Chhinnamasta

Chhinnamasta is the fifth of the ten Mahavidyas, the goddess who holds her own severed head. She is shown standing on a couple in union, with three streams of blood rising from her neck, one drunk by her and one each by two attendants. She is a Tantric goddess, understood as the power of self-sacrifice and of life and death in a single image. Her image is read as a teaching that life, death and desire are bound together, and Chhinnamasta Jayanti falls in the bright half of Vaishakha.

The best known story comes from Tantric tradition, as in the Pranatoshini Tantra. According to it, the goddess Parvati went to bathe in the river Mandakini with her two attendants, Dakini and Varnini. After the bath, the attendants became very hungry and asked her for food. She asked them to wait...