The goddess of the day moves in the dark with the help of moonlight from the moon she wears on her forehead. She finds courage in her heart as she turns toward her fear, and she is ready for battle at any hour of the day. Her voice roars with such intensity, the demons tremble with fear when they hear her. On the third day of Navaratri Chandraghanta is worshiped. 

Chandra is Sanskrit for the moon. Gantha is a bell. 

Navaratri is a Hindu holiday that celebrates the goddess Durga and her innovative, creative power, with which she wins a great battle with a horrible demon. Navaratri means nine nights in Sanskrit, and each of the nights celebrates a different form of the great Goddess. 

Durga is tough and tender, ferocious and fabulous, dangerous and delicate, wild and wise. She is the nourishing mother of all that exists, and she is a demon slayer, and a goddess for difficult times. She is serene, and she is also the fury of struggle and combat. She is a goddess of paradox and ambiguity, nuance and complexity. How else would you win a battle with a demon of certainty? 

When Durga takes the form of Chandraghanta she is fearsome. Her ferocity rises out of her own fear. Doesn’t that tell us something about ourselves, about humanity, about the world? The beauty here is that the very tendency that could make her a demon – fear that forges ferocity – doesn’t. We have the capacity to work with the energy that could send us through the shadows into demon territory, receive it, nurture ourselves within it, and alchemize it. 

She has ten arms, which marks her capacity to carve new pathways, to forge new possibilities, to make a new reality. 

In her hands she holds a bow and arrow, because we need to know how to aim with precision. She holds a lotus to remind us that beauty and tenderness grows in the mud. She holds a goad, to poke us when we get stuck and feel too timid to make a move. She holds a trident as she is the threefold way of the universe. She has a sword to cut the ties that strangle us. She has a pot of water because she is the feminine flow, the container of reality, the vessel of life. 

The story goes that after Śiva and Parvati get married, he brings her to his cave in the mountains. His bachelor flat is a mess. Ashtrays with half smoked joints are everywhere, empty beer cans all over, cobwebs, dishes piled in the sink and on the counter, and the place looks like no one ever cleaned it. Because no one ever did. 

Parvati is not into it.

A common version of the story is that she is still in her wedding sari, and she finds a broom and starts to clean up her new home. 

I am not into it! 

But it makes me think of how all of us inherit a mess, all of us arrive in this world needing to clean up the mess of those who came before us. And all of us make a mess for others in one way or another as well. 

There’s a demon who wants to harm Parvati. He is very powerful, and cannot be destroyed by anyone. No one but the child of Śiva and Parvati. This demon named Tarkasura is interested in getting Śakti away from Śiva as quickly as possible, before they go to bed. So he sends his buddy, the demon Jatukasura, who is a bat-demon, and he and his army come to attack the goddess. 

Demons are the creatures of our own shadow. They are the parts of us that we send to exile, and the parts of us that we don’t want to look at. They are the dangerous pieces of our fragmented self, lurking in the dark cave of our unconscious. A bat demon is like a double whammy of dark, unconscious, unseen parts. 

This is an army of bat demons. Bats live in caves. Caves are wombs. Wombs are the receptive, generative power of feminine encoded energy. The dark embrace of the womb is protective and caring and loving. And like anything beautiful and nurturing, it also has a shadow. We receive the shadow along with the light. When we generate new life, we also generate death. 

These bats arrive right after Parvati finishes to organize the home. She decorates the place and puts fresh flowers everywhere, and she gives their home a clean fresh makeover. But those bats arrive and they make a mess and Parvati is enraged. She literally just finished cleaning up after his mess. But she’s also really scared. Argh! 

She goes to Śiva to ask for help. He’s in the middle of his meditation. But he opens his eyes to see his beloved trembling with fear. She completely forgets that she is Śakti, that she is the mother of the universe, that she is the power that permeates existence. Do you ever forget your power? Śiva reminds her. He reminds her of who she is. She’s the demon slayer. She’s the only one who can take care of this situation. Don’t we all need a little reminder sometimes, from a friend or a lover, that we can do it, that we can battle our demons, that we can overcome challenges, that we can rise to the occasion? 

You are never not your powerful self. And part of life is to sometimes forget. We all feel disconnected from ourselves and from our strength sometimes. Those are important moments in our lives. They are portals into a deeper anchor in the richness of our being, in the diversity of our existence. 

(Join us for Bond With Your Life to work with those portals through yoga, somatic practices, myths, symbols, contemplation, breathwork, and meditation – click here for more info)

The goddess is in a new situation, she’s in a new home. She’s a new bride. She’s just had a huge life change. And to top it off, she just discovered that her new husband is a total slob, and she had to clean up the place if she was to live with him in his cave. 

Being reminded by someone else of our gifts, our powers, our strengths, and our capabilities is necessary sometimes. Our forgetfulness is part of the process. And we are social creatures, who need reminders from our community. If we are too sure of ourselves, and we think we can always win the battles, we become more like the demons, who are way too sure of themselves. 

The goddess invites us into the space between confidence and humility. She calls us into questioning ourselves, so that we learn to let the ambiguity be part of our power. She’s the most badass in all the worlds, but she must have doubt in herself so that she doesn’t become the demonic certainty. 

Remembering her power, she goes out into the darkness of the night and she can’t see a thing. Parvati calls Chandra, the moon, and he comes down to illuminate the battlefield for her. 

The moon moves in phases. The moon shatters and regathers itself. The moon is reflective, its light is soft, and it is nocturnal. The moon is the milk of the mother. The moon is the fluids of sex. The moon is the ashes of death. The moon is the movement between empty and full, the interwoven reality of life and death. The moon is your ability to keep the pulse of creation. 

(there’s a whole session on the moon in the sixth module of Bond With Your Life. Click here to learn more about this soulful somatic journey of yoga education, storytelling, and transformation)

Parvati creates the original headlamp as she puts the crescent moon on her forehead. She needs to battle these demons in low light. 

The goddess howls at the moon, and a pack of wolves comes to help her. They attack all the bats as she fights the main bat demon, Jatukasur. But he is relentless. He is nourished by the battle, by the blood shed of his army, by the howls of the wolves, by the shadows of the night. 

The goddess is resourceful. She can always find a way. So she goes and grabs her bell, and she makes so much noise that the bats fly away with fear. One of the wolves attacks Jatukasur. His mouth fills with blood, his teeth dripping red. 

Parvati hits the demon’s head with the Ghanta, the bell. And finally she sticks a sword in his heart. 

Swords, when we look at the Tarot for example, invite us to cut through to the core of the issue, or to cut the bullshit. A sword is a conflict, but it’s the call to attend to it when needed, even if it isn’t comfortable. It’s a tool forged in the fire. It is a threat, a protection, and the necessary power to sever what ties us up in our own delusions, reactivity, and toxicity. 

Chandraghanta rides a wolf. Sometimes she rides a tiger. She rides the wildest of the wild. She rides a ferocious animal, drenched in its own wildness. We wanna ride it, let it be a vehicle, and be the ones driving, we don’t want to be controlled by it, we don’t want to control it, we want to find ways to collaborate with it. 

The battle is inside of us, with our own bat demons, our own toxicity, our own fears. The battle is with forces in our lives. 

Chandragantha is the power of our own darkness, of learning to overcome and collaborate with what lurks and haunts us in the shadows. With this goddess we learn to weave the tapestry of who we are with threads of night and moonlight, with wildness, with dark caves, and with the mess of something more than our own selves, because relationships are messy, supportive, uneven, and nourishing. 

Check out this video for a talk about this day of Navaratri, which includes a mantra and mudra practice.

Join us for Bond With Your Life – a six week course that will help you turn toward the stress so that you can regulate it, befriend the parts of you that feel most challenging, and forge a path of deeper connection within and around you – mess and all.  

All the details are here. I can’t wait to dive in with you! 

XOXO

Hagar