The Goddesses of the Trika


What is the role of the Goddesses of the Trika?
Paraa is worshipped as the highest Goddess embodying the supreme Reality in the Tantric Shaiva sect called the Trika, which was taught and practiced by Abhinavagupta and his lineage. (Most of the well-known texts of "Kashmir Shaivism" such as the Vijnaana-bhairava, the Pratyabhijnaa-hrdayam, the Spanda-kaarikaas and so on were authored by Gurus of the Trika.) "Trika" means Trinity, and Paraa was worshipped along with two other "lower" goddesses, Paraaparaa and Aparaa, who are ferocious (aghora) forms of Para that look almost exactly like each other. These three Goddesses were worshipped on a trident and lotus mandala (pictured below) with Paraa in the center.

They were also to be visualized within the practitioner's body in a beautiful "internal ritual" (antaryaaga).

Abhinavagupta integrated them with the 12 goddesses of the Krama by multiplying them times four in a complex and philosophically profound system. Suffice it to say that for Abhinava, the three Trika Goddesses taken together were precisely equivalent to the high deity of the Krama, Kaalii Kaala-sankarshinii (seen left as the central lotus on Shiva's trident), the Supreme Reality that encompasses and subsumes the poles of transcendence and immanence, of existence and non-existence.

An ancient scriptural description of Paraaparaa
"Red as blazing fire, wearing a garland of skulls, displaying three eyes, she sits with trident and skull-staff in her hands upon Sadashiva, the Great Transcended. Her tongue flickers in and out like lightning. She is huge-bodied and adorned with great serpents. Her mouth yawns wide and at its corners are terrible fangs. Ferocious, with her brows knitted in wrath, wearing a sacred thread in the form of a huge snake, adorned with a string of human corpses round her neck, with the severed hands of a human corpse for 'lotuses' to deck her ears, her voice like the thunder of the clouds at the world's end, she seems to swallow space itself."
If you wish a complete set for your altar, you can get all three in 8x10; though some may find the aghori (ferocious) goddesses too overwhelming, and thus choose to get Paraa in 8x10 and the other two in 5x7. -The Artist- Bhavasindhudasa created these images of the goddesses, drawing them by hand on an electronic pad, using the ancient scriptural descriptions of them as a guide.