THE GODDESS BELONGING TO NO MALE.
All ways of knowledge are your aspects, O Devi; so are all women in the world, endowed with various attributes. By you alone, O Mother, this world is filled – Chandi, II, 6
According to the
Mahapuranas or ancient Hindu scriptures dating back to c. 250 CE, Durga
(meaning "the inaccessible" or "the invincible") is the
most popular incarnation of Devi, or the divine feminine, and is one of the
main forms of Adi Parashakti in the Hindu pantheon. Durga's story appears
primarily in the Skanda Purana and in the Devi Mahatmya, itself a part of the
Markandeya Purana, but very similar stories are told in the Brahmanda Purana
and also in the famous epic, the Mahabharata. She also appears elsewhere in
tantrik texts, such as the Kulachudamani Tantra.
Durga is a
multi-faceted goddess, with many names and personas. According to the Skanda
Purana, Goddess Parvati, who is the complete incarnation of Adi Parashakti,
accounted the name "Durga" after she killed the demon Durgamasura,
son of Ruru. In the most widely-accepted form of Mahishasuramardini, Durga is
the destroyer of evil – with her ten mighty arms carrying lethal weapons, she
triumphantly slays the demon Mahisha. Durga, through all her forms, encompasses
the essence of salvation and sacrifice. She is the embodiment of purity,
knowledge, truth and self-realization. ‘Aatman’ or supreme consciousness
existing in any being or ‘jiva’ manifests itself through the dynamic energy
that is Goddess Durga. She represents the power of the Supreme Being that
preserves moral order and righteousness in the universe. Durga, also called
Divine Mother, protects mankind from malevolence and misery by destroying evil
forces such as selfishness, jealousy, prejudice, hatred, anger, and ego.
The projection of the
stronger and fiercer side of womanhood is but obvious in the tales surrounding
Goddess Durga. In her epic battle with Mahisha and his cohorts, she assumes the
powers of the male gods to save the universe without any male assistance. As
the warrior goddess, Durga is virgin and does not lend her power, or ‘shakti’,
to any male. She is not seen as a submissive god, but one who can hold her own
against any male on the battlefield. Her battles signify the universal war
between knowledge and ignorance, truth and falsehood, the oppressor and the
oppressed. Mary Esther Harding, the American Jungian analyst, observed of “The
Virgin Goddess” in Woman's Mysteries: Ancient & Modern: “Her divine power
does not depend on her relation to a husband-god, and thus her actions are not
dependent on the need to conciliate such a one or to accord with his qualities
and attitudes. For she bears her identity through her own right.”
The myth encompassing
Goddess Durga is saturated with the potential for violence inherent in the
male-female oppositions. In the Puranas, and in North Indian traditions, there
is an implied sexual tension between Durga and Mahisha; in the South,
particularly in Tamil myths, this sexual tension is heightened. In fact, most
Southern myths identify Mahisha as Durga’s suitor. As the story of
Mahishasuramardini unfolds, the relationship between Mahisha and the goddess is
manifested at many levels: psychologically both demon and goddess become what
the other is, both behave like ferocious animals and one never knows what will
happen in the next instant as the constant alternations, which range from the
bestial to the divine, are the only reality. Thus, each of the antagonists can
be symbolically interpreted with feminine or masculine attributes. Each can
represent justice and power or evil and danger; each contributes to the
orgiastic disorder necessary for recreation. The myth thus transcends the
male-female alternative, signifying psychic totality.
Virgin Goddesses
encompassing many different fields of enterprise have featured in other
civilizations too, such as Greek and Roman. What they have in common is the
fact that they are self-contained, pure, independent, uncorrupted and
un-partnered. "Virgin" is not to be construed in the sense of a
patriarchal society. Virgin in this context has more to do with state of mind
and attitude rather than physical attributes or sexual status.
Often the virgin
goddesses are unmarried, but this does not mean that they are necessarily
asexual. In fact, some of the virgin goddesses express their sexuality openly,
owning their sexuality proudly and without shame. It is not given away or
bartered or owned by their partners, it is wholly and solely within their
dominion. Goddess Ishtar, worshipped in Mesopotamia since about 2000 BCE and
depicted as riding a lion and had multiple arms holding many weapons in a
striking resemblance to Goddess Durga, was thought to have had many lovers from
all sorts of backgrounds. As a virgin goddess, Durga belongs to no one fully. She is one of the consorts (a patriarchal
position) of Shiva, the Destroyer, and shares a job with him – slayer of the
demons. However, unlike the relationship
of Shiva and Parvati, their relationship is non-sexual; instead, we find them
as battlefield comrades.
Another interesting
trend shared by the virgin goddesses is that originally there was one goddess
within each dominion, but over time she was divided up into differing
personalities. For example, Markandeya Purana identifies ten forms of Durga:
Durga, Dashabhooja, Singha-Vahini, Mahisha-Mardini, Jagadhatri, Kali,
Muktakeshi, Tara, Chinnamastika, and Jagadguree.
The concept of virgin
goddess is grounded in the assumption that prehistoric societies in various
parts of the world worshiped a goddess who could appear in three forms or
Trinity: maiden (often used synonymously with virgin), mother, and aged wise
woman. Devi, being an equal counterpart to divine masculinity, herself
manifests as the Trinity: Creator (Durga or the Divine Mother), Preserver
(Lakshmi, Parvati and Saraswati) and Destroyer (Mahishasuramardini, Kali and
Smashanakali). Susan Seddon Boulet, a well-known Bay Area artist, made the
following observation about Trinity in The Goddess Paintings:
“The Triple Goddess,
the original trinity symbolizes the three faces of the Great Goddess and is the
earliest representation of her division into multiplicity. The Goddess with
three faces is a universal motif, found worldwide. The Triple Goddess is
intimately associated with the changing phases of the moon; just as the moon
transforms from one phase to another, the Great Goddess moves among her many
roles. Her three faces are usually virgin, mother and crone: virgin
representing the strong, self-defined goddess; mother representing the nurturing
goddess as source of all nourishment; and crone representing the goddess of
death and transformation. This symbolism embraces the role of goddess in all
phases of existence, from birth through death to rebirth. The Triple Goddess
reminds us of our sacredness regardless of our age or function in life. She
reminds us that despite her many forms there is one goddess, always present and
always sacred.”
Based on their
interpretations of Stone Age artifacts, some archaeologists, most notably
Marija Gimbutas, promoted the idea of a parthenogenetic (Greek: parthenos,
“virgin,” and gignesthai, “to be born”) primal goddess that might have emerged
in the Paleolithic era. According to Gimbutas’ hypothesis, the primal goddess,
who was a virgin, was equated with nature as a whole and therefore did not have
a particular shape. The earliest goddess images, the so-called Paleolithic
Venuses (dated before 10,000 BCE), are images of the awesome creative power
associated with woman and nature. The goddess could be represented by
triangular stones or by stone or bone carvings emphasizing her vulva, buttocks,
and breasts. In the Neolithic or early agricultural era (which began c. 9000
BCE in the Near East), goddess images symbolized the cosmic energy of birth,
growth, death, and regeneration, on which farming, and indeed all life,
depends. She was often depicted in zoomorphic shape or with animals as her
companions.
The anthropomorphic
goddess images, according to Gimbutas, gradually became differentiated into two
functions, one as "the giver and taker of all," and the other as
“rebirth and regeneration.” Eventually these two images were characterized as
the Mother and the Maiden. The Mother was the sustaining power, represented
especially by the enduring earth, the bedrock that underpins all life. The
Maiden, related to the forces of renewal and regeneration, was represented
especially by new life, plant and animal, that emerges in spring. The Mother,
the eternal, and the Maiden, the ephemeral power of nature, were understood to be
two aspects of the same whole. It is interesting to note that the actual
worship of Durga as stipulated by the Hindu scriptures falls in the month of
Chaitra, which roughly overlaps with the spring season in Bengal, and is called
Basanti (Vernal) Durga Puja.
A parthenogenetic
goddess stands as a primordial creatrix who requires no male partner to produce
the cosmos, earth, life, matter, and even other gods out of her own essence.
Plentiful evidence exists that in their earliest cults, before they were subsumed
under patriarchal pantheons as the wives, sisters, and daughters of male gods,
various female deities of the ancient world were indeed considered
self-generating, virgin creatrixes. Virginity, perhaps on account of its rarity
in those days among women of a marriageable age, always had a halo of sanctity
cast over it. The curious veneration for virginity, particularly the belief
that some occult power was attached to the state of virginity, survived even up
to the Middle Ages.
The Sharodiya
(Autumnal) Durga Puja celebrated during the month of ‘Ashwin’ is now the
hallmark of Bengali culture worldwide. According to The Ramayana, this ‘Akal
Bodhan’ or uncustomary time invocation of Durga was initiated by Rama at the
onset of his battle with Ravana. The Sharodiya Puja also involves the worship
of Shiva, Durga's consort, their (Goddess Parvati’s) children Ganesh and
Kartikeya as well as those of Lakshmi and Saraswati, who
are part of the Trinity that includes Parvati. The North Indian tradition of
Durga Puja, which stresses Durga’s character as a gentle young wife and
daughter in need of family tenderness, contrasts sharply with the South Indian
tradition of depicting Durga as a dangerous, indeed, murderous, bride who poses
a fatal threat to those approaching her sexually. Both traditions reflect
strong influences of patriarchal societies that dominated most of the history
of the Indian subcontinent.
The Virgin goddess
appears whenever a woman is pursuing her own desires and ideas for herself. The
Virgin or Maiden has been given a bad rap as a selfish wanton being for
centuries in a culture that has taught women to only please and look after
others to the exclusion of all else. She is now making a comeback as women
everywhere are beginning to follow their own hearts and dreams to manifest a
reality other than that of partnerships, motherhood and child rearing.
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