a r t i c l e s    o n    h i n d u i s m

The Goddess in Hinduism (excerpts)
By Joseph Campbell
(source :A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living -edited by Diane K. Osbon pg 216-218  ) 

" The goddess  alone knew of the all-moving, secret world energy which has helped the gods to victory; it was the power within them, of which they were unaware. They believed that they were strong in themselves, but without this force, or against it, they could not so much as harm a blade of grass. The goddess knew of the universal force, which the Vedic priests called Brahman and which Hindus call sakti, for sakti, i.e. energy, is the essence and name of the Great Goddess herself, hence she could explain the mysterious being to the Gods, she could teach them its secret - for it was her own secret."      - Heinrich Zimmer. 

In Hinduism, all power, sakti, is female. So, the female represents the totality of the power, and the male is imaged as the agent of the female. In that sense, the power that  a female feels from the male - the animus, in Jungian terms - is a specification of the female power, a mode of application of the power. 

Every being has a twofold aspect, reveals a friendly and a menacing face. All gods have a charming and a hideous form, according to how one approaches them; but the Great Goddess is the energy of the world, taking form in all things. All friendly and menacing faces are facets of her essence. What seems a duality in the individual god, is an infinite multiplicity in her total being...........She is the mute security of life in itself; from the ashes of burned forests she raises eager fresh flowers whose decay is pregnant with new life, a new life which all around it sees only life in its transitions and transformations with no shadow of death, just as we ourselves, when we sink our teeth into a ripe fruit, or draw a living plant from the garden are without awareness of death.

Whatever you do, in waking or sleeping, consciously or involuntarily in the cycle of your flesh to the accompanying music of your soul; whatever you do as your body builds and destroys, absorbs and excretes, breathes and procreates, or bestows joy infringing on the limits of rage and pain - all this is a mere gesture of the Great Mother, jaganmayi (consisting of all worlds and being), who unremittingly does likewise with her world body in endless thousands of forms.....To see the twofold, embracing and devouring, nature of the goddess, to see repose in catastrophe, security in decay, is to know her and to be saved....She is the perfect figuration of life's joyous lures and pitiless destruction: the two poles charged with the extremist tension, yet forever merging.  - Henrich Zimmer.

Also, in Hinduism, the sun is female and the moon is male; he is born of her, dies into her, and is born of her again every month. Shiva, this great power, is the moon god. Parvati, his consort, is the sun power. And although the worship in the masculine-oriented action systems in India is directly to Shiva, it's to the goddess Kali, that the worship finally goes. So that, actually, in India, Kali is the great divinity.

.....the Hindu goddess Kali...is shown standing on the prostrate form of the god Shiva, her spouse. She brandishes the sword of death, i.e., spiritual discipline. The blood-dripping human head tells the devotee that "he that loseth his life for her sake shall find it." The gestures of "fear not" and "bestowing boon" teach that she protects her children, that the pairs of opposites of the universal agony are not what they seem, and that for one centered in eternity the phantasmagoria of temporal "goods" and "evil" is but a reflex of the mind-as the goddess, herself, though apparently trampling down the god, is actually his blissful dream. 

                         
                       
The Goddess
                         gives birth to forms
                         and kills forms.
   

   

 

 

 

Copyright © 2001 - All Rights Reserved.

a r t i c l e s    o n    h i n d u i s m