Durga Puja, an important Hindu festival, just passed in October. It commemorates the victory of good over evil, order over chaos, and reveres the Great Goddess as the Redemptive Principle and Savior of the Universe. During this time, a section of the Markandeya Purana  known as the Devi Mahatmyam, or Chandi, which relates heroic exploits of the Goddess, is ceremoniously chanted in the context of elaborate ritual. Images of the goddess are constructed for the event, worshipped as representations of the Goddess, displayed in pageants, and then sunk in the Ganges or other waterways in locales outside the “Motherland,” such as the USA.  See the Wikipedia entry on Durga Puja here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durga_Puja

I had been dedicated to the goddess Durga for very many years. I was (and continue to be despite my perhaps incongruent immersion in Western occultism and contemporary Paganism) a long-time adherent of reformed Advaita Vedanta.  I was obsessed with the aforementioned text Devi Mahatmyam for at least a decade. The title translates as “Glory of the Goddess.” It has been dated to the 3^rd century and is a trilogy of mythologies in which the Goddess, personifying the combined power of the gods, defeats various demons in battles and, thus, restores the order of the Universe.

The full text, which takes more than an hour or three to recite, is chanted in the context of devotional ritual (puja) and is prefaced and followed by several auxiliary prayers, chants, mantra, and ritual gestures. It is generally done as a thaumatergic exercise in which the Goddess is thought of as a beneficent entity who is being addressed for the sake of gaining favors and for protection from both supernatural evil and the nasty world-at-large. In working with the text, I ultimately took a more Gnostic and literal approach. After all, Advaita Vedanta is jnana yoga, the discipline of spiritual integration through contemplativism and gnosis. In addition, the translations of the names of the demons that the Goddess is battling in the Devi Mahatmyam include The Great Deceiver (Mahahanu), The Aimless One (Parivarita), The Hypocrite  (Bidala), Anger (Kruddha), The Savage (Ugrasya),  He Who Gives  Way to Temptation (Durdhara), The Vicious (Chanda), The Malicious (Munda), Conceit (Shumbha), and Self-deprecation (Nishumbha). And the most famous demon celebrated in the scripture is Mahishasura—the “Buffalo demon” of egoism, the depiction of the slaying of which is an important piece of Hindu iconography.

So, the demons that The Goddess is protecting you from are not oogah-boogah things “out there”; they are negative qualities within yourself that the Goddess battles with a barrage of weapons: the sword of discrimination, club of articulation, bow of determination, arrow of penetration, pike of attention, rod of restraint, axe of right action, net of unity, trident of harmony, and discus of revolving time. Then she cuts off the head of your ferocious ego. And, frankly, this is why, philosophically speaking, “bad things happen to good people,” because they are not “bad things”; they are transformational and transitional things. Or else, they are just stuff happening in the grand drama of life.

When I began writing La Maga A Story about Sorcerers and Magi, my immersion in Eastern spirituality was much more robust than my then new foray into Western magical and Hermetic traditions and so the magic in La Maga is fanciful but the philosophy is built on a strong foundation. We are told in the novel that the main character, Sofia La Maga, had spent many years in the East and so returned home after long years in exile with an Eastern paradigm, including a devotion to an Eastern form of the Goddess. This she displays in 12

The Glory of the Goddess:

Excerpt

As the audience reveled in the display, Sofia continued the recitation: “‘The primordial creative vibration is the bow; oneself is the arrow. The Supreme Divinity is the target. Penetrating it unerringly, become one with it, just as the arrow unites with its aim.’”

When the audience settled from its enthusiasm, Sofia joined her hands in prayer and chanted:

“I meditate on She who embodies existence, the grantor of perfection, who is utterly luminous, whose eyes swell with tears of compassion, and who holds in her hands the net of unity, the scimitar of wisdom, the bow of determination, and the arrow of penetration.”

She proceeded to sprout 10 weapon-wielding arms.

“The sword of discrimination, club of articulation, bow of determination, arrow of penetration, pike of attention, rod of restraint, axe of right action, net of unity, trident of harmony, and discus of revolving time. With these weapons,” she announced, “the adept slays the mighty host of demons within himself.” She began uttering the names of demons embedded in Hindu myth:

Mahahanu: The Great Deceiver

Parivarita: The Aimless One

Bidala: The Hypocrite

Kruddha: Anger

Ugrasya:  The Savage

Durdhara: Given in to Temptation

Raktabija: Rampant Desire

Chanda: The Vicious

Munda: The Malicious

Shumbha: Conceit

Nishumbha: Self-deprecation

Armed, menacing, livid creatures, hairy and ogre-like, with snouts and tusks, claws and tails appeared. They amassed exponentially, charging upon the transfigured maga who glided about, dodging attacks and hurling weapons at the beasts. A whirlwind melee double-eighted the field until all the hobgoblins were cut to the quick. The field was rendered into a pit of bloody mud and grizzle. Severed heads, limbs, and entrails of monsters were heaped about. Sofia, winded and drenched in blood, stood in the midst of it, seeming . . . resolute.

She stretched her arms up, wrung them, and shimmied as if dispensing with a chill. The grizzle that coated her dissolved. The field resumed its earlier, more pristine state. The crowd cheered. Sofia produced a golden goblet of wine and sipped it. She smiled. While lingering in this manner, she explained that the phantasmagoria just witnessed was selected from a particularly important Hindu tale called the The Glory of the Goddess. “Which relates three episodes of how the Great Goddess, who is the embodiment of the power of all the gods, battles demons to restore the order of the universe.” 

She was nearing the end of her oratory when a giant water buffalo with a tremendous rack of horns sprung onto the field. It rutted and bellowed, threw up dust, and charged.

“‘Yeah, go ahead and roar! Roar and bellow while I finish drinking my wine,’” she told the creature. “‘When I’m through, you’ll be DEAD and the gods will be roaring in this very place!’” She egged on the audience to cheer, adding that “the worst demon of all that needs to be slain is the Great Ego, which manifests as the animal-familiar of the god of death. That demon is simply called the ‘buffalo-demon,’ Mahishasura.”

The great animal charged. Sofia pranced around the beast’s rut, racing and skirting over the field while dueling the creature’s horns with a trident. Finally, she took a ferocious running leap at the creature as it charged. Skirting a head-on thrust, she stuck her weapon into the animal’s side and pole-vaulted onto its back. She pressed her left foot into the buffalo’s neck and, although her weight on the beast had to have been slight, it sunk as if overwhelmed.

Collapsing, a fissure opened between the horns of the animal’s head. From it emerged another livid ogre. The audience squealed, but Sofia produced a double-edged sword and with it lopped off the ogre’s head.

Cheers resounded. The grizzle dissolved. A rainbow flooded the sky from which flowers rained down and wisps of angelic creatures wafted about. Sofia thanked the crowd, curtsied, and made a run for the gate.

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