Meditation on the Divine Mother Maa ChinnaMasta

Mantra for the worship of Maa ChinnaMasta

Maa ChinnaMasta symbolizes the continued state of self-sustenance of the created world, in which continuous self-destruction and self-renewal occur in a cyclic order. The cycle is starkly portrayed: life (the couple in union), death (the decapitated form of the Divine Mother), and nourishment (the flanking yoginis drinking her blood). She takes life and vigor from the couple and gives it away, severing her own head to feed her assistants.

In this way she embodies the cosmic process — the rhythms of creation and destruction, the harmonious alternation of giving and taking — presented so that the seeker can grasp their interconnectedness intuitively. Meditating on this image, the devotee contemplates the surrender of ego and the truth that giving and receiving, life and death, are one continuous movement of the Divine.