44 S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 5 - 1 S p r i n g 2 0 1 9 4 Shodashī With Shodashī we depart from the energies of fire, destructive energies, to enter the refreshing world, related to water and Moon. Shodashī sits at Mount Peru, mythical mountain, the axis of the world. Her complexion is rosy as dawn and shines with the brightness of the rising Sun. She wears a crescent Moon at the top of her head. Her body is like pure crystal. The hymns sing her exceptional beauty, her sweetness and grace, emphasizing the erotic character of the goddess. Endowed with purely sattvic qualities, she is bliss herself. Shodashī means “one who is sixteen” or “one who is sixteenth”. According to David Kingsley (1997, 121), this would refer to the fifteen phases of the Moon (tithis), fifteen in the rising phase and fifteen in the descendant. In the Indian pantheon each phase is personified by a Goddess. As the sixteenth, Shodashī is beyond these phases, beyond the rhythm of time. She is also calledBalā, “Child”, “Girl” or Lalitā, the “Charming”, or Tripura Sundarī, “Beauty of Three Cities” (Suryanarayanamurti 1975, 59, 84, 98, 143). With her four arms she holds a bow made of a sugar cane, five arrows in the shape of flowers, a noose and a hook. The bow symbolizes the mind, the flower arrows, the five senses which allow us to know the manifested world. The noose is the power to capture us by its beauty (Harshananda 1986, 137). It can also be interpreted as the link of attraction that assembles matter on several levels, from atoms to cells and even to human beings to form a couple (Kempton 2013, 282). The sting is anger or aversion that hurts. Shodashī also reigns over the whole universe as Rajarajeshvarī, “Queen of Kings”. Her first role is to ensure cosmic stability and to ensure the preservation of the Dharma. She has a warlike aspect. She is an emanation of Kālī, purified after a long asceticism. The myths tell of the battle in which she fights and kills the demon Bhanda and revives Kāma, God of love and desire. From the tips of her nails were born the ten avatars of Vishnu. The whole universe was created with a grain of dust from her feet. She is associated with the land and its nurturing aspect. She is the Goddess of Vedas and Vedantic knowledge. Shodashī commands the universe and her commands are based on love. The wisdom of Shodashī is to find happiness, joy, rapture in all that life brings us. The world takes on the look full of freshness and wonder, as if we were only sixteen years old again. 4.1 Shodashī Creation Notebook It is hard to free yourself from Kālī’s energy to meet Shodashī, she who is bliss, divine beauty, the queen of radiance and effulgence. Vibration of beauty, youth and freshness are her features while also suggesting the erotic aspect of Tripura Sundarī the cosmic rose. During this period of creation, I endeavored to look at the world with amazed gaze, contemplating beauty, developing love in myself. I practiced at dawn, meditating, with yonimudrā and sahasraramudrā, bathed in the sweet greeting of the Sun. To express this force of attraction, desire and love, one has to resort to an easy and elegant pencil line. Graceful, curvaceous curves would need to show a delicate being more in shapes than in lines, expressing together the softness and the strength. The season of roses was starting; contemplating and smelling the scent of rose at sunrise inspired me for the line that would be at the bottom of the drawings: a curve of soft colors, acidulous, that say the light of dawn, that express freshness. The choice of the material that would connect us to the nature of Shodashī came as soft pastel and watercolor, using paper mad of flower petals. I watched beauties in the works of Sandro Botticelli including The Birth of Venus, felt the energy of Shodashī, which is manifested in the smile of Ife’s Heads (one of eighteen copper alloy sculptures that were unearthed in 1938 at Ife, Nigeria). I only took a few notes when creating the images of Shodashī. Is it because with this Goddess we are more we are more in the feeling and the perception than in analysis and the intellect? The contact with nature, especially on the Full Moon evenings, inspired me. A small group of us used to meet once a month to walk under the Full Moon barefoot along the coast. I still remember the sensations of the soil under my feet; the texture of sand, earth, rocks, moss, the softness of bamboo leaves. Strong connection with the energy of the Earth and the beautiful, generous presence of the Moon. Facing the sea, facing the wind, we sang mantras. All our senses were awake. I have imagined Shodashī connected to the Moon. Playing with the Moon. Extended in space. I saw in her “the experience of the flow of Soma or nectar of bliss” (Frawley 1996, 90).
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