A section from the journey

The Stream of the Goddess

We have followed the bhakti tide as love for Vishnu and Shiva. Now we turn to a third great stream: the worship of the divine as the Goddess, as Shakti, the power that holds and moves all things. Her followers are called Shaktas. They sing to God as Mother. We will walk into this stream gently and with care, for it is one of the most misread paths, and one of the most tender.

We have walked the bhakti tide as love. We have heard it sung to Vishnu, in his forms as Rama and Krishna. We have heard it sung to Shiva. Now let us turn, gently, to a third great stream that has flowed beside these for a very long time.

It is the worship of the divine as the Goddess. Those who follow this path are called Shaktas. And the word that beats at its heart is .

Shakti means power. It means energy, force, the living strength by which anything at all is done. Think of it this way. A lamp may be present, but it is the power running through it that gives the light. The Shaktas felt that behind all the gods, and behind the whole moving world, there is this living power. And they worshipped that power as the divine itself.

You may remember the Goddess from an earlier age, from the Puranic time, when her great song was first sung. In it she goes out to meet a fierce demon that the gods could not defeat, and she alone overcomes him. That song planted a seed. Here, in this devotional age, the seed grows into a whole path of love.

Here is the turn that makes this stream its own. For most worshippers, a god is someone who has power. For the Shakta, the divine is power. God is not only a he who acts. God is the very energy of acting, and that energy is felt and loved as She, the Mother of all.

The tradition often pictures it as a pair. is the still ground, the calm one who simply is. Shakti is the power that moves. Without her, the still one does nothing at all. An old saying holds that without Shakti, even the great god is like one who cannot stir. The quiet and the power belong together, like a word and its meaning.

And so the Shakta calls the divine Mother. Not a distant ruler, but the one nearest of all, the one from whom you came and to whom you return. She is gentle and she is fierce, for a mother is both. She holds her child and she defends it. This is among the tenderest ways the tradition has ever loved God.

Now a careful word before we go further into this chapter. The path of the Goddess, and the practices woven into it, have often been misread by outsiders, made to seem strange or shocking. They are not. Seen from within, this is a path of deep reverence and inner discipline. We will walk it slowly, soberly, and with honour, the way a guest walks into a home that is not his own. Hold that care with me as we go.

Think of someone whose quiet strength held a whole household together, whose love was both tender and fierce. The Shaktas would say you have glimpsed a little of what they mean by the Mother. Where have you felt a power that was also pure care?