Category: Cosmic Tales
Narrative, editorial astrology — stories that illuminate the sky.
Mahishasura Mardini: The Slaying of the Buffalo Demon
The battle did not happen in a single day or a single confrontation. The Devi Mahatmyam — the scripture that contains the definitive telling of this story — gives it the scale it deserves: army after…
The Goddess Born from Every God’s Power
The problem had been growing for years. Mahishasura — the buffalo demon, the shape-shifting demon whose primary form was a great dark buffalo — had performed austerities that yielded him a specific…
The Demon Who Could Not Die: Raktabija and Kali
The demon Raktabija had a boon that made him, in the most practical sense, impossible to kill. Every drop of his blood — every drop, the moment it touched the ground — produced an identical demon…
The Goddess Who Stepped Beyond Anger: The Emergence of Kali
The war between the gods and the forces of Chanda and Munda had reached the crisis point. Durga — the great goddess, formed from the concentrated power of every deity in the cosmos — had been…
The Burning of Kama and Parvati’s Grief
Kama was sent on a mission he knew was dangerous. He was the god of desire — of the creative longing that moves beings toward each other and toward beauty and toward the future — and he had been…
The Goddess Who Feeds the World: Parvati as Annapurna
There was, one day on Kailasa, a philosophical discussion between Shiva and Parvati that went further than philosophy. The discussion, as philosophical discussions on Kailasa often do, concerned the…
Tapasya: Parvati’s Burning Love for Shiva
The conventional story of love has the beloved notice the lover and respond. Parvati’s story does not follow that convention, which is probably why it has been told and retold for two thousand years…
The Greatest Leap: Hanuman Crosses the Ocean
The monkey army had found the shore. After the search that had covered every forest and mountain and river of the subcontinent, after the intelligence gathered from eagles and other animals, after…
The Day Hanuman Tried to Eat the Sun
The morning was perfect — one of those early monsoon mornings when the air has been washed clean and the mountains gleam and the rising sun catches the water on every leaf and turns it to gold. It…
Born of Wind and Devotion: The Birth of Hanuman
Anjana was an apsara who had been born as a monkey — a forest dwelling, tree-scaling, thoroughly agile monkey — through a curse that could only be lifted through a specific circumstance. She had…