Bagalamukhiबगलामुखी

Bagalamukhi (बगलामुखी) is the Mahavidya of arrest — the power to stop. Her special siddhi is stambhana, paralysis: the stilling of an enemy's speech, a slanderer's tongue, a rival's advance, or the restless motion of the mind itself. Everything about her is yellow — her complexion golden, her garments, her ornaments and her offerings turmeric-coloured — earning her the name Pitambara, she who is clothed in yellow.

Iconography

Her image is a freeze-frame of victory. With her left hand she seizes the tongue of a demon; with her right she raises a club above him. The blow never falls — it does not need to. The enemy is held at the precise moment his power of speech, and so of harm, is taken from him. Few Hindu icons state their theology so economically: she does not destroy opposition, she stops it.

The stories

Tradition tells of the demon Madan, who won the boon that whatever he uttered came true and loosed havoc with his tongue; the goddess ended him by the obvious, terrible expedient of seizing it. Another account has her rise from a lake of turmeric-yellow waters to still a cosmic storm that threatened to tear creation apart — stambhana exercised on the elements themselves. In both tales the lesson is the same: unchecked speech is the demon, and the goddess is its check.

Worship

Bagalamukhi is invoked by those facing disputes, litigation, debate and enmity, and her cult has always drawn petitioners in trouble. Her best-known seats include the Pitambara Peeth at Datia in Madhya Pradesh and the temple at Bankhandi in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh. Practitioners regard her mantra as potent and exacting; like the other fierce Mahavidyas she is approached with discipline, for the power to stop others begins, the tradition insists, with the power to still oneself.