Review: David Kinsley, Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahavidyas, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1997, 318 pages, ISBN 9780520204997 

by Juliane Molitor

Indian deities in general seem kind of strange to many of us, and this impression is even increased by the Mahavidyas – ten goddesses, forms of the fierce feminine with attributes usually considered repulsive or socially subversive. They are what “good Indian women” should definitely not be, and seem to be spiritual outsiders, too – “obscure beings whose significance is peripheral to the basic themes of Hindu spirituality” (p. 1).

Their names do not necessarily reveal their unorthodox, fierce, powerful, and independent nature at once, but this book will do so. Here are its protagonists:   

• Kali – the black goddess

• Tara – the goddess who guides through troubles

• Tripurasundari – she who is lovely in the three worlds

• Bhuvaneshvari – she whose body is in the world

• Chinnamasta – the self-decapitated goddess

• Bhairavi – the fierce one

• Dhumavati – the widow goddess

• Bagalamukhi – the paralyzer

• Matangi – the outcaste goddess

• Kamala – the lotus goddess.

This group includes some well-known deities, such as Kali, Tara and Kamala (Lakshmi), some little known apart from this group, and a few strikingly unusual ones like Chinnamasta, Dhumavati and Bagalamukhi.

When David Kinsley started his studies of the ten Mahavidyas (1983-84 in Varanasi), he had a lot of questions concerning the peculiarities of the individual goddesses, but was “told many times by a number of people – priests, scholars, painters, and practitioners – that the Mahavidyas are ‘all one’.” Questions about the significance of their names, about their origins or about the details of their iconography “often elicited a look of incomprehension […] followed by the comment that all the Mahavidyas […] are different expressions of the same goddess, who enjoys taking many forms for her own pleasure and the needs of her devotees” (p. 2).

But being a Professor of Religion, Kinsley kept asking questions anyway and received amazing answers on the Mahavidyas as a group as well as on each of the ten goddesses individually. 

“There is evidence that the ten avataras (‘descents’ or incarnations) of Vishnu are the models for the ten Mahavidyas as expressions of the Mahadevi” (p. 20). Several tantric texts equate Krishna with Kali, Tara with Rama, Chinnamasta with Narasimha, and so on. Like the avataras, the Mahavidyas come to earth to fight all kinds of demons. While most of Vishnu’s incarnations used the way of nature to come into this world as animals or humans beings with extraordinary powers (in some parts of India even Jesus Christ is considered an avatar of Vishnu), the Mahavidyas are manifestations of the Great Goddess herself and came into being by her rage and her “earth-shattering laughter”. In one version of the myth the goddess takes the form of Sati, Shiva’s first wife:

Sati becomes enraged and accuses him (Shiva) of neglecting her. In her anger her eyes become red and bright and her limbs tremble […] Shiva closes his eyes. When he opens them, a fearsome female stands before him. As he looks at her, she becomes very old, her graceful appearance disappearing. She develops four arms, her complexion becomes fiery, and her hair disheveled, her lips are smeared with sweat, and her tongue lolls out and begins to wave from side to side. She is naked except for a garland of severed heads; she wears the half moon as a crown. Standing before Shiva, she blazes like a million rising suns and fills the world with earth-shattering laughter. 

Shiva is afraid and tries to flee. He runs in all directions, but then the terrible goddess gives a dreadful laugh, and Shiva is too petrified to move. To make sure that he does not flee from her terrible form, Sati fills the directions around him with ten different forms (the Mahavidyas) (p.13).

This and other versions of the myth make one thing very clear: the goddess in the form of Sati, Parvati, Durga or Kali “is a superior power to Shiva” (p. 15). She is the one who “fills the whole cosmos with her forms” (p. 19). Some of these forms and their functions correspond to the stages of creation and destruction and to the functions of the great male deities: Brahma, the creator; Vishnu, the maintainer; Shiva, the destroyer. Others seem to be just outrageous or bizarre – perfect social antimodels, especially for women. 

Hindu women for generations have been socialized to view Sita (wife of Rama, seventh avatar of Vishnu) as an ideal to imitate in their own lives. Sita’s husband is the be-all and end-all of her existence […] her life only has meaning in relation to him (p. 6).

Thus, becoming a widow is a horrible prospect for socially settled women. And here is Dhumavati, the widow goddess ”barely known outside the Mahavidyas” (p. 176). What this goddess represents is far from whitewashing anything around widowhood in Hindu society ... and not only there. Widows are regarded as inauspicious, if not dangerous. And before we point a finger at India and ascribe strange and cruel habits to the Hindus, we should have a look into our own history. It is not so long ago that preferably widows have been accused of witchcraft and burnt to death – in Germany, for example.     

Widows, by definition, are suspect as dangerous beings who are likely to cause trouble and who therefore should be avoided. As the divine widow, the symbolic widow par excellence, Dhumavati is to be feared (p. 183).

But what exactly is to be feared? And what can be gained by worshiping her?  

Upon asking such questions, the priest at the Dhumavati temple in Varanasi told Kinsley everything about the numerous inauspicious aspects of the goddess, and that she should not be approached by happily married men like him. But finally he adds that she gives “anything the devotee wants” which he himself regarded as “unusual among deities”. Despite the priest’s warnings Kinsley saw very few widows in the temple but a lot of married men and women asking for the usual worldly favours like wealth and children. No witchcraft from the horrible widow goddess then, and nothing but her grace for those who know that “inside she is tenderhearted” (p. 183).

There are two other Mahavidyas, though, who are particularly known for their magical powers: Bagalamukhi, the paralyzer, and Matangi, the outcaste goddess. Both look beautiful but also peculiar. Bagalamukhi was brought forth in a pond of turmeric and therefore is completely yellow: “yellow skin, yellow dress, yellow ornaments, and a yellow garland” (p. 193); Matangi has a blue/greenish complexion, and her clothes and ornaments are red (p. 209).

Reading about Bagalamukhi’s magical powers makes me want to become her devotee immediately: “She […] gives the power of forceful and intelligent speech by which one can defeat any opponent, no matter how brilliant” (p.199). And a little less intellectual:

[…] those who worship her will be able to make their enemies deaf and dumb, destroy their intelligence, and turn their wealth into poverty. Worshipping her will also make hostile people friendly towards the adept. […] Bagalamukhi is worshiped to gain control over one’s enemies, to paralyze others, to attract others, to bring about the death of another, to counter the influence of the planets, to get wealth, and to win court cases (p.199).

There are several Origin Myths for each Mahavidya, and in case of Matangi there is a hint to her origin in a Buddhist tale: “Buddha’s disciple Ananda […] saw a girl drawing water from a well, approached her, and asked for water. The girl answered: ‘I am a Candala (a very low caste) [...] Should I give you water?’ Ananda replied: ‘I am not asking what your caste is, I am only asking for water.’” (p. 211). 

What sounds a reasonable answer to most of us is outrageous for high-caste Hindus whose obsession with purity and pollution dominates almost every facet of daily life. And a Candala (also spelled Chandala) or Candalini is at the lowest end of untouchability. Candalas have to live outside the villages “and in this sense define the boundaries of ‘pure’ society” which, in fact, cannot “function without them: they provide the valve through which it rids itself of its pollution” (p. 218). 

But there is another aspect. “Matangi is closely identified with a goddess named Shavareshvari” (p. 219). This form of Matangi is closely associated with the forest. “She is also said to control all wild animals. This association with Shavareshvari affirms and reinforces Matangi’s identity with the forest and with tribal culture, both of which are strongly ‘other’ from the point of view of high-caste society ” (p. 219-220). Just as Bagalamukhi, Matangi is associated with magical powers, particularly the power to exert control over others.    

Many of the ten Mahavidyas have features in common that are discussed in the “Concluding Reflections” of this book (p. 235 ff.).

The association between corpses and the Mahavidyas is remarkable, and cremation grounds seem favoured places for worshiping them. An obvious reason for this is the fact that meditation upon death puts worldly pleasures in a perspective where their attraction can be minimized or subverted altogether. Moreover, the cremation ground is a “forbidden” place where the heroic Sadhaka can get a glimpse of the underlying nature of reality. There must be more to it, though, since not only those who have renounced the world, who are engaged in ascetic practices or initiated into a tantric cult, undertake the respective rituals but also ordinary people living middle class lives. This is because worshipping the Mahavidyas offers access to a world of spirits that is parallel to the physical world and impinges upon it.

Corpses, particularly of the recent dead, are vehicles with which one can move from one world to the other (p. 237).

Other features that are particularized here are skulls and severed heads, sexuality and awakened consciousness, the conjunction of death and sexual imagery, the roles of women and reverence for women, and finally the potentially liberating nature of social antimodels.

Let me conclude this review with a quotation from the book’s introduction: 

The world is not the way we like to think it is, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will make progress in acquiring spiritual maturity. The Mahavidyas, as antimodels, are awakeners, visions of the divine that challenge comfortable and comforting fantasies about the way things are in the world (p. 7).