Dasha Mahavidya Homam Part 1

I have a special interest in the ten Dasha Mahavidyas. It was my intense heartfelt desire to perform a homam for ALL the ten Dasha Mahavidya Devis in one sitting. Now, this is considered quite a complex task. In the world of homams, also called yagnas or havans, the Dasha Mahavidya homam is considered to be a high risk high reward undertaking. Needless to say, I did not know if I could conduct one of this magnitude and was quite nervous.

In earlier times, kings used to perform this Dasha Mahavidya Homam in order to succeed in battle or other situations of the protection of the citizens and so on; in recent times politicians including some recent high ranking Indian statesmen have performed this havan for victory in elections and have succeeded very well just like the kings of ancient times. Of course, they have had the luxury of employing purohits to conduct the actual task; whereas, here I am a one-man operator; where from can I get the strength and the stamina?

But unlike actions and undertakings in the material and especially the corporate world, the spiritual world is all involved with intention; I would like to elaborate on this very important topic in another post at another time. In the spiritual world, it does not matter what your resources are or what your financial or physical capacity is; that is NOT how the Divine rewards. The Divine looks at intention – in Sanskrit, there is a phrase called Yathaa Shakthi – it is doing with whatever one can given the cards that one has been dealt; however, the intention matters and in fact that is all that matters.

So, I gathered all the moola mantrams and all the gayatri mantras for all the ten Devis and deciphered that just by doing 108 moola mantrams for each deity and adding all the extra time involved in the invocation, neivedyam, etc, it should take me a little over four hours. My wife was a champion and she made ten different sweets over a period of two days observing as much “madi” – Tamil word for spiritual cleanliness – as possible; my son wanted to participate in the homam – amazing indeed that a young adult less than 24 years old born of Indian parents but born and grown up in America would even be interested in such efforts – hats off to him – he did all the kainkaryams and the little daughter did her little part and we all jumped in not knowing what to expect and we started early on May 24, 2015, a Sunday morning on our back deck with a sincere prayer to the Almighty to please help us conduct the homam without obstructions and problems and perform it nicely.

I decided to stay with only the moola mantrams for all the ten Devis, for two reasons: one was the time factor as mentioned before to do in one sitting. The second factor is that I like to perform homams with Sahasranamama Strotrams if possible – for example, Lalita Sahasranamam for Lalita Tripura Sundari or Vishnu Sahasranamam for Lord Vishnu Homam, etc but while I had the Sahasranamam Stotrams for SOME of the Dasha Maha Vidyas, I did NOT have for ALL of them; and I felt bad that I could not even obtain a Sahasranama Stotram for the ten Devis. I just could not find them – that is the state of affairs today…

The Homam went very well and all four members of our family were in cloud nine once we had completed the havan. Miraculous successes followed within weeks of the Maha Yagnam --  that is how powerful the Devis are. While there were great miraculous material successes, there was also a miraculous spiritual reward. I would like to explain the latter below.

I made a very short video clipping on this in a clumsy manner – I am NOT very tech savvy – and sent it to my brother-in-law. Here is Kamala Devi Homam :

 

And following is Dhoomavati Devi Homam:

 

Within two days, he called me and said that he has a surprise for me – he sent me the Sahasranamams AND the Ashtottarams for ALL the TEN DASHA MAHA VIDYA DEVIS neatly organized in one set – what I really wanted deep inside my heart but had not told anyone -- the story behind how he came across it is nothing short of an interesting story in itself – I will reserve that one for later. The end result is I got what was requested to the Power Above with a clean heart and good intention – the intention is to be able to recite the greatness and glory of the Goddesses using 1000 name hymns.

If one worships the Dasha Mahavidyas with heartfelt love, with good intention and request Them to help in the stuthi (praise), the Wisdom Goddesses are here to bestow Their blessings and boons to each and every one of us. They ARE after all the Divine Mothers and we are all Their children.

It must be mentioned that I, as a human being, do NOT take credit for this performance. The Yagna Itself (IS) Are the Devis, the conductors are the Devis – I was and still am simply an instrument at Their beautiful hands. Part 2 of this story at another time…. Thank you for reading … The very fact that you are reading this post is because of Divine Will – They invited you here, otherwise you will not see this post..