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Paper short abstract

The primary aim of Śrīvidyā practitioners is to become aware of their identity with Devī, the Goddess, in her benevolent, motherly and erotic form. Thus, they partake, with and as Devī, in her primordial, generative metaphysics of care and, becoming cosmic mothers, world an auspicious existence.

Paper long abstract

The primary aim of tantric Śrīvidyā practitioners is to become aware of their identity with Devī, Śakti, the Goddess, in her benevolent, motherly and erotic form as Tripurasundarī. Origin and end of everything existing and beyond-existence, Devī, together with her consort Śiva, presides over primordial expansion–contraction metaphysics which, when expanding, manifest worlds in spacetime and, when contracting, collapse worlds into their potentiality. As the tantric practitioners I lived with in South India reveal, by realising their oneness with Devī, they partake in this cosmic creativity and, with and as Devī, ensure the maintenance of an auspicious existence.

The identity with Devī ensues from a super-imposition between the Goddess and practitioners by means of the Śrīcakra diagram, or “genetic code of the cosmos”. In Śrīvidyā’s kaulācāra path, the Śrīcakra is mapped directly onto practitioners’ bodies, and worshipped through pleasure-evoking practices.

Because female practitioners are closer to Devī due to their creative and nurturing qualities, usually, male practitioners, as Śiva, lovingly worship female practitioners, as Śakti. Thus, female practitioners become aware of their inherent divinity, while male practitioners develop the caring traits of mothers – which premise their own self-discovery as Devī. Essentially, the relationships that practitioners, Devī and beings at large establish among each other by giving and receiving acts of care determine their personhood.

Motherhood emerges as a transspecies phenomenon that exceeds gender, biology and immanence, and engenders worlds around care; by cultivating nurturing attitudes, (non-)human beings uncover their divine nature and, as Devī, unravel transcendent potentiality into manifest spacetime.