Astami and Navami and Living Goddesses

On her ninth day, Navami, we ask for blessings for our tools and instruments. It is still one of Saraswati’s days and all the implements She inspires us to use are worshiped. Books, pens, my computer, beads and jewelry tools, anything that is necessary for my Work goes on the altar.

Saturday was the last morning ritual of the festival. I felt a little sad to know this daily ritual that has brought such a deep sense of power and grace to my life, is coming to an end. According to Durga’s myth, after the victory celebrations on the tenth day Durga returns to Her sacred abode in the mountains. It is not that She is no longer with us, She will always come when called. However, every year after the puja, the intensity of Shakti wanes, and we are asked to integrate the myriad lessons, insights and feelings we have opened to during the puja. Durga reminds us that She will always return-all we must do is call out Her name. I know this is true, but I will miss the warmth and empowering resonance that these rituals have provided. I will miss the mystifying ways the various Goddess energies and mantras have felt in my body. It has been very healing and restorative. For the past 9 days I have woken before dawn and have fully offered my Self to these pujas. I have felt Her strongly. She comes through in so many awesome ways. I sense that because of this regular worship I am more aligned and conscious of Her different expressions. I am deeply amazed by the ways Her energies are playing out in my life.

On the eighth and ninth days the battle Durga is fighting heats up. The myth tells of Her battle with Mahisasuramardini, the shape-shifting buffalo demon. In Nepal, these final three days belong to Kali (while Saraswati receives homage during the first three days). In any case, we must battle the remaining asuras or vestiges of negative thoughts, and open to the tremendous wisdom that Saraswati promises us.

On Friday, the eighth day after puja one of the devotees at this local temple gifted me with a copy of the Mahisuramardini Strotram. A wonderful chant/song narrating Durga’s battle with the demon. Actually, She is called Ambika, Chandika, and Parvati before She takes the name Durga, the Invincible One. Durga is the name of the demon She slays and liberates to its essentially divine essence. By assuming the name of a demon, Goddess shows that even that which we consider bad or negative is ultimately a part of Her. Like Durga, we can free ourselves from its limiting stronghold. Every morning we have sung this 15 minute chant and some have even danced. The words themselves induce a trancey energy. I find it impossible to sit and just read the words to the music. My body instinctively moves, sways, pulses with Shakti. This is Saraswati’s grace. Music, art, dance. The gift of this music from a sister devotee really touched me. I can now listen to it whenever I like. Although I do not know this woman, I have seen her almost every morning at the ritual and we both have recognized Durga in each other. It is an honor to make these connections with women, especially when I consider how a significant theme of the Durga puja in South Asia is that it is a reunion between mothers and daughters. Despite the patriarchal brahmanic overlays, I have experienced this festival as a ritual celebrating the bonds between women-which my own research has shown is its true origin.

A few minutes later, on this same day, another woman, who has been one of the main priestesses for the puja (and who looks like Durga!!! She is radiant with Durga’s energy!), invited me to help build the Sri Yantra for the Vijaya Dashami-Durga’s Victory, the tenth day. Synchronistically, I was wearing my Lalita necklace (the Sri Yantra is a manifestation of Lalita) and knew I needed to invoke some of Her delightful energies into my life. These necklaces are not your every day adornment. They are sacred, imbued with Goddess energy, and have continuously offered me and my clients who wear them many mystical and spiritually affirming experiences. It was no coincidence that the first day I wear a Lalita necklace to the puja I am invited to co-create a Sri Yantra out of colored rice. The Sri Yantra is Goddess Herself. And this Durga priestess, L. is truly an embodiment of Her.

On one of the first mornings of the puja I looked at this priestess and saw Her as a living emanation of this beautiful Chandi/Durga mask a friend in Bombay had given me. She has Shakti, and her presence has felt very familiar to me. Something I can only ascribe to Maa. Then on the evening of the eighth night I learn that this priestess, L, works in a crematorium! How Kali-esque! Kali and Her bevy of fierce goddesses frequent and perform ritual practices in the cremation ground. On the Tantric path we learn and experience how life and death walk hand in hand. Death, like life, is merely a state of being. Every moment we are experiencing death, whether it is of as thought, or experience, or something larger like the loss of physical body or forms. Many of the rituals revolve around confronting those things/people/places that we fear most. When L. told me how She burns bodies and how beautiful the experience is to her, I was deeply moved. It is a tremendous blessing for these souls, who are leaving this world, to have their physical forms offered to Her sacred flames by a priestess of Durga and Kali.

One of the many gifts I have received during this puja time is to continue to recognize Her in living women. I know many women in my own chakra of yoginis who are embodiments of Saraswati, the Black Dakini Throma, Lakshmi, Chamunda, Tara, and other Goddesses. And over the past week I have been exposed to many many more living women who are integrating goddess energies into their lives and consciously living Her myths. The myths have come even more alive for me. It is clear that these stories must have been based on women’s lives and expressions of femininity/female experience. For those of us who live unconventional lives, it is especially heartening to not only hear stories of unfettered yoginis, but to actually know them and witness their radical liberated and fearless dance within this world.

Astami and Navami have brought a multitude of rich blessings this year. Before Durga's mythical battles were won during the ninth night, before the rituals commemorating Vijaya Dashami, Durga's victory day, I have personally experienced a major shift in consciousness that consequently has attracted even more profound experiences around the power of women, especially women in groups. Last night at the Bioneers conference I had the great honor of having dinner with Alice Walker and the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers. The conversations, the heart opening, the teachings I received are something I must write about soon - but at a later time as I am too bleary eyed from lack of sleep and all the blazing Shakti. Tonight is Her great Victory Celebration. I must prepare for the final puja and open my heart to the victories and awareness that are still to come.

Saraswati Puja Day Seven

Om. I worship the incomparable Mahasaraswati, who holds in her lotus-like hands the bell, trident, plough, conch, mace, discus, bow and arrow, who is effulgent like the moon shining at the edge of a cloud, who is the support of the three worlds, and who came from the body of Gauri to destroy Shumnba and other asuras.
(In Praise of the Goddess: The Devimahatmya and Its Meaning, Devadatta Kali)

I meditate upon the Goddess Matangi, the Embodiment of the Mother (of Saraswati). Sitting upon a throne of jewels, She is listening to the sweet sounds of parrots. The color of Her body is dark. She has one foot resting upon a lotus, and She wears a half moon upon Her head. Wearing a garland of flower buds, She plays the strings of the vina. She covers Her body with a blouse and a red colored sari. In Her hand is a cup made of conch shell. From Her face comes a slight sweet scent which causes intoxication, and a brilliant spot of vermillion shines on Her forehead.

These are Goddesses I love and adore. Saraswati, Goddess of Creativity, Dance, Music, Poetry, all the Arts, Wisdom and Learning; Matangi Elephant-headed Goddess of Female Sexuality and Mystical Power. Today at the morning puja we worshiped MahaSaraswati. One Her devotees played a beautiful tin drum like instrument ( I wish I knew its name!). The notes sounded like water gently cascading over river rocks in a brook or stream. I wept from the resonance I felt in my heart. Saraswati, Goddess of Flow, of all the Waters, and Goddess of Music, Her essence merging and expressing itself in this puja through Her devotees. We chanted to Saraswati. We prayed. Some of us dance to the recitation of the Mahisuramardini-the trancey chant about Durga's battle with the shape-shifting buffalo demon. For almost two hours every morning we praise and worship Goddess. We ask for Her blessings. We say Her mantra 108 times and float in Her energy, my own consciousness merging and expanding.

This evening I had my Sanskrit class. My teacher is a tantric scholar and practitioner. He is very well-educated and funny. And he clearly knows how to dance with Saraswati. The Sanskrit alphabet is truly a science that expresses the spiritual patterns of our manifest reality. The phonemes of Sanskrit are building blocks of manifestation. The Goddess Vac, an earlier form of Saraswati, is the Goddess of the word-the word whose vibration brings the physical realm into manifest reality. The alphabet itself is a sacred act. There are even practices of mapping phonemes on the body. Language creates consciousness and the vibrational, linguistic and mystical properties of various letters and words in Sanskrit attest to language's influence on consciousness. (May I just remind us of my previous blog on the word guys...women are not guys. To call women in a group "guys" only perpetuates the patriarchal paradigm on many unseen levels...)

To continue with tonight, the first of Saraswati's three days, I attend class and receive teachings on the Sanskrit alphabet, one of Her domains. On these final three days Saraswati's gifts are that of illuminated wisdom, discernment, and clarity. It is wonderful to be able to live my life in such a congruent way with Her during these puja days. It is as if every aspect of my life reflects some of the qualities of each of these Goddesses on their particular days. I cannot see Her as separate, nor do I forget about Her after puja. She permeates my entire life and being, and I am grateful for the recognition of Her constant presence that I am experiencing.

We learn a beautiful chant to Saraswati. The tune has floated in and out of my consciousness since I first heard it sung in this rhythm four weeks ago. It is called Sardula-Vikridita, Tiger's play meter. Indeed the low notes could be the tiger's paws pressing heavily on the ground, and the lighter notes the times when the tiger is rolling and frolicking, then coming to her feet to pounce, then dive in play again. So many layers of consciousness are intentionally integrated and experienced as One through various modes of expression within this mantra. All the while the tiger plays, we clumsily try to pronounce the mantra while visualizing Saraswati and asking for Her blessing on our learning endeavors.

Hareesh, our teacher is extremely knowledgeable. He tends to go off on these fascinating esoteric tangents on tantric mysticism, linguistics, yoga, the Vedas, spiritual experiences, philosophy, mythology, ritual practices and more! All 8 of us students love it. What a wonderful way to learn the language. Although I studied it before, I never could get excited about it. We were translating texts on the warrior caste and rarely focused on pronunciation or spiritual philosophies. But now the language has come alive. The alphabet IS the Goddess. How wonderful to really see and feel this on Saraswati's day.

One of the teachings Hareesh shared tonight is a central aspect to the Tantric path. He described a path I embrace and was grateful to be reminded of. Desire.
Desire is Matangi's domain...The Tantric path teaches us to use sensual means to attain divine consciousness. In ritual worship Matangi is offered pollutants, things deemed taboo and unclean. She can transmute their energies into Shakti and so within Tantric circles these offerings hold much power. From the Tantric perspective, no desire is bad, when approached in moderation, any desire can be used as a tool to help us achieve union with the Divine. And the attainment of Divine union is the ultimate goal of every practitioner. What if we were to see every desire as a microcosmic manifestation of the divinity? What if, instead of coming from a place of lack, we realized that we are already complete and will enjoy the sensation of our own divinity through a catalyst-the desire. Awareness of our Divinity. To know that I am the One Who is aware of this 'chocolate', craving, experience. The joy of obtaining our desire is not really inside the thing itself, but comes from following joy back to its source. Who is the one experiencing the joy? I actually am the instrument of the joy, not the desire itself. Here we find the bliss of our self-awareness. As the sensation subsides once the desire has been used, the mind too has the opportunity to dissolve into pure awareness - if one can stay conscious through the practice.

Jai Matangi Maa! Jai Saraswati Maa!