma’, etc. or ‘Karman’ (both of which pertain ultimately to ‘action’ undertaken). We mention it here as ‘Krityaa’ ( कृत्या – kṛtyā ) is the relevant term for the aforementioned feminine spirit. Most usually encountered as the ‘vector’ or the ‘bearer’ for a malevolent spell. The idea in the relevant Vedic metaphysics is that when the cursing spell is completed, it comes forth and then ‘seeks out’ the target – taking the form, often, of a female beast of prey which then ‘hunts down’ the quarry to unleash its impact. There is also a more specific ‘Krityaa’ that occurs as a particular feminine form associated with the ‘absorbing’ of potential curses against a newlywed bride, and with a complexion the blue and red colour of a bloodied sunset sky, and with particular connexion to a sort of ‘impurity’ that has been indeed sloughed off by the bride. However I am digressing.
The point is quite a simple one: ‘Krityaa’ does not only refer to the specific form of female spirit that is the ‘enaction’ of curse-actions. But can evidently also pertain to the more generalized notion of a (feminine) ‘enactor’ or ‘executor’ for other styles of metaphysical potency and invocation as well.
And so we are unsurprised to note the statement in the aforementioned Lalita Mahatmya: that MahaGauri is “the utmost limit of the essence of beauty”, “born of [Devi’s] Eyes” (and we would observe that as the Eyes of the Sky Father often correlate to the Sun etc. … so, too, perhaps, might the Eyes of His Wife), and “stationed there in the form of Mahālakṣmī or in the form of a Kṛtyā”.
This understanding operates, as does much of the Shakta canon (and, indeed, just about any major Hindu textual corpus), upon multiple levels. In the context it’s directly drawn from, it can be read as specifically pertaining to MahaGauri acting as an ‘enactor’ to the Will of Devi – poised to reward the propitiation of the king Dasaratha who has approached Her to beseech Her Aid and Blessing with a particular matrimonial boon.
Yet it may also be read as a far broader and more underlying cosmological point – of which the above-aforementioned is a specific manifestation or occurrence. As it is not only the ‘enaction’ of the requests of mortals, the culmination-into-active-expression of mantras and rites carried out unto Her (and we recall the words of Brahma in the course of the Shiva Purana sections quoted above about the fruitlessness – evidently in multiple senses – of Rites without Her involvement and active approval … something that is a clear resonancy with the more archaic Vedic theology pertaining to Vak Devi, as we have discussed at quite some length elsewhere).
But is also the ‘activator’ or ‘executor’ for these more transcendentally impelled processes as well.
So, the ‘Great Enactor’ of the Universe. The One Who brings to fruition (both figuratively, and it should seem – literally) of the ‘potentia’ inherent within everything, as needed.
All of which, of course, brings us to the Ninth and Last of the NavaDurgas – Siddhidhatri.
( our previous and much lengthier commentary toward Her can be found here – https://aryaakasha.com/2019/10/07/siddhidhatri-the-final-night-ninth-of-the-navadurgas/ )
Siddhidhatri is often (and not incorrectly) rendered as ‘Bestower’ (Dhatri – ‘Dative’, ‘Donation’, etc.) ‘of Boons’ or ‘Empowerments’ (Siddhis). However, this can also be approached as ‘The Perfector’.
It is in this latter sense that ‘Siddhi’ as ‘Cooking’ or a ‘Work of Art’ is intended. And hence, the idea of a ‘work in progress’ (which, surely, the Universe also is), being brought to its highest state of realization. Those ‘potentials’ inherent within the seed being impelled and empowered to grow – but also, that ’empowerment’, that potential placed within the seed in the first instance (the ‘donation’ of the ‘Siddhi’). As with the rest of the universe itself.
After all, as Adi Shankara phrased it in his Saundarya Lahari [‘The Waves of Beauty’] –
“sivah saktya yukto yadi bhavati saktah prabhavitum
na cedevam devo na khalu kusalah spanditumapi”
Or, phrased in a language we can perhaps grasp somewhat better (most of here in the audience, anyway) –
“Shiva with Shakti joined (Yukta), if (Yadi) comes to be (Bhavati) empowered / endowed with (Sakta) is able to influence / manifest / effect (Prabhavitum)
If Without (Na Cet), the God (Devo) is indeed (Khalu) not capable / competent (Kusala) even (Api) to ‘pulsate’ / ‘move’ / ‘engage in mental activity’ (Spanditum) .”
Putting this into a more straightforward-for-English approach:
“If Shiva is joined with His Shakti, then He becomes empowered to Manifest and Impel the Universe
But without Her, Even the Mighty God is indeed unable to even Move nor Mentally Conceive”
Various translations have chosen – quite understandably – to render particulars of the above rather more ‘figuratively’ than I have done here.
So, for instance, it is the ‘Lordship’ of the Universe that is referred to ; or the ‘Stirring’ of motion and activity (mental, metaphysical, or otherwise) – which is rather useful, as we are aware of Shiva as Purusha (i.e. the Universe – Matter) … in fact being Shiva as ‘Shava’, that is to say the ‘Corpse’ (beneath Kali’s feet) prior to Her investiture of Life into Him.
Hence, that idea of the ‘corpse’ ‘stirring’ to life – and we would note the PIE *h₃er- – to ‘rise up’, to ‘stir up’, and yes, ‘to fight’; that has a likely expression also in the ‘Erinyes’ of ‘Demeter Erinyes’, or various other epithets and theonymics quite salient to our purpose here.
If we are to conceptualize the Universe as a ‘Body’ – then without Her, it is a Body not in motion. It is static, it is still, it is suspended and stopped. Indeed, we may go back steps further and note that it is a body that is not even extant to be in such a frame.
If we are to conceptualize the Universe and its unfurling as a Dream, a Vision – the ‘mental activity’ we had spoken upon earlier – then without Her, even Lord Shiva is unable to Dream, to experience and then actively bring to immanentize, His Vision.
Or, we may say – Her Dream, Her Vision – the one that She had Inspired Him to express !
It is a good thing, then, that She never truly leaves Him – not for too long, anyway.
His Shakti is always there – it is just simply a matter of divining how to reach out to Her again.
जय माता दी ॥
#Happy #Navratri Day 7
Saptami
#Maa #Kalaratri Puja
28th
March 2023
(Tuesday)
Navratri Day 7: #Grey
The colour of this day is grey, which stands for the strength of transforming. Hindus worship Goddess Kalaratri on this day. The goddess is believed to be the destroyer of all demons, negative energies, evil spirits and ghosts. The goddess is also known as #Shubankari due to the belief that she always provides auspicious results to her devotees.
Kalratri Mata is worshipped on the seventh day of Navratri. She is considered quite a violent form of Maa Parvati. Her name means: ‘Kaal’ - time/death & ‘Ratri’ - night. As per her name, she is considered as the destroyer of darkness.
About Kalratri
Goddess Kalratri has dark black complexion. She rides on a donkey. The Goddess has 4 hands; both right hands stay in Abhaya and Varada Mudra; and the left 2 hands carry sword and a hook weapon.
Legend
As the legend goes, there were 2 demons - Shumbha and Nishumbha, who had captured the entire Devlok (holy abode of Devas). The King of the Gods, Indra was defeated badly. In order to get their home back, they sought help from Maa Parvati. While they were explaining the entire story to her, she was bathing inside. In order to help them, she sent Chandi to help them.
When Goddess Chandi went to the demons for war, Shumbha and Nishumbha sent Chanda and Munda to fight. Hence, she created Maa Kalratri to kill them. After killing them, she got the name Chamunda. After that, Raktabeej arrived. This demon had the capability of recreating his body with his blood. Everytime Goddess killed him and his blood spilled on the ground, the demon made a new body for himself. So, Kalratri Durga decided to drink all his blood, so that nothing drops down on the floor; and it actually worked!
There are many other legends associated with Kaalratri. One of them tells how Maa Parvati became Durga. As per that legend, the demon Durgasur was trying to attack Kailash (the holy abode of Shiva-Parvati) in the absence of Maa Parvati. So, she sent Kal Ratri for dealing with him. The guards of the demons tried to attack Kala Ratri, but she grew bigger and bigger in size. Eventually, she got too powerful to handle. Durgasura had to leave, but Maa Kalratri told him that his death is near. Another time when Durgasur tried to attack Kailasha, Maa Parvati fought with him and killed him. Hence, she got the name Durga.
Astrological Aspect
Planet Saturn (Shani) is ruled by the Kalratri Mata. Worshipping her helps in pacifying the ill effects of this planet.
Mantras
ॐ देवी कालरात्र्यै नमः॥
Prarthana Mantra:
एकवेणी जपाकर्णपूरा नग्ना खरास्थिता।
लम्बोष्ठी कर्णिकाकर्णी तैलाभ्यक्त शरीरिणी॥
वामपादोल्लसल्लोह लताकण्टकभूषणा।
वर्धन मूर्धध्वजा कृष्णा कालरात्रिर्भयङ्करी॥
Stuti:
या देवी सर्वभूतेषु माँ कालरात्रि रूपेण संस्थिता।
नमस्तस्यै नमस्तस्यै नमस्तस्यै नमो नमः॥
Dhyana Mantra:
करालवन्दना घोरां मुक्तकेशी चतुर्भुजाम्।
कालरात्रिम् करालिंका दिव्याम् विद्युतमाला विभूषिताम्॥
दिव्यम् लौहवज्र खड्ग वामोघोर्ध्व कराम्बुजाम्।
अभयम् वरदाम् चैव दक्षिणोध्वाघः पार्णिकाम् मम्॥
महामेघ प्रभाम् श्यामाम् तक्षा चैव गर्दभारूढ़ा।
घोरदंश कारालास्यां पीनोन्नत पयोधराम्॥
सुख पप्रसन्न वदना स्मेरान्न सरोरूहाम्।
एवम् सचियन्तयेत् कालरात्रिम् सर्वकाम् समृध्दिदाम्॥
Stotra:
हीं कालरात्रि श्रीं कराली च क्लीं कल्याणी कलावती।
कालमाता कलिदर्पध्नी कमदीश कुपान्विता॥
कामबीजजपान्दा कमबीजस्वरूपिणी।
कुमतिघ्नी कुलीनर्तिनाशिनी कुल कामिनी॥
क्लीं ह्रीं श्रीं मन्त्र्वर्णेन कालकण्टकघातिनी।
कृपामयी कृपाधारा कृपापारा कृपागमा॥
Kavacha Mantra:
ऊँ क्लीं मे हृदयम् पातु पादौ श्रीकालरात्रि।
ललाटे सततम् पातु तुष्टग्रह निवारिणी॥
रसनाम् पातु कौमारी, भैरवी चक्षुषोर्भम।
कटौ पृष्ठे महेशानी, कर्णोशङ्करभामिनी॥
वर्जितानी तु स्थानाभि यानि च कवचेन हि।
तानि सर्वाणि मे देवीसततंपातु स्तम्भिनी॥
With this, we hope that you will make the best of Navratri’s seventh day. May Kalratri Maa blesses you with all the goodness of life.
Happy Navratri!
dedicated to Kalaratri – The Night of Death, the Blackest Night, the Darkness at the End of Time Herself !
And yet, as has become something of our theme whenever we discuss the Devi – we are vehement in pointing out that this is only one side to Her, that She has been frequently misunderstood, and in quite an array of manners.
For example – that notion of KaalRatri as the Darkness at the End of Time : it is accurate, yes, yet it is also fundamentally incomplete. For the End is also a segue to the Beginning – and what we find is that this Darkness, is also that which precedes Creation, and even which we might readily find (if we know where and how to look) permeating all through Creation between these two foundational points. People – understandably – wish to focus in upon the Death and Destruction aspect, and that is most certainly part of Her potency and salience – but we seem inevitably to practice a kind of cognitive-philosophical ‘reductionism’ : wherein we insistently reduce Gods and Goddesses down to having less complexity, depth, and multidimensionality than even our coworkers, much less ourselves. But I digress – we shall come to some of these other elements in due course.
One area wherein we have frequently observed another style of downright insistent wrongness in relation to Her, is the endlessly repeated claims of Kali, Kaalratri (and there both is and isn’t a distinction – hence in part why we went with this art) being somehow ‘Non-Indo-European’ figures. Why? Who knows, at this point. In some cases, it may simply be as simple as “Black” being the operative element to Her blessed visage. Which is ridiculous, because I am pretty sure that the Night looks rather Dark no matter whereabouts one happens to be and which ethnicity – and we know very well that Indo-European mythic perspectives were eminently able to describe Goddess figures as being of darkened facing.
Indeed, this is one of those elements which helps us to identify Her more westerly co-expressions.
Demeter Erinyes and Demeter Melaina – Demeter the Furious Sanction, and Demeter the Black – two epithets for the same Dark and Enraged Goddess-form known amidst the Greeks; with particular emphasis upon the upholding of Law, and understood to have a dark patina that has accrued upon Her which is washed off at the other end of the Furor through Her bathing in a particular river. An understanding which – to, no doubt somebody’s surprise – is a very, very clear concordant to the situation we find viz. Kali and Kaalratri.
Skaði, amidst the Nordic sphere, has the name that connotes ‘Shadow’ – and likewise, we find other identifying features for the archaic Indo-European typology in Her mythology. The upholding of Order, for instance, particularly availed via Serpentine sanctioning (a feature also found viz. the Erinyes complex we had briefly mentioned earlier); and the dogged pursuit, the hunting, of the evildoer. She stalks with the inevitability of Night’s Fall, we may say – and comes on with all that similar implacability, this Terrific Wife of Odin.
For quite a lot more on various elements to this rather impressively broad typology, we would refer you to our earlier work – ‘The Queen of Serpents – The Serpentine Figure of the Indo-European Earth Mother’ ( https://aryaakasha.com/2020/12/18/the-queen-of-serpents-the-serpentine-figure-of-the-indo-european-earth-mother/ ), inter various alia. (We would also recommend the sustained etymological and theological discussion upon Kali more generally in our earlier (Sharada) Navratri tribute (A)Arti-cle to Her – https://aryaakasha.com/2019/10/05/kaalratri-the-seventh-night-of-navratri-the-seventh-of-the-navadurgas-2/ )
The fact that we have recognizable attestations for the figure in later and rather geographically disparate Indo-European spheres helps to overcome another objection which is frequently brought up – the notion that there is purportedly no Kali in the Vedas, and so therefore there can be no Indo-European origination to Her. Which presupposes, of course, that everything that is Indo-European for the culture of the Vedic Aryas is contained exclusively within the Vedas – something we know not to be true simply upon the basis of how much there is that is only tangentially therein and briefly alluded to precisely because it’s contained in the general milieu of that people and did not require in-depth explication therein, being picked up for considerable examinatory expansion in the later Puranic-era texts.
We might also feasibly ponder whether particular elements which are most definitely found within the Vedas might be describing the same Devi – just in ways that we are not used to thinking of Her. For instance, there is a prominent occurrence in AV-S XII 5 48 for the ‘Keshini’ – a Roudran-associated female figure of wild hair and aggressive dance ‘midst cremation-ground circumstances, Who brings about destruction for the evildoer, roaring out a terrifying howl, and accompanied in the next line it should seem, by a Wolf. We could also make quite feasible observations in other areas – around the purport of the Mundamala ‘Garland of Skulls’ and its import pertaining to the fundamental Powers of Speech linked to Vak, for instance.
As we have detailed at … quite some considerable length – the Vedas do most definitely contain quite an array of epithets that concord strongly with Kali for a female clade associated with Rudra, that can just as easily apply also to Valkyries about Odin, various Nymphs and Devotees about Dionysus, and so forth. With a consistent pattern that the Wife or Consort of the Sky Father in each of these cases is found to be hailed as the Chief, Commandant, Greatest amongst these Ganas. You can find all of that in my recent ‘ RudraGanika – A Study In Eternal Return As Manifested Through The Sky Father’s Female Retinue Across The Indo-European World ‘ ( https://aryaakasha.com/2022/03/08/rudraganika-a-study-in-eternal-return-as-manifested-through-the-sky-fathers-female-retinue-across-the-indo-european-world/ ); although to quote briefly one additional point –
“And when we encounter Skeggöld / Skeggjöld, we are – as Y.A. pointed out to me – instantly pondering whether this ‘Axe-Age’ named Valkyrie might have some interesting degree of coterminity with Mother Kali, for reasons that ought be rather apocalyptically clear. “
But we are perhaps getting a bit away from our central theme here. The Indo-European elements are interesting and useful for us for an array of purposes and reasonings, but they are not quite so direct in their essentiality for our intended glorification of Her.
What is, perhaps, is an array of succinct scriptural quotations that may help to get across the proper understanding (limited though it might be – the Skanda Purana (VI 1 54 20) literally declares Her – Kalaratri – to be the ‘Incomprehensible One’) for how Kalaratri is to be regarded. So much more than ‘just’ a Very Scary Devi, or of horrifying appearance, and ending the world, etc.
We’ll call it an ‘Apocalypse’ – but that’s only meant in the sense of a ‘Revelation’.
First up, a selection from the Kathasaritsagara (the ‘Ocean of Story’) concerning the initiatory journey of the Emperor Naravahanadatta. We won’t go through the whole thing and its context, but suffice to say that the ruler in question is seeking a fairly potent blessing, and has managed to attain many of the ‘Jewels’ that are supposed to be essential to the availment of one of his station. Having passed through a cave and braved the tests to be found therein, he emerges on the north face of Kailash and finds himself confronted by one further (ultimate) prospect: Her. We shall let the fine words of Somadeva (the human author) in the translation of Tawney take over:
“Then Dhanavatī and Devamāya said to the emperor:
“Your Majesty, Kālarātri is always near this opening. She was originally created by Viṣṇu, when the sea was churned for the nectar, in order that She might tear in pieces the chiefs of the Dānavas, who wished to steal that heavenly drink. And now She has been placed here by Śiva to guard this cave, in order that none may pass it except those beings, like yourself, of whom we spoke before. You are our emperor and you have obtained the jewels, and have passed this cave; so, in order to gain the victory, you must worship this Goddess, Who is a meet object of worship.”
In such words did Dhanavatī and Devamāya address Naravāhanadatta, and so the day waned for him there. And the northern peaks of Kailāsa were reddened with the evening light, and seemed thus to foreshadow the bloodshed of the approaching battle. The darkness, having gained power, obscured the army of that king, as if recollecting its animosity, which was still fresh and new. And goblins, vampires, jackals and the sisterhood of witches roamed about, as it were the first shoots of the anger of Kālarātri enraged on account of Naravāhanadatta having omitted to worship Her. And in a moment the whole army of Naravāhanadatta became insensible, as if with sleep, but he alone remained in full possession of his faculties.
Then the emperor perceived that this was a display of power on the part of Kālarātri, angry because She had not been worshipped, and he proceeded to worship Her with flowers of speech:
“Thou art the power of life, animating all creatures, of loving nature, skilful in directing the discus to the head of Thy foes; Thee I adore. Hail! Thou, that under the form of Durgā dost console the world with Thy trident and other weapons streaming with the drops of blood flowing from the throat of the slain Mahiṣa. Thou art victorious, dancing with a skull full of the blood of Ruru in Thy agitated hand, as if Thou wast holding the vessel of security of the three worlds. Goddess beloved of Śiva, with uplifted eyes, though Thy name means the Night of Doom, still, with skull surmounted by a lighted lamp, and with a skull in Thy hand, Thou dost shine as if with the Sun and Moon.”
Though he praised Kālarātri in these words, She was not propitiated, and then he made up his mind to appease Her by the sacrifice of his head; and he drew his sword to that purpose.
Then the Goddess said to him:
“Do not act rashly, My Son. Lo! I have been won over by thee, thou hero. Let this thy army be as it was before, and be thou victorious!”
And immediately his army awoke as it were from sleep. Then his wives, and his companions, and all the Vidyādharas, praised the might of that emperor! And the hero, having eaten and drunk and performed the necessary duties, spent that night, which seemed as long as if it consisted of a hundred watches instead of three.
And the next morning he worshipped Kālarātri, and marched thence to engage Dhūmaśikha, who had barred his further advance with an army of Vidyādharas. Then the emperor had a fight with that king, who was the principal champion of Mandaradeva, of such a desperate character that the air was full of swords, the earth covered with the heads of warriors, and the only speech heard was the terrible cry of heroes shouting, “Slay! Slay!””
You can instantly see some importantly resonant mythic elements here – namely, the confronting of fear in the course of initiatory contest, and the fact that it is only through final submission to Her that this emperor is able to obtain the most powerful blessing in the course of his empowerment. He has to be ready to sacrifice everything to Her and for Her – and he must do so, it seems, not quite ‘alone’, for She is with him … but certainly, it is not the sort of thing that one can easily hide behind the serried ranks of other, burlier men for.
Particularly when what one is seeking to hide from is a failure to pay proper and due homage to Her. After all, as the Skanda Purana should have it (IV 2 72), in the words attributed to Lord Skanda Himself:
“That Goddess Durgā protects Kāśī [the City of Shiva] all-round in the company of the Śaktis. They, the chief of whom is Kālarātri, should be assiduously worshipped by men.”
But when this necessary task is accomplished, and She has been propitiated – his forces become truly unstoppable indeed. They have, we may say, Time upon their side !
Yet while we often think of Kalaratri as having a rather terrifying visage – it is also evident that She can radiate a most terrific beauty as well. See here, from the Skanda Purana ( IV 2 71, Tagare translation):
“23 The Devas who had lost their kingdom sought refuge in Maheśa. Thereupon the Goddess was directed to suppress the demon by the omniscient one (Śiva).
24 On receiving the great Lord’s behest joyously, Bhavānī assured freedom from fear to the immortal ones and set about for the war.
25 She summoned Kālarātri, the most beautiful one in all the three worlds by her radiance. Rudrāṇī sent her to challenge the demon.
26-30 After coming to that Daitya of evil conduct, Kālarātri said: “O Lord of Daityas, give up the wealth of the three worlds. May Indra get back the three worlds. You go to Rasātala. May all the sacred rites enjoined in the Vedas and binding on the expounders of the Vedas be performed. If at all there is a vestige of pride (in you), come on for a fight; otherwise, if you wish to live, seek refuge in Indra. I have been sent by the goddess of great auspicious features to you to convey this message. If you are indifferent to it, your death is certain. Hence, O great Asura, do what is proper. If you care to hear what is beneficial to you, go unto her to retain your life (and save your life).”
Now, predictably, the demon-lord being referred to (in this case, Durgamasur) … doesn’t take the hint. And upon seeing this immensely beautiful female figure appeared in his court, has his coteries move to seize and restrain Her in order to deliver Her to his harem.
She atomizes them with a mere Humkara, and then buffets others who rise up to follow the initial would-be manhandlers with the torrential force of Her breath, before flying away and leading the demon’s army into their field of Doom.
Of further interest is that this source also has KalaRatri referred to as Mahakali – as we had said, the degree of distinction between KaalRatri and more ‘general’ Kali is a somewhat circumstantial one.
Further, while this properly deserves a piece in its (in Her) own rite – our eye was drawn by the occasional references to Kalaratri as not only the ‘Shadow’ of Mahadev – but also as vital to His Mighty Bow. The Skadi point of resonancy is clear in both dimensions.
To quote from the Mahabharata (VIII – Karna Parva – 34):
“Having made the Year adorned with the six seasons His bow, he made his own shadow the irrefragable string of that bow in that battle. The illustrious Rudra is Death’s Self. The Year became His Bow; Kala Ratri the Death-night therefore, which is Rudra’s shadow, became the indestructible string of that bow.”
We mention this because of firstly, the situation of Brihaspati’s Bow having Rta as its Bowstring, and secondly the situation of Vak Devi as the in-universe expression of Rta … with RV X 125 6 – the famed Devi Suktam that I am so frequently quoting from or otherwise referencing – well, as the Griffith translation puts it: “I [Vak] bend the Bow for Rudra that His Arrow may strike and slay the hater of devotion.”
We might also seek to tentatively connect this to the potential hailing for Skadi as ‘Bow-String Var’ in the Nordic textual corpus – ‘Var’ being an ‘Oath’ or a ‘Pledge’, and therefore fundamentally congruent with the notion of Order as the Bowstring of the Weapon of this Most Righteous !
Now no examination of the various facets of Devi should be complete without some referencing of the Devi Bhagavata Purana (Vijñanananda translation – X 10); and we do so here precisely because it helps to present this ‘broader’ context and cosmological role to Her:
“One day, when the Muni finished his worship, etc., the king went to him and saluted him duly and humbly asked him the following :– “O Muni! I am suffering terribly from my mental pain. O Deva on the earth! Why I am suffering so much though I know everything, as if I am quite an ignorant man. After my defeat from my enemies, why does my mind become now compassionate towards those who stole away my kingdom. O Best of the knowers of the Vedas! What am I to do now? Where to go? How can I make me happy? Please speak on these. O Muni! Now I am in want of your good grace.”
The Muni said :– “O Lord of the earth! Hear the extremely wonderful glories of the Devī that have no equal and that can fructify all desires. She, the Mahā Māyā, Who is all this world, is the Mother of Brahmā, Viṣṇu and Maheśa. O King! Know verily that it is She and She alone, that can forcibly attract the hearts of all the Jīvas and throw them in dire utter delusion. She is always the Creatrix, Preservrix and Destructrix of the Universe in the form of Hara. This Mahā Māyā fulfills the desires of all the Jīvas and She is known as the insurmountable Kālarātri. She is Kālī, the Destructrix of all this universe and She is Kamalā residing in the lotus. Know that this whole world rests on Her and it will become dissolved in Her. She is therefore, the Highest and Best. O King! Know, verily, that he alone can cross the delusion (Moha) on whom the Grace of the Devī falls and otherwise no one can escape from this Anādi Moha.”
Another, perhaps rather more imminently familiar depiction of Kaalratri comes to us from the Mahabharata ( X – Sauptika Parva – 8; Ganguly translation), the famed ‘Night Raid’. [note: ‘Death-Night’ is how ‘KalaRatri’ has been rendered by Ganguly herein]:
“Endued with great strength, Drona’s son made a heavy carnage amongst the sons, the grandsons, and the followers of Drupada, singling them out one after another. Accomplished in the use of the sword, Ashvatthama then, rushing against other combatants, cut them down with his excellent sword. The warriors in the Pandava camp beheld that Death-Night in her embodied form, a black image, of bloody mouth and bloody eyes, wearing crimson garlands and smeared with crimson unguents, attired in a single piece of red cloth, with a noose in hand, and resembling an elderly lady, employed in chanting a dismal note and standing full before their eyes, and about to lead away men and steeds and elephants all tied in a stout cord. She seemed to take away diverse kinds of spirits, with dishevelled hair and tied together in a cord, as also, O king, many mighty car-warriors divested of their weapons. On other days, O sire, the foremost warriors of the Pandava camp used to see in their dreams that figure leading away the sleeping combatants and Drona’s son smiting them behind! The Pandava soldiers saw that lady and Drona’s son in their dreams every night from the day when the battle between the Kurus and the Pandavas first commenced. Afflicted before by Destiny, they were now smitten by Drona’s son who terrified them all with the frightful roars uttered by him. Afflicted by Destiny, the brave warriors of the Pandava camp, recollecting the sight they had seen in their dreams, identified it with what they now witnessed.
At the noise made, hundreds and thousands of Pandava bowmen in the camp awoke from their slumbers. Ashvatthama cut off the legs of some, and the hips of others, and pierced some in their flanks, careering like the Destroyer himself let loose by Time. The Earth, O lord, was soon covered with human beings that were crushed into shapelessness or trodden down by elephants and steeds and with others that roared in great affliction. Many of them loudly exclaimed, “What is this?” “Who is this one?” “What is this noise?” “Who is doing what?” While uttering such shrieks, Drona’s son became their Destroyer. That foremost of smiters, the son of Drona, despatched to regions of Yama all those Pandus and Srinjayas who were without armour and weapons. Terrified at that noise, many awoke from sleep. Possessed with fear, blinded by sleep, and deprived of their senses, those warriors seemed to vanish (before the fury of Ashvatthama). The thighs of many were paralysed and many were so stupefied that they lost all their energy. Shrieking and possessed with fear, they began to slay one another. Drona’s son once more got upon his car of terrible clatter and taking up his bow despatched many with his shafts to Yama’s abode. Others awoke from sleep, brave warriors and foremost of men, as they came towards Ashvatthama, were slain before they could approach him and were thus offered up as victims unto that Death-Night. Crushing many with that foremost of cars, he careered through the camp, and covered his foes with repeated showers of arrows. Once again with that beautiful shield of his, adorned with hundred moons, and with that sword of his which was of the hue of the welkin, he careered amidst his enemies. Like an elephant agitating a large lake, Drona’s son, irresistible, in battle, agitated the camp of the Pandavas.
Awaked by the noise, O king, many warriors, afflicted still with sleep and fear, and with senses still under a cloud, ran hither and thither. Many shrieked in harsh tones and many uttered incoherent exclamations. Many succeeded not in obtaining their weapons and armour. The locks of many were dishevelled, and many failed to recognise one another. Having risen from sleep, many fell down, fatigued; some wandered here and there without any purpose. Elephants and steeds, breaking their cords, passed excreta and urine. Many, causing great confusion, huddled together. Amongst these, some through fear laid themselves down on the earth. The animals of the camp crushed them there.
While the camp was in this state, rakshasas, O king, uttered loud roars in joy, O chief of the Bharatas! The loud noise, O king, uttered by ghostly beings in joy, filled all the points of the compass and the welkin. Hearing the wails of woe, elephants, steeds, breaking their cords, rushed hither and thither, crushing the combatants in the camp. As those animals rushed hither and thither, the dust raised by them made the night doubly dark. When that thick gloom set in, the warriors in the camp became perfectly stupefied; sires recognised not their sons, brothers recognised not their brothers. Elephants assailing riderless elephants, and steeds assailing riderless steeds, assailed and broke and crushed the people that stood in their way. Losing all order, combatants rushed and slew one another, and felling those that stood in their way, crushed them into pieces. Deprived of their senses and overcome with sleep, and enveloped in gloom, men, impelled by fate, slew their own comrades. The guards, leaving the gates they watched, and those at duty at the outposts leaving the posts they guarded, fled away for their lives, deprived of their senses and not knowing whither they proceeded. They slew one another, the slayers, O lord, not recognising the slain. Afflicted by Fate, they cried after their sires and sons. While they fled, abandoning their friends and relatives, they called upon one another, mentioning their families and names. Other, uttering cries of “Oh!” and “Alas!” fell down on the earth. In the midst of the battle, Drona’s son, recognising them, slew them all.”
As we can see here, Kalaratri is evocatively illustrated – not only in terms of the direct referencing of the Goddess’ iconographic elements, but also in a figurative, functional sense. Is this a metaphor? Is this the direct manifestation of Kalaratri upon this battlefield? It is deliberately ever-so-slightly ambiguous just which is what. A sort of ‘inversion’ in some respects to the situation of much of the Iliad. But more upon that, perhaps, at some other time. Although it is most definitely interesting to note that foreshadowing, foreboding, is what effectively lays many of the Pandava soldiers into the earth’s blood-spattered warm embrace. They had seen things in dreams, nightmares, that they then projected back out onto the circumstances around them. Were they accurate to do so? Well, therein lies the delicious ambiguity, doesn’t it. Ultimately, though, ‘Fate’ is indeed the victor here. And Fate, as we know, is She.
We could go through and quote quite an … extensive further array of scripture to our purpose; but for now, I think it is enough. The only major area we have left unexamined is Her role in the Ekpyrosis via which the Universe is finally purged in fire. But that is something that, again, is quite extensively covered within the course of the canon – and so one’s attention would feasibly be directed elsewhere upon that matter.
Besides, everybody knows that Kali has such a role and saliency. And we felt that it was important, as we had said, to present these ‘other sides’, ‘other dimensions’, ‘other vitalities’ both to and for Her.
Wherein we find Her aiding and availing Her Chosen to actually stay alive [rather than merely the converse]; wherein we find Her hailed as the most beautiful woman of the Three Worlds (rather than a singularly withered and terrifying visage); and wherein we find Her engaged in creating, upholding, and embodying the Universe Entire – rather than simply destroying it.
She is, we may say, ‘All And Everything’ – that black of the darkest night afore the Sun had first ever arisen, which contains so much that is .. .in a word .. ‘Subjunctive’ – the ‘Mood of Possibility’.
We can, I suspect, do little better than quoting in closing the Skanda Purana (VI 1 54 – Tagare translation)’s ‘Carmamunda Prayer’:
“19 Be victorious, O omnipresent Goddess, O excellent Carmamuṇḍadharā. Be victorious, O splendid Daughter of Dakṣa, efficient in the annihilation of the race of demons.
Be victorious, O Kālarātri, O incomprehensible one, O Goddess fond of Navamī and Aṣṭamī (9th and 8th lunar days). O three-eyed One, O Beloved of the Three-eyed One. Be victorious, O goddess adored by Suras.
21 O terrible One, O beautiful One, O great Deity of learning of great power, O Goddess of huge body and great prosperity. Be victorious, O Goddess of great Vratas.
22 O Mother of the Universe, of permanent form, O Goddess fond of liquor and meat and suet! O Mahākāll of hideous form, be victorious, O Goddess with Pretas as followers.
23 O beautiful Goddess fond of corpse as vehicle. O Goddess with serpents for ornaments! O Goddess of huge hands armed with the noose, O Goddess having flood of blood made as the place of residence.
24 O Goddess splendidly shining with shouts and howls! O Goddess shining with music of instruments and songs. Be victorious, O Goddess without beginning. Be victorious, O Goddess worthy of meditation, O Goddess resorting to a half of the body of Bharga (Śiva).
25 Undoubtedly You are Rati, You are Dhṛti (fortitude), You are Tuṣṭi (satisfaction) O Gaurī; You are the Goddess of Suras. You are Lakṣmī; You are Sāvitrī and Gāyatrī.
26 O Goddess, whatever is seen in the three worlds in female form is identical with You. Here I have no doubt at all.
27 On the basis of that truth whereby I believe so You shall be present here quickly. O Goddess bowed down to by Suras and Asuras, pleased with my devotion, be present here.”
As I had closed our more usual (Sharada) Navratri Kalaratri tribute (A)Arti-cle with in previous years (wherein I always post the same image, and make reference to a certain Divine favour and active-intervention bestowed to me by Her upon Kalaratri 2015 that was life-changing … )
“It is right, righteous, and proper to Honour one’s Ma.
After all – SHE is Time.
And SHE is On My Side.
ॐ देवी कालरात्र्यै नम॥
नमो नमो दुर्गे
रूप कराल कालिका धारा
जै माता कालि जै माता दुर्गे।
कालि दुर्गे नमो नमः॥
ॐ क्रीं कालिकायै नमः॥ “
जय माता दी ॥
#Happy #Navratri Day 6
Shashti
#Maa #Katyayani Puja
27th
March 2023
(Monday)
Navratri Day 6: #Green
Green colour signifies new beginnings and growth. Hindus worship Goddess Katyayani on this day and she is seen as the slayer of tyrannical demon Mahisasura.
Katyayani Mata is worshipped on the sixth day of Navratri. Goddess Parvati took this form to kill the demon Mahishasura. This form is considered quite violent and hence, Maa Katyayani is also known as the warrior goddess.
About Katyayani
Katyayani Maa rides a majestic lion. She is depicted with 4 arms, where the left 2 arms carry lotus & a sword, and right 2 arms stay in Varada & Abhaya Mudras. The Goddess is draped in a red attire.
Legend
The Goddess got this name Katyayini because she was born to the Katyayana Rishi. Some texts also described that she is an Avatar of Goddess Shakti and got this name because Rishi Katyayana was the first one to worship her.
When the world was in danger due to the atrocities of Mahishasura, Goddess Katyayani slew him. As soon as she arrived in front of the Demon Mahishasura, she dismounted herself from the lion being armed with all the weapons. The demon took the form of a bull and the goddess sprang over his back. With her tender feet, she pushed his head down and then slew his neck. That’s why she has also got the name Mahishasuramardini (the Mahishasura;s slayer).
Astrological Aspect
Planet Jupiter (Brihaspati) is ruled by the Goddess Katyayani. Worshipping her helps in pacifying the ill effects of this planet.
Mantras
ॐ देवी कात्यायन्यै नमः॥
Prarthana Mantra:
चन्द्रहासोज्ज्वलकरा शार्दूलवरवाहना।
कात्यायनी शुभं दद्याद् देवी दानवघातिनी॥
Stuti:
या देवी सर्वभूतेषु माँ कात्यायनी रूपेण संस्थिता।
नमस्तस्यै नमस्तस्यै नमस्तस्यै नमो नमः॥
Dhyana Mantra:
वन्दे वाञ्छित मनोरथार्थ चन्द्रार्धकृतशेखराम्।
सिंहारूढा चतुर्भुजा कात्यायनी यशस्विनीम्॥
स्वर्णवर्णा आज्ञाचक्र स्थिताम् षष्ठम दुर्गा त्रिनेत्राम्।
वराभीत करां षगपदधरां कात्यायनसुतां भजामि॥
पटाम्बर परिधानां स्मेरमुखी नानालङ्कार भूषिताम्।
मञ्जीर, हार, केयूर, किङ्किणि, रत्नकुण्डल मण्डिताम्॥
प्रसन्नवदना पल्लवाधरां कान्त कपोलाम् तुगम् कुचाम्।
कमनीयां लावण्यां त्रिवलीविभूषित निम्न नाभिम्॥
Stotra:
कञ्चनाभां वराभयं पद्मधरा मुकटोज्जवलां।
स्मेरमुखी शिवपत्नी कात्यायनेसुते नमोऽस्तुते॥
पटाम्बर परिधानां नानालङ्कार भूषिताम्।
सिंहस्थिताम् पद्महस्तां कात्यायनसुते नमोऽस्तुते॥
परमानन्दमयी देवी परब्रह्म परमात्मा।
परमशक्ति, परमभक्ति, कात्यायनसुते नमोऽस्तुते॥
विश्वकर्ती, विश्वभर्ती, विश्वहर्ती, विश्वप्रीता।
विश्वाचिन्ता, विश्वातीता कात्यायनसुते नमोऽस्तुते॥
कां बीजा, कां जपानन्दकां बीज जप तोषिते।
कां कां बीज जपदासक्ताकां कां सन्तुता॥
कांकारहर्षिणीकां धनदाधनमासना।
कां बीज जपकारिणीकां बीज तप मानसा॥
कां कारिणी कां मन्त्रपूजिताकां बीज धारिणी।
कां कीं कूंकै क: ठ: छ: स्वाहारूपिणी॥
Kavacha Mantra:
कात्यायनौमुख पातु कां स्वाहास्वरूपिणी।
ललाटे विजया पातु मालिनी नित्य सुन्दरी॥
कल्याणी हृदयम् पातु जया भगमालिनी॥
With this, we hope that you will make the best of Navratri’s sixth day. May Katyayani Durga blesses you with all the goodness of life.
Happy Navratri!
Ma as Katyayani – in many ways, perhaps the most iconic understanding for Devi amidst the modern Hindusphere.
When we think of Durga – this tends to be Whom we are praising. For She is MahishasuraMardini – The Destroyer of the Buffalo-Demon – Herself !
However, as with many prominently declared myths, it is an occasionally misunderstood one in various of its key particulars. Particularly by an outside audience or those with an insistent agenda to do so.
So, for instance, you will often find a particular focus upon the notion that She is created, congealed from an emanation of ‘essence’ or ’empowerment’ from various (male) Gods – that They give Her various weapons as parts to Her appearance in amongst Them.
Technically, this is true. It is absolutely correct to state, as it is found quite well attested within the relevant scriptural source-material. However it is something of a limited perspective – one which misses at least as much as it illuminates.
For it leaves unexamined the rather more ‘underlying’ point – where those Weapons, those Empowerments came from in the first place.
The answer?
Her.
We can find this presaged in the Vedas. Long-term readers of my work will instantly know which hymnals I am going to cite in support of this contention. RV X 125 is the obvious – therein, Devi is stated to be the figure Who enables Rudra to wield His Bow to smite the opponents of Gods and our religion; Who supports Varuna, Mitra, Indra, Agni, the Asvins, Soma, Tvastr, Bhaga, Pusan … you get the idea. Devi is not only Uber Alles – but also Underpinning All likewise.
Except how does this generalized conception for ‘Supporting’ the Gods pertain to the rather specific points around Divine Weaponry? Well, other than the aforementioned Bow of Rudra – we find in RV VIII 100 9-10, the situation of the Vajra of Indra being, it should seem effectively granted through Devi’s empowerment. Indeed, per Sayana’s commentary upon the verse, the Vajra is Devi – Thunder is Vak.
We can tell that this interpretation is likely accurate due to the lesser-known situation found in the Greek Indo-European mythos – wherein Athena alone “[knows] the keys to the house where His Thunderbolt is sealed” per Aeschylus’ Eumenides.
I have detailed at far grander length the mythic and theological purports of these understandings elsewhere, and so shall not seek to reproduce that work here. However, to provide the ‘essence’ of the situation –
My position is that what is being expressed here is quite simple. We know that Devi is the Absolute, Cosmic Order – and we know that what is being expressed here is that ‘elements’, ‘shards’, ‘sparks’ of this are being ‘brought in’ to our universe via Her Grace and active bestowal. Hence why the Vajra, as with Vak Devi has its home in amidst The Waters – that liminal sphere which surrounds our universe and provides an evidently semi-permeable barrier from the more ‘unshrouded’ Absolute Order. The ‘Lightning’, if you will, to the ‘Thunder’.
Now, this is vitally important in our discussion of the circumstances pertaining to Katyayani in combat against Mahishasur.
Why?
Because consider what a Demon is. It is a Lie given form and flesh.
In one of the rare moments where I say something complimentary about the Zoroastrians – their use of a certain term in Avestan, Druj, is apt. What does this word mean? Just exactly as I have said – “falsehood”, “harm”, “pollution”, “demon”. It derives from Proto-Indo-European *dʰrewgʰ-. In our language – in this case, Sanskrit – we have the similar term and understanding – द्रुह् (‘Druh’ – although it has less of the active sense of a lie and focuses instead on the ‘injury’ and ‘invidious demonic entity’ elements). And in Old Norse, we have ‘Draugr’ (a term most frequently used for a sort of malefic undead spirit – a false mockery of life).
Rta, Orlog – Cosmic Order – this is the Truth. The Demon is, in many ways, defined by its opposition to Rta, its opposition to Cosmic Order. And so therefore, it is quite natural that it is so eminently .. well .. False. Why it seeks to overthrow the Reign of the Gods, and drag the universe entire down to its turgid level.
And hence also how it seeks to do so – via the skillful use of illusion, beguilement, deceit. This is partially why demons are stated to have such great power of ‘maya’ (in its later sense – not quite the original Vedic understanding to the term), and partially why we find Mahishasur, a foremost lord of demonkind, described as such a shapeshifter.
The Demon, it dresses itself and its cause up – it bewitches the minds and senses of various beings (including, one can observe, itself – to delude itself into believing it has not only chance, but virtual certitude of victory) to bend them to its will; all in a bid to undermine and to eviscerate out, the saliency of Cosmic Order here in this universe of ours.
So, if this is the ‘essence’ of the demon – this falseness – then we are unsurprised to find that the supreme weapon with which the Demon is to be combatted … is Truth, is Light, is Law.
What is the Weapon of the Gods?
Just exactly that.
Or, rather, just exactly – Her.
Devi.
In the Hands of Indra, the Vajra is, indeed, Devi-bestowed Law – a weapon that is an in-universe tangible expression of Her Will, Her Law, Her Force (‘Shakti’). Hence why it is so incredibly effective at smiting the demonic foe that sought to ‘shroud’ away the Truth or the Dawn or the other such elements vitally necessary for the ongoing maintenance and upholding of Existence Itself.
In similar fashions, the various ‘qualities’ represented by the various weapons of the Gods that are given (back) to Devi for Her Fight against Mahishasur are likewise. She granted them to Them in the first instance.
These ‘qualities’ coming back – radiated out from the faces, the mouths, the brows of the Gods – into a ‘mountain of Tejas’ (radiancy, fire). A most eloquent, excellent tool with which to ‘illuminate’ – to dispel the darkness, the shadows, the delusions and illusions and despair.
To dispel, in short, the ‘Dhrewgh’ we have just aforemet.
As Terry Pratchett once observed: “Sometimes it’s better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.”
Indeed, I suspect that this rather more than partially explicates the root to the name ‘Katyayani’.
After all, the customary interpretation is that She is the ‘Daughter’ of the Sage Katyayana.
The etymology of ‘Katyayana’ is a bit of a complicated topic for another time – although we note with interest the potentiality around Kai (कै), ‘To Sound’. Certainly, in addition to the logical ‘Priestly’ component to this, it should concord rather well with the salient contribution of the historical Katyayana as … something of an etymologist, or perhaps a philologist, and directly acquainted with some of the ‘mysteries’ around Vak akin to those salient in RV X 71 (effectively, that words in the Sacred Speech have meaning a-priori to human utilization – our tongues and minds being ‘guided’ to these via Her Divine Hand).
One way to perhaps interpret this is the notion of the Vedic Ritualist invoking Her – causing Her to become present via the sacral fire and his prayerful Song. The notion of Devi in this form as ‘Daughter of Katyayana’ would accord what we seemingly observe elsewhere in the poetic descriptions of various Gods as being the ‘Sons’ of prominent Vedic Rsis – statements that cannot be taken at face-value and literality for a number of reasons, yet which make perfect sense when we consider the manner of the Vedic rite wherein a God is ‘brought into this world’ through the Priest’s holy formula of invocation.
However, another potentiality for the theonym is also in evidence.
In the Skanda Purana (VI 1 120), we find this most intriguing illustration:
The Gods are said to have been defeated in combat against Mahishasur, even despite being lead by Indra – leading to the woeful state of the Three Worlds as the Demons rapaciously appropriate anything and everything of worth. This lamentable situation is the cause for much anger and strategizing on the part of the Gods – with, and this is of vital importance, this anger and its attendant heat (the Sanskrit word used is Gharma (घर्म) – so ‘heat’, predictably, doesn’t really capture the connotation; think ‘boiling’, ‘brew-up’ – as with various ritual preparations), issuing forth from ‘Vak’s Gate’ (Vaktradvāra – i.e. the Mouth), begins to congeal.
However, it is only once Lord Skanda, Kartikeya, becomes aware of the situation – and joins His vocal expression of Wrath (‘War-Fury’ would be the apt translation for Kopa ( कोप ) here, I think) again out through the voice-gate with those of the rest of the pantheon – that She ‘arrives’ in earnest (the relevant Sanskrit term – Samagata – simultaneously means ‘to arrive’ but also to ‘come together’, ‘conjoin’, ‘unite’).
The Purana then goes on to state (VI 1 120 13) that it is due to precisely this that She becomes known as Katyayani – as She has developed from the Wrath of the Heavens, catalyzed via the Rage of Kartikeya being introduced to this.
Now this opens up some rather intriguing possibilities, in light of the later understanding via Prakrits of ‘Katya’ to pertain to the Krttikas (Pleiades) – however that is perhaps unnecessary to explore at this time.
What we shall instead note is that due to the theonymic for Kartikeya Himself as ‘Katyayanisuta’ – the Issue of Katyayani (i.e. His Mother’s Son) – or ‘Katyayaniputra’ (again, ‘Son of Katyayani’), it is not the case that this sets up the ultimate Invoker of Katyayani as being Her Father. Only Her ‘Caller’ (and here we are pointedly referencing the sense to Goði as the ‘Caller of the Gods’ … as well as, as we have seen viz. Gharma, the Pourer Forth to the Gods – as seen in the underlying sense to होतृ ( Hotr ) and हवन, होम (Havan, Homa), all from PIE *ǵʰew- (‘To Pour’)).
Now, toward the outset of this piece, I declared that the Myth of Katyayani is one that, “as with many prominently declared myths, it is an occasionally misunderstood one in various of its key particulars. Particularly by an outside audience or those with an insistent agenda to do so.”
To which did I refer there? Well, in part it is to a most bizarre and scurrilous spectacle I had beheld some years ago – wherein a group of Bengali animation students had decided to ‘re-interpret’ the myth to be more in line with their own particular flavouring of ‘feminist’ sensibilities. This is affronting on multiple levels – one of which being that the myth needs no reinterpretation to be approached as an excellent ‘feminist’ morality tale. The Demon makes a most indecent proposition indeed toward the beautiful Devi, and following his would-be harassment, objectification, however we wish to term it … She destroys him mercilessly.
However, it is the precise manner of their ‘reinterpretation’ that caused – and should cause – such intemperate outrage. For they had decided to “present” (in truth, flagrantly misrepresent) the narrative in a manner they considered to not have been crafted for the ‘male gaze’ … and so instead of Devi slaying the demon through force of arms, they chose to try and suggest that more “feminine” [their labelling] means that eschewed violence to instead ‘persuade’ and ‘exhaust’ the cretin were deployed.
Perish the thought. This sort of thing is directly opposed by the actual texts themselves.
In the course of the Srimad Devi Bhagavatam, Devi directly tells the envoy of Mahishasur, in reply to an attempted marriage proposal, that she is going to kill him.
In fact, it is not so much phrased as a threat – but rather, an inevitability. She is, as we have said, Cosmic Order – Rta, Orlog – and just as ‘Orlog’ in the later Germanic / Nordic rendering came to mean ‘Fate’ … well, so She is thusly, too.
To quote from the text (V 10; Vijñanananda translation):
“Now see that your master Mahiṣa has shown his intelligence, when he courted his death from the hands of a woman. For that very reason, I have come here in the shape of a woman to effect my purpose; why shall I fear, then, to hear your words, contradictory to those of the Śāstras.
When Fate goes against any one, a grass comes like a thunderbolt; and when fate goes in favour of anyone, a thunderbolt becomes as soft as a bundle of cotton.
What does it avail even when one possesses an extensive army or various weapons in abundance, taking shelter in a wide extending fort? What will his soldiers do to him, whose death has come close at hand?
[…]
Know this as certain, very certain, that death will come to him in the manner as written by the hands of Fate; it will never be otherwise.
As the birth and death of Brahmā and other gods are ordained, your death has been similarly ordained; no, there is no need of taking the example further than this.
Those who are tied up by the hands of death are surely fools and of extremely blunt intellect, if they think simply on the strength of their getting some boons “that they would never die.”
Therefore go quickly to your king and speak to him what I have said; you will then surely obey what he commands you to do.
If he wants his life, he, with his retinue, would at once go down to Pātāla; let Indra and the other Devas get possession of the Heavens and their share of Yajñas.
If he holds a contrary opinion, let him be eager to go to the house of Death and come and fight with Me.
If he thinks that Viṣṇu and the other Devas have fled from the battle-fields, he has nothing to boast of; for he has not shown his manliness at all even then; for his victory is solely due to his having got the boon from Brahmā. ””
The message is relayed to Mahishasur … who asks his advisors what it is that he should do with this information.
One of these, Durdhara, offers this counsel (V 11):
“As far as I think, I consider that woman with beautiful teeth as passionate. For that woman of broad hips has expressed a desire to bring you under control by making you fearful; the mistresses, proud of their beauty generally use such words when they become passionate.
When they behave in this way, people call these amorous gestures. These crooked words of mistresses are the chief causes in attracting dear persons unto them.
Those who are skilled in the art of love affair, some of them can know these things thoroughly well.
O King! That woman has said:
“I will pierce and kill you by arrows, face to face, in the battlefield.”
The sense of this is different. The wise persons that are clever and experienced in the art of finding out the cause, declare that the above sentence is pregnant with deep and esoteric meaning.
You can easily see that the handsome women have no other arrows with them; their side-glances are their arrows. And their words carry their hidden meanings, and, expressing their desires, are their flowers.
O King! Brahmā, Viṣṇu and Maheśa even have no powers to shoot arrows at you; how can, then, that helpless woman, who appears so passionate, dart real arrows at you?
O King! That lady said:
“O Stupid! I will kill your King by my arrow-like eye-sight.”
But the messenger was wanting in that power to appreciate; so he, no doubt, understood her words in their contrary sense.
The saying of that lady:
“I will lay your lord in the death-bed in the battle-field”
is to be taken in the light of inverted sexual intercourse, where woman is above the man.
Her utterance:
“I will take away the vitality (life) of your lord” – is also significant.
The semen virile is known as the vitality (life). Therefore the above expression means that she will make you devoid of your virility. There can be no other meaning.
O King! Those women that are excellent show by too much of their covert expressions (innuendos) that they select and like very much their beloved. The experts only in these amorous affairs will be able to appreciate these things.
Knowing thus, dealings ought to be made with Her so that the harmony in amorous sentiments be not broken.
O King! Sāma (conciliation) and Dana (gifts) are the two means to be adopted; there is no other way. By these two, that Lady, whether she be proud or angry, is sure to have brought under control; I will go now and bring Her before you by such sweet words.
O King! What is the use of my talking too much? I will make Her submissive to you like a slave girl.”
You can just imagine how this actually plays out in practice.
Violently. For the demons.
As it turned out, Devi meant exactly as She had said when She declared that She would destroy them. Funny, that.
Now as it happens, this mytheme of demon lords deciding they really do rather like the appearance and other such qualities of Devi, and would like to possess Her in most unseemly fashion – is quite a recurrent one. It always ends the same way. We could quote quite a number of further exemplars from the scripture, but this piece has already taken far too long in the writing (we apologize wholeheartedly to Devi for being a night late, even!).
However, we shall quote from the … aftermath of another decidedly ill-considered attempted-marriage-proposal from a would-be demon world-emperor:
From the Devi Mahatmya (Pargiter translation of the Markandeya Purana’s presentation of same):
“Seeing his brother Niśumbha slain, who was dear to him as his life, and his army being slaughtered, Śumbha in wrath spoke thus—“O Durgā, who art tainted with the arrogance of strength, bring not thy pride here, thou who, trusting in the strength of the other goddesses, dost fight in exceeding haughtiness!”
The Goddess Spoke:
Alone verily am I in the world here; what other Goddess is there besides Me? See, vile one! that these Goddesses, Who have their divine power from Me, are entering into Me indeed.
Then all those Goddesses, Brahmāṇī and the others, became absorbed into the Goddess’ breasts; Ambikā then remained alone indeed.
The Goddess spoke:
Whereas I existed with My Divine Power in many forms here—that has been drawn in by Me, truly alone I stand now. Be thou steadfast in combat!”
It is intriguing to note that which happens next:
“Thereupon commenced a battle between them both, the goddess and Śumbha, while all the gods and the Asuras looked on —a battle without quarter. With showers of arrows, with sharp weapons and also with pitiless missiles both engaged anew in a combat which set all the world in fear. And the lord of the Daityas broke the heavenly missiles, which Ambikā discharged in hundreds, with weapons that parried them. And the supreme goddess in merest play broke the heavenly missiles that he discharged, with fierce shouts, ejaculations and other sounds.”
We are unsurprised to find that Vocalization is such a prominent combat-form here. Vak, as we have said (in multiple senses), Over All.
Although, of course, more conventional forms of martial engagement then ensue – which we shall not quote here for length.
Our point in quoting that aforementioned excerpt was simple – as She Herself states: the Powers, the Divinities that had taken to the field … well, She Alone outnumbers the foe, precisely because all of these other forms are expressions, emanations of Her. The various Goddess-forms mentioned are, indeed, Shaktis of the male Gods as well in many of these cases. Just as we had stated much earlier.
Yet let us draw things to their close.
Demons both present and represent Lies. In some cases, these are small and subtle – in others, large and pernicious in their profusion. They may be conceptual delusions – like the idea that one can successfully defy the Will of the Gods (and live …), or for that matter, the notion that a woman cannot possibly be a martial threat or a leader, cannot prove and demand respect. Or they may be other kinds of falsehood – the various and manifold guises adopted by Mahishasur in the course of his attempted combat against the Goddess, as one example; or the lies we might tell ourselves (whether under demonic influence, particularly) about who and where we are ‘supposed’ to be.
However, in order to gain meaningful purchase out here in this world of ours – or even ‘in there’ in these heads that sometimes uneasily coexist with same – they must be listened to, believed, given credence, let in and entertained, tolerated. And slowly but surely, upon our beginning to do so, they become … not ‘true’ – not really – but a sort of twisted simulacra of ‘reality’ that parasitically sustains itself upon the energy of our life’s force, and the stolen valour of Truth, that it can pervert away from its true direction. We’re ‘necessary’ to them, in order to grant them the material support, the material expression, to which they are otherwise – eminently righteously – denied !
The Kingdom of Mahishasur – such as it was – was a fundamentally Delusory one. For it was based, at all levels and in all ways, upon a Lie. It was ruled over by a Liar, whose conquest was only made possible via his Lie that he was invulnerable (and the best lies, as they say, are the ones that are only ‘mostly’ true), garbed up also as another Lie as to his purported superior martial vigour. Devi calls him out on all of the above. But I say that it was a Delusory kingdom, because that is just exactly that which it was – the Heavens, Truth, belong to the Gods. He had not set up a meaningful ruination and casting down to Them – he had, at best, temporarily taken up residence somewhere that he decidedly did not belong. The dreams of empire and imperial dominion he harboured were fantasies – they were defined against the truth, and against Cosmic Law, right there from the outset.
What does all of this lead to?
A ‘snapback’ of sorts.
Reality reasserts itself – sorry, I should say:
Reality reasserts *HERself – violently.
जय माता दी ॥
जय जय हे महिषासुरमर्दिनि रम्यकपर्दिनि शैलसुते ॥
ॐ देवी कात्यायन्यै नम ॥
#Happy #Navratri Day 5
Panchami
#Maa #Skandamata Puja
26th
March 2023
(Sunday)
Navratri Day 5: #Yellow
The colour of Day 5 is yellow. The colour stands for happiness and brightness. On this day #Goddess Skandmata is worshipped and is also known as the mother of Lord Kartikey or Skanda.
Maa Skandmata has four arms and she rides on a lion. 2 of her arms carry lotus, 1 arm carry baby #Kartikeya, and another one stays in the Abhaya Mudra. As she sits on the lotus, Goddess Padmasana is her another name. She is the Goddess who can bless her devotees with power and prosperity. Also, she can bless her worshipper with immense intelligence as well as salvation. She is also considered as the Goddess of fire. As she is the epitome of motherly love in this form, devotees get blessed with her immense love.
Legend
As the legend goes, there was a great demon, Tarkasur. He did extreme penance for years to impress Lord Brahma; and finally the Lord appeared in front of him. He, then, requested for a boon of becoming immortal. Brahma Ji explained that death is inescapable on this planet earth. Being quite witty, he thought that Shiva will never get married, as he is an ascetic. So, he requested Brahma to grant him a boon that he can only be killed by the son of Shiva. Lord Brahma agreed on this and he started torturing the world thinking that he cannot be killed.
Being tortured, all the Devtas visited Lord Shiva and requested to him to get married. Hence, he married Goddess Parvati and became the father of Lord Kathikeya (Skand Kumar). When Kartikeya grew up, he killed the Demon Tarkasur and saved everyone.
Astrological Aspect
Planet Mercury (Budh) is ruled by Goddess Skandmata. Worshipping her kills the ill effects of Mercury.
Mantras
ॐ देवी स्कन्दमातायै नमः॥
Prarthana Mantra:
सिंहासनगता नित्यं पद्माञ्चित करद्वया।
शुभदास्तु सदा देवी स्कन्दमाता यशस्विनी॥
Stuti:
या देवी सर्वभूतेषु माँ स्कन्दमाता रूपेण संस्थिता।
नमस्तस्यै नमस्तस्यै नमस्तस्यै नमो नमः॥
Dhyana Mantra:
वन्दे वाञ्छित कामार्थे चन्द्रार्धकृतशेखराम्।
सिंहरूढ़ा चतुर्भुजा स्कन्दमाता यशस्विनीम्॥
धवलवर्णा विशुध्द चक्रस्थितों पञ्चम दुर्गा त्रिनेत्राम्।
अभय पद्म युग्म करां दक्षिण उरू पुत्रधराम् भजेम्॥
पटाम्बर परिधानां मृदुहास्या नानालङ्कार भूषिताम्।
मञ्जीर, हार, केयूर, किङ्किणि, रत्नकुण्डल धारिणीम्॥
प्रफुल्ल वन्दना पल्लवाधरां कान्त कपोलाम् पीन पयोधराम्।
कमनीयां लावण्यां चारू त्रिवली नितम्बनीम्॥
Stotra:
नमामि स्कन्दमाता स्कन्दधारिणीम्।
समग्रतत्वसागरम् पारपारगहराम्॥
शिवाप्रभा समुज्वलां स्फुच्छशागशेखराम्।
ललाटरत्नभास्करां जगत्प्रदीप्ति भास्कराम्॥
महेन्द्रकश्यपार्चितां सनत्कुमार संस्तुताम्।
सुरासुरेन्द्रवन्दिता यथार्थनिर्मलाद्भुताम्॥
अतर्क्यरोचिरूविजां विकार दोषवर्जिताम्।
मुमुक्षुभिर्विचिन्तितां विशेषतत्वमुचिताम्॥
नानालङ्कार भूषिताम् मृगेन्द्रवाहनाग्रजाम्।
सुशुध्दतत्वतोषणां त्रिवेदमार भूषणाम्॥
सुधार्मिकौपकारिणी सुरेन्द्र वैरिघातिनीम्।
शुभां पुष्पमालिनीं सुवर्णकल्पशाखिनीम्
तमोऽन्धकारयामिनीं शिवस्वभावकामिनीम्।
सहस्रसूर्यराजिकां धनज्जयोग्रकारिकाम्॥
सुशुध्द काल कन्दला सुभृडवृन्दमज्जुलाम्।
प्रजायिनी प्रजावति नमामि मातरम् सतीम्॥
स्वकर्मकारणे गतिं हरिप्रयाच पार्वतीम्।
अनन्तशक्ति कान्तिदां यशोअर्थभुक्तिमुक्तिदाम्॥
पुनः पुनर्जगद्धितां नमाम्यहम् सुरार्चिताम्।
जयेश्वरि त्रिलोचने प्रसीद देवी पाहिमाम्॥
Kavacha Mantra:
ऐं बीजालिंका देवी पदयुग्मधरापरा।
हृदयम् पातु सा देवी कार्तिकेययुता॥
श्री ह्रीं हुं ऐं देवी पर्वस्या पातु सर्वदा।
सर्वाङ्ग में सदा पातु स्कन्दमाता पुत्रप्रदा॥
वाणवाणामृते हुं फट् बीज समन्विता।
उत्तरस्या तथाग्ने च वारुणे नैॠतेअवतु॥
इन्द्राणी भैरवी चैवासिताङ्गी च संहारिणी।
सर्वदा पातु मां देवी चान्यान्यासु हि दिक्षु वै॥
With this, we hope that you will make the best of Navratri’s fifth day. May Skandmata Durga blesses you with all the goodness of life.
Happy Navratri!
Now as one might presume – She is the Mother (Mata) of Lord Skanda, one of our … many War Gods. Takes after His Mother in that regard!
The story of Skanda’s conception and birth is perhaps a bit of a curious one – as it is not, in fact. Devi Herself Who gives birth to the young prince (Kumara – another epithetic theonym of He).
Instead, He comes to us from the Krttika cluster (hence His Six Heads – One for each Mother) – better known to us here in the West as the Pleiades. Something which I believe to resonate with the circumstances for the conception of Heimdallr in the Nordic sphere.
But let us take things back a few steps.
As we have said, the Story of the NavRatri cycle is one of Reunification – of the Divine Couple re-finding Each Other after having become separated in circumstances both tragic and lamented … yet arguably necessary in order to bring certain events to their logical progression.
One result of this was the Death of Devi as Sati. The other was another sort of ‘death’ – in the figurative sense, at least. As Lord Shiva had chosen to withdraw Himself from the World to head up into the High Himalayas in order to meditate, smoke weed, and attempt to overcome His immense, unbearable grief at losing His Other Half. I am sure various of us can relate.
However, simply because we are no longer (we think) moving, does not mean that the Universe has given up upon moving around us. The world turns – and though we know it not – we turn with it.
And so it was that the latest in a long, long line of demonic foes came to rise.
This demon warlord was named Taraka, or Tarakasur – an interesting ‘ironic resonancy’ with Lord Skanda (otherwise known as Kartikeya – ‘Of the Krittikas’), given Taraka also means ‘Star’ (or, at least, celestial light – the corona of a comet, for instance, in some more specialized contexts).
Now, there is a standard pattern to these sorts of myths. Some demon gains prominency and sets his mind upon casting down the Gods. He realizes that he, himself, shall be unable to meaningfully go up against the Heavens as he is, and so undertakes immense austere penances and propitiation in order to win a Boon from a certain favourably-disposed force … customarily asking for Immortality / Invincibility.
This is logical. If one is going to go and fight the Gods Themselves, then one had best be – in a word – unkillable.
It is also impossible.
The way that our relevant legalistic metaphysics works – they are only able to be accorded a ‘conditional’ invulnerability. They have to have some weak-point – some condition to which they remain vulnerable.
The weakness that the demon chooses is often an interesting insight into their character – Mahishasur, for instance, was a misogynist and contemptuous of the fairer sex … and so, he chose as his ‘condition’ that he could only be taken down by a woman, precisely because he believed that no woman could possibly be a threat to him. Which, of course, was a spectacularly stupid thing to do given that Devi (Whom we shall be meeting in the next Night of NavRatri as Katyayani) … has a bit of a reputation in these areas – as the foremost of our War Gods.
But nobody ever said that the arrogance of demons was commensurate with their sagacity – most of the time, anyway.
Durgamasur was smart enough to request an entirely different boon – that of wiping the knowledge of the Vedas from the minds of mankind, thus leading to a weakening of the Gods through the cessation of the performance of the Vedic rites of sacrifice that nourish and strengthen Them. But more upon him some other time.
Tarakasur, however, chose a rather more straightforward vulnerability. He was acquainted with the events surrounding Lord Shiva’s immense sadness and why He had retreated from the world – the loss of His Beloved Wife. He knew just how …. inconsolable Lord Shiva was upon this matter – how absolutely devoted to His Wife He had been (and yet still remained, even in Her Death). And therefore, he surmised, how immensely unlikely He was to ever remarry. For how could He, when He still carried only Her within His Deepest Heart?
Tarakasura thusly chose as his condition – that he would only be able to be vanquished by a yet-to-be-born Son of Shiva. Reasoning, perhaps rather logically, that it was almost certain that Lord Shiva – in the absence of His now-deceased Wife – would never conceive another Son; and thus rendering him functionally invincible pending this apparently inconceivable circumstance.
To twist the common saying, though – ‘Demons Plan, Fate Laughs’.
Knowing of this prophecy, certain Divinity attempts to do something about the situation. Kamadeva, the God of Love, is sent to endeavour to get Lord Shiva to ‘move on’ … which results in Shiva burning Kama to ashes when He detects the intrusion into His Mighty Mind, and as a perhaps rather natural outpouring of the renewed sense of grief which He experiences when a pleasing romantic memory of His Wife is revealed to have been .. just exactly that – a memory, once more.
However, as we have covered in previous NavRatri pieces, this is not the end of the tale. Rather, His dead Wife has reincarnated (Shailaputri) – and not all that far away from His present situated circumstance. She is seeking Him (Brahmacharini). They Reunify, Remarry (Chandraghanta), and are indeed in a position to bring forth another Child (Kushmanda, in a sense).
At this point, Agni moves to safeguard the future by ‘stealing’ the embryo of Skanda from Parvati’s womb – His reasoning being that before the God is born, should Tarakasur become aware of Shiva having successfully conceived a Son, both Mother and (pre-natal) Child should prove at grave risk from the demon.
This, however, is not explained to Parvati – and when She finds out what had occurred, She curses Agni (Flame) to be indiscriminately all-devouring, always wreathed by black smoke, and to ever have His food be riven with impurities.
The yet-to-be-born Skanda is spirited away, and in order to further safeguard Him, is borne to term by not one but six Mothers – the Krttika (Pleiades) Star-Maidens. As we have said, this circumstance should appear to resonate with the birth of Heimdallr to His Nine Mothers found in the waters at the edge of the world (a point arguably in common with the Stars in the archaic Indo-European view; and we should further note a rather prominent 7 => 9 shift between Vedic and Eddic traditions, as well as the curious situation wherein the Pleiades constellational cluster, at latitudes further from the equator, appears to have nine rather than six (or, for that matter, seven) stars to it).
Yet it also resonates in a curious way with the more archaic Hindu layers of mythology – wherein we find Agni in romantic relationship with Svaha … Who has taken the form of Six of the Seven Pleiades, and, yes, leading to a situation involving the conception of Kumara – that instead features Kumara being born to the Krttikas.
The situation is rendered rather more clarified when one considers the voluminous and repeated attestations in the Vedas for Lord Shiva and Agni being the same deific. And, further, the attestation in the Puranic literature for Svaha as the Wife of Rudra – also known as Vikeshi, which we mention due to the circumstance of Vikesi in the conception (again via a certain ‘displacement’ of seed) of Mangala … that is to say, Mars.
To quote from a relatively recent earlier work of mine ( https://aryaakasha.com/2022/01/04/tuesday-the-day-of-mangala-mars/ ):
“The Puranic mythology around Mars makes for interesting reading. There, we find the origin of Mangala stated to be drops of sweat from tapasic exertion from the brow of Lord Shiva that had fallen upon the Earth (with the Latter acting as His Mother for these purposes).
Shiva’s situation at the time of this was engaging Himself in strenuous pursuits to endeavour to control and contain His immense grief at losing His Wife, Lady Sati.”
That is the presentation contained within the Skanda Purana at IV 1 17 4-6; and also the Shiva Purana at II Rudra Samhita 3 10 7-27.
Although another Puranic narrative presents the circumstances somewhat differently. In Brahmanda Purana II 10 78 we find Sharva (‘The Archer’ – Rudra) married to Vikeshi as Her Husband (with pointed ‘Earth’ linkage), and states Angaraka (Mars) to be Their Son; whilst Brahmanda Purana, II 24 48 directly equates Skanda with Mars / Mangala (there referred to as Angaraka) and in line 91 states Kumara Mars born to Vikesi and Agni. The matrimonial situation is further buttressed by Markandeya Purana 52 – wherein Rudra in His Ishana form is stated to be married to Vikesi (Isana being ‘Light’, ‘Ruler’; and in the Shatapatha Brahmana (VI 1 3 17) being that Form and Name of Rudra-Agni (therein Himself referred to as Kumara – ‘Young Prince’) correlate with the Sun), with Their Son being Lohitanga (Mars, again); whilst elsewhere in the same section we find Rudra’s Bhima form to be married to Svaha with Their Child being Skanda. As we can clearly see, it is a situation of many Names, many Qualities, many Aspects, many Facings even – for but Three.
As the Markandeya Purana then puts it:
“Such was Rudra Himself. He found Satī for his wife; and through Dakṣa’s curse Satī quitted Her body. She was the Daughter of Himavat by Menā, O brāhman; Her brother was Maināka, the chiefest friend of Ambhodhi (the Ocean.) And the Lord Bhava [Rudra] married Her again as His Only Wife.”
(F. Eden Pargiter translation)
We might also ponder the situation of the Krittikas Themselves – wherein They go from numbering Seven in the archaic Vedic Age, through to Six by the time of the Puranas. This is not something unique to the Hindusphere – as it also prominently occurs amongst the Greeks. In both cases, mythic explanations present the reasoning for one of the Seven Sisters having become dimmed – or even outright leaving the Heavens.
We have considered some of the Vaidika star-lore pertaining to the Krttikas in our earlier work explicating the #Krittika ‘Six Swords of the Stars’ bindrune row that I had created for somebody –
https://aryaakasha.com/2021/12/02/krttika-the-six-swords-of-the-stars/
One point that I would quote from the above that is pointedly relevant for current circumstances is the following:
“In a sense, I suppose we may think of the Krittikas as being ‘Fire-Blades’ [the name itself renders as ‘Cutters’]. They connote both ‘destruction’ and ‘illumination’ (which we can also phrase as ‘Purification’ – ‘Hallowing’) – and, most especially, both at once. The one via necessity precedes the other. Aptly for this purpose, They are presided over by Lord Agni as the Deific – a situation which also resonates with the mythological presentation, as we have covered in some detail elsewhere (and fully intend to revisit more in the future). We have also undertaken to represent an additional element to the Indo-European mythology around the constellation via the fact that there are Six Runes here – for Six Sisters, Six Star-Maids.
In both Hellenic and Hindu reckoning there were archaically Seven of These – with one, Amba (to use the Vedic), having mysteriously dimmed and disappeared. However, particularly given the overt resemblance of ‘Amba’ to … a certain figure of this name … I have my enduring belief as to where (and, most especially, Who) it is that She eventually Returns To.”
You see how this immediately resonates with the circumstances of NavRatri – as well as other, more personal points of promontory.
Elsewhere in that (A)Article we had also explored the theme presented in the Vedas for the Krttikas in connexion with Invocation, Prayerful Hymns, Ritual – and we should surmise that there is indeed an eminently logical point of contextualization here for why They are Chosen to bear Lord Skanda into this world. A Holy Warrior, indeed, thusly congealed through the Rites (Agni included as the central element) and the Prayer-Songs – likely under the correct and auspicious Constellation, just as was the Flaming Sword of Rudra as attested in the Mahabharata.
In terms of nomenclature, we should also draw attention to the meaning of Skanda – a term which (to quote myself from some years ago) “connotes charging, attacking, and leaping or springing forth “; and which is often connected to the curious circumstances of Skanda’s conception and birth. However, we instead prefer another interpretation – one which connects this theonymic and its purport instead to “Lord Skanda’s role and function – as the great warrior. Further, the likely PIE roots of the name, often proposed as “Skend” (‘Jump’), but to which I would also speculatively add “Skewd” (“shoot” or “throw”, and the same root as “Skewer” in modern English – a rather important thing for a soldier, equipped with a spear – or, as with many depictions of Skanda seated in the lap of SkandaMata … a bow and arrow !), both seem far more closely connoted with the nature of the Deity rather than being simply circumstances of conception.”
Oh, and in case you had been wondering – once Skanda is successfully born, Lord Agni appears to Parvati to explain the situation, and somewhat mollify Her Divine Wrath. Skanda then goes on, as was foretold (though he knew it not) by the demon himself to defeat and destroy the demon Taraka.
For though Evil counts itself clever and beyond reach, each and every … all of its contrivances are ultimately undone.
Perhaps rather aptly, as we can see here, through a power of Love – one strong enough to overcome even the barriers of Death.
Even if it may take a bit of time and effort – and some help from one’s Friends – in order to do so.
ॐ देवी स्कन्दमातायै नम
जय माता दी !
Chaturthi
#Maa #Kushmanda Puja
25th
March 2023
(Saturday)
Kushmanda Mata is worshipped on the fourth day of Navratri. Kushmanda is a Sanskrit name, which means: ‘Ku’ - small/little, ‘Ushma’ - energy/heat, ‘Anda’ - egg. This form of Goddess Parvati blesses her devotees with health, wealth, and strength.
About Kushmanda
Maa Kushmanda has 8 arms carrying Chakra (a weapon like discus), sword, Gada (mace), bow, arrow, Amrit Kalash (jar of the elixir of life), Kamandal (stoup), and lotus. Due to her 8 arms, she is also known as Ashtabhuja Devi. She rides a lioness.
Legend
When there was no universe and darkness was prevailing everywhere, Goddess Kushmanda brought light to the universe by producing the cosmic egg with a smile. She is the Goddess who can reside inside the core of the Sun. Her light and glow is just like Surya (the Sun).
When the universe got created, the Goddess created the Trideva (3 gods - Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh) and Tridevi (3 goddesses - Kali, Lakshmi, Saraswati). She is the creator of the entire Brahmand (universe).
Astrological Aspect
Kushmanda Maa gives direction to the Sun. Hence, worshipping her can eliminate all the ill effects of the astrological planet Sun.
Mantras
ॐ देवी कूष्माण्डायै नमः॥
Prarthana Mantra:
सुरासम्पूर्ण कलशं रुधिराप्लुतमेव च।
दधाना हस्तपद्माभ्यां कूष्माण्डा शुभदास्तु मे॥
Stuti:
या देवी सर्वभूतेषु माँ कूष्माण्डा रूपेण संस्थिता।
नमस्तस्यै नमस्तस्यै नमस्तस्यै नमो नमः॥
Dhyana Mantra:
वन्दे वाञ्छित कामार्थे चन्द्रार्धकृतशेखराम्।
सिंहरूढ़ा अष्टभुजा कूष्माण्डा यशस्विनीम्॥
भास्वर भानु निभाम् अनाहत स्थिताम् चतुर्थ दुर्गा त्रिनेत्राम्।
कमण्डलु, चाप, बाण, पद्म, सुधाकलश, चक्र, गदा, जपवटीधराम्॥
पटाम्बर परिधानां कमनीयां मृदुहास्या नानालङ्कार भूषिताम्।
मञ्जीर, हार, केयूर, किङ्किणि, रत्नकुण्डल, मण्डिताम्॥
प्रफुल्ल वदनांचारू चिबुकां कान्त कपोलाम् तुगम् कुचाम्।
कोमलाङ्गी स्मेरमुखी श्रीकंटि निम्ननाभि नितम्बनीम्॥
Stotra:
दुर्गतिनाशिनी त्वंहि दरिद्रादि विनाशनीम्।
जयंदा धनदा कूष्माण्डे प्रणमाम्यहम्॥
जगतमाता जगतकत्री जगदाधार रूपणीम्।
चराचरेश्वरी कूष्माण्डे प्रणमाम्यहम्॥
त्रैलोक्यसुन्दरी त्वंहि दुःख शोक निवारिणीम्।
परमानन्दमयी, कूष्माण्डे प्रणमाम्यहम्॥
Kavacha Mantra:
हंसरै में शिर पातु कूष्माण्डे भवनाशिनीम्।
हसलकरीं नेत्रेच, हसरौश्च ललाटकम्॥
कौमारी पातु सर्वगात्रे, वाराही उत्तरे तथा,
पूर्वे पातु वैष्णवी इन्द्राणी दक्षिणे मम।
दिग्विदिक्षु सर्वत्रेव कूं बीजम् सर्वदावतु॥
With this, we hope that you will make the best of Navratri’s fourth day. May Maa Kushmanda blesses you with all the goodness of life.
Happy Navratri!
The colour of Day 4 of Navratri is royal blue. The colour signifies good health and prosperity. On this day, Goddess Kushmanda is worshipped. Goddess Kushmanda has eight hands and thus is also known as Ashtabhuja Devi.
The Fourth Night of #NavRatri is dedicated to Ma as Kushmanda – which I have figuratively chosen to render as ‘the Power of the Sun’.
In essence, the reason that the Sun is … well … the Sun – rather than some abstract ‘ball of flaming gas’, or even simply an inanimate, lifeless object, is due to Her. This applies also to the universe entire as a fairly directly consequent result, for reasons that ought prove readily apparent. Everything has its Shakti – and in this case, She truly is the Shakti of Everything.
It would be tempting to simply approach Her as a further expression of that enduring Indo-European understanding: the Solar Goddess (which, despite the prominence of a rather specific late-Classical perspective insistently ‘colonizing’ everybody’s perceptions, appears to be a much more pervasive and archaic element than Goddess(es) being only found amidst the Moon … often a Male figure, as it happens – not that you’d notice just going by the Classical comparanda). Except this would leave unexplored and underexpressed Her true saliency. Which is, I would say, eminently more profound and foundational to our world than even the Solar radiance presently rising into our sky.
And besides, it would be rather incomplete of us not to address the situation of this (essence of) Devi with relation to Lord Surya. A male Solar deific, yes (although it must be emphasized, as I often do, that there has usually not really been one Sun per Indo-European pantheonic setup – rather the Sun is more of a ‘position’ that, depending upon context, various figures may ‘step into’ as required … or may be an inanimate object, even) – and not at all contradictory with having a female Solar deific also. Indeed, the Two must actively work in tandem.
Behind every Radiant Man … there is, indeed, an eminently Empowering Woman.
So … let us look at Her Name. As I am a great believer that via understanding and grasping the name, the etymology, the mytholinguistics of a figure … we gain great and otherwise-hard-to-come-by insight as to Their true nature.
Names do, indeed, not only ‘reference’ but also ‘encapsulate’ Being, as we shall soon see in macro!
Kushmanda, however, defies easy conceptualization in such a regard. ‘The Power of the Sun’ is, I believe, an accurate ‘essence’ – yet it is not truly what the words involved literally mean. They are more evocatively expressive than that. And contain within them Multitudes in terms of what is actually meant, entailed, and what links up with what elsewhere within its appropriate, attendant mythic sphere and context. Fanon’s point about speaking upholding the weight of a civilization even through the minutiae of words and other such formulations seems apt for the intricacies of interleavened resonancy here.
A more direct translation is usually given as something along the lines of “a little (Ku) warmth (Ushma)” in relation to a certain Egg (Anda).
However this I consider to be … somewhat inaccurate – and, indeed, there seem to be quite a few attempted translations or unpackings of ‘Kushmanda’ out there even amidst Hindu commentaries that seem to leave a bit to be desired.
So, let us start from the bottom. ‘Ku’ ( कु ) – while it can be applied as a diminutive, also tends to have an array of connotations that should make it rather curious in this context.
As it’s not so much “little” as it is “meagre”, “mean”, “insufficient”, “inferior”, or even outright false and negative.
That is not something which fits with the Goddess or Her cosmological role – it should certainly prove a most curious manner to address the Solar Power Herself !
Two other ‘Ku’ renditions are perhaps more immediately salient for us here.
The first of these concerns ‘Ku’ as a ‘base’ or the ‘Earth’. A foundation, we might suggest.
The second, is a Sound – likely a rather indistinct sound that we are not quite able to grasp the meaning of as a language.
Experienced followers of my work shall instantly apprehend where we’re going with this …
The ‘Ushma’ (उष्म) particle being understood as ‘Warmth’ is, again, not inaccurate – although may be somewhat incomplete.
For in addition to ‘Heat’, there is also a cheerful ‘Summer’ sense to it – and, of course, ‘Fire’.
We might figuratively compare ‘Tapas’, for reasons that we shall address later on.
‘Anda’, as Egg, has at least three not-necessarily-exclusive interpretations we could foster.
The first and most obvious being the Egg at the beginning of everything;
The second, a more generalized connotation of fertility and generative fostering for the necessary fundaments of life in this universe of ours – in a more ongoing sense than that Cosmic Egg, I mean;
And the third, the Sun – an ‘Egg’, or a ‘Source of Life’, that is, we might figuratively suggest .. ‘Sunny Side Up’.
Except there is another possibility … that of the final component to ‘Kushmanda’ in fact being ‘Da’ ( ड ) – which, once again, connotes ‘Sound’ (particularly that of a rhythmic beat) – and potentially the drum that makes it; or a basket or carrying device, an epithet of Shiva, a Bird, or ‘Submarine Fire’. There is also some suggestion that, in fact, the particle is ‘Daa’ ( डा ) – which would pertain to a Dakini.
All of these are relevant.
How?
Well consider what we have here. Kushmanda is stated in the theology to be just as we have said in our introduction: The Power of the Sun. The Shakti of the Universe – the ultimate source and (Solar) empowerer of Life within this most expansive sphere of ours.
We have long observed that there is a remarkable mytholinguistic pattern in the Indo-European languages for a ‘Solar Speech’ coterminity – words for Sounding, for Speech, being correlate with terms for Illumination, Light.
The best example of which would be terms derived from the two Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₂ roots – the one that means ‘illumination’, and the one that pertains to ‘communication’.
We considered quite an extensive array of these in our previous piece, imaginatively entitled – “On The Mytholinguistics Of The Solar Speech”. We shall not endeavour to seek to repeat that work here.
https://aryaakasha.com/2022/01/09/on-the-mytholinguistics-of-the-solar-speech/
However, there is another dimension to proceedings. Two, in fact. Three, if we really think about it.
The first – and it is literally the first – concerns the Sound at the Start of Everything.
To quote me some Terry Pratchett [from one of his earlier works – ‘The Light Fantastic’] –
“There was a rustling in the darkness.
‘In the beginning was the word,’ said a dry voice right behind him.
‘It was the Egg,’ corrected another voice. ‘I distinctly remember. The Great Egg of the Universe. Slightly rubbery.’
‘You’re both wrong, in fact. I’m sure it was the primordial slime.’
A voice by Rincewind’s knee said: ‘No, that came afterwards. There was firmament first. Lots of firmament. Rather sticky, like candyfloss. Very syrupy, in fact—.’
‘In case anyone’s interested,’ said a crackly voice on Rincewind’s left, ‘you’re all wrong. In the beginning was the Clearing of the Throat—’
‘—then the word—'”
Now, this is a work of satire that is briefly name-checking a few prominent cosmogonical perspectives encountered in various of the religions of the world.
Any Christian shall recognize “In the beginning was the Word”; the “Egg”, we have earlier met as one of the (various) Hindu perspectives – and we can find … well, ‘primordial slime’ we might have to get a bit creative with. Certainly The Waters are somewhat relevant here.
But it is this ‘Clearing of the Throat’ that has caught my imagination herein. For you see – what we find at the absolute beginning of everything is not a ‘Word’ in the sense that should prove intelligible to us. Indeed, it may not even be the Speaker that many are used to thinking of in such a capacity – Vishvakarman etc. as a ‘Solar Smith’, a Priest Who Speaks the world into being (c.f my work on Svarog). But rather, there is the ‘getting ready’ for that Voice to take flight.
We might say that this is the ‘Cracking’ of that Cosmic Egg aforesaid. A noise like Thunder. And, to quote myself upon the subject:
“‘Crack’ and Garjati – the latter meaning a roar, or a low-frequency humming, a growl, a resounding noise, the sound of the Thunder – actually share an etymological root in PIE *gerh₂- .”
Why is that salient?
Due to one of my favourite Sanskrit theological maxims (and this is the part I was directly foreshadowing when I had earlier suggested that: “Experienced followers of my work shall instantly apprehend where we’re going with this …”).
Vacam Garjit Lakshanam. What does it mean? Vacam – ‘(Divine) Voice’ or (Sacred) Speech (and implicitly the Devi thereof); Garjit – ‘Thunder’, or an ‘Indistinct Noise’, a ‘Roar’; Lakshanam – ‘Bearing the Imprintings of’, ‘Having the Characteristics of’.
Thunder bearing the imprinting of Divine Speech. Or, and this is an important figurative sense that actually underpins much of the concept … it is an incredible noise that we can’t necessarily understand. We don’t, after all, hear the Words in Thunder – we just hear it. Even if it can fairly be argued that Thunder is fundamentally ‘communicative’ – usually of the fact that somewhere, it is raining. So … ‘indistinct speech’ (to our (mortal) ears) that nevertheless contains the ‘Seed’ of All. ‘Aum’, perhaps we might suggest …
However, this notion of ‘Cracking’ is also pertinent in another fashion as well. One visual rather than sonorous. For you see, the mythology around Kushmanda has Her ‘cracking a Smile’. Indeed, it is this act that begins the emanation of Holy Light into our cosmos. She must most certainly have impressive Teeth!
So that, then, is this first sense that is pertinent here. The ‘Big Bang’ of the Cosmic Drum – that ‘first strike’ which sets it all into motion; making the way and opening the floor for the First Singer to begin the Cosmic Performance in earnest.
The second sense concerns ‘what came next’ – both in one sense, immediately following the above; and in another sense, enduringly following the above. That is to say .. it is not merely ‘step two’ to the Universe’s unfolding – it is something that is ongoing as a continual re-immanentization of this even right down to this very Day.
On one level, we have already covered this. The Universe is made up of Sound. Cosmic Speech – Divine Speech. Words. Hence the plenipotentiary status of Vak Devi. She is an in-universe (Active) Expression of Rta, Brahman. As we would understand it in the Shakta sphere – The Goddess That Is Über Alles and A-Priori to Everything, emanating Herself into this cosmos – also as the Cosmos. All-pervading and giving qualities to all via Her most mystical potency of Words, and their hard-embedded mytholinguistic conceptry. Names, as we all know, have such potency to them – if you know and can understand the true ones.
The Word may indeed not quite be In The Beginning, precisely because what is first and foremost required is a Mouth with which to Express Them (and there is some rather intriguing conceptry for the Tongue within said Mouth that we have previously explored and elocuted with particular deference to Sarpa Rajni (The Queen of Serpents) and Sarasvati (‘Pure Speech’, indeed), and other such conceptual representations which we might so happen to taste (with) from time to time). And even a-priori to that is the requisite Mind, Spirit, with which to have the Thought (or, if you like, Dream – Vision) to thence turn into the Speech. But we are … getting a bit heady now, so back to the major pillar of our (Sacral) post.
As we have so often observed, the Ritual Space of the Indo-European in the archaic world is a ‘microcosm’ of the Universe (the ‘macrocosm’) – indeed, as Robert Levy most usefully observed, it is in fact a ‘Mesocosm’ – a space poised between the ‘microcosm’ and ‘macrocosm’ where the one can engage and more saliently ‘influence’ or ‘co-express’ with the other. But more upon that elsewhere.
At the heart of such a space, what do we find. Often it is a Post – an Axis Mundi resonancy. The ShivLing we have shown to be just such a thing – the Irminsul of the Germanics, no doubt, likewise. And we of course have the ‘Omphalos’ conceptry known amidst the Greeks.
However we also tend to find the Fire – the ‘Live Fire’, the ‘Sacral Flame’, into which offerings may be offered so that they make their way to the Gods.
Now this is often thought of as being Agni’s demesne-domain. And that is not wrong. Only ‘incomplete’.
For you see – we know via Hestia of the Greeks that the Indo-Europeans also conceived of the Sacral Fire as having a Goddess living within it. Scythian Tabiti (there’s that ‘Tapas’ cognate) is equated with Hestia in a sense by Herodotus – and we believe he was most eminently not wrong to do so. It is only that Hestia had become somewhat ‘reduced’ in comparison to Her no doubt more imperious situation in the archaic days of the Proto-Indo-European Urheimat. We see this trend persisting even today – where a Goddess Whom in Classical times one might find as the Fire at the heart of the Polis (and, we would suggest, the Universe Itself) … has been reduced in the popular imagination to something of a Goddess of Cooking Fires. Quite literally consinged to “get back to the kitchen”. A situation aided by just how much we have forgotten about – well, the centrality of Hearth to making a Home and its liveable situation.
The innate integrality of Hestia to the cosmos (and here I am meaning it in the archaic Greek sense – the ‘regime’, the ‘Divine Realm’ and ‘Rule’) is aptly demonstrated via the relevant Orphic Hymnal unto Her:
“Daughter of Kronos, venerable dame,
Who dwellest amidst great fire’s eternal flame;
In sacred rites these ministers are Thine,
Mystics much blessed, holy and divine.
In Thee the Gods have fixed Their dwelling place,
Strong, stable basis of the mortal race.
Eternal, much formed, ever florid queen,
Laughing and blessed, and of lovely mien;
Accept these rites, accord each just desire,
And gentle health and needful good inspire.”
[Taylor translation]
And, because sometimes people look a bit sideways at the Orphic corpus – from Homeric Hymnal 29″
“Hestia, in the high dwellings of All, both deathless Gods and men who walk on earth, You have gained an everlasting abode and highest honor: glorious is Your portion and Your right.
For without You mortals hold no banquet, – where one does not duly pour sweet wine in offering to Hestia both first and last.”
[Evelyn-White translation]
But what does all of this have to do with the Vedic sphere? And, more pointedly, Shakta theology?
Well … contrary to what you may have heard, the Shakta theology is strongly founded within the Vedic – indeed, due to the intrinsic role of Vak, we might even suggest that it is the case that the Vedic theology is strongly founded within the Shakta. Certainly, it is actively expressive of the Shakti !
Within the ritual manuals of the Shatapatha Brahmana, we observe several vitally interesting expressions of just such an understanding as we are getting at here with Kushmanda.
We shall quote a verse to elucidate:
“9 Now as to why he pours ghee on the high altar, while the fire is held (over it). Because the Gods said to Her [Vak] on that occasion, ‘The offering shall reach Thee before Agni,’ therefore the offering now does reach Her before (it reaches) Agni.
And because She said to the Gods, ‘Whatsoever blessing Ye will invoke through Me, all that shall be accomplished unto You!’ therefore the priests now invoke through Her that blessing upon the sacrificer, and it is fully accomplished unto him.”
[SBr III 5 2, Eggeling translation]
However, we can go further.
“23 And, accordingly, when he [the sacrificer / ritualist] pours ghee on the high altar, while the fire is held (over it)–
since the Gods said to Her on that occasion, ‘The offering shall reach Thee even before Agni’–then that offering does reach Her even before (it reaches) Agni; for this (high altar) is in reality Vâk. And when he raises the high altar, it is for the completeness of the sacrifice, for the sacrifice is Vâk (speech) and that (high altar) is Vâk.”
[SBr III 5 1, Eggeling translation]
As we had noted elsewhere and in previous – “It is also good to note the direct linkage of Vak with the ‘high altar’ of the rites under discussion – as this comports with the etymology for ‘Hestia’ : which directly comes from an Ancient Greek term for a fireplace, ‘Hearth’, or altar : ἑστίᾱ (‘Estia’).” We shall explain the purport of this momentarily. But let us go further still !
SBr III 2 1 sets out a most fascinating and vitally important metaphysics for the Vedic Yajna rite. What occurs therein is Vak is summonsed into the Altar-space – in order to bring the Fire to a certain sort of Life. And, flowing from there, to bring Life out of the Flames – as Vak is, after all, a Devi (indeed, The Devi), a Woman, and bears a most magnificent Child indeed.
In that context, it is Indra that is ‘birthed’ out of this process. And we must pay careful attention to what has gone on here. For it is a ‘microcosmic’ expression of a ‘macrocosmic’ principle. Although afore we get to that – in the ritual conceptry, what we are seeing is the ‘Invoking’ of the Great God, Indra, and causing Him to come down here amongst us in order to participate in the Rite. How does Indra make His way to us in this particular ritualine context? The same way that the offerings would ordinarily go up unto Him. Through the Flame. That Fire-Conduit at the heart of everything – in the ritual sphere, as in life. It is, after all, through Fire that we eat (the ‘Fire of the Belly’ in Hindu perception), and the column of Energy that connects all the centers of our earthy (and transcendental) existence within us likewise that presents quite the conduit for same.
Vak, here, in this ritual occurrence, is acting as a ‘Mother’ to Indra out into this world, this ‘microcosmic’ space – a ‘ritual understanding’, I do not mean to suggest merely a ‘ritual implement’, as She is most definitely Alive as an essence-tial essence to the mechanism. And quite capable of getting rather annoyed, wandering off, and/or turning into a fearsome, formidable Lioness if ‘objectified’ or maltreated. In the Macrocosmic space, we find Aditi as Mother of Indra – and Vak, as is quite extensively attested in the Vedas, is Aditi. Aditi being, as you all know, ‘The Limitless’, ‘The Infinite’, (‘The Absolute’?) and implicitly ‘Solar’ as well. Handy how it all fits together like that, isn’t it. (The Mat(t)er goes further with the commentary upon, for instance, SBr I 3 1 17 pertaining to Aditi being the (earthen) Altar likewise (the ‘base’ for the operation’s placement), as well).
Yet how does that pertain to our Cosmos and the salient supremacy for Kushmanda therein with (and through) same?
Well, the Fire at the heart of the ritual space – it is the ‘resonancy’ for the Sun at the center of our solar system, at the center of our mortal affairs. As somebody (I think it was Sadhguru but probably various other luminaries as well) once observed – pretty much all life upon this earth is, in essence, Solar Powered. We are all here because the Sun is (up) there.
This brings us back to our mytholinguistic and etymological ‘unpacking’ of Kushmanda – ‘Ku’ as in ‘Base’ or ‘Earth’, ‘Ushma’ as in the life-giving Solar quality (as particularly expressed through the abundance of Summer) … and that ‘Anda’ or ‘Da’ being renderable in quite a few ways to achieve ultimately similar impetus. The ‘Cosmic Egg’ in relation to ‘Sun’ we have previously aforementioned. The Sun’s life-giving rays as Sound, we can infer. The strong conceptual linkage in the Vedas for the Sun to a Bird, or to Fire coming up from the firmamental Waters is both well-known and eminently logical. Shiva as ‘Solar’ we can also directly attest (and where would He be without His Shakti – His Wife … ‘Disempowered’ or even actively ‘Remote’, the world – His World, at least – turning slowly into a ball of Ice akin to the peaked inhospitability of His high-Himalayan retreat when She is gone from Him during the period between Sati’s immolation upon the sacral pyre of Daksha and Her reincarnation as Shailaputri). The notion of the ‘Basket’ bringing these essential radiancies of life and nourishment? It should most certainly fit together likewise. And ‘Dakini’ – well, consider just exactly what a Dakini is actually supposed to be. A (female) figure in amidst the Sky, a bearer and active expression of Energy. A Drum or Drumbeat? The former is the Sun, the latter is the regulation of our world provided via the regular modulation of our experience of its rays – ‘Seasons’, ‘Horae’ (and note the potential etymological coterminity viz. ‘Hera’, as well!), ‘Hours’, and ‘the Year’ (PIE *yóh₁r̥ underpinning various of these). (It might also be tempting to speculate upon Proto-Slavic *jarъ and its various other ‘furious’ descendants in line with this as similarly expressive of this ‘life force’ and ‘order’, given the sustained mytholinguistic coterminity for the ‘furious’ senses of the descendant terms with the ‘year’ and ‘spring’ ones in certain languages – as well as the significant role for the Goddess in question in imparting not only Life but also Furor (‘Ugra’, per RV X 125 5, for instance; or the Menos & Menis potencies of the Iliad granted by Athena; etc.)… ; but more upon that, perhaps, at some other time).
However, I said that there would be a third potential sense to our Universal unfurling from the Mouth of Devi conceptry – and it is to that which we shall now turn.
Earlier, I suggested that the Universe was, in essence, Sound – Speech. I also related that the Ritual Space is a resonancy, an expression for the Universe – and vice versa, to a certain degree, anyway. Objects (or patterned inferency) ‘going up’ have a lot more inertia to overcome than those ‘coming down’.
We find a most intriguing ‘esonance’ for both of these principles when considering RV X 114 8 – an indelibly complex verse within a beautifully poised ‘allusive’ Hymn. We shall not seek to unpack its full purport here. But to briefly parse its meaning:
“sahasradhā pañcadaśāny ukthā yāvad dyāvāpṛthivī tāvad it tat |
sahasradhā mahimānaḥ sahasraṃ yāvad brahma viṣṭhitaṃ tāvatī vāk ||”
What does this mean?
Sahasradha – ‘a thousandfold’; panchadasany – ‘fifteen’; uktha – ‘prayers’, ‘hymns’ (uktha is from ‘Vak-Thak’ – the ‘expressed’ (Thak) Vak); yavad (yavat) – ‘as far as’, ‘co-extensive with’, ‘to the bounds of’, ‘as long as’, etc.; dyavaprithvi – ‘heaven and earth’ (i.e. ‘everywhere’); tavad – ‘so great’, ‘so expansive’, ‘so much’; it – ‘indeed’; tat – ‘that’.
Mahimanah – ‘Greatness’, ‘Glory’, ‘Majesty’, ‘Power’, ‘Might’; sahasram – ‘thousand’; brahma – here short for ‘brahman’, and meant in the older Vedic sense not necessarily as the Absolute, but rather ‘ritual formulation’, ‘prayer’, ‘hymnal’, ‘invocation’; visthitam – ‘standing’, ‘spreading’; Vak .. should by this point require no introduction!
So, now that we have the individual words … the purport should become more readily apparent. The verse is stating that the Universe is permeated by the Expressions of Vak. Whether in the sense of Words or Song in Prayer – or the ‘animating’ Devi that underpins each and all of these and renders these more than mere flapping of gums and expulsion of air and meaningless except as atmospherics. These are not merely ‘permeating’ of the Universe – but are ‘co-extensive’ with. And, as we can see, the bounds of the ritual operations area (the ritual space and sphere) are likewise … both coterminous with the Universe and also with Her.
There is more to it that can unquestionably be extracted, but it is enough for now.
The point is – the ‘animating principle’ of the Ritual Space is Vak.
The ‘animating principle’ of the Universe is also Vak (and we may direct one’s attention to RV X 125 – the famed DeviSuktam – for more upon this general and vitally important theme !)
The Universe Itself, Entire, is also a (macroscopic, macrocosmic) Ritual Sphere.
And what makes the Ritual Sphere? Why, the very same thing that makes a ‘House’ into a ‘Home’ per our Ancient Greek influenced development … or, rather, I should say our Proto-Indo-European mytholinguistic-originated conceptry.
‘Hestia’ is, we surmise, from PIE h₂wes- (‘to dwell’, ‘to spend the night’), which, via PIE *h₂wéseti (the suffix being a ‘thematic’), gives us Sanskrit ‘Vasati’ – a term, indeed, for a Dwelling, a House; and via PIE *h₂wóstu (which underpins .. an array of other such terms in other IE languages), it produces ‘Vastu’ … a term that is rather ‘foundational’ to the conception of ‘Home’. And, from this latter, ‘Vastospati’ – ‘Protector of the Home (& Hearth)’, an epithet used with intriguing prominence for Rudra in the RigVeda etc.
There is some further intriguing resonancy viz. terminology for ‘Essence’ and *its housing, which we do not think is at all coincidental. But we should, perhaps get into that at some other point in time.
Our Universe, as with the conceptual ‘space’ that must surely underpin the above-mentioned, becomes ‘habitable’ in just the same fashion. Through Her – investing and empowering, emanating, carrying, speaking, and above all Smiling.
May we always come back to this Source when we so need, no matter how far we might wander in the intervening interim.
Hunter S. Thompson, in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, put it thusly – “Well, I thought. This is how the world works. All energy flows according to the whims of the Great Magnet. What a fool I was to defy him. He knew. He knew all along. […] Never cross the Great Magnet. I understood this now . . . “
He got this completely right. Except for the gender.
ॐ देवी कूष्माण्डायै नम
जय माता दी
https://aryaakasha.com/2022/04/05/kushmanda-for-chaitra-navratri-the-power-of-the-sun/
