Takes readers through Shakta imagery, philosophy, beliefs, customs, history, folklore and myth. This book includes tales of Adi-Maya-Shakti, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Parvati, Kali, Durga as well as several village-goddesses such as Kanyakumari, Vaishnav-devi, Bahucharmata and heroines such as Anasuya, Arundhati and Savitri.

Tulasi, Or The Incomparable One, Has Been Worshipped For Thousands Of Years In India As An Embodiment Of The Divine Mother On Earth. This Book Explores Tulasi's Vast Medicinal Applications In Ayurveda And Modern Medicine, Cultivation In Diverse Climates Around The World, Ancient Legends, Traditional Worship, And Personal Experiences. Additionally, It Offers Insights Into The Significance Of Tulasi In The Journey Of Reawakening A Harmonious Relationship With Mother Nature. Published By The Disciples Of Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, Affectionately Known As Mother, Or Amma The Hugging Saint.

Writer and journalist Mrinal Pande sees in strong passionate women who defy the strictures of a male-dominated world, shades of the Goddess. There were many such women in her life, women who succeeded beyond the expectations of men. First, there was her forceful mother, the writer Shivani. Then came Badi Amma, the most colourful woman in this book, her domineering, intellectual aunt. There were the friends who silently lived lives of emotional deprivation till they opted out of the world altogether. There were women who made the news--among them prostitutes, activists and reformers. And there were also the women who preyed on men, in conscious contempt of their vulnerability in the grip of sexual passion. In all these women, the writer sees the original Devi, created by the Gods to quell the forces of evil that they had themselves failed to contain, but quickly dismissed by them once victory was theirs. But the Devi keeps coming back in a myriad manifestations of herself, sorrowing, vengeful, but always the prime mover in the lives of men through the ages...

The monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have severely limited the portrayal of the divine as feminine. But in Hinduism "God" very often means "Goddess." This extraordinary collection explores twelve different Hindu goddesses, all of whom are in some way related to Devi, the Great Goddess. They range from the liquid goddess-energy of the River Ganges to the possessing, entrancing heat of Bhagavati and Seranvali. They are local, like Vindhyavasini, and global, like Kali; ancient, like Saranyu, and modern, like "Mother India." The collection combines analysis of texts with intensive fieldwork, allowing the reader to see how goddesses are worshiped in everyday life. In these compelling essays, the divine feminine in Hinduism is revealed as never before--fascinating, contradictory, powerful.

"Devi, the Great Goddess of India, is beautiful, beneficent, terrifying, all-powerful, and glorious. Ubiquitous in India's social and spiritual fabric, she has, over the millennia, been painted, sculpted, carved, and wrought from silver and bronze in myriad shapes and forms. Devi: The Great Goddess brings together 120 of these diverse examples of Devi and a group of distinguished essayists who explore facets of Devi worship and tradition, including ritual, architecture, literature, history, and contemporary issues such as feminism and gender politics. The book appeals to readers compelled by the exploration and interpretation of the art, religion, and history of India."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

About 16 centuries ago, an unknown Indian author or authors gathered together the diverse threads of already ancient traditions and wove them into a verbal tapestry that today is still the central text for worshippers of the Hindu Devi, the Divine Mother. This spiritual classic, the Devimahatmya, addresses the perennial questions of the nature of the universe, humankind, and divinity. How are they related, how do we live in a world torn between good and evil, and how do we find lasting satisfaction and inner peace? These questions and their answers form the substance of the Devimahatmya. Its narrative of a dispossessed king, a merchant betrayed by the family he loves, and a seer whose teaching leads beyond existential suffering sets the stage for a trilogy of myths concerning the all-powerful Divine Mother, Durga, and the fierce battles she wages against throngs of demonic foes. In these allegories, her adversaries represent our all-too-human impulses toward power, possessions, and pleasure. The battlefields symbolize the field of human consciousness on which our lives' dramas play out in joy and sorrow, in wisdom and folly. The Devimahatmya speaks to us across the ages of the experiences and beliefs of our ancient ancestors. We sense their enchantment at nature's bounty and their terror before its destructive fury, their recognition of the good and evil in the human heart, and their understanding that everything in our experience is the expression of a greater reality, personified as the Divine Mother.

The Great Goddess, in her various puranic and tantric forms, is often figured as sitting on a corpse which is identified as Shiva-as-shava (God Shiva, the consort of the Devi and an iconic representation of the Absolute without attributes, the Nirguna Brahman). Hence, most of the existing critical works and ethnographic studies on Shaktism and the tantras have focused on the theological and symbolic paraphernalia of the corpses which operate as the asanas (seats) of the Devi in her various iconographies. This book explores the figurations of the Goddess as corpse in several Hindu puranic and Shakta-tantric texts, popular practices, folk belief systems, legends and various other cultural phenomena based on this motif. It deals with a more intricate and fundamental issue than existing works on the subject: how and why is the Devi – herself - figured as a corpse in the Shakta texts, belief systems and folk practices associated with the tantras? The issues which have been raised in this book include: how does death become a complement to life within this religious epistemology? How does one learn to live with death, thereby lending new definitions and new epistemic and existential dimensions to life and death? And what is the relation between death and gender within this kind of figuration of the Goddess as death and dead body? Analysing multiple mythic narratives, hymns and scriptural texts where the Devi herself is said to take the form of the Shava (the corpse) as well as the Shakti who animates dead matter, this book focuses not only on the concept of the theological equivalence of the Shava (Shiva as corpse) and the Shakti (Energy) in tantras but also on the status of the Divine Mother as the Great Bridge between the apparently irreconcilable opposites, the mediatrix between Spirit and Matter, death and life, existence-in-stasis and existence-in-kinesis. This book makes an important contribution to the fields of Hindu Studies, Goddess Spirituality, South Asian Religions, Women and Religion, India, Studies in Shaktism and Tantra, Cross-cultural Religious Studies, Gender Studies, Postcolonial Spirituality and Ecofeminism.