Shakti Peethas
Every Shakti temple in the directory, grouped by state.
A guide is written where we have one, and the temple is named where we do not. Bookable pujas appear where we have verified pandits in the temple's city.
The Shakti Peethas mark where the parts of Sati's body are said to have fallen. After she gave up her life at Daksha's yajna, Shiva carried the body across the subcontinent in grief, and Vishnu's chakra divided it so that he would stop. Each site is named for the part that fell there and is paired with a Bhairava who guards it — the goddess is never worshipped alone at a peetha.
The lists do not agree. Fifty-one is the count most often given, from the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet; the Ashta Dasha Maha Peethas count eighteen, other traditions fifty-two, and the Tantric lists a hundred and eight. Sites in present-day Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka appear on most of them.
Kamakhya in Guwahati, where the yoni fell, closes for three days each Ambubachi when the goddess is held to menstruate, and opens to the largest gathering of the year. Kalighat in Kolkata marks the toes of the right foot. Jwalamukhi in Himachal has no image at all: the object of worship is a natural flame.
Vaishno Devi in the Trikuta hills is the most visited of the goddess shrines and is not a peetha on most lists. The object of worship there is three natural rock formations — the pindis of Maha Kali, Maha Lakshmi and Maha Saraswati — reached by a walk of about thirteen kilometres from Katra, and the tradition treats it as a shrine of the goddess in all three forms rather than of one part of Sati.
Temple collections
- Shakti Peethas
- Nav Durga
Shakti Peethas temples
Bihar
- Badi Patan Devi
- Shyama Mai Temple
- Aranya Devi Temple
- Mangla Gauri Temple
- Chhoti Patan Devi
- Agam Kuan Shitala Mata — guide in progress
- Kankali Mandir — guide in progress
