Śākta traditions — the Goddess as supreme

शाक्त

Also written: shakta · shaktism · devi worship · sri vidya · dasha mahavidya · kali · durga · शाक्त

Śāktism holds that the ultimate reality is Śakti — power, energy, the feminine principle — and that Śiva without Her is inert. The position is stated with unusual bluntness in its own literature: without Śakti, Śiva is a corpse.

The Devī Sūkta — the Goddess speaks

अहं रुद्रेभिर्वसुभिश्चराम्यहमादित्यैरुत विश्वदेवैः।

ahaṁ rudrebhir vasubhiś carāmy aham ādityair uta viśvadevaiḥ

I move with the Rudras and the Vasus; I move with the Ādityas and the All-Gods.

— Ṛgveda 10.125.1 — the Devī Sūkta, spoken by the Goddess in the first person

The hymn is astonishing for its date: the Goddess speaks in the first person, claims to bear Mitra and Varuṇa, to make the man she loves a seer, and to have brought forth the father at the summit of the world. She is not petitioned in it — she declares.

अहमेव स्वयमिदं वदामि जुष्टं देवेभिरुत मानुषेभिः। यं कामये तंतमुग्रं कृणोमि तं ब्रह्माणं तमृषिं तं सुमेधाम्॥

aham eva svayam idaṁ vadāmi juṣṭaṁ devebhir uta mānuṣebhiḥ yaṁ kāmaye taṁ-tam ugraṁ kṛṇomi taṁ brahmāṇaṁ tam ṛṣiṁ taṁ sumedhām

I myself declare this, welcome to gods and men alike: whomever I love, him I make formidable — him a knower of Brahman, him a seer, him one of deep wisdom.

— Ṛgveda 10.125.5

The Devī Māhātmya makes the metaphysical claim explicit: she is not a consort of the supreme but its very power, without which nothing can act.

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

yā devī sarva-bhūteṣu śakti-rūpeṇa saṁsthitā namas tasyai namas tasyai namas tasyai namo namaḥ

The Goddess who abides in all beings in the form of power — to her salutation, to her salutation, to her salutation again and again.

— Devī Māhātmya 5.32 (Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa)

The two great streams

Stream	Presiding form	Character
Śrīkula	Lalitā Tripurasundarī	The beautiful, benign, orderly aspect. Śrīvidyā, the Śrī Yantra, the fifteen-syllable mantra. Strongest in the south
Kālīkula	Kālī, Tārā, Chinnamastā	The fierce, transformative, boundary-crossing aspect. Strongest in Bengal, Assam and Nepal

Śrīvidyā and the Śrī Yantra

Śrīvidyā is the most refined of the Śākta systems: the Goddess as Lalitā, approached through the Śrī Yantra — nine interlocking triangles forming forty-three smaller ones around a central point — which is simultaneously a map of the cosmos, of the human body, and of the stages of the practitioner's own ascent. The Saundarya Laharī and the Lalitā Sahasranāma belong to this stream.

The ten Mahāvidyās

Kālī, Tārā, Tripurasundarī, Bhuvaneśvarī, Chinnamastā, Bhairavī, Dhūmāvatī, Bagalāmukhī, Mātaṅgī and Kamalā — ten forms of the Goddess covering the whole range from the terrifying to the auspicious, and understood as ten aspects of a single reality rather than ten deities.

Kaula and Samaya

	Kaula — vāmācāra	Samaya — dakṣiṇācāra
Practice	External rite, including transgressive elements used deliberately	Entirely internal; the rite performed in the cakras
Principle	What binds the ordinary person liberates the practitioner, under a qualified teacher	The same result reached without external means
Eligibility	Strict initiation; a small, tested circle	Open, and the form taught by most modern lineages

Śākta traditions — the Goddess as supreme

The Devī Sūkta — the Goddess speaks

The two great streams

Śrīvidyā and the Śrī Yantra

The ten Mahāvidyās

Kaula and Samaya

The Āgama traditions and the six paths

Śaiva traditions

Vaiṣṇava traditions

Gāṇapatya — Gaṇeśa as the supreme

Saura — the worship of the Sun

Kaumāra — Skanda, Murugan, Kārttikeya