Bagalamukhi (Bagalāmukhī) — The Deceitful, Crane-headed, the Power of Cruelty

Bagalamukhi (Bagalāmukhī) — The Deceitful, Crane-headed, the Power of Cruelty 

In the middle of the ocean is a pavilion of jewels with an altar inside it. On the altar is a lion throne on which the goddess Bagalāmukhī is seated.

Her complexion is completely yellow, perfectly yellow, and she wears a yellow dress, yellow ornaments, and a yellow garland. I call to mind she who holds the tongue of the enemy in her left hand and a raised club in her right hand.

She has assumed a serious mood and is maddened with intoxication. Her brilliance reflects the golden hue of her body. She has four arms and three eyes and is seated on a lotus.

On her forehead is the crescent moon, which is yellow in colour. She wears yellow clothes, has high, firm breasts, and wears golden earrings. (Brihat Tantra sāra)

An aspect of our human psychology that we very quickly learn to repress is a subtle desire to kill other living beings – a desire to destroy all others but ourselves; the forbidden pleasure that we feel when hurting another — something we don’t like to admit to.

This desire to kill, to torture, is present to some degree in the psyche of everyone. This repressed destructive desire unconsciously motivates many of our actions in day to day life.

In the iconography of Tantra this aspect of mind-force is represented as a woman with the head of a crane, the placid, graceful crane being considered the most deceitful of all creatures.

Bagalāmukhī is also known as Pitambara-devi (The goddess garbed in yellow) she presides over all the subtle forms of killing.

She is more than any of the other Mahā-vidyās the presiding goddess of the supernormal yogic powers known as “siddhis” which can either be used for universal good (“white-magic”) or subjective self-agrandisement (“black-magic”). She is the cosmic force which incites men to kill and to torture one another.

A demon named Mādan undertook austerities won the boon of vāk siddhi, according to which anything he said fulfilled. He abused this siddhi by killing people.

Enraged by his mischief the gods worshiped Bagalāmukhī. She stopped the demon’s rampage by taking hold of his tongue and stilling his speech.

Before she could kill him, however, he asked to be worshiped with her, and she relented. That is why he is depicted with her:

“I bow to the two-armed goddess who with the right hand grasps the tongue of her enemy and with her left hand tortures him. She holds a mace and is clad in yellow.” (Bagalāmukhī Tantra.)

Bagalāmukhī is also strongly associated with sexual desire and pleasure — particularly that of the sado-masochistic type. Several of her epithets in her thousand-name hymn associate her directly with kāma, “sexual desire,” or the god of sexual desire, Kāma-deva.

She is called, for example: She Who Dwells Where There Is Sexual Desire, Who Likes Sexual Desire, Whose Form Is Sexual Desire, Whose Eyes Are Full of Desire, Who Promotes Sexual Desire, and Who Takes Pleasure in Sexual Play.”

Another string of epithets associates and identifies her with the female sexual organ:

She Whose Form is the Yoni, Who dwells in the Yoni, Whose form is the Lingam and Yoni, Who Has a Garland of Yonis, Who is adorned with Yonis, Who Enjoys the Union of the Lingam and Yoni, Who Is Worshiped with the Lingam and Yoni, and Who is Absorbed with the Lingam and Yoni.

Her consort is the One-faced (Ekavaktra) Rudra. The night of Bagalāmukhī is identical to that of Chinnamastā. It is the Night-of-Courage (Vīra- Rātri), the time of suffering.

Bagalāmukhī Sadhana -

Bagalāmukhī Sadhana is done to defeat and paralyze the enemy. She is also worshipped to win the court cases and to get success in all sorts of competitions.

Bagalāmukhī Moola Mantra -

ॐ ह्लीं बगलामुखी देव्यै ह्लीं ॐ नमः॥

Oṁ Hlīṁ Bagalāmukhī Devyai Hlīṁ Oṁ Namaḥ॥