Worship of Shakti

Victor Hugo is supposed to have said, “Woman is the most sublime ideal", and it is this sublimity that we celebrate during the Navratri, the ideal that a woman is. The principle of Shakti is invoked and the nation worships this feminine principle which is the driving force behind the world.

According to Devi Mahatmya, once upon a time, there was a demon, who had threatened the very existence of the universe. Due to the boons he had received during his numerous penances, he had become invincible; at least the gods couldn’t do much harm to him. All the gods got together and breathed their energies into a powerful ball of energy, which shaped to form the Shakti. This Shakti was responsible in eliminating the demon, after a waging a powerful war, where the demon took different shapes to elude the powerful force, but at the end die in her hands. The goddess came to be known as the Mahisasur-mardini, the slayer of the buffalo-demon, and the quintessential woman-power.

On earth, we commemorate this divine act of the goddess and celebrate, Navratri, Durga Puja, etc.

Durga slaying Mahisasura

The principle of Shakti cannot be undermined, rather, any god without its shakti is meaningless and a beautiful verse explains this as candid as शक्ति के बिना शिव भी शव के समान हैं, i.e. without Shakti, Shiv is like a dead-body. Shakti is the personification of the divine feminity, the creative powers of the earth. No god is complete without this principle of Shakti, and together they create a beautiful harmony of the union of the two principles, the purusha and prakriti, the union of which is the root of all creation on earth.  

Hold it, I think, I have got a trifle carried away in my explanation of some concepts which only make good scripts, and just that. Did you like that? If you did, then let me pat my back, to say that I do write well. Don’t make that face; humility is not the domain of men! Such behaviour on our part is confidence, awareness and truth; however, if such behaviour was expressed by a woman, then they would be over-confidence, arrogance and brazenness! Whoever said, the world was equal, don’t believe her – aren’t there mountains and valleys on the same surface of the earth?

The earlier paragraph is a utopia painted with all the colours of the rainbow, and more. Those words of wisdom were only to make the women folk feel good and raise them to an altar after treating them like paanv-ki-jooti, for major part of the year and in more than 90% of our country. These occasional rhetoric of Shakti, etc. served well, to ensure that the women-folk got back to the grind, the fields, the kitchen and the beds to cater to all the needs of the man, and the society at large! And just in case a solitary one, did not, then there were means to bring them back to senses – kangaroo-courts, Khaps, stoning to death, rape and murder, naked-parade, etc. If nothing, it served its purpose well in others, who wouldn’t dream of any misdemeanour as inane as staring eye-to-eye with ones younger brother, leave alone any boy!

What a manly sense of achievement! First raise them to an altar, and then drag them to your beds. First talk them into such harmless divinity and them have them croon whatever you want. First offer them some rituals and then ensure that they perform ritually for you.

Dear Indians, let’s get off the high-horse of big talk, and take stalk. Except in a few homes and an even fewer Corporate, the woman is a second-class citizen, if one at all. Let’s not resort to such fancy concepts, if we don’t mean it. As a nation, we have failed our women, when one Nirbhaya takes place in Delhi and the other follows suit in Mumbai, Badaun, and just about everywhere else. If we still have to enact laws to catch hold of them legally, then we sure have failed as a society. If our politicians tell us what women should wear and what they should not, just to avoid getting raped, then such talk of Shakti is pure high-decibel talk and that’s it, and if such politicians who suffer from verbal diarrhoea too often, still move around freely in our society, then let’s take some blame for allowing the moronic retrogrades to move around freely.

A society, which feels proud to allow their men to behave like stray dogs and is not ashamed to ask the women to cover themselves, since the salivating strays cannot be controlled, then stop worshipping the feminine principle – it’s a sham, if not shame!

Ma Durga, my apologies for writing what I wrote, but sorry to tell you, that this is the truth, sordid but truth. The eulogies die a quiet death, even before you turn your back and are yourself reduced to left-over’s in rivers and ponds. I am rather appalled, that you are unable to control the terror that has been unleashed on your daughters by a certain segment of your own followers, especially when the victims had faith in you.

 

Image Courtesy – Taproot India’s campaign ‘Abused Sisters’

I dare you to show us that you care for the daughters of this country, and I further dare you to show the principle of Shakti that I so eloquently waxed, a few paragraphs back.

Or retire hurt……..

Navratri

Navratri, as the name goes, is a festival of nine nights. Besides the fun and revelry, it has its own religious and social significance. But what seems to be lesser known is that this is not the only Navratri that gets celebrated. There are more than one Navratri in a year, though the one that begins today is the more popular one.

According to some, Navratri is celebrated four or five times in a year, but the most common are –

Vasant Navratri during the months of March-April, &
Sharad Navratri during September-October

Vasant is the spring season or beginning of summer and sharad is the beginning of winter. It is important to note that both are celebrated when Mother Nature undergoes important climatic changes. This highlights the significance of the worship of Mother Goddess cult and its most significant aspect of regeneration.

The vasant navratri is generally celebrated in the North, which also coincides with Ram-Navami which falls on the ninth day of the month of chaitra (thus vasant navratri is also sometimes referred to as chaitra-navratri). The sharad-navratri is generally celebrated in the West and other parts of the country, and in the East, it is celebrated as Durga Puja, which marks the slaying of the demon Mahishasura.

Navratri is the worship of the divine Mother and is a part of the Mother Goddess cult, a practice that found its origin during the Vedic times. The worship of

Shakti, the feminine creative principle has been an important practice in India from the times of yore. Worshipping a ghata, an earthen pitcher, (Read This is Utkarsh Speaking: Navratri ) with different grains and allowing them to sprout during the days of the festival is another very important ritual, which brings out the fertility aspects of nature. The sprouts are an indication of nature’s bounty, which was the prime concern of the primitive society which was agrarian. The fertility aspect makes Navratri a predominantly women centric festival, which however, has emerged as a social festival to reckon with. The importance of the cult of Shakti is such, that according to the Skanda Purana, even Lord Shiva is like a shava (a dead body) without Shakti! Needless to say, that Shakti is the primordial energy and the nine days of Navratri are to honour the nine different forms of Shakti, also known as the nava-Durga, or the nine-Durgas.

To conclude, Goa has an interesting version of the Navratri, which brings out the cult of Mother Nature worship very effectively. In Goa, goddess Durga is known by many names, some of them being Bhumika, Shantadurga, Sateri, etc. all of which are a form of earth goddess. On the first day of the Navratri, a copper pitcher is installed in some temples. The pitcher is surrounded with clay around it and in it are sown nine different grains. During the nights, folk songs and traditional dances take place amidst the worship of different village deities. The rituals are to seek abundance in harvest from the earth mother, and on the tenth day, the village deities are taken out in a procession. With time the folk dances have given way to the more popular dandiya and garba, but the rituals have not undergone much change and nor has the belief system.

During Navratri, over the next few days, we will focus on some aspects of the same, with a special emphasis on the ensuing Durga Puja.

So keep reading…..

The Cult of Shakti

Shaktism is a Sanskrit term and means “Doctrine of the Goddess”. It is that aspect of Hinduism that focuses upon worship of Shakti (feminine power) or Devi, who is the Divine Mother. In Hinduism, the Great Divine Mother is regarded as the symbol of motherhood and power/energy. In Shaktism goddess worship, in all her forms is the practice. Shaktism regards Mahadevi as the Great Goddess. Here Shakti is the dynamic feminine aspect of the Supreme Divine.

Deities of Shaktism possess the very energy of existence, as Shakti is active, creative energy and each Goddess is profiled with her Shakti (power). The Goddess is seen as the personification of all creative energy and the source of all divine and cosmic evolution including all aspects of Nature.

In Hinduism, Adi Shakti is the ultimate Shakti, the final feminine power inherent in all creations. There are supposed to be a group of seven or eight mother goddesses, called the Matrikas. They are Brahmani, Vaishanvi, Maheshwari, Indrani, Kumari, Varahi and Chumnda and/or Narasimhi. The matrikas are considered Shaktis of the most important gods like Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Indra, Skanda or Kumara, Yama and Narsimha. Shakti is seen as a sign of protection of the country, the punisher of evil people, the curer of diseases and the one who gives happiness to the village.

The worship of Mother Goddess or Shakti, can be traced back to the Pre-Vedic or Indus Valley Civilisation. Devisukta of the Rig Veda is the primary source of Shakti Cult. In the Rig Veda there is a description of a goddess named 'Aditi'. She is depicted not only as Mother Goddess but also as an emblem of the divine spirit. Some other references of Mother Goddesses are Prithvi (earth), Vac (speech) and Usas (dawn).

Over time when the Puranic gods and goddesses gained prominence, the prominence of the Shakti worship did not ebb. It continued to flourish and the associated myths and the temples associated with this myth remained prime centres of pilgrimage. Needless to say, that in many a case, myths got inter-woven with that of the Puranic deities to co-exist.

To conclude, according to Shiva Purana, Shiva is shava (dead body) without his energy, Shakti. This underlines the significance of the concept of Shakti.