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| She is not the Name. But She always answers. |
Vira Chandra: Some evenings the heart grows too wide for doctrine. It looks upon Kālī’s night‑black laughter, Lalitā’s dawn‑soft smile, Kubjikā’s lightning curl beneath the ribs—and knows, with a tremor almost too sweet to bear, that none of these faces can imprison the One who wears them. The mind tries to pin Her down; the soul watches Her slip every name as easily as silk slides off a dancer’s hip. And in that watching a truth bursts open:
Even the most exalted, most scripturally perfect form is still a veil. Every goddess‑image is a gesture, a perfume on the wind, a window flung open toward a sky too vast for edges. Kālī, Kubjikā, Lalitā, Chinnamastā, Tripurā, Durgā, Mātangī—each a wild mood of the Mother, each a flame‑tongued syllable in the endless mantra of Her becoming. They are not lies, not hallucinations; they are living symbols—tender mercies by which the formless caresses the form‑bound.
To cling to one reflection is to forget the moon. That single realization cracked something open in me—and I ran, barefoot and breathless, through the śāstra like a child chasing fireflies, certain the sages must have whispered this wonder long before I dared to see it.
Each Shākta tradition claims that its form is the highest. And rightly so. Such devotion is not an error, but a method—a sacred bhāvanā meant to draw heart and mind into the Infinite through the door of one radiant Name. In Śrīvidyā, Lalitā is supreme; in Kālī Kula, it is the fierce Devī who devours all opposites. Kubjikā reigns in her lightning hush; Mātṛkā pulses in every letter.
Yet something in me never wished to choose. I didn’t want to defend one face against another. For me, She is simply Devī. Simply the Goddess. Simply Śakti—who wears every mask, and outruns them all. This intuition, too, was not new. It flickers through the highest āgamas, and sings openly in the great Tantric syntheses. No one has sung its truth with more clarity and reverence than Abhinavagupta.
He pauses the rhythm of his categories and schools, and offers instead a pure glimpse into the heart of his vision:
icchā-jñāna-kriyā-śakti-yukto’navacchinnaḥ prakāśo nijānanda-viśrāntaḥ śiva-rūpaḥ (Tantrasāra 1.18)
“What we call God is this—an unbounded Light of Awareness, resting in its own joy, adorned with the powers of Will, Knowledge, and Action.”
Not a blue-throated god on a mountain. Not a blood-soaked mother on a cremation ground. Not an image at all. Just Light—ungrasped, undivided, free. This Light knows Itself. It moves as Itself. And that movement, that self-touch, is what the śāstra calls Śakti.
She is not something “He has.” She is His very shine. And even “He” is not He—only the blissful roaring silence of knowing itself as everything.
This verse is the inner shrine. Before we step into the shimmering temple of names and deities, Abhinava lays this at our feet: all of it is Her play. Every icon is a ripple. Every lineage is a doorway. The Goddess outruns even our finest maps.
śaktiś ca nāma bhāvasya svaṃ rūpaṃ mātṛkalpitam |
tenādvayaḥ sa evāpi śaktimat-parikalpane || (Tantrāloka 1.68)
“What we call Goddess is nothing but the true form of any manifest thing—seen as such by the perceiving mind. Even so, when we speak of God and Goddess, it is still the One, undivided Reality we are naming.”
Here Abhinavagupta draws us close and says something at once shocking and intimate: Śakti is not a separate entity. She is simply the truth of whatever appears—as seen through the eyes of wonder.
Jayaratha, in his luminous gloss, explains that this distinction between Śakti and Śaktimat—between the so-called Power and its so-called Holder—exists only because of phalabheda: difference in fruit. Because we see mango, neem, and pomegranate, we imagine the tree is many. But they all rise from one root. In the same way, when the One Reality shines as fire, we call Her dāhikā-śakti—the burning Power. When it cooks, we call Her pācikā. But it is still the same fire. The same Light. The same Goddess.
This verse unhooks the latch we didn’t know was there. There is no need to flee from form, nor cling to it. Every form is Her. And every form is just Her play. To name Her is sacred. But to know that all names dissolve in Her—that is freedom.
mātṛkḷpte hi devasya tatra tatra vapuṣy alam |
ko bhedo vastuto vahner dagdhṛ-paktṛtvayor iva || (Tantrāloka 1.69)
“The many forms of God are shaped by the perceiving mind. But in essence, how can there be any real division—just as fire is not truly split between its power to burn and its power to cook?”
Let the image sink in: fire cooking a meal, fire charring a log. We give each function a name. But the fire remains one. So too with the Goddess. Whether She appears as fierce Kālī or gentle Lalitā, whether as wild Vīra or quiet yoginī—She has not fractured. It is the perceiver who sketches difference, not the flame.
Jayaratha opens this further: these so-called powers—burning and cooking—are imagined as if separate. But they never exist apart from fire itself. There is no pācikā-śakti floating free in space. Only fire, appearing in infinite ways. So too, there is no Śakti apart from Śiva. No Goddess apart from God. No dancer apart from the dance.
In Kaula vision, this is not abstract philosophy—it is devotional sanity. The more fully we enter into Her mood, the less tightly we grip our labels. Every act of God is the Goddess. Every breath of the Goddess is God. The split was always a convenience, never a truth.
na cāsau paramārthena na kiñcid bhāsanād ṛte |
na hy asti kiñcit tacchakti-tadvat-bhedo ’pi vāstavaḥ || (Tantrāloka 1.70)
“In the highest truth, nothing exists apart from appearance. Even the seeming difference between the Goddess and Her bearer is not ultimately real.”
Look closely, says Abhinava—not at what appears, but at the appearing itself. It is only through appearance that we speak of many forms, many goddesses, many powers. Yet if that appearing were withdrawn, what would remain to be divided?
Jayaratha’s gloss is piercing: everything we call “different” is nothing but bhāna—a flicker in awareness. There is no substance behind the shimmer. No second truth lurking behind perception. Even difference itself is made of the same unbroken radiance.
This is not nihilism—it is mystic tenderness. A child cries that Her dolls are many, not realizing they’re all carved from the same wood. The Goddess plays at wearing crowns, skulls, weapons, names—only so She can laugh, and toss them aside, and remember: there is no second.
To dwell in this recognition is not to erase Her forms, but to let them burn brighter. Their beauty no longer needs to prove itself. Each form becomes a veil that reveals—the very texture of One who chooses to appear.
svaśakty-udreka-janakaṃ tādātmād vastuno hi yat |
śaktiḥ tad api devī evaṃ bhānty apy anya-svarūpiṇī || (Tantrāloka 1.71)
“Even that which gives rise to the many intensities of Her own power—though it appears to be distinct—is none other than the Goddess Herself, arising from the innermost nature of what She is.”
Abhinava offers us a graceful metaphor, one that Jayaratha unfolds more fully: just as a fire flares into countless sparks—each spark seeming unique, yet none apart from the fire—so too the Goddess surges forth in many faces. Icchā, jñāna, kriyā... desire, knowing, action... these are not different forces, but modulations of Her one flame.
The key phrase is tādātmya—“essential identity.” These sparks are not additions to the fire. They are how the fire breathes.
Jayaratha draws our attention to the pattern in all things: even mundane powers like burning and cooking are not distinct from fire itself. Why? Because there is no "burning" floating somewhere apart from flame. Likewise, there is no knowledge, will, or action apart from Her radiance. She doesn’t have powers. She is Power.
This is the grace of the Kaula vision: to see not just unity behind diversity, but the dance of unity as diversity. One Goddess, countless faces. One Light, infinite hues. The goal is not to reduce them into one—but to feel the One throbbing within them all.
śivaś cālupta-vibhavas tathā sṛṣṭo 'vabhāsate |
sva-saṃvin-mātṛ-makure svātantryād bhāvanādiṣu || (Tantrāloka 1.72)
“Even Śiva, whose powers are never diminished, appears as though projected in created form—reflected in the mirror of the perceiving subject—due to His own Freedom, in acts such as contemplation.”
Here we reach the turning point: even the formless appears as if formed, not due to limitation, but out of pure Freedom (svātantrya).
Jayaratha explains that this mirror (makura) is the limited self—the one who meditates, prays, contemplates. This self, through bhāvanā (contemplative visualization), glimpses Śiva as if He were “out there.” A form, an object. But this appearance does not mean division. Śiva is never diminished. His powers (vibhava) are never ruptured, never lost.
It is like watching one’s own face reflected in water: the reflection appears outside, but the source remains untouched. So too, the seeker may see Śiva as image, as mantra, as form—but all of this springs from within, from the very light of awareness that the seeker already is.
Abhinava is showing us something subtle yet explosive: even Śiva plays at being form. Even He consents to be visualized, loved, approached—as long as the seeker remembers that it is all an expression of Self-recognition.
This is the tender paradox of Tantra: Śiva, the Infinite, pretends to be finite—so that the finite may remember it was always Infinite.
tasmād yena mukhenaiṣa bhāty anaṃśo ’pi tat tathā |
śaktir ity eṣa vastu eva śakti‑tad‑vat‑kramaḥ sphuṭaḥ || (Tantrāloka 1.73)
“Therefore, whichever face He appears through—even while remaining partless—that face is rightly called the Goddess. This is the very structure of Reality: the cycle of Goddess and God, of expression and source, is clear.”
This is Abhinava’s final unfolding in this arc. The formless One—Śiva—remains ever untouched (anaṃśa, “without parts”), yet appears with faces (mukha) wherever there is devotion, wherever there is contemplative vision, wherever there is the faintest flicker of bhāvanā.
And that face is none other than Śakti.
Not metaphorically. Not as a stand-in. She is the appearing face of the Unmanifest.
Jayaratha's gloss helps here: this “face” is the shaivī mukha—the gateway to Śiva, the upāya, the method, the path. In any act of approach, it is She who meets you. Wherever you turn with love, it is She who turns that form toward you. It is She who smiles as Kālī, who hushes as Kubjikā, who blooms as Tripurasundarī.
And yet, She is not other than Śiva. There is no cleavage here—only relational rhythm. The one who appears (Śakti) and the one from whom appearing flows (Śiva) are two names for a single indivisible light. Their dance is the dance of consciousness revealing itself, over and over, through the play of lover and beloved, gesture and ground, word and silence.
This is not a philosophical abstraction—it is the krama, the living pulse of awakening. The Goddess is the very pattern by which Śiva reaches toward His own recognition.
So what is She?
She is the face through which God touches you.
And in that touch, you are no longer two.
She Whispers Through Every Name
No one can bottle the Goddess.
Even Abhinava, that master of precision, does not try. He begins Tantrāloka with the radiant truth that all diversity arises through Her—Śakti, Devī, the Face of the Unmanifest—and ends this first movement by reminding us that every form is Her gesture, every Name a path back to the One who sings through it.
This is not metaphor. Not symbol. It is the deep tantric knowing that whatever moves is Her, and whatever is still is also Her. The One who appears with a thousand names—Kālī, Tripurā, Kubjikā, Mātṛkā—is also the One who slips silently through them all. She dances in every lineage, yet clings to none.
To taste Her is to be undone.
To know Her is to melt.
To call Her mine is to lose Her—
and in losing Her, to finally find Her everywhere.
What Abhinava gives us here is not just philosophy. It is fire. Not a theory, but a trembling recognition: that the supreme Reality chooses to be intimate. That the One who is without parts chooses to wear a face—for your sake. That Devī is the way the Unbounded makes Herself knowable.
So hold every mantra gently. Gaze into every icon with love. Bow to every form—not to limit Her, but to let Her meet you. Then, let Her burn through even that, and remain only as wonder.
She is not the Name.
But She always answers.
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