The Ten Mahāvidyā
States of Consciousness
Daśa Mahāvidyā are yogic/tantric goddesses understood to represent cosmic powers, states of consciousness, and stages within the development of kuṇḍalinī.
Kālī
The dark one
Also known as ādi śakti, she is both the womb and the tomb. Known as the power (śakti) of time (kāla), she is known to devour and transform all things. Kāli is the greatest force of liberation and all the Mahāvidyās are understood to be forms of her.
Tārā
The guiding star
Within tantric cosmology, she is known as the very first vibration of sound, the first movement into manifestation. That first vibration is known as praṇava mantra (OṂ) and as spanda. As the guiding star, Tārā represents both the teacher and the mantra, as they both have the capacity to carry us across the ocean of saṃsāra. She is often shown with a protruding belly, representing that she is pregnant with the whole cosmos.
Lalitā Tripura Sundarī
The playful beauty of the three worlds
She is known as the charming beauty whose bliss permeates consciousness. Within tantric cosmology, she represents icchā śakti - the power of will or desire, which is the urge to create something out of oneself.
Bhuvaneśvarī
The ruler of the world
She is the manifest world, as well as the space that holds creation. As the material world, she is known as prakṛti and is often associated with the five great elements (tanmātra).
Tripura Bhairavī
The terrible one in the three worlds
She is known as the power (śakti) of action (kriyā), or the force of tapas (heat or austerity). Within tantric cosmology, she is the heat that is needed for creation. She is also the restriction, or limitation needed for creative as well as spiritual work.
Chinnamastā
The one who cuts her own head
She is the creation cut off from remembrance of its true source. But she is also the one who can lead the practitioner back to identification with the absolute. She is an image of life feeding of death, of how control of sexual energy can lead to spiritual progress, of the awakened kuṇḍalinī, and the enlightened teacher who has the capacity to grant śaktipāta.
Dhūmāvatī (the one who is made out of smoke). Known as the eldest form of Kālī and a widow, she is the void (śūnya), the desert, creation completely disconnected from consciousness. Dhūmāvatī teaches through loss, disappointment and humiliation. She meets us in the standstill points of life (and spiritual practice) when we feel like we are going nowhere. Worshipped, she has the capacity to liberate us from attachment.
Bagalāmukhī
The one who has the face of a crane
She is the great silence, the pause before movement. Often seen holding the tongue of a demon, Bagalāmukhī is known to grant stillness of mind. Strongly associated with the color yellow, she holds the promise of newly awakened creativity after a period of silence. She is also known as a goddess of yoga, leading practitioners to the madhya - the space in between, which is synonymous with the midline of the body (suṣumṇā).
Mātaṇgī
The daughter of the sage Mātaṇga
She is the dharmic expression of creativity, the divinely inspired spoken word (vaikharī). Seen from the lens of the spiritual journey, she is the individual expression born from a kuṇḍalinī which has travelled all the way up to unite with Śiva, and all the way back down into embodied liberation. Sometimes referred to as the outcast goddess, she represents nondual wisdom and the power to digest what was previously indigestible to us.
Kamalā
The one who is like the lotus
She represents embodied liberation and an auspicious state of mind, as well as the beauty of the material world. As the goal of spiritual practice, she allows us to look upon the world, and everything in it, with the gaze of love.