An examination of the concept of
Shakti,
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Shaktism as a devotional form within Hinduism has developed only since medieval times, but the notion of Shakti - the female creative principle - has endured in the psyche of India from its earliest days, even predating the Aryan invasion and the Vedas themselves. Shakti is woven through Hinduism's history, its theology, philosophy, ritual, art and sacred literature, its social fabric. As the force bestowing both life and death, Shakti is to be feared as destructive and adored as nurturing all creation. Her many forms are sought in Tantric practice and revered in Bhakti worship, yet this expressionism is often treated as an unspoken secret by orthodox mainstream Hindus. But Shakti, generative female power, permeates Hindu thought and even underlies the self-image of the nation of the Hindus, which is called "Mother" India. To understand shakti (as power) and Shakti (as Goddess) it is necessary to trace the history of Hindu mythology, and to consider its theology. In what R.N.Dandekar calls "proto-historical Hinduism", pre-Vedic times, a supreme male god was associated with the Mother Goddess Maha Devi; she who, it is thought, personified the god's powers of procreation and sustenance.(1) During the period of early Hinduism and the Vedas, no such Great Goddess is apparent, though there are many minor female deities representing aspects of Vedic mythology. It was not until the era of the deeper philosophical thought of the Upanishads that the unifying concept of atman/ brahman emerged from the previous polytheism. The supreme reality, Brahman, was given the attributes of being, awareness, and bliss (sat, chit, and ananda), and seen as wholly transcendent soul (brahman), yet immanent in all things as the soul of each (atman). Upanishadic philosophy held, in progression, both monistic and theistic positions. In Vedic intellectual thought to this time, there had been "three movements: from plurality to unity, from objectivity to subjectivity, and from materiality to spirituality".(2) In the Svetasvatara Upanishad, which marked the transition between monism and theism, the Vedic god Rudra-Shiva reappears, as a Supreme Lord, a personal God: (For there is one Rudra only, they do not allow a second, who rules all the worlds by his powers. He stands behind all persons, and after having created all worlds he, the protector, rolls it up at the end of time and That Bhagavat [Rudra] exists in the faces, the heads, the necks of all, he dwells in the cave of the heart of all beings, he is all pervading, therefore he is the omnipresent Shiva. Svet. Up.III 2 & 11.)(3) Since a major aspect of Shakti is as the consort and completion of Shiva, a view of Shiva's place in Hinduism is essential to any discussion of Shakti. (He, the sun, without any colour, who with set purpose by means of his power [sakti] produces endless colours. Svet. Up. IV.1.) Shiva is in some ways the "wild card", the outsider, in the great Trimurti (one god in three forms), of Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva. Here, Shiva is the "Destroyer" to Brahma's "Creator" and Vishnu's "Preserver". He destroys the finite to make way for the infinite. Possibly the strangeness and mystery Shiva evokes stems from his origin outside the Aryan (brahmin) fold, into which he was incorporated when having proved too powerful or too popular to be ignored. He has always remained a god emanating both fear and fascination, who transcends humanness, and is contradictory and unfathomable. Shiva, girdled with serpents, his throat blue with poison, and often depicted as half man, half woman, is god of the cremation grounds, and as nataraja, is Lord of the dance. He dances with joy his overflowing power, dances creation into existence; and he dances a frenzied destruction of the world to hurry its cycle to rebirth or moksha. In Shiva/Shakti all opposites meet - creator and destroyer, eternal rest and ceaseless activity, male and female, evil and good, ascetic and ithyphallic. Shiva/Shakti is the yin/yang of the subcontinent. An ancient legend tells that Shiva and Shakti "once engaged in such violent sexual intercourse that they merged into one androgynous being".(4) As woman, he is shakti (the power to become), maya (materialization) and prakrti (the creative power in nature); as man he is Purusha, the eternal, unchangeable Spirit, the origin.(5) Shiva is most commonly worshipped as a linga - a cylindrical black stone shaft (male) set into a circular base, the yoni (female). The circular base represents the turning world (samsara)(6); the erect shaft represents the still point which defines and gives meaning to the whirl of samsara.(6) Shakti is to Shiva, it is often said, as a ray of sunshine is to the sun. (Yet in the Shakta cults, Shakti is elevated over all Gods - as the ultimate principle of creation is considered, of necessity, to be female). True to the apparently contradictory spirit of Shiva, although Shiva and Shakti are eternally One, joined in blissful coital union to produce the world and souls, still Shiva is always chaste, austere, and Shakti always virginal, pure. This exemplifies the doctrine of Vishishtadvaita, (differentiated non-duality) as propounded by the scholar Ramanuja in the 12th century: though eternally united, the Shiva and Shakti principles are yet eternally distinct, since without distinction, love is impossible. And the liberated soul is at one with Shiva/Shakti, "but still distinct in that it knows and loves what it can never altogether become."(7) Any conception of pure consciousness (Brahman) that denies Shakti (the power of becoming), is only half the truth. This philosophy forms the ground for the bhakti devotional movement in which Shakti goddesses figure prominently. Another strand of Hindu theism in which Shakti is essential is Tantra, which uses the Shakti, or lifeforce, as the path to moksha. Believing that Shakti (becoming) and the world of Maya (that which has become) are one, Tantra believes it is only through the physical world of Maya/Shakti that an ascent can be made to the spiritual, and so is about harnessing the Shakti energy. Thus Shakti is inseparable from the Tantras, which are manuals of instruction aiming to lead devotees to unite with the power of the Goddess and attain liberation. The Tantric texts, written from around the 6th century, are believed to be revelation (sruti) from the gods; so the Shakta Tantras are transmitted from the Goddess through intermediary sages, as were the Vedas two millennia before. The Tantras consist of magic formulas, rituals, esoteric teachings and spells. Six wheels of sacred power along the spine, chakras, linking the serpent power, the Kundalini goddess, with the Shiva lotus centre at the top of the skull, are to be activated by yogic practices. All these teachings were, and are, considered dangerous to the uninitiated and hence to be kept secret. Thus they became exclusive sects, although not exclusive of caste or gender - within tantric ceremony all were equal. Tantra was viewed as unorthodox, as many of its rituals used things normally forbidden to Hindu practice. They are the five M's: madya (wine), mamsa (meat), matsya (fish), mudra (parched grain, regarded as an aphrodisiac) and maithuna (sexual intercourse). They symbolise, in corresponding order, "the intoxicating knowledge of god, the consignment of all things to one's self, identification of the pain and pleasure of the universe, the release from contact with evil, and the union of Shiva and Shakti."(8) Partaking in these in ritual (either in reality by the Vama-charis, following the "left-hand path", or symbolically, by the Dakshina-charis of the "right-hand path"), was believed to transform these lower gross passions that bind us to the world, into higher forms that lead to brahmasayujya - union with Brahman.(9) In Tantra, woman had the status of a divinity, with whom the male devotee, himself representing Shiva, could attain sacred mystical union. An important part of Tantric practice is the worship of a woman or a young girl into whom the Goddess has been ritually invoked. If worship of the goddess was to be as child to mother rather than as lovers, then the Five M's would be substituted with "harmless" things (coconut milk, paddy, "a childlike submission before the Divine Mother's feet" for maithuna.)(10) The Mother image was greatly venerated, since life began in the mother's womb. But Tantra is more usually a "yoga of sex", as the union of Shiva and Shakti is an analogy of the cosmos, and of the inseparability of opposites of which it is composed. To attain this union is to reach the point of bindu, zero, the creative matrix, the productive point of potentiality - the term bindu means seed, or semen.(11) Retaining the semen during the sexual act was believed a way of gaining spiritual power.this also reflects the "chaste ithyphallus" of Shiva, the virginal fecundity of Shakti. And the dualism of Shiva/Shakti is further expressed in Tantra in its microcosmic view of the body: male-female are respectively right or left side of the body, active or passive state of mind, semen and menstrual blood; and other pairings such as cause and effect, lust and beauty, blowing and sipping, consonant and vowel.(12) The sun and moon, stars and planets are mirrored in Tantric anatomy. The woman's body, in ceremonial ritual, corresponds to the Vedic altar, and the body of the ritual partner is "a mystical terrain to be explored like the streets and sanctuaries of a holy city."(13) To break taboos was also to break with the bonds of the world, and the tantric rites centred on Kali (as Shakti) are as shocking to orthodox Hinduism as the appearance of Kali herself. Besides observance of the "5 M's" there is ritual sacrifice, possibly at times involving human sacrifice and the tasting of human flesh. Ceremonies may be conducted at night, in cremation grounds, among the human remains; devotees may smear themselves with human ashes, drink from a skull - all restraints of society are disregarded, and the dark side of life confronted to purge terror and so embrace the whole of experience. Kali signifies annihilation as a prelude to creation (as does Shiva). She is represented in black (as all colours disappear into black, so all forms disappear into her); she is naked, free from all illusion; full breasted, signifying motherhood and preservation; her wild hair is a curtain of death, surrounding life with mystery.(14) Kali wears a necklace of skulls, a girdle of human hands, has three eyes, four hands and a red, lolling tongue. She dances on the prostrate body of Shiva; some say in transcendence of him, and that his submission is that of the perfect servant or devotee. Others say that Shiva lies below her to prevent her dancing from shattering the world.(15) She is the murderess of all she brings forth in the round of existence. Kali inspired not only much of the Tantric ritual, but an enormous following in the Bhakti devotional tradition. A Bhakti poem from Ramprasad Sen, from the 18th century, expresses his devotion to Kali, who brings the world's abundance, delight and pain, death and immortality:
Bhakti is passionate devotion to a particular deity, and grew out of the legends and myths about the gods and their relations with humankind as told in the Puranas and the great epics of the Bhagavadgita and the Ramayana. Open to all, regardless of class, learning or wealth, Bhakti required only loving dedication to one's God, and the desire for God's grace, which could even override the fate of one's actions (karma). The love of God being likened to that of the yearning for reunion with a lover, Bhakti's expression was not far removed from the eroticism of Tantra. Kali-the-black is just one of the many names and forms under which Shakti is worshipped. As Gavin Flood remarks, "The Goddess is a contradictory and ambivalent figure in Hinduism ...the source of life, the benevolent mother who is giving and overflowing, yet .a terrible malevolent force who demands offerings of blood, meat and alcohol to placate her wrath."(17) So the Goddess is depicted in two main ways, as "goddesses of tooth" who are erotic, dangerous, ferocious, independent and usually dominate their consorts; or as "goddesses of breast", fertile, bountiful, auspicious, maternally generous and gracious, subservient to their consorts.(18) This is certainly true of the Bhakti Shaktis. The "tooth" goddesses are propitiated and praised with offerings of sacrificial blood, (which represents the devotees giving of her/himself), as for example at the yearly festival of Durga-puja at the great temple of Kali-ghat (Calcutta), when hundreds of goats are sacrificed. Until the mid-nineteenth century, human sacrifice to Durga, often of volunteers, was common, too. It was believed that the consecrated blood became ambrosia to nourish the goddess, and both the victim and the sacrificial priest were, in their innocent and ego-less role of devotees "able to identify their consciousness, and thereby their reality, with the inhabiting principle of the whole."(19) Durga ("difficult to approach"), she who was born from the collective anger and frustration of all the gods, has killed the buffalo-demon Mahisa, who could not be killed by a male; the Durga image of a ten-armed slayer mounted on a lion thus refutes previous Brahminical views of women as passive and dependent on men - she has proved to be more powerful than the male gods.(20) Other aspects of Shakti as Shiva's consort represent the "goddess of breast" - Parvati, daughter of the Himalayas, whose dedication and love enticed the ascetic aloof Shiva from eternal meditation to join her in the act of creation; Yoni, as goddess of reproduction; Jaganmatri, mother of the universe; Uma, goddess of the mountain, and of beauty. Shakti is consort of the other gods of the Trimurti, too. As Brahma's consort she is Sarasvati, goddess of inspiration of all learning, poetry and music, she who is, too, the mythical river Sarasvati. She is associated with the Goddess of speech, Vac, from early Vedic times. Vac inspired the sages, represented truth, revealed the meaning of language; so is central to later focus on sound: mantras. Vac is the "Word", first principle of the universe.(21) As Vishnu's consort, Shakti is Laksmi, or Sri, and worshipped in a tantric form as Lalita Tripurasundari ("Beautiful Goddess of the Three Cities") in the sacred yantra, or diagram, of nine intersecting triangles, and a fifteen syllable mantra, srividya, from which the tradition takes its name. In this theology the Goddess is supreme, and here too she represents the Word, the primal sound (nada), the syllable (om), that "unfolds the cosmos and contracts it once again in endless cycles of emanation and reabsorption".(22) As an avatar (reincarnation) of Vishnu, Rama is central to the epic "Ramayana", but his consort Sita has been the strongest popular exemplar of women's behaviour in Hindu tradition. She is not only beautiful, gentle, devoted to her husband, but she is courageous in adversity and though a martyr to truth and virtue, still strong and independent. Sita is the ideal Hindu woman, and has been elevated over Rama by the Shakti cult in the Adbhuta-Ramayana.(23) So Shaktism is immanent in Vaishnavism as well as in Shaivism. The concepts of Maya and Shakti are intertwined. For as Shakti is the power within all creation, Maya is the world of phenomenal existence itself; but also the flux within existence. Richard Lannoy says that "the phenomenal world is made of the same stuff as dreams; both are maya."(24) Maya is often termed "illusion", and the Advaita system views the world of Maya as "unreal", as the veil that masks the reality of Brahman. But for most schools of Hindu thought, including Tantra and bhakti, Maya is the cosmic, divine play, sacred and magical to those whose eyes are awakened to the divinity within all forms and appearances. Maya is alive with bliss, to those in an exalted state, not concrete and profane. Yet Maya can trick humanity into "maintaining false solidarity with the profane"(25) and into forgetting the transience of life. Herein reappears the duality and contradictory nature of Shiva/Shakti; for as Shaktas find in the Goddess ultimate reality, so too as Maya she can disguise this reality behind a kaleidoscope of phenomena. Even the Shakti-created senses that perceive this phenomena are a part of this Maya. Maya encompasses the concept of time too - the most essential, integral element of Shakti's conjuring of creation. And Maya "represents the possibility for Being of not being. The All-Possibility must by definition and on pain of contradiction include its own impossibility .relativity is an aspect of the Absolute. Relativity, Maya, is the Shakti of the absolute."(26) Ramakrishna-swami expresses in imagery the relationship between Maya/Shakti and Brahman: "The personal and impersonal are the same Being, in the same way as are milk and its whiteness, or the diamond and its lustre, or the serpent and its undulations. It is impossible to conceive of the one without the other."(27) I cannot leave an exploration of Shakti without regarding the origin of this concept of female divinity and creative power - the primal notion of a Mother Goddess, the MahaDevi. From pre-Vedic times the earth-mother has been revered as the source of life and sustenance. She can be bountiful and fertile but, too, she may withhold her gifts and create instead sterility and famine. She consumes the dead and spreads disease (the smallpox goddesses are Sitala and Mariyamman, and those dead of this disease are considered as pure as small children, pregnant women, holy men and those killed of snakebite. Only these may be consigned to the Mother Ganga river unburnt.). The seasons are the moods of the Goddess; and all nature is she. As Uma she dwells in the mountains, as Sarasvati in the rivers, as Kali on the cremation ground.(28) As Goddess of dawn, Ushas, in the Rg Veda, brings the round of new days, new awakenings.(29) The Goddess is all-pervasive in Hindu life and thought. Dandekar explains her primacy in classical Shaktism, where her active quality overwhelmed the passivity of Shiva, by three factors: "1) the metaphysically derived concept of the divine energy, 2) the ancient cosmogonical concept of sexual dualism, and 3) the deep-seated primitive faith in the mother-principle as the ultimate secret of the universe."(30) From the ocean of stillness (Shiva) an impulse to movement (Shakti) becomes a wave that carries all before it and breathes all back, in its ebb, to the still centre. Joseph Campbell believes this power of Shakti is also that known to science as energy, to the Melanesians as mana, to the Christians as the power of God; and to psychoanalysts, in the human psyche, as libido.(31) It is Love, Death, and the Mother, it is Illusion and the Word, it is Abundance and it is Fear. Hinduism has millions of names for God, Who is manifested by the power of Shakti into countless aspects as the Limitless One is activated and scattered endlessly into Being. Notes
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