Day 13 - TARA DEVI

                  

 TARA DEVI

"Om Tarai cha vidmahe

Mahograya cha dheemahi

tanno devi prachodayat"

                                      -Tara Gayatri

Day 13. Shakti Yantra Practise 

I bow to you mother Neela Saraswathi.

You gave well being and auspiciousness, you are situated on the heart of a corpse and advancing aggressively you have 3 fearful bright eyes.

You carry your skull bowl ,scissors and sword,your form shines like a blazing fire. Give me refuge, give me golden speech. 

Please let your gracious nectar drench my heart. 

Remover of pride, you are decorated with snakes as ornaments, you wear a tiger skin as a skirt, you ring a bell loudly and wear a garland of chopped off heads, you are frightening and remove fear.

This prayer is, in praise of one of the many forms that Maa Taara appears in. This is for her, as Neela Saraswati or the blue lotus one. 
 If Kali is the Nirguna Brahman or the supreme undifferentiated consciousness.Tara is the first creative impulse. She is Sabda Brahman.

Tara is closest to Kali, both as the first step towards creation as well as the last step towards dissolution. She is venerated as the generous one that ferries her devotees across the vast ocean of samsara or material mortal life towards the state of eternal bliss,satchitananda. 

In appearance, she is similar to Kali in many ways. Her skin too is like a dark blue night sky and she too wears the garland of skulls, symbolic of the sounds and letters that emerged from her. Her wild hair at times presents as one thick bunch or dread lock and in this form she is Ekajata. She wears a tiger skin skirt and as Smashana Tara, her form is so fearsome... it is bordering on grotesque that, to look upon her is to dissolve immediately. 

Goddesses (like Tara and Kali) often adopt a scary form to shake up devotees by teaching them to look beyond the external. In her 4 hands she carries a human skull bowl, symbolic of the ego she helps eliminate. A sword she uses to swiftly remove negative attributes and defeat enemies for her devotees and a pair of scissors with which she cuts away karmic cords and a blue lotus symbolizing the pure transcendental knowledge that she bestows upon her devotees. 
As the goddess of sound, every sound (good ,noisy, loud, melodic) is a form of Tara. Try to recognize her in all that you hear.

For me, she appears in the yantric form of Neela Saraswati that is accompanying this post . This yantra form, is a gift from that Goddess which I received in a meditation and since then, I can sense and experience her in all my creative actions.

Affirmations:

~ I constantly strive towards realization of the truth.

~In every sound and word, I attempt to recognize the divine.

~I am protected and guided by the Goddess.

~I try to live my life from a place of compassion towards myself and others.

Colour: All shades of blue,white and silver.

Mantra:

                    "Om Tare Tu Tare Ture Swaha"

Jai maa

Tara Yantra Free Printable (pdf)