Guruji and GuruAmma in front of Devipuram

LAGHUŚYĀMĀ

Aṅga Devata of Rāja Śyāmalā

Laghuśyāmā appears to be very similar to the Mahāvidyā Mataṅgi. She provides the inspiration and creative urge, protection and the ultimate knowledge which transcends the duality of our perceptions leading us to liberation. She represents the death instinct; and on the other hand, the instinct of kāma, or desire. She represents both the raging bonfire of desire and the cool detachment of the burial ground. She is a unity of opposites. She’s both nivṛti mārga and pravṛti mārga. She gives both enjoyment and creative drive and death and liberation. Her yantra is a clear representation of this principle - containing both ugra deities (64 yoginis and matrikas) and the 5 arrows of Kāmadeva and Apsaras.

Her proximity to Rajaśyāmalā is supported by the following:

  1. Her abode is in Svādhiṣṭhāna cakra, next to Mūlādhāra (abode of Parā),
  2. Her dress is stained by the blood of her first period, denoting her transitioning to womanhood (parā to paśyanti, also pointing to her being in the yoni), and finally
  3. She’s described as wearing conch shell earrings, which symbolize her proximity to Parā sound (next to her ear).

VĀHANA/VEHICLE:

Chariot

BODY LOCATION:

Genital Center: The yoni represents both the entrance and an exit. On the path pravṛti (creation), She’s iccha śakti, the creative jolt and on path of nivṛti she’s the ultimate destroyer, killing one’s ego and helping one merge with the Divine.

LEVEL OF SPEECH:

Paśyanti: When a tendency toward manifestation arises in parāvāc, there appears paśyantī, which is, properly called, the First stage of Speech. It is characterized by a desire (icchāśakti) for the differentiation of speech into phonemes, words, and sentences. Paśyantī has for its nature the desire to know the object which is to be known. It brings about the energies of cognition and action.

She’s described as wearing a dress stained by the drops from her first period. This points to the first movement in the creative process to differentiation. Prior to that she was an “unblemished” virgin, Parā.

Laghu Śyāmalā Meditation

māṇikya vīṇāmupalālayantīm madalasām mañjulavāk vilāsām
māhendra nīladyuti komalāṅgīm mātaṅgakanyām manasā smarāmi
(Nityotsava - Shyamala Dandakam)

The above is the meditation verse (dhyāna śloka) of Śrī Laghu Śyāmalā Devī, who is the aṅga devatā, primary attendant, of Śrī Rāja Mātaṅgī. Laghu means easy, so this Devī is easy to approach and confers boons on a little effort. She takes part in the war of Śrī Lalitā with Bhandasura rides a chariot and slays Kurūṣa, on the first day.

Her mantra in Nityotsava is “aiṃ namaḥ ucchisṭa cāṇdāli mātaṅgi sarva vasaṅkari svāhā”.

We shall try to find an identity of the meditative verse with the mantra.

māṇikya vīṇāmupalālayantīm: Śyāmalā Devī is mediated as playing the ruby studded veena. Veena represents backbone and suṣumna nadi with other two (ida and pingala) are the strings in it. Thus we find a subtle reference to Kundalini, which can be meditated as Vāgbīja ‘aiṃ. This vowel on continuous repetition will sound like the playing of the veena.

madalasām mañjulavāk vilāsām: She is meditated as in a intoxicated state, uttering soft language. This is the vaikhari (gross) speech, which can be meditated as ‘ucchiṣṭa cāṇdāḷī’. Ucchiṣṭa also means left over after eating which here is the spoken word.

māhendra nīladyti komalāṅgīm: She is meditated as of blue hued with beautiful body. In prayogas of six types (ṣaṭkarmas) said in tantra deity is to be meditated as blue hued for attraction (vaśīkaraṇa), so this attractive force can be seen as ‘sarva vaśaṅkarī’.

mātaṅgakanyām: She is addressed as daughter of sage mātaṅga, which can be seen in ‘mātaṅgi’

manasā smarāmi: Thus above Devī is deeply meditated. Deep meditation involves a complete identification with deity, which is main purport of mantra ‘namaḥ’ and ‘svāhā’. ‘na’ is negation of self represented by ‘ma’; ‘svāhā’ is oblation into fire which consumes offered materials, thus we are directed to wholly involve and deeply meditate on deity resulting in complete unification of individual consciousness with Universal consciousness resulting in experience of unlimited bliss.

Let us now see philosophical import of slaying of asura “Kurūṣa”, this name is constructed from two words ‘kuru’ and ‘uṣā’ which will mean work and indulgence. So a workaholic is denoted here. He has no time for sādhana. Once he is initiated and starts the sādhana, he has to find a time out of busy work schedule. The initial bliss enjoyed on japa and puja will cause further interest and will pull him into this process. This is the slaying of the asura by this Devī.

Source: Yogamba Sahita Atmanandantha - "Meditative Texts - Revised Thoughts"

    Laghu Śyāmalā's two Dhyāna Ślokas

    smaret prathamapuṣpiṇīṃ rudhirabindhuśoṇāmbarāṃ
    gṛhitamadghupātrikāṃ madavighūrṇanetrāñcalām |
    ghanastanabharālasāṃ galitacūlikāṃ śyāmalām
    karasphuritavallakīṃ vimalaśaṅkhatāṭaṅkinīm ||
    (Śrīvidyārṇava Tantra)

    Śyāmala should be meditated on as wearing a cloth stained with a drop of the blood from her first period. She’s holding a vessel filled with intoxicated drink. Her eyes are wavering from the inebriation. She has large and firm breasts and a crescent on her crown. She’s holding a vīna and wears beautiful white conch shell earrings.

    māṇikyābharaṇānvitāṃ smitamukhīṃ nīlotpalābhāmbarāṃ
    ramyālaktakalipta-pādakamalāṃ netratrayollāsinīm |
    vīṇāvādana tatparāṃ suranatāṃ kīracchadaśyāmalāṃ
    mātaṅgīṃ śaśiśekharāmanu bhaje tāmbūlapūrṇānanām ||
    (Agnikārya Paddhati)

    One shall resort to and meditate upon Matangi who is bedecked in ornaments of ruby whose face beams with a smile, whose garments have the luster of the blue lotus, whose lotus-like feet are smeared with beautiful red lac juice, who is brilliant with three eyes, who is eager to play on the lute who is revered by the Devas, who is dark-hued like the feathers of the parrot, whose crest has the crescent moon and whose mouth is filled with betel leaves and juice.

    Source: Purnanda Lahari Compilation

    Tripurasundari stotra (with references to Laghuśyāmā)

    by Śaṅkarācarya

    The stotram dedicated to Tripurasundarī and attributed to Śaṅkarācarya interestingly contains number of direct references to Mataṅgi, in her form as Laghuśyāmā.

    Verse 5

    I take refuge with Her, the sweet speaker,
    Daughter of the sage Matanga
    Whose breasts is adorned with the vina
    And whose head is beauteous with locks of curling hair;
    Who dwells in the lotus;
    The destroyer of the wicked
    Whose eyes are reddened with wine
    The charmer of the enemy of the God of Love

    Verse 6

    I take refuge with Tripurasundari,
    The Souse of the Three eyed One,
    Who should be meditated upon as in the first flush of Her nubile youth,
    Her blue garment stained with drops of blood.
    Holding the wine cup,
    Her eyes rolling with wine
    With heavy, high, and close-set breasts
    Dark of color, and with disheveled hair

    Source: Hymns to the Goddess, by John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon), [1913]

    Eros & Thanatos

    Life is full of polarities that give our existence meaning. We know pleasure because we have felt pain. We revel in beauty because we have witnessed destruction. We experience happiness only because we have known despair. The emotional energies that fuel our lives spring out of this grand dichotomy that separate the light from the dark, the constructive from the destructive.

    Sigmund Freud awarded these opposing forces mythological labels: Eros was established as the “life instinct” and, later, Thanatos for the “death instinct”. Freud articulated these two instincts as being hopelessly locked in a state of eternal battle.

    Eros encapsulates the will to survival and the desire to create. What blooms out of this instinct are the potent forces of love and ambition. Allegorically, Eros can be expressed as Renaissance art — creations that prioritized elegance, the exquisiteness of the human form, and classical notions of man’s nobility. It seeks to rise out of the muck of chaos and to fashion order. It endeavors to surface above messy animalistic impulses and put something more palatable and more attractive in its place. Eros is life and love, vigor and purpose, cooperation and civilization.

    Thanatos is the drive towards obliteration; it is aggression manifest. It is the heady lure of destruction, the greedy pursuit of confrontation with our own mortality. It is flirtation with death; it is a testing of our human ability to destroy that which we have patiently labored to create. It is decay immortalized. It is the drive to return to the dust, to kill the self. Dissolution is the objective of Thanatos — the temptation to revert back to an inanimate, motionless state.

    Eros and Thanatos come from the same source, which is called negation. The negation of life is death; the negation of death is life. God desires to be born; and having been born, he desires to die. What is born must die, what dies must be born again. That is an endless loop of līlā, divine play.

    Not only do the Eros and Thanatos impulses come from the same cause, they are both the same, identical stuff. Hence the attraction of both—the only difference being that one attraction is conscious, while the other is unconscious and suppressed as fear. Yet the attraction of fear is undeniable: sex sells, but so does horror.

    Fire in the yoni is the symbol for lust and anger—Eros and Thanatos, the life and death instincts.

    Freud developed a “pleasure principle”, which maintained that humans were so magnetized to pleasure mostly because such a state was defined by the absence of tension. Tension had to be eradicated in order to experience this elusive pleasure. Freud mulled over the notion that the “death wish” was so appealing in part because it contained the heady promise of a tensionless state. A truly tensionless state, after all, is only achievable in death.

    Sources: "Gifts from the Goddess: Selected Works of Sri Amritananda Natha Saraswati" by Michael M Bowden;
    "The Ancient Dance Between Eros and Thanatos"

    Dveśa

    Destruction of Aversion

    In Chapter 28 of Lalitopakhyana - “Slaying of Viśukra and Viṣaṅga” Devi kills a demon named Kurūṣa. His name is made up from two words:

    • “ku" - bad or degenerate and 

    • “rūṣa” - covering, adornment, bitter/sour. 

    He who is reprehensible in appearance or who has an unpleasant (bitter/sour, as opposed to sweet and pleasant) taste. 

    All of this points to the Ucchiṣṭa Cāṇḍali nature. Her task is to make sacred those aspects of life that are normally considered to be taboo. In Her, everything unclean becomes pure and everything unrighteous becomes righteous. She’s the one who helps to us see “anugraha” (the Divine grace) in everything unclean.

    The differentiation at its core is dualistic. On the one hand, she has the outward projection of the will and desire to see the multiplicity and the beauty of life, and on the other side She removes the cover of illusion from the eyes of the mystic and eliminates the last vestiges of the dualistic perception, leading the devotee to the Source of all Knowledge.

    Laghuśyāmā's Yantra

    The yantra is described as having a triangle, pentagon, an 8 petalled lotus, a 16 petalled lotus and a square.

    Source: Purnanda Lahari Compilation

    64 Yoginis

    The interesting thing to note is that this yantra also contains the 64 yoginis, which are described in the Skanda Purāṇa, Kāśī Khaṇḍa, Chapter 45, verses 33-52. They are also can be find in the Yogini Temple in Bangali Tola Distric in Varanasi.

    • 3MB

    Skanda Purana - 64 Yoginis

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