11) Pañcatanmātrasāyakā
Wielding five arrows corresponding to the five subtle elements.
Lalitā wields five flowery arrows in Her lower right hand these are sound, touch, form, taste, and smell. These are the five channels of communication for the perception of the individual with the cosmos, which couple with the five sensory organs of the mind, namely ear, skin, eyes, tongue, and nose. Moreover, these five functions of sensory perception are considered to be the five properties of the elements, namely, space (sound), air, (touch), fire (form), water (taste), and earth (smell). These five “elements” correspond successively to grosser and grosser states of awareness, as for example the sequence: vacuum, gas, plasma, liquid, and solid states of aggregation of matter.
Space is the first condensation of awareness, gas is a condensation of space (curved space-time around matter), liquid is a condensation of gas/plasma, solid is a condensation of liquid, and black holes are a condensation of solid nuclear matter.
In the enumeration above, it is significant that sound is associated with empty space. Sound, it is well known, does not travel in free space. Then why is sound associated with space and not air? Here sound is to be interpreted in the generalized sense of vibrations. Electromagnetic waves, a part of which is the visible light, another part of which is radio waves, microwaves and heat and ultraviolet and so on, can and do travel in empty space; there are other waves that are less well known but can traverse free space; examples of these are the matter waves, thought waves, neutral currents and so on. All these are vibrations of some sort or the other; it is convenient to club them all together and call them sound with a sense of poetic humor of denoting something by that which it is not.
To summarize then: Space-Time is Her hands, in which She holds the weapons of attractive and repulsive interactions creating the cosmos, the mind, and the ability to see, know, feel, hear, etc, creating the individual. The complete stage for the illusory appreciation of the universe, based on a clever scheme of separation of the seer and the seen, is set up. The drama of unfolding beauty bewitching in the extreme can begin.
Sādhana
The senses are inputs into the mind. Why then are they described as arrows? They are described as arrows that leave the bow to go out, to remind us that the cosmos is in fact a creation of the mind; when the arrows are going out, they are in fact going into the mind from which the cosmos sprang in the first instance. Senses and sensual pleasures are the arrows of Manmatha, the Indian equivalent of the Greek God of love, cupid. Manmatha is the sage for the “Kādi Vidyā” of Śrī Vidyā Upāsana. In the full knowledge that the object of the senses is not distinct from oneself, worship of the sensual pleasures offered to the Devi, the inner awareness, constitutes the main mode of sādhana. This is the Kaula mārga which combines full sensual happiness with liberation in accordance with divine inspiration.
12) Nijāruṇa-prabhāpūra-majjadbrahmāṇḍa-maṇḍalā
Whose crimson radiance floods the entire cosmic sphere.
The entire cosmos is filled with the crimson glow coming from Herself.
Crimson is a mixture of red with a bluish tinge added, the colors of blood leaving the heart and getting back; it is the color of life ebb and flow and of love and passion. Having created the cosmos, Lalitā as the Universal Mother, peoples its [cosmos'] life, to be lived and enjoyed, not to be rejected and wasted. The color of the Universal Mother, the womb and the external reproductive organs is crimson red. In the morning rays of the sun, the very skies, the womb of wakefulness for the teeming life on earth takes on a crimson glow. The mother earth, terra cotta, has the brick red color. The flush of color on the cheeks of a youthful girl is a crimson glow.
Śiva, who resides in every man as liṅga, the membrum virile, the erect phallus, is red in color when excited, he is then called Rudra, the red one or the angry one; he is the Universal Father. When the mother wants to become a mother or the father wants to become a father, the color of love engulfs them. Without love this world would not be. It is created by love, sustained by it and it evolves through love.
Love is an object for meditation, for worship. This healthy fact has been recognized in India since ages. The temples, which are places of worship, are sculpted with voluptuous figures of male and female forms in the most erotic, sensual and artistic forms to be meditated upon by those who come to pray. In the sanctum sanctorum there is the symbol of the erect phallus proudly jetting out of the vulva, the ever blissful union of the sexes shown as Śiva liṅga.
The mode of worship is abhiṣeka, meaning lubricating the joyful coitus for ever more blissful feelings by adjusting the viscosity and structure of the lubricating fluid which is made by a proper mixture of milk, honey, ghee, curds and banana. This ceremony is watched and performed by millions; if they are knowledgeable they relate it to their own sexual center to derive bliss internally while performing the symbolic act externally; if they have had no background in the grand truths of religion, the symbols act subliminally on their psyche to clear the subconscious from the inhibition that sex is impious.
That the union is to be personally enjoyed, seen and shown is the orgiastic message of the Śiva liṅga. The rock symbol implies that the erection, the hard on, must always remain so.
13) Campakāśoka-punnāga-saugandhika-lasatkacā
Whose hair shines with the fragrance of campaka, aśoka, and punnāga flowers.
Here follows a description of Śrī Devi from head to foot. Her hair has naturally the perfumes of the most exquisite flowers. The mother earth has all the flower bearing trees which are like hairs to it. So the wooded aromas of all the gardens in the world are Hers.
14) Kuruvindamaṇi-śreṇī-kanatkoṭīra-maṇḍitā
Adorned with a radiant crown of rows of rubies.
She wears a diadem of rows of rubies and diamonds.
If the night sky is Her flowing hair, the stars are diamonds and rubies adorning Her head band, our galaxy of the milky way.
15) Aṣṭamīcandra-vibhrāja-dalikasthala-śobhitā
Whose forehead is adorned with the crescent moon of the eighth lunar day.
Her forehead wears the half moon of the eighth lunar day as a sign of saubhāgya, or the eye of knowledge.
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