First of all, Sati took the form of Kali. Her form was fearful, her hair untied and loose, her body the color of a dark cloud. She had deep-set eyes and eyebrows shaped like curved swords. She stood on a corpse, wore a garland of skulls, and earrings made from the bones of corpses. She had four hands – on one hand, she had the head of a skull, and the other a curved sword with blood dripping on it. She had mudras on her other two hands – one giving freedom from fear and the other giving blessings. She roared and the ten directions were filled with that ferocious sound.

In the series of the ten Mahavidyas or wisdom aspects of the Divine Mother, Kali comes first, for she represents the power of consciousness in its highest form. She is at once supreme power and ultimate reality, underscoring the fundamental Tantric teaching that the power of consciousness and consciousness itself are one and the same.

The Devimahatmya vividly depicts a scene with Kali and her associated goddesses ready to take on an army of demons. The battle culminates with the slaying of two demon generals, Chanda and Munda, and this act earns her the name Chamunda.

In the next episode, Chamunda takes on the demon Raktabija. In the battle, he sheds blood profusely until the world is teeming with Raktabijas. Just when the battle looks hopeless and the onlooking god’s despair, Chamunda roams the battlefield, avidly lapping up the blood and crushing the nascent demons between her gnashing teeth. Finally, drained of his last drop of blood, Raktabija topples lifelessly to the ground.

Significance: Raktabija’s amazing replicative ability symbolizes the human mind’s ordinary state of awareness. The mind is constantly in motion, and one thought begets another in an endless succession. The mind rarely rests and is never fully concentrated. In the light of Patanjali’s Yogasutra, we can understand Chamunda as the power to restrain the mind’s endless modulations, to stop them altogether. When all mental activity (chittavritti) ceases, that state is called yoga: consciousness resting in its own infinite peace and bliss.

As Dakshinakali, she is portrayed as young and beautiful, standing on the supine, ash-besmeared body of Siva, who looks up at her adoringly. Siva is absolute consciousness, ever blissful in its own glory. Kali is consciousness in motion—the overflowing joy that projects, sustains, and withdraws the universe. Consciousness and its powers are one and the same reality.

In general, we can say that all the dualities of life, the light and the dark, the beautiful and the fearsome, are united and reconciled in Kali. She represents supreme non-duality, for she is none other than Brahman. At the same time, the duality of this world is nothing other than her own self-expression.

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

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The Goddess Tara is worshipped in both Hinduism and Buddhism as the goddess of compassion and protection. In Hinduism, she is a form of the female primordial energy known as Shakti. The name comes from the Sanskrit root tar, meaning “protection.” In other Indian languages, the name translates as “star.”

Tara’s name is derived from tri, which means “to cross.” One of her epithets is Samsaratarini, “she who takes across the ocean of worldly existence.”Tara is thus the all-gracious liberator.

Tara first appeared as a deity in Hinduism but was later adopted by Buddhism. In fact, in some traditions, she is considered the female Buddha. In Tibetan Buddhism, she is the most popular deity worshiped today.

Origin – It is said that during the churning of the milky sea when poison came out the ocean, Lord Shiva drank it to save the world from destruction. But Lord Shiva fell unconscious under the powerful effect of the poison. At this point, Goddess Durga appeared as Tara and took Shiva on her lap and breastfed Him to counteract the effect of the poison. Hence Tara is said to be more approachable to the devotees because of her maternal instinct.

In tantric traditions, she may be considered an incarnation of Durga, Parvati or Mahadevi. Goddess Tara protects those on their journey to enlightenment, as well as earthly travelers. In some traditions, Tara appears in different forms; the two best-known versions of her are White Tara, the embodiment of compassion and peace, and Green Tara, who is the great protector and overcomer of obstacles.

Images of Tara often show her seated on a white lotus in the midst of the primordial waters that envelop the entire universe. From this, we understand that she is the Mother of the three worlds—of the heavens, the atmosphere, and the earth.

Much of Tara’s symbolism can be related to death—but in its broadest perspective. The death it refers to is the death of the ego, the false idea of selfhood that keeps the individual in bondage, ever reactive and in thralldom to all of the life’s ups and downs. Like Kali, Tara is sometimes shown wearing a girdle of severed human arms, a symbol of her ability to relieve us of the burdens of karma. The scissors and sword, rather than being understood as agents of death, should be thought of as tools to dismantle and remove the ego, the sense of mistaken identity that defines, limits, and binds.

Tripura Sundari is also known as Goddess Shodashi. As the name suggests Goddess Shodashi is the most beautiful in all three worlds. In Mahavidya, She represents Goddess Parvati or also known as Tantric Parvati.

Goddess Shodashi is also known as Lalita and Rajarajeshwari which means “the one who plays” and “queen of queens” respectively. Mahavidya is Tripurasundari, also known as Kamala. A form of Mahalakshmi, She symbolizes wealth.

According to the description in her dhyana mantra, Tripurasundari’s complexion shines with the light of the rising sun. This rosy color represents joy, compassion, and illumination.

She is shown with four arms in which she holds five arrows of flowers, a noose, a goad and sugarcane as a bow. The noose represents attachment, the goad represents repulsion, the sugarcane bow represents the mind and the arrows are the five sense objects.

In the Sakta Tantra, it is Mother who is supreme, and the gods are her instruments of expression. Through them, she presides over the creation, maintenance, and dissolution of the universe, as well as over the self-concealment and self-revelation that lie behind those three activities. Self-concealment is the precondition as well as the result of cosmic manifestation, and self-revelation causes the manifest universe to dissolve, disclosing the essential unity.

With this in mind, the eighteenth-century commentator Bhaskararaya proposed that the name Tripurasundari should be understood as “she whose beauty precedes the three worlds,” meaning that she is divinity in its transcendental glory. However, the name is usually taken in an immanent sense to mean “she who is beautiful in the three worlds.” Present here is the idea of a triad, a grouping of three that plays out in many different aspects of the phenomenal world.

Tripurasundari represents the state of awareness that is also called the sadasivatattva. It is characterized as “I am this” (aham idam). Cosmic evolution is the outward flow of consciousness (pravritti). Spiritual practice reverses that flow, so for the yogin, this stage is a very high level of attainment, close to final realization. It is an experience of the universe within the unity of consciousness.

Even in our ordinary state of consciousness, Tripurasundari is the beauty that we see in the world around us. Whatever we perceive externally as beautiful resonates deep within.

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