Offering Flowers, Feeding Skulls: Popular Goddess Worship in West BengalThe Indian state of West Bengal is home to one of the world's most vibrant traditions of goddess worship. The year's biggest holidays are devoted to the goddesses Durga and Kali, with lavish rituals, decorated statues, fireworks, and parades. In Offering Flowers, Feeding Skulls, June McDaniel provides a broad, accessibly written overview of Bengali goddess worship. McDaniel identifies three major forms of goddess worship, and examines each through its myths, folklore, songs, rituals, sacred texts, and practitioners. In the folk/tribal strand, which is found in rural areas, local tribal goddesses are worshipped alongside Hindu goddesses, with an emphasis on possession, healing, and animism. The tantric/yogic strand focuses on ritual, meditation, and visualization as ways of experiencing the power of the goddess directly. The devotional or bhakti strand, which is the most popular form, involves the intense love and worship of a particular form of the goddess. McDaniel traces these strands through Bengali culture and explores how they are interwoven with each other as well as with other forms of Hinduism. She also discusses how these practices have been reinterpreted in the West, where goddess worship has gained the values of sexual freedom and psychological healing, but lost its emphases on devotion and asceticism. Offering Flowers, Feeding Skulls takes the reader inside the lives of practicing Shaktas, including holy women, hymn singers, philosophers, visionaries, gurus, ascetics, healers, musicians, and businessmen, and offers vivid descriptions of their rituals, practices, and daily lives. Drawing on years of fieldwork and extensive research, McDaniel paints a rich, expansive portrait of this fascinating religious tradition. |
Contents
Introduction | 3 |
Life with the Goddess | 27 |
Knowledge of the Goddesss Ways | 67 |
Devotion to the Goddess | 145 |
Durga and Kali | 209 |
Kundalini Vacations and Tantric Honeymoons | 265 |
6 Conclusions | 295 |
Notes | 305 |
Diacritical List | 331 |
341 | |
353 | |
Other editions - View all
Offering Flowers, Feeding Skulls: Popular Goddess Worship in West Bengal June McDaniel Limited preview - 2004 |
Offering Flowers, Feeding Skulls: Popular Goddess Worship in West Bengal June McDaniel Limited preview - 2004 |
Offering Flowers, Feeding Skulls: Popular Goddess Worship in West Bengal June McDaniel No preview available - 2004 |
Common terms and phrases
Adivasi Adya Shakti Kali Annada ascetic become Behula Bhairavi Bhattacarya bhava blessings body brahman burning ground Calcutta called chakra Chandi chant classical tantra consort corpse ritual Cult dance daughter death deities Delhi demon Devi devotees dharma disciples divine dream dream command Durga Puja emphasize energy female festival gain girl give gods guru Hindu Hinduism human husband Ibid India initiation Interview Jagaddhatri Kali Puja Kali’s Kalika Krishna kula kundalini yoga Lakhindar Lakshmi living low-caste Mahavidya Manasa married meditation Mother Muslim night offerings performed person popular possession practitioners priest Purana Rama Ramakrishna Ramprasad Ramprasad Sen religion religious sacred sadhana sadhu Sanskrit sexual Shakta bhakti Shakta tantra Shaktism Shiva siddhi skulls snake sometimes songs spiritual statue story supernatural tantric tantric texts tantrikas temple Thakur told tradition trance tree tribal understood University Vaishnava Vedanta Vedas Vedic village vision West Bengal Western wife woman women worship yogic yoginis