The third Mahavidya is Chinnamasta. She is also known as Prachanda Chandika. Chinnamasta (“she who is decapitated”) is a form of the Divine Mother shown as having cut off her own head. This is her story:

Origin Story: According to Panchatantra Grantha once Parvati went with her friends Dakini and Varnini to take a bath in the Mandakini River. Parvati was feeling very happy and a lot of love was welling up inside which caused her complexion to darken and the feeling of love completely took over. Her friends, on the other hand, were hungry and asked Parvati to give them some food. Parvati requested them to wait and said that she would feed them after a while, and began walking. After a short while, her friends once again appealed to her, telling her that she was the Mother of the Universe and they her children and demanded that their hunger be satisfied immediately. The compassionate Parvati laughed and with her fingernail cut her own head. Immediately the blood spurted in three directions. Her two friends drank the blood from two of the directions and the Goddess herself drank the blood from the third direction.

Since she cut her own head, she is known as Chinnamasta. Chinnamasta shines like a lightning bolt from the Sun. She demonstrates the rare courage needed to make the highest conceivable sacrifice.

The severed head, iconographically, symbolizes liberation. Each person’s individual identity is a state of conditioning or limitation, dependent on qualities. By severing the head, the Mother reveals herself in her true being, which is unconditioned, infinite, and boundlessly free. This idea of freedom is reinforced by her nudity, which symbolizes that she cannot be covered or contained by any garment. Because she is infinite, she is also autonomous.

Dakini, on the left, is black; Varnini, on the right, is red. Chinnamasta, in the middle, is white. Black, red, and white represent the three gunas, or basic universal energies. Sattva, symbolized by Chinnamasta’s whiteness, is the highest of the gunas, of course, but all three belong to prakriti, the principle of materiality on which all nature rests. Nothing exists apart from the Mother, whose power of diversification takes form as the grand display of the universe.

The blood spurting from Chinnamasta’s neck represents the life force (prana) or cosmic energy that animates the universe and sustains all life. The first stream flows into Chinnamasta’s own mouth. She is self-existent and dependent on no other. The streams that flow into the mouths of her attendants represent the life-force in all living creatures.