Dhumavati is the oldest Goddess, and she is the granny Goddess. She stands behind the other Goddesses as their ancient guide. She gives the lessons on birth and death. She is the knowledge which comes to us from the difficult experiences we undergo.

Dhuma means,” smoke.” Dhumavati is composed of smoke. Her nature is to shroud and not illuminate. However, this obscurity leads to deeper knowledge. She unshrouds the hidden and the profound.

She is a widow and is the feminine principal of the masculine principle. She is Shakti without Shiva as a pure, potential energy, without any will to motivate it. So, she contains within herself all potentials and shows the latent energies that dwell within us.

To develop our latent skills, we must recognize them. And how do we accomplish this by honoring Dhumavati. She reveals the feminine principle of negation in all its aspects. On an outer level she represents poverty, destitution and suffering. We all dread these misfortunes.

A new potential

She is crassly called crooked, troublesome and quarrelsome and a witch. However we have to understand her true self, which enables us to seek a greater fulfillment from this extreme negativity. When we are frustrated in our life, then we seek the inner reality. Through believing in her we are blessed with resilience and a new potential.

Dhumavati represents the darkness and the chaos which underlies creation. Our life is caught between the twin darknesses, ignorance and we do not know where we are going. She reveals the imperfect, transient, unhappy and confused state of ordinary egoic existence in order that we may transcend it. She enables us to transmute them into energies of delight.

Dhumavati grants us transcendence and freedom, returning us to the condition prior to the arising of any negative forces. Her mantra is ‘Dhum, Dhum Dhumavati Svaha’. Dhum means smoke or to obscure. This mantra darkens all false lights, it creates a protective smoke which shields us from all negativity.

Perceived as the Void, as the dissolved form of consciousness, when all beings are dissolved in sleep in the supreme Brahman having swallowed the entire universe, the seer poets call her the most glorious and the eldest, Dhumavati.
She exists in the forms of sleep, lack of memory, illusion, and dullness in the creatures immersed in the illusion of the world, but amongst the yogis she become the power that destroys all thought, indeed Samadhi itself. – Ganapati Muni, Uma Sahasram 38. 13—14.

Accepting our sorrows as divine friends, we learn to understand the limitations of the body-mind and we then have the blessings of Maa Dhumavati.

Reference: Tantric Yoga and the Wisdom Goddesses by Dr David Frawley.

Aim Hrim Klim