Devī — the Divine Mother
Durgā on her lion, Kālī dark and dancing, Pārvatī the faithful wife, Mariamman in the village shrine: the Goddess in her many forms, and why so many Hindus simply call God “Mother.”
Ask a Tamil grandmother in Klang or Ipoh to whom she prays, and the answer may be simply அம்மா, ammā, “Mother.” She might mean Mariamman of the corner temple, Pārvatī beside Shiva, or the Goddess beyond all names. Devī, “the Goddess” (from the same root as deva, “shining one”), is worshipped in more forms than any other figure in the tradition — and for the Śākta traditions she is not one deity among many, but the supreme reality itself.
The Goddess as power
The key word is śakti, “power,” “energy,” “capacity to act.” In much Hindu theology every god has his śakti, usually pictured as his consort: Pārvatī for Shiva, Lakṣmī for Vishnu, Sarasvatī for Brahmā. A god without his śakti, says a much-quoted line, is like a body without breath. The opening verse of the Saundaryalaharī, a hymn traditionally attributed to Shankara, makes the point boldly: only when joined with Śakti is Shiva able to create; otherwise the god cannot even stir. The verse is quoted in full on The Tridevī.
Śākta view The Śākta traditions take this to its end: the Goddess is not the power of a male god but Power itself, the one reality that is both consciousness and the whole world. The Devī Bhāgavata Purāṇa and its Devī Gītā teach that she is Brahman, and the gods are her instruments. Other traditions honour her deeply while placing her differently — see the box at the end of this page.
Vedic roots
Goddesses in the Ṛgveda are fewer than gods, but vivid. Uṣas, the Dawn, is praised in some twenty hymns as a radiant young woman who wakes every living thing. Pṛthivī, the Earth, is paired with Heaven as the parents of all, and the Atharvaveda’s Earth hymn is quoted on The Four Vedas. Aditi, “boundlessness,” is mother of the gods. And in one remarkable hymn Vāk, sacred Speech, speaks in her own voice as the power behind all the gods:
तां मा देवा व्यदधुः पुरुत्रा भूरिस्थात्रां भूर्यावेशयन्तीम् ॥ ahaṃ rāṣṭrī saṃgamanī vasūnāṃ cikituṣī prathamā yajñiyānām,
tāṃ mā devā vy adadhuḥ purutrā bhūri-sthātrāṃ bhūry āveśayantīm I am the queen, the gatherer of treasures, the knowing one, first of those worthy of worship. The gods have set me in many places — I who stand in many forms and enter into many. Ṛgveda 10.125.3 (the Vāk Sūkta, or Devī Sūkta)
Śākta tradition calls this hymn the Devī Sūkta and recites it with the Devī Māhātmya. The Kena Upaniṣad adds another early glimpse: when the gods cannot understand a mysterious presence, Umā Haimavatī, the radiant daughter of the Himalaya, appears and teaches them that it was Brahman.
Historians see the great Goddess of later Hinduism as a confluence: these Vedic goddesses; the countless local and village goddesses of India, many probably far older than any text; and the Tantric traditions. The decisive moment in Sanskrit is the Devī Māhātmya of the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa (probably 5th–6th century), where, for perhaps the first time, the Goddess is the supreme reality and not a god’s consort. Its story of Durgā and the buffalo-demon is told on Navaratri. Some writers also see a Mother Goddess in the figurines of the Indus civilisation; this remains a guess, since the Indus script is unread.
Four great forms
The Goddess is gentle and terrible, bride and warrior, the girl next door and the queen of the universe. Four of her best-known faces:
Durgā, “hard to approach” or “the one who carries us across difficulty,” rides a lion or tiger, her many arms holding the weapons the gods gave her. She is the protector who fights for the world when the gods cannot. Her festival is Navaratri, and her great hymn includes this verse, sung at the close of countless pūjās:
शरण्ये त्र्यम्बके गौरि नारायणि नमोऽस्तु ते ॥ sarva-maṅgala-māṅgalye śive sarvārtha-sādhike,
śaraṇye tryambake gauri nārāyaṇi namo ’stu te Auspiciousness of all that is auspicious, gracious one, who brings every aim to fulfilment; refuge, three-eyed one, Gaurī, Nārāyaṇī — salutation to you. Devī Māhātmya, chapter 11
Kālī, “the black one” — or “she who is Time” — has her first great mythic appearance in the Devī Māhātmya (chapter 7) — the name is older, found already in the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad as one of the seven tongues of the sacrificial fire — springing from the Goddess’s furrowed brow to destroy the demons Caṇḍa and Muṇḍa, and so taking the name Cāmuṇḍā. Dark, with a garland of heads and a tongue thrust out, she dances on the cremation ground. Fierce, yes — but to her devotees fierce only towards what harms her children. In Bengal she is above all the loving Mother: the 18th-century poet Rāmprasād Sen sang to her like a child sulking at its mother. Modern reading In the 19th century, Ramakrishna, priest of the Kālī temple at Dakshineswar near Kolkata, found her as the living Mother of the universe, and his disciple Vivekananda carried that vision abroad.
Pārvatī, “daughter of the mountain,” also called Umā and Gaurī, the fair one. By fierce tapas she won Shiva the ascetic as her husband (the story told in Kālidāsa’s Kumārasambhava), and she is mother of Ganesha and Murugan. She is the Goddess as wife and mother, loving and steady — yet the Purāṇas say Durgā and Kālī are her own forms. In Tamil she is மலைமகள், Malaimakaḷ, the mountain’s daughter; see Shiva for the divine couple.
Lalitā Tripurasundarī, “the playful one, beautiful in the three worlds,” is the Goddess as supreme queen in the Śrī Vidyā tradition, worshipped through the Śrī Yantra (see Āgamas & Tantras). Her thousand names, the Lalitā Sahasranāma, belong to the Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇa and are chanted in homes and temples every Friday. They open:
चिदग्निकुण्डसम्भूता देवकार्यसमुद्यता ॥ śrī-mātā śrī-mahārājñī śrīmat-siṃhāsaneśvarī,
cid-agni-kuṇḍa-sambhūtā deva-kārya-samudyatā The holy Mother, the great Queen, sovereign of the glorious lion-throne; born from the fire-altar of consciousness, risen to do the work of the gods. Lalitā Sahasranāma, verse 1 (Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇa, Lalitopākhyāna)
The ten wisdom goddesses
Medieval Śākta Tantra gathered ten forms into the Mahāvidyās, the “great wisdoms.” Some are beautiful, some terrifying, one a widow, one headless. Śākta Tantric scheme The list is fairly stable, though names and order vary. Tap each:
Interpretations of the stranger forms vary widely; David Kinsley’s study (below) gathers the textual and living views.
The seats of the Goddess
The best-known sacred geography of the Goddess comes from a story of grief. Purāṇic and popular Satī, Shiva’s first wife, gives up her life at the sacrifice of her father Dakṣa, who had insulted her husband. Shiva, mad with sorrow, wanders the universe carrying her body; to end his grief Vishnu cuts it into pieces with his discus, and wherever a piece falls a śākta pīṭha, a seat of the Goddess, arises. The destruction of Dakṣa’s sacrifice is old (it is in the Mahābhārata); Satī’s death there is told in the Purāṇas; and the scattering of her body appears in later texts such as the Kālikā and Devī Bhāgavata Purāṇas, and in its fullest form in Tantric digests.
The number varies: early lists give four great pīṭhas; the most popular count today is 51 (matching the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet), others say 52; and the Devī Bhāgavata lists 108 holy seats. Lists also disagree about which places belong. Famous among them are Kāmākhyā in Assam and Kalighat in Kolkata.
Mother of the village
Beyond the Sanskrit goddesses, almost every village in South India has its own grāma-devatā, often an Amman, “Mother”: guardian of its boundaries, its health and its rain. Many were worshipped long before any Purāṇa named them, often with priests from non-Brahmin communities, and are now linked to Pārvatī or Durgā. Tap each:
மாரிMariammanrain, healing, protection
மாரியம்மன், Māriyammaṉ: māri means rain, and also the pestilence the heat brings. She sends and cools the fevers of smallpox and measles; devotees offer cooling foods such as kūḻ (millet porridge) in the hot month of Āṭi, carry fire-pots (tīcceṭṭi) and milk-pots, and fulfil vows. Her great temple is at Samayapuram near Tiruchirappalli. Community practice In Malaysia she is among the most loved deities of all: the Sri Maha Mariamman Temple in Kuala Lumpur, founded in 1873 and the oldest functioning Hindu temple in the city, is the trustee of Batu Caves and starts the Thaipusam chariot procession. Fire-walking (tīmiti) is part of many Amman festivals; in Singapore and at some Malaysian temples it is held for Draupadī Amman.
காமாட்சிKāmākṣī, Kanchipuramshe of loving eyes
Seated in yogic posture in Kanchipuram, one of the seven sacred cities. In the temple story Sthala-purāṇa she worshipped a sand liṅga under a mango tree and embraced it when the river flooded, winning Shiva as Ekāmbareśvara. Her temple is a great seat of Śrī Vidyā.
மீனாட்சிMīnākṣī, Maduraithe fish-eyed queen
In the Tiruviḷaiyāṭal Purāṇam she is born to the Pāṇḍya king as a warrior princess who conquers the world — until she meets Shiva on Kailāsa and becomes his bride, Sundareśvara. Madurai celebrates the wedding every year in the Chittirai festival. Here the Goddess is queen first, and wife second.
கன்னிKanyākumārīthe virgin at land’s end
At India’s southern tip she stands as a young girl, forever waiting. Temple tradition Her wedding to Shiva was called off when the cock crowed early; the rice and grain prepared for the feast, it is said, became the sands of the shore.
காளிKālī in BengalKalighat and Dakshineswar
Kālī Pūjā falls on the new-moon night of Deepavali in Bengal (see Deepavali). Kolkata’s Kalighat is a śākta pīṭha; Dakshineswar is Ramakrishna’s temple. Tamil Nadu and Malaysia have their own fierce Kāḷiyammaṉ shrines, often at a village edge.
On a Friday — the Goddess’s day in many Tamil homes — light a lamp before an image of the Mother, offer a flower, and recite the sarvamaṅgala verse above three times, or simply say “Ammā” with full attention. If you can, visit your local Amman temple during Āṭi or Navaratri and watch how the community worships: the vows, the milk-pots, the songs. Notice what draws people to her.
The Goddess and women
It is often said that a tradition which worships God as Mother must honour women. There is truth in this: Śākta texts tell practitioners to see every woman as the Goddess; girls are worshipped as Devī in Kanyā and Kumārī Pūjā; women lead Amman worship, sing her songs and fulfil her vows in their thousands; and women saints and teachers, from Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār to Sarada Devi, Ramakrishna’s wife, are revered.
But the honest answer is that honouring the Goddess has never guaranteed justice for women. The same societies that worshipped Durgā also practised child marriage, barred widows from ordinary life, and in places practised satī — a custom that, despite the name, has nothing to do with the goddess Satī in the scriptures. Ideals of the self-sacrificing wife, drawn partly from the stories of Satī and Pārvatī, have been used to demand silence from women. Many Hindu women today draw strength from the fierce, independent forms — Durgā, Kālī, Mīnākṣī the conquering queen — and many reformers, women among them, have argued that the Goddess is best honoured by honouring living women. Both truths belong to the story.
- Śākta traditions: Devī is the supreme reality; Shiva, Vishnu and Brahmā act through her power.
- Shaiva traditions: Śakti is Shiva’s inseparable power and grace (in Shaiva Siddhanta, his aruḷ); the two are one, as fire and its heat.
- Vaiṣṇava traditions: Lakṣmī is Vishnu’s eternal consort and mediator of his grace (see Lakṣmī & Sarasvatī); Durgā may be seen as Vishnu’s power of māyā.
- Smārta and Advaita: the Goddess is one of the forms of the one Brahman, worshipped alongside Shiva, Vishnu, Ganesha and Sūrya.
Seeker does not rank: see One and Many and The Tridevi.
Check your knowledge:
In which Ṛgveda hymn does the Goddess speak in her own voice?
Ṛgveda 10.125, where Speech declares herself queen of all.
Where does Kālī first appear in the Devī Māhātmya?
Chapter 7 — and so she is called Cāmuṇḍā.
How many śākta pīṭhas are there?
The lists differ; 51 is the most popular count today.
Which goddess is especially linked with rain and with healing fevers?
Māri means rain — and the summer pestilence she cools.
Questions people often ask
Are all these goddesses one Goddess?
For Śākta theology and for most devotees, yes: “the Goddess” (Devī, Mahādevī) is one, appearing in many forms, just as the Devī Māhātmya’s gods see every goddess merge back into her. Village worshippers may also treat their Amman as a distinct, very local presence. Both views live side by side.
Is Kālī evil or dangerous?
No. Her terrifying form is aimed at what destroys us — ignorance, ego, fear of death. Her devotees call her the most loving of mothers. Western films and novels that present her as a demon of blood have done real harm to how she is seen.
Why are animal sacrifices made to some goddesses?
Some Amman and Kālī temples, especially village shrines, have offered goats or fowl, and a few still do; others have replaced them with pumpkins, coconuts or lime. It is debated within the tradition, and several Indian states have restricted it. Most Malaysian temples today offer only vegetarian items. Community practice
॥ Pause and reflect
- What changes when you think of the divine as Mother rather than Father?
- Durgā is gentle to her children and fierce to what harms them. Where in your life is love asking you to be fierce?
- How might honouring the Goddess change the way you treat the women around you?
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Key terms on this page
Sources & further reading
- David Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition (University of California Press, 1986).
- David Kinsley, Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahāvidyās (University of California Press, 1997).
- Thomas B. Coburn, Encountering the Goddess: A Translation of the Devī-Māhātmya and a Study of Its Interpretation (SUNY Press, 1991).
- C. Mackenzie Brown, The Devī Gītā: The Song of the Goddess (SUNY Press, 1998).
- Rachel Fell McDermott and Jeffrey J. Kripal (eds.), Encountering Kālī: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West (University of California Press, 2003).
- Douglas Renfrew Brooks, The Secret of the Three Cities: An Introduction to Hindu Śākta Tantrism (University of Chicago Press, 1990).
- W. Norman Brown (trans.), The Saundaryalaharī, or Flood of Beauty (Harvard Oriental Series 43, 1958).
- Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton (trans.), The Rigveda (Oxford University Press, 2014) — 10.125.