Batik Paintings of Indian Goddesses

"...the originator of families, the preserver of the established order and the perpetuator of traditions...As the Great Goddess rules the heavens, her earthly counterpart, the woman, rules the home..."

"Rigveda acclaims that \'he who is described as male is as much the female....When invoking her in her entirety, describing her beauty, limb to limb, these hymns did not stop short of anything....Devi Bhagavata is the foremost of scriptures that consider Devi as the Adishakti, the divine power that preceded all things, all beings and all gods....Devi Mahatmya in the Markandeya Purana and other texts relate her origin to the elimination of Mahishasura, a mighty demon who once ruled the earth.....She also created her \'shaktis\', subordinate powers.....As Kali she was ferocious, as Durga, valorous, and as Parvati, Uma or Gauri, lovable and incomparably beautiful."

"The Mother Goddess is India\'s supreme Divinity... In fury or in frown, she is always the same protective, caring, loving Mother with a benign face and a blessing hand... In her material manifestation, She represents, with absolute motherhood, also the absolute womanhood. She causes life and sustains it, and is also the cause of life, its inspiration and aspiration, and the reason to live... She is the eternal upholder of Dharma and truth, the promoter of happiness and the giver of salvation and prosperity but also of sorrows, grief and pain... As Adi Shakti, She represents Prakriti, which operates in and on all things, the manifest or otherwise, materially present or abstract..."

"The earliest term applied to the divine feminine... is Shakti... Specifically, Shakti means power, force and feminine energy. She represents the fundamental creative instinct underlying the cosmos, and is the energizing force of all divinity, of every being and every thing... The yoni or female generative organ is... venerated for its obvious properties of fertility and growth... While Durga is the most potent icon to express the aggressive and destructive behavior of Shakti, Lakshmi is the quintessential goddess who proclaims her creative aspect... (It) is emphasized in the Gandharva Tantra (that) \'She who is the sun, moon, and fire, lays down the purusha (male) and enjoys him from above.\'..."

"providence has blessed women with the primary responsibility of the perpetuation of the human race. Understandably her physical body has been richly endowed for this glorious function… To the connoisseur of Indian aesthetics, the profusion of voluptuous women dominating its canvas comes as no surprise… But while celebrating the female body in glorious images the artist never loses sight of the fact that whatever nature creates, it creates with a purpose. No form is accidental and every natural form must have a divinely ordained function. Whatever be the artistic representation, it must glorify this inherent natural function…"

"A virgin blooming with fresh youth, the luster of her body was like the rising sun. Three-eyed, her face was endowed with the beauty of ten million cupids (Kamadeva)...Blossoming breasts which surpassed even the buds of a lotus (in softness)...Wishing to pay obeisance to her, the gods then got down from their chariot and approached the goddess. No sooner had they done so than she transformed them all into beautiful, young maidens....A weak man is declared to be without any Shakti, nobody says that he is without Shiva, or without Vishnu. They are all called Shakti-less; no one says that this man is Shiva-less…"