Born of Combined Light

The tejas of all the gods pours out and becomes Her. Power that only exists when the parts stop acting alone.

The exiled gods go together to Vishnu and Shiva, and as the great ones hear the depth of the defeat, their anger blazes into light. A great tejas pours from every god and fuses into one, taking form as the radiant Goddess, each of her limbs shaped from a different god's light. The tradition reads her as the power that exists only when the parts stop acting alone: the integrated whole no single strength could be.

The Gods Go to the Great Ones

Homeless and beaten, the gods stopped trying to win alone. They went together, the whole exiled host of them, to the two greatest, Vishnu and Shiva, and they told the story plainly. How Mahishasura had taken heaven. How he had seized the offices of the gods. How every single one of them, sent in with his own strength, had been thrown back. They held nothing back and they asked for nothing specific. They simply laid the whole defeat down in front of the great gods and waited.

And something happened that no weapon had managed. As Vishnu and Shiva heard how far the arrogance had gone, a great anger rose in them, and the anger did not stay anger. It turned to light.

The Light Pours Out

From Vishnu's face, creased with fury, a huge radiance streamed out. From Shiva's face came another. Then Brahma, and Indra, and every god present, each blazed, and out of each poured his own tejas, his fiery inner power, the concentrated light of what he was. The streams did not scatter. They rushed toward one another, drawn as if by a single will, and gathered into a blazing mass that stood in the sky like a mountain of fire, filling the three worlds with its glow.

Watch what has changed. A moment ago there were many gods, each holding his own strength close, each already defeated with it. Now that same strength is leaving their separate hands and pouring into one place. The light that had lost every battle as a dozen scattered fires is becoming a single sun.

She Takes Form

And the mountain of light took shape. It became a Goddess, radiant beyond any of them, and she was made of all of them at once. Her form was built limb by limb from the gods' light: