Kamakshiकामाक्षी

Kamakshi (कामाक्षी) is the goddess of Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu, one of the seven traditional mokshapuris of India and a city sacred to Shiva, Vishnu and the Devi alike. Her name is read as she whose eyes (akshi) are desire (kama) — eyes full of longing and of grace — and in the Śrī Vidyā tradition she is worshipped as the living form of Lalita Tripurasundari, the supreme goddess herself.

The seated goddess

Unusually among major Devi images, Kamakshi is enshrined seated in padmasana, the lotus posture of yogic repose, holding the emblems of Lalita: the sugarcane bow, the flower arrows, the noose and the goad. Before her image is installed a Śrī Chakra, and tradition holds that Adi Shankara established it, tempering an older and fiercer aspect of the goddess into the benign sovereign worshipped today. The Kanchi Kamakoti Pitham, the monastic seat associated with Shankara's lineage, stands in close relation to her temple.

In tradition

Kanchipuram's lore makes her supremacy explicit: it is traditionally said that the Shiva temples of the city keep no separate shrine for the Goddess, because Kamakshi alone presides over Kanchi. She is grouped with Meenakshi of Madurai and Vishalakshi of Kashi as one of the three great akshi goddesses — the eyed ones — of the Devi's map of India. The city's temple legends also tell of Parvati worshipping Shiva as a linga of sand beneath a mango tree, the cycle attached to the neighbouring Ekambareshwara shrine. Tradition further remembers Muka, a mute poet granted speech by her grace, who is said to have poured out five centuries of verses in her praise.

Worship

Her worship follows the Śrī Vidyā ritual pattern, and her festivals — Navaratri above all, and the chariot processions of her annual utsava — draw the whole city. For Tamil Shakta devotion she is the definitive image of the Goddess as both mother and empress: desire itself made auspicious.