Devi Mahatmya — The Glory of the Goddess
The Devi Mahatmya (also called Durga Saptashati or Chandi) is Tantra's most celebrated text on the goddess, teaching through mythological narrative that the Divine Mother is the supreme power behind all existence.
The Devi Mahatmya (c. 5th-6th century CE) is the foundational text of the Shakta tradition, embedded in the Markandeya Purana. In three episodes, the Goddess Durga (Devi) defeats the cosmic demons Madhu-Kaitabha, Mahishasura, and Shumbha-Nishumbha — each representing a deeper layer of the ego's resistance to divine power. Symbolically: Madhu-Kaitabha represent attachment and delusion; Mahishasura represents the ego's assumption of divine authority; Shumbha-Nishumbha represent the subtlest spiritual pride. The Devi teaches that she is not merely a deity who defeats external enemies but the inner Shakti that defeats the internal demons of ego, greed, and spiritual pride. The text is recited for its transformative power — its 700 verses (saptashati) are considered mantra as well as scripture.
By you this universe is borne, by you this world is created. By you it is protected, O Devi, and you always consume it at the end.
Psychologist Carl Jung's archetype of the Great Mother — the universal feminine principle that simultaneously creates, nourishes, and destroys — provides a psychological framework for understanding the Devi Mahatmya's symbolic account of the Goddess's triple nature.
Devi Mahatmya
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- What Tantra says about devotion
The Shakta tradition's central text tells how the Goddess defeats three demons, read as three layers of the ego's resistance. Devotion here has an object with a face, a name and a story.