The story of Goddess
This autumn, in Root + Rise: The Membership Space for Mythic Inner Alchemy we’re transitioning into the space of Goddess in the form of the ancient Indian myth of Goddess Durga & the Buffalo Demon.
Autumn is the time of her annual celebration of Navaratri (literally meaning “nine nights”) Navaratri is an epic celebration of Durga across India, observed through its diverse cultural lenses.
One of my fondest memories of my very early years spent in India, where I was born, is of the annual Durga Puja at my mother’s ancestral home in the state of Bengal, north-east India. The celebration at the family seat’s temple there dates back to the 16th century, and each autumn the victorious Goddess has been welcomed back “home” after defeating the buffalo-demon Mahishasura.
Durga Puja was the smell of jasmine and marigolds, mind-meltingly delicious food, the exchanging of gifts, getting dressed up in vivid finery, laughter, cousins, aunts, uncles and my beloved living goddess, my maternal grandmother, who first told me about - and embodied - Durga’s fierce, loving, protective power.
To be honest, there was much hesitation in offering this as autumn’s mythic excursion. Both ancestrally and personally, Goddess Durga has deep, deep roots in my psyche and I was unsure about doing justice to her. But as with all the stories that present themselves for exploration in Root + Rise, this one made it unequivocally clear that it was time.
The frequency of Durga is unapologetic. With unfailing precision and power, she cuts through the oppressive delusions of the colonizer - literally personified as the demons who have usurped the natural order and taken control of Earth, of the Self-regulating inner sovereignty of the soul. First and foremost, this is a journey within in order to dissolve the stubborn, shapeshifting forms of the inner-colonizer, before any such feat can be undertaken without.
And it is only Goddess as the Source of all that is, who can do this when called upon with the power of sincere surrender.
We’re going to be diving into some deep waters - not least the potent alchemizing properties of the story. In the ancient Indian science of Ayurveda, the practical expression of Indian philosophy and alchemy, there are three fundamental qualities of cosmic energy - the three gunas.
These are black - tamasic; red - rajasic; and white sattvic. They correspond to the overarching black, red and white stages of so-called “western” alchemy (which originated in ancient Egypt). They are all emanations of Goddess - and Durga’s myths point to the cycles of transmutation and the endless play-dance of Life.
When the balance of these cycles is upset, and the organic interplay of the three gunas is distorted, as is the case with the colonized self/world, we are existing in a state of delusion, divorced from the power or shakti of Goddess which wants to move through us, which is our very animating essence.
As I transition into a new cycle of Self re-membering, it's the lion-mounted Durga who is piercing through deeper veils of untruths for me. No matter how deep the forgetting, she always calls me back home to her. And it is in this spirit of Soul reclamation and the composting of the false self that autumn’s myth of Goddess Durga & the Buffalo Demon is offered.