Camunda : The destroyer of evil

[Guest guest]

Invocations:

 

Goddess of all reckoning

You who inspire fear with a glance,

You who licks the wounds of asuras (demons)

as you laugh and trample them to death

Come to us drunk on the blood of life

Inebriated on the wings of hope.

Your skeleton red reminds us of our origins

in Mama's darkness as your digambari ( sky-clad or "garbed in

space")

pleasure makes us tell the need for nothingness.

Garbed in space, your hair aflame in a cobra tiara

You dance on cremation grounds and bring joy to despair,

Laughter to sorrow, mirth to uneasy embarrassment.

Holding your kapala (skull) full of your enemies' blood, you choose

life at every juncture and will us to do the same.

Divine mother of might who rides the owl of death, the corpse of

ultimate transformation, be with us now

Om Chamunda namostatue namah

[sources: From the internet]

 

She is often or rather identified with Kali. Sometimes too referred

as MahaKalee. She is one of the popular Dark Goddess, revere among

the

Shaktas and She is being worshiped throughout the Indian Society.

There are several temples dedicated to Her. One of the famous is

located in Orissa.

 

Goddess Camunda appeared both as one of Matrikas (Mothers) and also

as

one of the yoginis [there are 64 yoginis. The yoginis are said to

have

been the daughters of the Sapta/Asta Matrikas.]. One of the

distinguish features of Camunda is her ferocious and terrifying

features. Yet this fearsome manifestation of the Devi teaches us to

over come the ignorance and prejudices in existing in our society.

Just by standing before her, she could invoke the fear in you, and

make one wonders as to the meaning of such fearsome manifestation.

 

The followings are the physical description of Goddess Camunda : a)

"She holds a skull mace, a snake, a wine cup in her different hands.

She has a third eye and below her is a jackal gnawing at the left hip

of a corpse lying on the floor"

 

b) "… Emaciated in appearance that her bones are all clearly

visible.

Her eyes pop from her head, her breast are withered, and her

expression is fierce"

 

 

c) "She has four arms, emaciate boy an shrunken belly showing the

protruding ribs and veins, skull-garland, her corpse seat, bare teeth

and sunken eyes with round projecting eye-balls, bald head with

flames

issuing from it. She holds in her back hands a chopper and a sula,

while her front right and left ones hold a kapala and a human head

respectively, the skull on the armlet on her right had has a griming

smile on its face. While the severed head in her left hand has a life

like expression.

 

d) "Camunda embodies bareness and decay. Her hair is piled up into a

chignon decorated with a tiara of skulls and a crescent moon. She

scowls, baring her teeth, and enormous eyeballs protrude menacingly

from sunken sockets in her skeletal face. As a necklace, she wears a

snake whose coils echo the rings of decaying flesh that sag beneath

her collarbone. Just above her navel on her emaciated torso is a

scorpion, a symbol of sickness and death"

 

Her emergence is chronicled in the third story in the Devi Mahatmya.

She emerges from Devi's forehead as a burst of furious energy. Kali

overpowers and beheads two demon generals, Chanda and Munda, and

when

she carries their heads to Devi and she is named Camunda.

 

As a triple Goddess concept, Camuna represents the Crones aspect of

the trinity. Infact She is the living Crone, who function as the

in-between of the realms of this world and the next. Kali manifest as

the power of time and of death while Camunda holds the infinity and

eternity.

 

The image of Camunda itself, contradicts the very image of the Divine

Mother seen as the life giver and caretakers. Camunda is not giving

life or caring for life, but taking it away. But to the Shaktas and

Tantriks, her image holds greater significance.

 

What is that about Camunda that makes her to be well loved and adored

by her devotee? What can we learn about her? What is she trying to

tell us? What psychological implications is she trying to emit to us?

 

These are the questions that keep on playing in my head for the past

few days. Imagining seeing her dancing, screaming ferociously

amongst

the death, blood and human heads, it became an almost obsession to

find the meanings and understanding in her iconography.

 

She manifest as both a life-giver and destroyer. The universe is full

of pairs of basic principles: male and female, positive and negative,

active and passive. Camunda obviously represent the darker aspect of

the Divine Feminine. She is growth, decay, death and rebirth

completely unrefined. And more often she is associated with Death.

Why

is that so?

 

The Emaciated Appearance

These are typical appearance of all form of Devi's fearsome

manifestation including Camunda.

a) Goddess Raktadantika in Devi Mahatmya, as described by Devi

herself as being emaciated and red-toothed.

b) Goddess Dantura is being described as: having bare canine

teeth, rounded eyes, ghastly smile, emaciated body, lean and

pendulous

breast, sunken belly and peculiar sitting posture.

The emaciated form portrayed the Goddess as ever hungry and all

consuming nature. As a Mother who nourishes the world, she needs to

be

nourished as well. She must eat for her energy is not inexhaustible,

or she will soon grow weak and creation would cease. Therefore the

emaciated figure of Camunda symbolizes her awesome hunger due to her

awesome creation power, which need to be nourished continuously as

she

continue to give birth.

 

This is what the same as the steady-state system. The world is like

our human body (her body) and just like the blood, which must

continually flow both out and back, and at every cell of the body

with

a life-blood, need to continually arriving and departing in the

process of metabolism and catabolism. Blockage or ceasing of this

process creates a state of in equilibrium and the whole system goes

berserk. The body ceases to function and began to behave

irrationally.

Eventually something has to happen. To remove the state of blockage

or

correct the state of imbalance. It is from this system that we have

to

learn to give and take.

 

Association with death and places of death (especially Cemetery)

I believe, the basic fundamental principle in Camuda Iconography is

to

overcome our fear. All of us have our fears. Often we pretend to

suppress it or attempt to deny its existence. We only fear of the

unknown, but once anything is known, the fears fade away.

 

The greatest fear most human have is of death, but once you are able

to overcome the fear of death, you go beyond all fears, because you

have gone beyond expectations and anticipation. When death ceases to

have value to you, you don't bother about anything at all. And once

you have drop this fear, the whole world is open to you, because you

have nothing to take from anyone. You know then of how to give

because

you have nothing to hold on to. Once you are be able to possess this

feelings, only then you can consider yourself as being free. It is

really a superb feeling.

 

Have you ever have the experience of spending some time in the

cremation ground or the cemetery. I have and it is a wonderful

experience. I never thought about it then, but now when I reflect

back, I realize that I have learned a lot from that experience. The

cemetery is the most peaceful place as far as I am concern. It is

like

a gateway between the living and death. It is a place where there is

equality. Look beyond the grave and what do we see: Skeletons. The

flesh withered away. That is what we are: we are all the same. Minus

the skin, the flesh and what ever internal organs we have inside our

cavities, we only see the skeleton. Through the skeleton, it is often

difficult to distinguish the gender of the skeleton. The same as our

soul. It has no gender and no color.

 

Association with Sacrifices and blood.

The centrality of sacrifices and blood offerings is often associated

with Goddess worship. It has been a practice from ancient times (when

men are hunters) animals are being offered to the goddess as

offering.

What else is there to offer but the hunt of a day as a form of

gratitude to the goddess to give them food and protect them? It is a

practice that they offered the hunt to the goddess/god first before

they themselves consumed it. And such practices of offering the first

hunt or harvest of the day/month to the goddess are still in

practices

till today. As man gradually improved their standard of living, and

living in communities, growing vegetables and rear animals, its just

right to offer what ever they have to the goddess/gods. Animals often

as sacrifices are goats, buffalo, sheep, pigs and fowl.

 

In association with the concept of the Goddess as nourishes and

creator, who needs to be feed continuously. In order to give life the

Goddess must receive life, because blood itself symbolizes life.

 

In Devi Mahatmya: When Durga pierced Asuras Raktabija's body, a drop

of the asuras blood creates another Raktabija. Therefore any attempt

to kill Raktabija will subsequently create more Raktabija. Durga

asked

Camunda (also Kali) to drink the blood of Raktabija before it touched

the ground. By drinking the blood, the Goddess indicates her ability

to transmute a potentially negative charge force into a positive

charge force. Which also means that blood (in several text include

some Buddhist ones) describes is as a vital essence of being, has the

potential to be destructive if taken by "asuras" but alternatively

can

be transformed into a positive power by the "goddess".

 

 

 

 

Association with three eyes

Eyes have always been given a prominence in Hinduism and Indian

society. In Indian classical dance (i am sure adi_shakti16 can

confirm

this) every aspect of the body: the hands, the fingers, the movement

of the head, legs and eyes, emit a message. The eyes have a powerful

impact on the overall dance.

 

Like wise in Hinduism. The prominence of the eyes in the Hindu deity

image, reminds us that is it not only the worshipper who sees the

deity, but the deity sees the worshipper as well. Therefore the

devotee and the deity exchanged contact through the eyes.

In Chinnamasta iconography (Camunda is one of the thousand names of

Goddess Chinnamasta), Chinnamasta does not look directly at her

devotee. Instead she looks at herself. This is to imply that the

devotee should look within himself or herself first before they look

at the Deity.

 

Having the three eyes can also mean that nothing escape the vision of

the Goddess. More specifically in Hindu context, the third eye, which

is located in the center of the forehead, indicates the realization

of

transcendent knowledge, which is necessary in order to help beings to

achieve liberation. Two eyes = duality. Three = Unity.

 

This is why Camunda is often depicted as having three eyes. She is

both the manifestation of duality (Maya is an essence of duality) and

also the possessor of the transcendent knowledge (Jnana). She helps

you to cross over the sea of duality and reach unity.

 

Association with heads:

Throughout Indian thoughts and literature, the importance of the head

is indisputable. The head is considered as the best part of the body.

In tantarism, the tantras viewed a man as a microcosm corresponding

to

the macrocosm. The head is the highest and best member.

 

The head can be an external and internal identifying factor. As

external identifying factor, the head is the decisive factor for

identifying a person.

 

As an internal identifying factor, head is also considered as the

source of seed. This source of seed is located in the middle of the

brain therefore corresponds to the placing of the bindu in the

forehead. The bindu itself on the forehead symbolizes the opening of

the third eye (transcendent knowledge) and by doing so diminishes any

illusion that the individual is a separate being, thus allow them to

get connected to the great soul, which pervades everything. This

individual self is an impediment to liberation.

 

What is the symbolic nature of severing the head?

In many Hindu mythologies, there are stories of devotees severing

their head and offer it to the goddess as sacrifices. Sculpture dated

as early as in Pallava and Cholas era, shown several scenes of

devotees offering their heads to the goddess. Goddess Camunda was

shown as holding a severe head in her left hand. Goddess Kali adorned

herself a garland of human heads, and the only Goddess who severe her

head for her devotee is Goddess Chinnamaste. Ganesh head was severed

and replaced with another.

 

David Kinsley suggested that severing the head is " … act of

annihilation of one's ego in the quest for self knowledge. In the

process of discovering or uncovering the atama, one destroys, denies

or otherwise subverts egocentricity. The cutting of the head

symbolizes getting rid of false notions of one's identity."

 

Restoring of the head?

This indicates that when one receives a new head, a transformation

occurs which is often interpretate as receiving a better head. When

Ganesha received his elephant head, he received his "real" one which

"expresses his true nature" The same notion apply to Goddess

Chinnamasta, her ability to severe her own head with her own sword

and thereafter restore it does not denote death but immortality.

 

 

OM ParaShaktiye Namaha