The Seven Mothers Take the Field
The Sapta-Matrikas, the Shaktis of the gods, join the battle. Every face of power arrayed at once.
The Sapta-Matrikas, the Shaktis of the gods, join the battle. Every face of power arrayed at once.
Seven Powers Stream onto the Field
Chanda and Munda were dead, their army devoured, and still Shumbha would not stop. He emptied his kingdom, calling up demon clans by the thousand, whole hosts with fierce names, and sent them all at once to overwhelm the Goddess by sheer number. The mountain passes filled with them. And in answer, something happened on the Goddess's side that the text tells as a single astonishing image.
From the bodies of the great gods, their powers came out in visible form. Not the gods themselves, but their Shaktis, their energies, each one a Goddess shaped exactly like the god she came from, bearing his weapon, riding his mount, wearing his ornaments. They streamed onto the field beside the Goddess, and the tradition calls them the Sapta-Matrikas, the Seven Mothers.
Who the Mothers Are
Each Mother is the power of a god, made into a Goddess and sent to fight. The text names them, and each carries the unmistakable mark of her source:
- Brahmani, the power of Brahma, seated on a swan, with the water-pot and rosary.
- Maheshvari, the power of Shiva, riding a bull, with the trident and the crescent moon.
- Kaumari, the power of Skanda, riding a peacock, with the spear.
- Vaishnavi, the power of Vishnu, seated on the eagle Garuda, with discus and conch.
- Varahi, the power of the boar-form, with a boar's face, striking with tusks.
- Narasimhi, the power of the man-lion, with a lion's mane and terrible claws.
- Aindri, the power of Indra, on a great elephant, wielding the thunderbolt.
Seven forms, each the concentrated might of a god, all of them Goddesses, all of them faces of the one Goddess who stands at their center. Alongside them came a fierce companion, Shivaduti, and Kali, and the field that had held one radiant figure now blazed with the whole array of divine power at once.