Who, overflowing with compassion at the plight of humanity, provides succor.Tripura Sundari’s name means beauty unparalleled in the three worlds (earth, heaven, netherworld). In her popular depictions, she laughs at the absurdity in the drama of creation. The goddess’ anger is a purifying fire that is aimed at the ego itself — all impurities are reduced to ash, leaving a purified consciousness behind. In the way Kali represents time, Bhuvaneshwari represents space. She nourishes us, fulfils our material needs, thereby enabling a fuller, richer experience of being human. Realising the agony of endless birth and death, she encourages a movement towards spiritual enlightenment. In a way, she represents the beginning of worship — when our worldly needs are met, we can focus our energies on the inner journey. She is the matrix and the field in which everything exists. Her aid is not just material, but spiritual. She holds her own severed head in her hand — the emblem of transcending the body, its ego, and its karmic burdens. Not the beauty of face or form, but the beauty of a flawless perception of truth. She reveals the opposite of any circumstance — defeat in victory, sadness inherent in laughter — thereby giving us courtesy wholesale the facility of becoming aware of reality as a whole and not just in parts.  With Chhinamasta, we enter the realm of the Devi’s active doership. Her special power is obscuration; dhuma means smoke.Dhumawati is the “grandmother goddess” — representing the feminine wisdom of age. Kali is divine mother, also the one who slays. The image is ghastly but the seeker must find its deeper meaning — the agency of the Goddess to enable conscious knowing that destroys ignorance. By obscuring the known, she opens up possibilities for delving into that which lies hidden and unknown — the innermost self.Bhuvaneshwari is goddess/ruler of the created world where all beings exist. In her, we are born, grow and perish.Matangi is goddess of the mind and intellect. She wears a skirt made of human limbs, to denote the ultimate fate of human beings. She focuses the mind internally, on the highest knowledge that can be gained out of any intellectual inquiry — the knowledge of Self and Reality, atman and Brahman. Hers is the light of consciousness that lights up the three worlds.Bhairavi is a wrathful manifestation, but it is not the anger of the ego.Who, or what, are the Dasamahavidya — 10 forms of the Goddess — venerated during the nine sacred nights of the Navaratri festival?Kali is the mistress of time, the mover of things, the primordial night in which creation is birthed.Tara is the one who saves.    Bagalamukhi represents the power of the word. In this way, she removes duality inherent in our perception of the world, and focuses us on the whole..Kamala, the lotus-faced one, is the goddess of abundance. Even so, her expression is beatific — she is the true knower of things.