The Shape-Shifting Demon

Mahisha becomes buffalo, lion, man, buffalo again to survive. How ego changes form the moment you corner it.

Mahishasura's armies and generals fall first, and then the buffalo-demon himself charges. Cornered, he will not stay one shape: buffalo, lion, man, elephant, buffalo again, each new form an escape from the blow about to land. The tradition reads the shape-shifting as exactly how a cornered ego behaves, changing costume, from arrogance to reasonableness to self-pity to charm, and warns that chasing each shape is how you lose.

The Army Falls First

The Goddess laughed on her lion, and the sound rolled across the sky like the world cracking open. Mahishasura heard it from his stolen heaven and sent out his armies, and his great generals rode at their head. They came in their thousands, a flood of demons with spears and maces, sure of the numbers that had never yet failed them.

They failed now. The Goddess breathed out and armies of her own attendants poured from her breath. Her lion tore through the demon ranks like wind through dry grass. Her many arms worked all at once, the trident and the discus and the arrows never resting, and the generals who had helped conquer heaven fell one after another. The outer defences of the buffalo-demon, the host he hid behind, were gone before he himself had struck a blow.

या देवी सर्वभूतेषु छायारूपेण संस्थिता। नमस्तस्यै नमस्तस्यै नमस्तस्यै नमो नमः॥

yā devī sarva-bhūteṣu chāyā-rūpeṇa saṃsthitā | namas tasyai namas tasyai namas tasyai namo namaḥ ||

To the Goddess who dwells in all beings in the form of reflection, salutations to Her, salutations to Her, again and again salutations.

Devi Mahatmyam, Chapter 5 (Ya Devi refrain, the reflection aspect)

The Buffalo Charges

Now Mahishasura came himself, in his own buffalo form, and the earth shook under him. He tossed hills into the air with his horns. He lashed with his tail and whole armies scattered. He churned the oceans with his hooves and tore the clouds with his breath. For the first time the battle had met something that did not simply fall.

The Goddess met him without moving back. She threw her noose over the great buffalo and drew it tight. And here the real fight, the one this lesson is about, began. For Mahishasura would not stay one thing long enough to be killed.