Study YOGA
FREE Online Summit
APRIL 29 – MAY 03, 2024
Receive profound teachings from the yogic wisdom traditions that thrust you into digestible depths, result in personal revelations, and are anchored in authenticity.
TRANSCRIPT
TOVA OLSSON
Amy:
Welcome to the Study Yoga Online Summit. If you are seeking beyond the sea of superficial yoga flooding your feed, yearning for insightful conversations and community, or are a sincere seeker devoted to the depths of studentship, then the Study Yoga Masterclass series is the nectar that you need. Tova Olsson is a scholar of religion, author and yoga teacher with over 20 years of experience in educating. She’s appreciated for her deep knowledge, her ability to explain esoteric ideas and philosophical concepts in an accessible way for her skillful storytelling and humorous approach. As a scholar practitioner, she strives to combine academic critical understanding with the dedicated experience of a long-term practitioner offering courses that provide liberating knowledge on many different levels. Tova holds an MA in religious studies from Gothenburg University and is currently working on her PhD at Umeå University where she researches gender constructs in contemporary tantra in Europe. She lectures internationally on the history, philosophy and mythology of yoga and tantra and runs the online school Saraswati Studies. Tova, I’m so happy to have you as a part of the summit. Welcome.
Tova:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Amy:
It is such a treat to be speaking with you about a truly rich topic at a time such as this, the beginning of Chaitra Navratri, at the time of us recording. And you’re here to share some insight into the feminine, or more specifically with regard to devi and primarily through a tantrik lens. The Devi Mahatmyam, or Durga Saptashati is one of, or if not the most revered and well-known of the Shakta texts. And there will certainly be some tuning into this who have studied this Shastra and some who have not. And in light of the overall theme of this session together, Tova you have offered to reveal some insight into Kundalini, particularly through the lens of this sacred text, which I’m incredibly excited about. So please delve into this as feels good for you and take us into the realm of the goddess.
Tova:
Okay, it’s a huge subject, but let’s get into this. So when first, thinking about the summit and the yoga studies subject, I thought to share something connected to the goddess since we were just moving, as you said, into the spring version of the Navarre, the nine Nights of the Goddess. And at this particular time, a lot of devotees all over the world shunt this particular text or be this particular text de, which means the glory of the goddess. And when I wrote my book, yoga and Tantra, history, philosophy, and Mythology, one of the chapters in the book is dedicated to this particular text because I know that a lot of yoga teachers, a lot of practitioners of yoga might not be familiar with the particular text, but they know a lot of that myths a lot of the stories that come out of the text.
They know the names of Durga, they know the names of Kali or the goddesses that are first introduced in this text. Of course, these are very ancient goddesses, but this is the very first text that is bringing all of these goddesses together and naming the goddess, Maha Devi, the great goddess. So some scholars will say that this text places a capital G in front of the goddess. And so for practitioners, this text really speaks about the unfoldment of Kundalini. And Kundalini, as we know, is such a mysterious subject, right? We hear about Kundalini in the yoga and tantra world all of the time, but very few people know what this concept actually means. And I’m not saying that I know, even though I have studied it’s subject for so long, and particularly with my teacher Sally Kempton, and I had so many experiences when it comes to kini, and still this is a subject that I approach with so much humility because it’s a huge subject.
And as a scholar of religion, I know that the understanding of Kundalini has changed drastically throughout the ages. But as you said, today we take the approach of a devoted tantrik practitioner, somebody who is devoted to the goddess, to Shakti. And so in this text, as in a lot of the Indian and the yogic and the tantrik text, we have a “frame story” around the story. And in this frame story, we have two men, a merchant and a king who has wandered into the forest and they have wandered into the forest because they have been gravely disappointed with their lives. The king has lost his kingdom, and the merchant has lost all of his richest because he was betrayed by his very own family. And so they meet each other in the forest and they say basically, why do you look so sad? And they tell each other, even though I’ve been betrayed, even though I lost all of the things that were dear to me, I still think about those things.
I still think about my family, I think about my kingdom, I think about my riches and all other things that I lost, and how come that these things that hurt us so bad still we cling to them? And so sharing this concern, they run into a sage in the forest. The sage is called Medhas, and they ask him, how come we clinging to suffering? Why do we do that? And so meta say, well, the thing that keeps you attached to the world is Maya. Now, Maya is a concept that we might come back to later on. Maya has a bad reputation in a lot of the philosophical schools that we talk about in yoga studies. But Maya in the tantric understanding means the one who measures out so that the part of Shakti, the of the goddess. Well, Shakti means power, but it also means creative capacity or energy.
So that part of the creative capacity that enables unity to become diversity or enables all of the multiplicity that we see in the world that is Maya. So of course, Maya enables diversity and true diversity. She also makes us experience separation. And that is why Maya has a bad reputation. And so the sage says, well, you are attached to the world because you are attached to Maya. And that is because the goddess will sit and he starts telling them tales about the goddess, because now they’re very, very interested. They want to know how come they’re clinging to the world in this manner. And so he tells them three mythological stories, and the first one is very, very short. It’s about the time when Vishnu, the great sustainer of the world, is resting on his snake, his serpent couch, Ananta the endless one in between the cosmic ages, and he’s deep in sleep and out of his navel grows a lotus flower.
And in the center of this lotus flower, the creator is seated, and Brahma, as you might know, has five heads so he can see in every direction, and he’s eternally awake. So he sees that from that ear wax of Vishnu two demons are being formed Madhu and Kaitabha, meaning sweet and sour, or maybe the thing that we long for and the thing that we try to get away from ragga. And basically, and so Madhu and Kaitabha are trying to kill. They have weapons in hand and they’re rushing towards. But since Vishnu has this very, very long body, it takes them a long time to run from the ears to the navel. And Brahma realizes that the thing that keeps Vishnu in this steep state of sleep is the goddess. He calls this the Yoga Nidra or the Maya. And so he starts chanting, praises, hymns, to the goddess asking her to please lift herself and awaken Vishnu.
And I’ll used to read very shortly from the Devi Mahatmayam, because I think this is so very, very beautiful, and it really shows the non-dual quality of this text. So Brahma calls her by her names for a long time. And he says, for example, by you is everything supported, by you is the world created, by you it is protected, oh, goddess, and you always consume it at the end of time. You are the great knowledge. Maha Vidya, the great illusion, Maha Maya, the great insight, Maha Medha, the great memory and the great illusion, the great goddess, Maha Devi, the great demoness Mahasuri. So he says, you are the great goddess, but you are also the great demoness, meaning there is nothing that is not part of you. There is nothing that is not part of this power. And so the goddess becomes pleased and she lifts herself like a fog from the body of Vishnu.
And as he wakes up, he begins to battle the demons, and he battles them for a really long time, something like 60,000 years or something like this. And so the goddess decides to help him out a little. And so she cast a spell of dilution over the demons, and now they want to offer Vishnu a boon. And so they say, we want to offer you a boon because you’ve been fighting us so well. And then Vishnu says, the only thing that I want is to slay you. And so the demons look around themselves, they try to think fast, and they see that the whole world is covered in water, and they say, may be so Vishnu, but then slay us in a place when there is no water. And so Vishnu places the two demons on his thigh, and he chops off the heads of the demons.
And that is the end of that very first story. So it’s kind of a tricky story. It’s not obvious what this story is about, but if we read this text from a Kundalini perspective, we would say that this is the first act of anugraha, the first act of grace. Anugraha is a Sanskrit word for grace, basically meaning graha-the one who grabs, anu, that which is very small. It’s the grace that grabs the individual. And so that first moment of waking us up from our deep slumber, our deep state of ignorance or delusion, and notice that it’s the goddess that wills it so… she wakes us up because she wills it, but she also keeps us in that state of, we might say a tamasic state. When we think about that, the gunas, we would say that this is the tamasic state of the goddess and the tamasic state of the practitioner.
And when we, through the navaratri, work with the Kundalini and work with this particular text, a lot of practitioners will say that the first three days are dedicated to durga in the form of Kali. And we’re going to speak more about Kali in a little while. But Kali, having this very, very dark color and a deity having this dark color in Hindu tradition means that they are very capable when it comes to slaying demons, right? And so Kali has this capacity to really uproot the tamasic tendencies in us, ignorance, sluggishness, stagnation, compulsive action, what we would call karma, the deep seated habitual patterns in us. And so this first little story is about that little ignition. Now the first awakening out of that tamasic state. And the second story is about a demon called Mahishasura. He often has the shape of a buffalo. This is a very, very old iconographical form, and we’re not going to get into that right now. For now, we can just say that this demon represents our inner rajasic, demonic state, the part of us that really wants to, well, something that is interesting. Let me back up a little bit before I get ahead of myself.
In this story, it said that that Indra is the king of the gods. We know that from the Vedic stories, and Mahishasura is the king of the demons, and that is all. Well, there’s definitely a place and a position for the asuras or demons in this story. But what we don’t want is for the demons to take charge. And this is what happens in this story that Mahishasura claims the position of Indra. He becomes the king of the heavens, and this is very problematic. And so the God’s go to them, what we call the tri murti, the three reigning gods in the Puranic, in the mythological stories, Brahma, who is often seen as the creator, Vishnu seen as the sustainer, and Shiva as the destroyer, very and very simplistic view for now. And they go to them and they say, well, we have this great problems with the demons and how can you help them?
And it’s said that the great gods, they frown, they draw their foreheads together and out of their shared anger, great light, Tejas, just comes beaming out of their foreheads, and it becomes a great mountain of light turning into a female figure. And as they see this great beaming light, they hail her as the goddess, and they offer her basically their own Shakti, their own power. This is a big conversation, but we have to understand that the Devi Mahatmyam is a shakta text. So it’s written from the perspective of somebody who is a devotee of the goddess. That means that these mythological stories, they are not new. They’re taking from other earlier Puranas and so on, where perhaps Vishnu is seen as the greatest God or Shiva or some other deity is seen as the greatest God. But here, Devi, the goddess is seen as the greatest one.
That means that they cannot possibly create her. The gods cannot possibly create the goddess, but she is the creator of them. And so she’s basically taking a little bit of her Shakti of her power back to take this manifest form. So she’s usually is hiding in plain sight, but here she’s showing up in the form of Durga, the one who is sometimes her name is translated as the fortress, but she’s the invincible one, the one who cannot be conquered, sometimes it’s said that her name translates to when the road is difficult to wander. So she shows up when we are in big trouble, as my teacher used to say, and now the gods are in big trouble. And so they give their Shakti to this great goddess form, and they also give a replica of all of their weapons. So she gets a Trident from Shiva, she gets the discus from Vishnu, she gets the conch from Brahma, she gets all of the different weapons, and she gets to get a great lion to ride from Himalaya, the great mountain.
And it said that they start screaming “victory to the goddess”, and she starts to laugh thunderously and defiantly, it says in the text, I really love this part. And as Mahishasura hears this laughter, he comes to see who dares to laugh like this in his world. And as he shows up, he is completely enamored by her. The text doesn’t actually say this, but we have many different bhakti versions, stories coming out of the Devi Mahatmyam, and I really like this version where Mahishasura shows up, he sees Durga, he falls in love, and he says, “a body like yours, a face like yours, limbs like yours, they’re not made for fighting. They’re made for lovemaking.” And so he tries to unite with the goddess and she says, this will not be so. I will not be yours, you’ll be mine. And this is so important because Mahishasura represents those part of you of us that I spoke about earlier, that I rarely speak about the ego because I really think that this is something that we often get wrong in contemporary spirituality.
The ego, Ahamkara, Aham meaning I am, Kara, the creator of, so the creator of the sense of I am is not a bad thing in tantric philosophy and in tantric worldview, it’s very important that we have a sense of an appreciation for this individual form that there will never be another Amy or another Tova. Once we’re not here, we share this form. But if we have an exaggerated sense of self, then we make life difficult for ourselves and for the world around us. And Mahishasura, he has an exaggerated sense of self. And so basically when Kundalini awakens, he says, marry me. I can use you. I can become more powerful. I can become more respected. Perhaps I will be this very powerful spiritual person. And the goddesses, no, you will become me, right? And so she goes into battle with Mahishasura and he’s a shapeshifter.
So he takes all types of different forms and she matches him. She follows him into these shapes, and eventually the God says, just finish him Durga. It’s easy for you. And she drinks a potion to make herself angry because all of this is lila, all of this is play for her. She never does something because she has to. She does it because she wills it so. And so she eventually takes her foot and the foot represents anugraha, grace, of course, and she presses the demon down with gentle foot, and she takes her spear of discernment and she pushes it through the heart of the demon. And then she takes her sword and she chops off his head. And some of us have had this experience when going through yogic processes and practices. It’s a very, very real experience. And that’s how I know that this text is really about Kundalini.
And so moving on, now that Gods are very pleased, of course they’re cheering for Durga, and she says, just know that even though I will leave, whenever you need me, just call on me and I will be back. And this is also a crucial part of the text because as Sri Aurobindo says, we need the calling from below to have the answer from above. So we need perhaps to feel a little bit desperate in order for the goddess to really come and do her work on us. Something I really want to say about Kundalini in this perspective is that it is an act of grace, right? It’s not how we see it in the hatha yoga systems, for example, that this is a force that you can mechanically manipulate, but this is a portion of the great goddess. She’s not something that we could manipulate even if we wish to.
This is instead a process where our will becomes her will. And so in the third part of this great story, the gods are in trouble again. And this time we have the demons, Shumbha and Nishumbha, two twin brothers perhaps. And they are often said to represent the sattvic demonic tendencies in ourselves and in society around us. They are very, very refined, but they still have this extreme sense of self. It’s all about them. And so they have kidnapped all of the scholars, all of the artists, all of the people that they want to learn from because they want to be the most refined and the most knowledgeable people in the world. And so they pretty much succeeded with this. And they have a great big or hundreds, perhaps, palaces, and they have great big harems with women that have married them because they are so, such desirable mates.
And so the gods go and cry for the goddess again, and they go to the mountain where she has her abode and they start chanting to her, and they chant for a very, very long time. And eventually Parvati, the concert of Shiva, shows up, she’s going to take a bath in the river there in the mountain, and she says, who are you chanting to? And out of her comes another form known as Ambika. She says, it’s for me, they’re chanting for me. And it says that Parvati takes a dark form, and she goes back to the mountains and this lovely, the golden form of Ambika sits in front of the gods. And they approach her a little bit embarrassed because she’s saying, well, you only come when you are in trouble. So what is it this time? And they say, well, there can be bad children, but there can be no bad mothers.
Of course, we know that this is not the reality of the world, but this is the great mother, the divine mother, and she says, whatever it is that you need from me, the wish is already accomplished just by me being her. And so she instantly transports herself over to the great palace of Shumbha and Nishumbha, and as she approaches the palace riding on her lion, clouds forming in her hair, flowers, dropping from her hands, holding all of these glistering weapons in her 18 arms, two demons spot her, Chanda and Munda, sometimes their names are translated as lust and anger, I think. And they report back to Chanda and Munda. They go into the palace and they say, in the garden there is this gem, this jewel of a woman, and do you not own everything that is precious and beautiful in this world? And Shumbha and Nishumbha say, yes, we do.
And they say, well, should you not own her? And they say, yes, we should. And they say, they send a messenger out to her and they tell the messenger, go and tell her about all of our virtues and all of our power, and then allow her to choose a husband, or maybe she wants to marry both of us. And the messenger goes out and he starts talking about Shumbha and Nishumbha. And the goddess listens patiently. And when he’s done, she says, you have spoken the truth. Shumbha and Nishumbha are the most powerful beings in the whole world, but silly me as I’m from Kshatrya, from a warrior family, I took this silly vow as a young girl that I would only marry somebody that could defeat me in battle.
And so if they want to battle me, I would be honored if they come out. And the messenger, he can already see that this is trouble. He says, no, no, no, miss. I would hate it if you were defeated and dragged in by the hair. And the goddess says, this is my word. Go in and they can do whatever, bring my message, and they can do whatever they find suitable. And so the messenger goes back in. Of course, Shumbha and Nishumbha are highly provoked by this. And they send an army of 60,000 demons out, and they tell them either she comes voluntarily or you will drag that wild woman in by the hair. I think this is an astonishing part of the text. It’s a text from the fifth century written in a highly patriarchal society, and still it’s written in this very way. And so this demon army comes out, they approach the goddess, she raises her sword, and she uses the mantra OM to make all of them turn into dust.
And Shumbha and Nishumbha still do not back down, but they keep sending their armies out to defeat the goddess. And out of the goddess’ body comes other shaktis, other goddess forms that help her in this battle. And as she’s fighting Chanda and Munda that we heard about earlier, she comes very angry, and it’s said that she draws her forehead together, and out of her forehead comes the emaciated, hungry, terrible form of Kali. And Kali springs onto the battlefield, this very, very long descriptions in the text of how she grabs the demons, and she slams them on her breast and she slams them on the floor and she grinds them in between her teeth. And this is really not the form of Kali that we see often in contemporary art where she is young and voluptuous and beautiful. But this is, as I said, an emaciated, terrifying looking form with red eyes moving from side to side with a lulling tongue, moving from side to side, with long breasts basically hanging down to the ground.
And so Kali slays the demons, Chanda and Munda, and she brings their heads back in front of Durga. I always think about like a cat dragging something home and offering it to the owner, and she releases the heads and Durga says, well done Kali. And because you slayed Chanda and Munda, you will get the name Chamunda. Chamunda, of course, is a very ancient name for the goddess. And this is an independent form of the goddess that is now incorporated into the form of Kali, who is incorporated into the form of durga, basically as her embodied rage. So they keep on fighting and durga comes up against an enemy that seems to be impossible to defeat, and that is the Rakta bija, rakta meaning blood or red, bija, seed. So blood seed. And he has this name because every time that he gets hurt and he spills a drip of blood, there’s a new version of himself being born.
And so the more Durga tries to slay him, the more versions of Rakta Bija she finds herself with. And so she says, Kali, open your mouth wide, and when I hurt him with my spear and my weapons, you just lick up all that blood. And so Kali does. She opens her mouth wide, and she basically sucks the demon dry. And then there’s nothing left of Rakta Bija. Sometimes he’s said to symbolize compulsive desire, because desire is not necessarily a bad thing, in tantric practice. The desire, longing is what brings us on the path of practice. Longing for the divine is basically bhakti, right. So the desire in itself is a motivating force, but compulsive desire, that the desire that is just leading us into compulsive action and cycles of just wanting more and more and more, which we know is not good for us and not good for the earth, that is perhaps what Rakta Bija symbolizes.
So when they are done with him, they keep fighting the demons, and eventually Shumbha and Nishumbha have to come out and face the goddess. And so I’m going to read a little part again because this is perhaps the most important part of the Devi Mahatmyam. The Mahāvākya, the Great Saying of this text is when she slays one of the demon brothers, and then the other one confronts her, and he confronts her with not being there by herself. Then he says “on seeing his brother, dear to him as his own life, slain and his army slaughtered, the enraged Shumbha spoke these words, oh, Durga, puffed up with misplaced pride in your own strength of arms. Don’t be so (inaudible). It is by relying on the strength of others that you fight with this inflated sense of your own importance. The goddess said, I alone exist here in the world.
What second other than I is there? Oh wicked one. Behold, these, my manifestations of power entering back into me. There upon all the goddesses led by Brahmani, went to the resting place in the body of the goddess. Then there was just Ambika alone.” So I almost cry when I read this, and this is the great saying of the text because she’s saying, there is nobody here but me, right? I am here alone. There’s just one force in this universe, and that is the goddess according to this text. And that of course means that even the demons are part of her. And in the bhakti tradition, it is normally said that when the demons get slayed in the text, they exhale “ma”, because that inflated sense of self that he accuses durga having right? It’s difficult for the ego, so the projection of it. And so they long to go back to the mother, but they don’t know it until they are defeated.
And so she enters into this great final battle, and eventually she places her foot again on the demon, the spear to the heart, and she beheads him with his sword, and is in many of these texts in the Ramayana, for example, when Rama defeats Ravana, the great demon in that text, there’s a great exhale and a complete silence falls upon the universe. And this is also, I believe, a depiction, a description of the Kundalini process because we see during the battle, there is so much noise. Durga is making all of this noise. Kali is making all of this noise. The goddesses are constantly making all of these terrible noises, and the demons are as well. And then by the end of it, there is this great silent moment. And again, the god’s praises, praise the goddess. And she says, again, I’ll be back whenever you need me.
And then of course, we have the frame story of the king and the merchants listening to all of these stories. And now they say, we would love to get to know this goddess. And they start doing puja for her. They start doing worship for her for many, many years. And by the end of the puja, they even sacrifice their own flesh. So they give their very all to the goddess. And she shows up and she says, what is it that you want from me? And then interestingly enough, they don’t both want liberation. But the merchant, his name is Samadhi, so we already know what he’s going to ask for. He asked to be released from the sense of me and mine. So he reaches liberation, but the king, he wishes to fulfill his dharma, his mission, his duty on earth. And so he wants to get his kingdom back because he knows that he is a righteous king and that he has work to do.
And so the goddess grants him back his kingdom, and she also grants him an eternal kingdom. This is also a very important part of the text because it says basically that when the Goddess is awakened, when Kundalini awakes, and maybe when we go through the whole process, it’s not only about leaving the body and the world behind reaching liberation, however we think of liberation, but there is also a fulfillment of desires. And that is why we often speak about the goddesses. Bhukti, Mukti she gives liberation, but she also gives worldly pleasure or worldly success in different ways. And tantric traditions will often say that we have to, as practitioners be very honest about what our desire really is, and to not say that, well, of course I long for liberation when we have worldly desires that we need to fulfill first. So yeah, that is the Devi Mahatmyam, in a nutshell, very condensed.
Amy:
That’s wonderful. I love it. I’m just so, I’m relishing in the story time. I love storytelling. I love story time. It’s so wonderful, and I really appreciate the subtle points that you’ve raised that allude to seeing this text through the tantric lens. I love that you’ve highlighted, I’ve never really consciously thought about this, but I love that you’ve highlighted the frame story because it’s like I’m listening to a story that someone else is listening to, the core story., It’s like this multilayered experience, which is very typical of these more traditional texts. And yeah, I find that really enriching, and I appreciate your, well, obviously simple, but clarification on the different approach to understanding Kundalini or having a relationship with Kundalini comparative through the text comparative to how we might see it as something in a subtle anatomy through a hatha yoga lens. And not to say that one is right or wrong or more superior to the other, but just to broaden that perspective, which is really wonderful.
It just makes the ocean of all of this seem even bigger. But yeah, it’s so wonderful. So I trust that this leads us beautifully into the Dasha or 10 Mahavidyas, the emanations of Devi, if you will. And we haven’t got a lot of time left, but perhaps you can share with us how they’re connected to this text, to Kundalini, what they can reveal to us and how they can enrich the path of spiritual development and self transformation for us. You’ve got a course on this if people want to go in depth, but yes, can you just introduce us to this and bring that connection and relevance to all you’ve just shared?
Tova:
I’ll do my very best. As I said, the Devi Mahatmyam is a, it’s a pretty old text and Dasha Mahavidyas as we know them nowadays, some of them are very, very ancient goddess, but the way they are put together in this compilation of 10 tantric wisdom goddesses, that is something that is pretty recent. And so when people, for example, say that they are avatars of Durga, like Vishnu have avatars or try to connect them to the story of durga, that is probably a way to get authorization–difficult word–for this particular assemblage of goddesses. Having said that, as a Kundalini practitioner, I have not find that other system as brilliant as the Dasha Mahavidya system to explain the different phases that you move through as the practitioner when you have a kundalini awakening. And so as I said, there are many different origin stories of the Dasha Mahavidyas.
One of them will say that as durga slaves the demons, these forms come out of her, but it never says so in the Devi Mahatmyam. In the Devi Mahatmyam we have the Matrikas, the little mothers coming out of Durga as she fights the demons, right? But one other story that is very, very famous is the one of Shiva and Sati, that I assume that some of you know, but you can definitely hear the long verse in my courses, where Shiva has the beautiful bride, and Sati is the great goddess incarnated to become the wife of Shiva. And she shows us to leave the world behind because her father Daksha is not showing her enough respect. And sometimes in this very moment when her husband and her father is not showing her the respect that she should be showed, she takes the form of the 10 wisdom goddesses that are pretty horrible looking to pretty much scare her husband.
So that is one version of it. But then the first form, there are many different ways to understand the sequence, and the sequence is not always the same, but the way that I teach it and the way I was taught Kali is of course, always the first one, and Kali is the first one because when we receive tantric teachings, the absolute teaching is always given first. So why is it given first? It might be given first to scare immature students away, and it’s also given first so that the mature student will not waste their time. They can go straight to the highest lesson, so to speak. So in this system, Kali is understood to be the absolute, the non-dual state. And then the other goddesses are, we could say more dense manifestations, right? If Kali is that the absolute, the blackness of space, the color that all of the other colors merge into, right?
She’s the womb and the tombs as it’s usually sent, then the other goddesses emerge out of her as more and more tangible aspects of the goddess. So the sequence of the Dasha Mahavidyas can be understood as a cosmological sequence. They tell us how tantric traditions believe that the cosmos came into being. So beginning with Kali, Kali is the representation of time. So the very, very first movement of time is the first movement in the universe. And then the next goddess is Tara and Tara, her name, the star that leads us back home. And she’s often associated with the teacher, but she’s also associated with mantras and with spanda, the subtle vibration of expansion of contraction. She’s associated with the pranava, the very first mantra OM, and the very first sound vibration that many Indian tradition believes is the first thing that came into the world. The first there was sound vibration, and then that vibration became gradually something more and more dense until we finally had the manifest world.
We have, I’m really rushing through this now, but if you look at the cosmological sequence, then we have Tara as sound, then we have Lalita Tripura Sundari as Iccha Shakti, as desire, as will, that first impulse to create something. Then we have Bhuvaneshwari, the lady of the world who is the space around our manifest thing, but who is also understood to be Prakriti to be the natural world, to be the manifest world itself. And then we have Tripura Bhairavi, who is understood to be shakti, the kriya-Shakti, the force of action like the heated state that really brings creation into being. And then we have Chhinnamasta, the headless one, who is in a way the separation where the non-dual state turns into the dual state. And then we have Dhumavati, the aging, the widow, the one who is completely, in a way, separated from Shiva, from consciousness, she’s the widow.
And then we have Bagalamukhi, who is the sacred pause, the one who holds the tongue of the demon that represents many different yogic processes, but the madhya, the space in between. She is very much associated with yogic processes of pranayama, of holding the breath, of finding the stillness in between everything that is moving. And then we have the goddess Matangi, who is sometimes said to be a tantric form of Saraswati, which is of course not true, but they are both associated with creativity, with wisdom, with knowledge, with articulated speech. Matangi is especially associated with Vaikari, with articulated speech and with channeled wisdom. So being able to receive wisdom and then to give it to others. And then the very last goddess is Kamala, who is a lot like Lakshmi. She is eternally moist. She’s seated on a lotus. She has two elephants who are constantly showering her with water, and she represents the beauty of the manifest world.
So that is the way to understand the cosmological progression, of course, very, very simplified here. And then in the Kundalini process, we have the same sequence, but moving from the other way, right? From Kamala all the way back to Kali, and then all the way from Kali back to Kamala again, which I think is the very interesting part of this process, because a lot of time we think that, well, we move from attachment to the material world all the way up to Kali, and then we have this absolute non-dual liberated state, right? But this tantric tradition will say no. Then you go back down, and as you come back down, these goddesses have a slightly different meaning. And as you move all the way down into Matangi and Kamala, you move into your individual creative expression and your absolute appreciation of the beauty in the manifest world.
So it’s a really world enhancing way to understand the Kundalini process and the way through my experience and through the experience of my friends and students. I believe that this is really the way it happens, though it never happens exactly the same for two people, seeing that this is a very, very individual process. And this I think is something that is very important to emphasize and highlight when we’re speaking about Kundalini, that we need not compare ourselves too much to the testimonies that we read in books, because this is a process that is very, very different for different people.
Amy:
Can I ask you, I think what you’ve shared with us demonstrates this to a certain degree, but you have stated that they each represent, and these are your words, wisdom plateaus. So again, you’ve kind of alluded to this, but could you just clarify that a little bit what you mean by that?
Tova:
I really rushed through this, but Maha means great, like Maha Devi and Vidya means knowledge. Vidya can also be a mantra, A feminine mantra is a vidya. So a Maha Vidya is a great mantra, a feminine great mantra is also a form of great knowledge or great wisdom that we gain along the way as we process spiritually. Having said that, of course, these goddesses, they are great cosmic powers. They surround us. So whether we are practitioners or not, we will bump into them. But my experience is that when we have an understanding for what they represent, we meet them with a lot more grace. So for example, let’s take Dhumavati, who is this aging widow who is seated on a chariot that is not going anywhere. She’s wearing rags, and it’s said that she has gaze that is completely lacking love. And so she represents states of disappointment or loss or grief. Her name Dhumavati means the one who is associated with smoke. So sometimes it’s said that when Sati leaves her body behind, all that is left is smoke, and that smoke is Dhumavati. So that absolute state of disappointment in a way.
So none of us will escape grief, loss, disappointment, the feeling that something that we had planned for went up in smoke. But when we consciously work with that force, when we welcome Dhumavati, she blesses us because she said, okay, this desert that you’re moving through, whether you’re moving through a desert in your spiritual practice, you feel like nothing is happening. It’s dry. You’re moving through the desert, or you’re moving to a desert in your life in general. Maybe you feel like you’re not going anywhere, you don’t have any creativity. That is still the blessing of Dhumavati. And in this sequence, who comes after Dhumavati? Bagalamukhi, very yellow goddess, the one that holds the tongue of the demon. And so she represents that past. When we have gone through the process of perhaps losing something that was important for our identity or for our life, sense of self, and then we move into the space of Bagalamukhi and we say, okay, now that I’ve let go of this aspect of myself, or perhaps this habitual pattern or whatever it might be, maybe I can grow a new habit or find a new way to speak or something else.
And so Bagalamukhi has this yellow color as the very first flowers in the springtime, that very first little movement back into creativity. And after her comes Matangi, the green goddess that represents that full, authentic individual voice and creativity and channeling of wisdom. So we can see through the sequence that they’re all needed, and we can’t rush through any of them. Some of them represent tapasya, that fiery discipline, the yogic discipline, some of them represent soma, the nectar that overflows, that nurtures us. So they’re all part of this great sequence, which is life, and which is also our spiritual process. And working consciously with them, as I said, really makes it so helpful because we can see that we are in the arms of the goddess. So yes, I speak about them as wisdom plateau or as faces of Kundalini, but they’re also great cosmic forces, right? They’re all around us. And as we start befriending the goddess, we also see her showing up in people around us and in animals and in the world around us, and in popular culture and everywhere. But yes, I don’t want to…
Amy:
It’s incredible. It’s a bottomless ocean of richness to explore.
Tova:
And of course, we could just work with one of these goddesses, study one of these goddess, and a lot of people do for an entire lifetime. But a lot of teachers will say that once you approach one of the goddesses, she will lead you to the next one eventually. And having said that, we need to start with Kali or Kali starts with us. That’s usually the way it happens, that we go through some really, really messy time in our life where we are really uprooted, where our life really falls apart in some way. And that leads us onto the other goddesses. So they rarely, of course, come in this exact sequence for us as individuals, but they all show up along the way. And some of us are dearly beloved, one particular goddess. So she will really keep us for a long time before letting us move on to another one. But me particularly, I have a really strong connection to Kali, of course, also to Lalita Tripura Sundari, well to all of them. But I have murtis of Bagalamukhi and a painting of Matangi here where I’m seated on by my desk, and I work with Matangi and Bagalamukhi on a daily basis with their mantras. So they are very, very important goddesses for me.
Amy:
It’s so interesting. I could let go on forever, actually. But obviously you have a much deeper, longer in-depth course online for anyone who’s interested in exploring this further with you. And so for those listening in, for those that would like to go deeper and study with Tova, please use the discount code “Jaima”, J-A-I-M-A, all one word at checkout on her website to receive a generous, generous 50% off all online courses and the code and also the teachable course link is available for you right now on the summit webpage. So you don’t need to write anything down, just jump over to the webpage. You’ll find it all there. And just so you know, all courses are also available immediately for self-study, which is wonderful, so you can immerse in at your own pace. There is a course on the Mahavidyas, these 10 tantric wisdom goddesses, if you want to go deeper into this. There’s also the history, philosophy, and mythology of yoga. And there is also a course on Kashmir Shaivism, the heart of classical tantra. And don’t forget, you can upgrade to gain lifetime access to all these wisdom fueled summit sessions. Thank you for tuning in, and thank you Tova for your seeds of insight into this vast universe of devy. This has been a beautiful and fascinating opportunity to listen and learn from you. Thank you so much.
Tova:
Thank you so much for your patience with me and your kind attention.
Amy:
It’s been wonderful. Jai Ma. Jai Ma.
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A beacon for those craving a connection to tradition and timeless wisdom, Amy Landry has cemented herself as a global yoga teacher, teacher trainer, mentor, mama, ayurvedic practitioner, podcast host, speaker, and eternal student.
Renowned for her sold-out retreats, Amy has contributed extensively to Australian Yoga Journal, Om Yoga & Lifestyle magazine, YOGA Magazine (UK), and Nature & Health magazine (AU).
She has presented at Wanderlust, Evolve, Byron Spirit Fest, and Ekam Yoga Festival. You can listen to her Living In Alignment podcast on all major platforms.
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