SAKTI and Shiva – A concept (feminine); the Goddess

 

 

shakti Shakti is a term for the concept of energy (and as such a feminine noun), and it can be said to have been personified as Divine Energy, or the Mother Goddess, the source of energy. The concept is linked to the power of the austerities (tapas), creative and supernatural powers (siddhis), and the power of the sacri­fice (maya). Saivites claimed it as a property of Siva, his creative energy (shakti). Thus, it could be personified as his wife, Devi. And (sakti was one of Devi’s names and one of her manifestations. However, from a (sakta (a devotee of (sakti as Supreme) perspective, (sakti was and is the cosmic energy of the Supreme Mother. And to illustrate this emphatically, (saktas state that (Siva without sakti is only sava, corpse. (Removing the feminine “i” ending in the Sanskrit and derivative languages literally changes the first syllable of Siva’s name from Si to Sa, and thus his name becomes (sava.) Thus, it is Mother’s energy that trans­forms the corpse (sava) to a god (Siva).

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