BHAIRAVI JAYANTI
December 28, 2020
Creative Beauty or Destructive Creation
30th December | Full Moon
The days are lengthening
Boonath
The solstice is passed
The nights recede by a sunlit mast
The first full moon of the rising year
Belongs to Bhairavi, who on this day is here.
Bhairavi means the fierce one. Her beautiful face shines fiercely with the brilliance of 1000 suns, she wears a necklace of fresh severed heads, and the moon is on her forehead.
The sight of Bhairavi can be an ugly, frightening one. What starts beautifully can start to creep slowly if we lose honour of Bhairavi. Her lesson is about honouring the dark feminine power.The yogi watches carefully how they approach Bhairavi.
She uses if she is used,
she honours if she is honoured.
She is the mirror
of how we treat our life power.
Bhairavi is the fire that consumes, she incites power and passion, her destructive fire ingests creation in its flames. She is the continual destroyer of the three worlds (Earhtly, Conscious & the subconscious), for this she is called Tripura Bhairavi (“fierce in the 3 worlds”).
Her burning destruction allows for creation to take place. Necessary is destruction if creation is to go on.
Just like her lover Bhairav, Bhairavi is ever present, she is the fire that consumes our lives until death less than the shadow of ash.
Psychic Clouds
in our Inner Skyes
Bhairavi is the grand paradox.
She is beautiful and enchanting. Her beauty excites and calls out our life force as we serve that to which we are drawn.
But Bhaiiravi is also known as Kotraksi, which means the one with deep set sunken dark eyes. The more of our power we give away, the deeper we fall into her dark eyes, and the more ghostly her form becomes.
Bhairavi Jayanti Puja
is the study of that which
we give our power to.
We see this now as the solar fire in nature grows with the lengthening of days grows, previously nourished by the darkening season.
The night of Bhairavi is the time to study where we are giving our power, and where perhaps we are wasting our power by feeding corpses.
This Purnima (full Moon) is the first one of the rising half of the natural year, with its now lengthening days after having crossed the threshold of the solstice.
Bhairavi sits on a corpse as her vehicle, called the Savasan in Tantra.
The corpse does not move and neither does Bhairavi. But we move towards them. The more we waste our Shakti, the uglier and more fierce she becomes.
This is why she is the drinker of blood.
In this life we have to give our energy and life blood, living and loving requires the investment of Shakti, we have to make focussed effort to live, but sometimes it is not focussed, but obscured by psychic clouds.
Bhairavi is the one
who reveals the psychic clouds
in the skies our soul.
Bhairavi is the force that requires focus to face, she requires our involvement and relationship. She is the force of living and dying which both go hand in hand.
It might seem easier to feed our power to a dead corpse than to Bhairavi who is the most exacting woman of all.
Bhairavi can be displeased easily, but the corpse will never complain, we can turn away from Bhairavi and complain into the ears of a corpse, but Bhairavi grows more frightening and ugly as we waste our energies on dead things.
In Frustration there is power
This might sound abstract, but simply spoken, this is what we do when we don’t use our energies well. For example, Complaining is something we might take for normal and necessary. It is easy to discover an injustice, if we look for it.
With our acquaintances, we might make coffee meetings with the intention of releasing frustration through unloading by complaint. The complaint might stand in the light of absolute justice and we might believe it absolutely necessary to speak it out.
Rather than internalising the power inherent in the frustration, we release it prematurely when complaint and being against something is not internalised but externalised habitually.
When we open
& start to touch & hold
the powers that frustrate
we prepare for Bhairavi.
It is prepared by facing deeply the origin feelings that are created within us, and not all too easily turn to complaint as an outlet.
These days there are many more ways of complaint perhaps available as technology seems to broaden the horizons of expression.
The practice of Bhairavi Jayanti is a subtle inner ritualistic work that honours the birth of the growing half of the year of lengthening days, with this first full moon in the bright half of the year we ritually come forward to the study of the habits and familiar ways we might be wasting our life force. Facing the gaze of Bhairavi with honour on the other hand, requires us to harness our life force. A volcano builds its fiery forces in the dark, it follows the path of knowing when to restrain, sometimes it’s destructive explosions give birth to the new by destroying the old. Yet…
… to be like an ever emitting volcano,
leaving no power in the base
is the path of feeding the corpse.
On this night, Tantric’s have timelessly gathered in a circle of power. Together they have ritualised with the blessing of nature’s currents and practiced Antar Bhairavi Mudra in concentrated puja (ritual).
Bhairavi Mudra
is the deep investigation
of the harnessing, usage & wastage
of our life force.
Agni & Tejas in the 3 Worlds
Bhairavi is the opposite of Lalita, the second of the Mahavidyas.
Lalita Jayanti follows on February the 27th, on the Full Moon.
Both Goddesses have the prefix Tripuri (the three worlds) before their names.
Bhairavi is the consuming fire of Agni, and Lalita is the cooling fire of Tejas.
Tripuri Bhairavi is the consuming Agni fire of the three worlds, and Tripuri Lalita is the cooling Tejas fire in the three worlds.
When Agni and Tejas are in balance, they brew Soma, the psycho physical compound of spiritual insight.
The fires exist in the 3 worlds, that is, in the subconscious underworld, in the world of celestial awareness above and in the middle plane of the earth in between.
We live, move and have our being in these 3 realms.
The study and balance
of the hot and cooling fires
in our threefold world
is a focus of the Tantric practitioner.
If the psychic fire within us is hot and emphasis is on the Agni, then the body will be heated and the breath and heart burning. If the psychic fire within us is focussed on Tejas (the cooling fire) the body will be cool with heart and breath rhythmical.
The fires must be balanced in the right measure to create Soma.
The movements of nature and the moon intersect with these two fires which are ever moving and reflecting the currents of atmospheric and lunar energy.
The balance of the two fires is the ever moving Yogic pursuit.
When Agni does not overly consume, then the solar plexus fire recedes from it’s all too often seat of dominance. Balance is then established and the cool fire of Tejas burns in the soma chakra and creates the psychic elixir of Soma in the 3 worlds that we inhabit.
The Soma chakra
is the other polarity of the solar plexus
and brews the downward glowing moon fire
from above.
The mantras for Soma and Agni are balanced in Tantra.
For example, the Mantras of Bhairavi exist as three syllables which are the 3 tips of the downward facing triangle at the base of our being. This triangle is her primal Yantra (symbolic and sound form).
Bhairavi’s heating mantras are the bijas (seed syllables) that activate the fire of the 3 worlds, one for the physical, one for the unconscious, and one for the celestial awareness.
The 3 Bija mantras of Lalita on the other hand are cooling in nature, the mantras are combined in the right measure, and this measure is ever changing, just as the Moon is. Tripuri Bhairavi and Tripuri Lalita, together teach us about the destructive fire and the creative fire respectively.
They reveal to us how both the creative and destructive fires of our destiny are ignited.
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