Shaktism and the Goddess: An Excerpt

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What is irrational can never be spiritually true. [A]ll that is seen

tells of the unseen. Facts of daily life give auxiliary proof. The

Vishvasara Tantra says: "What is here is elsewhere. What is not here

is nowhere." The life of the individual is an expression of the same

laws which govern the universe. ...

 

Human experience teaches that all life is born from the womb of women,

from the mother. Therefore Shaktism [teaches] that the highest Deity,

the supremst creative principle, should be brought nearest the human

mind not through the word "Father," but through the word, "Mother."

....

 

Just as one moon reflects itself in innumerable waters, so Devi, "the

Goddess" -- by whatever other names she may be otherwise called -- is

the embodiment of all Gods and of all Shaktis [powers] of the Gods.

Within her is Brahma, the Creator, and his Shakti. Within her is

Vishnu, the Preserver, and his Shakti. Within her also is Shiva, the

great Destroyer. But [since Shiva is also] swallowed up by herself,

she is also Adya-Kalika, the "primordial Kali" ... [who is] at the

same time Creatrix, Preservatrix, and Destroyer of the world. ...

 

As the highest Deity is a woman, every woman is regarded as an

embodiment of theis Deity. Devi, "the Goddess," is within every

feminine being. When [a male skeptic] thinks that it is a *debasement*

of the deity to conceive of it of feminine, then this can only be

because he "looks upon his mother's sex as lower than his own," and

because he thinks it unworthy of the deity to conceive it otherwise

than as masculine. The conception of the Shakta is, in this

connection, the more unbiased and unprejudiced one …

 

-- Excerpted from Sir John Woodroffe (a/k/a Arthur Avalon), "Shakti

and Shakta: Essays and Addresses," 1918.