Dhumavati
Often referred to as widow goddess she is depicted as an old hag, cruel even, and the general harbinger of poverty and misfortune.
All of those assertions are incorrect.
The mythology around this Mahavidya, along with the 9 others, developed in a time when India was already steeped in sexism and patriarchy. The concept of her independence is mistakenly overpowered by widowhood. In India, even as little as a hundred years ago, for a woman to be independent she would have to be a widow. From the control of her father she would pass in marriage to the control of her husband. Widows, essentially the only independent women, are again associated with poverty (as many women were not permitted to earn a livelihood), cruelty (she must have killed her husband by being a bad wife), and loneliness.
In current day America, and luckily to a large extend in India, divorce is a possibility (and maybe a little too common) and marriage no longer a requirement — the murmuring of aunts not withstanding. Independence no longer requires widowhood.
The symbolism of widowhood carries another connotation. The woman is inextricably tied to her husband. It is a complex relationship that she cannot conventionally escape. Abuse is endured silently. Dhumavati represents an escape from this reality. And she is a widow by choice.
Oddly, she eats her husband. We differentiate between people who kill animals for fun and livestock they love. When a Native American hunts and kills a Buffalo to nourish the community he is not sacrificing his love or his respect; and he is certainly not expressing hate. Eating her husband suggests that she is not so much concerned with the killing as with ‘digesting the relationship’ — absorbing what is useful and discarding what is not.
Dhumavati in truth, is nothing other than fierce independence.
Sexism and patriarchy have created symbolized meanings that took away from her real meaning. Her sadhana can be found in the Dhumavati Tantra (which now can be found digitally at Muktabodha’s e-text library as part of the śāktapramoda) and there it can be seen that she is not caricatured as an old hag — she is as eminent and majestic as any other Mahavidya.
Her name, rising smoke, implies neither loneliness nor poverty. It implies freedom — smoke is what escapes when we burn something physical. When we burn incense it is the sweet fragrance that rises as smoke. It symbolizes escape from social relationships or conditions that bind us, and spiritually it symbolizes a consciousness that escapes the physical constraints of the body.
Her sadhana allows us to break off relationships that are no longer nurturing; gently and without loss of love. She allows us to retain pride, dignity, and self respect while we make peace with a situation that no longer serves us well.
She is gentler and less jarring than Bhagalamukhi (who will essentially destroy your foothold in this world). She is not the opposite of Kamala — rather she is Kamala’s beauty without form. For those of us preoccupied with only the material world this may seem the opposite of Kamala, but it really is not. She is more the opposite of Matangi — as she makes us unattractive to the factors in our lives that cause us unrest. Dhumavati, Matangi, and Chinnamasta form a line with Chinnamasta as the pivot, uniting the two. For those who have seen Varnini and Dakini this conclusion is almost obvious.
Dhumavati is oddly the goddess of our time. Consumerism has occupied the spiritual void left by scientific rationalism, leaving us trapped in material relationships with the world. We relate by consuming, not by appreciating; we love by taking, instead of being. This has destroyed our planet and left us unable to understand how to live even with each other. We live in silos not even knowing the names of our neighbors. We are overcome by relationships that are suffocating us and afraid to walk out alone onto the clean white snow.
Nietzsche famously said “When you look into the abyss, the abyss looks back into you.” Dhumavati will make sure that when that happens, you are not afraid.
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