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Navaratri

Ashvina, bright fortnight (September–October) · Durga

Nine nights of the Goddess ending on Vijayadashami: Durga's slaying of the buffalo demon Mahishasura, told in the Devi Mahatmya, kept as Durga Puja, Garba, Golu and Ramlila.

Read more in the guides

  • The Nine Nights Treatise

    She appears at Vasant Panchami as Saraswati , she is invoked at the spring Navaratri that climbs to Rama's birth, she stands behind a hundred local observances.

  • What is Navaratri? Worship

    The festival that builds her and then drowns her is called Navaratri, and the scene the potter has shaped is roughly fifteen hundred years old.

  • Who is the Goddess? Deities

    Devi, the Goddess, is in the Shakta tradition the supreme reality and the active power (shakti) that animates the cosmos. The earliest extended statement is the…

  • Who is Shiva? Deities

    Shiva is the supreme reality for the Shaiva traditions, and, by one widely cited estimate, for something like a quarter of all Hindus, though such figures are rough…

  • The New Year and the Avatara Treatise

    It is the first of the nine nights of the Goddess, the spring Navaratri , the Vasanta Navaratri .

  • The Goddess Takes the Field Treatise

    It is the scripture of Navaratri , the nine nights of the Goddess, when across India it is recited in full, chapter by chapter, its verses taken not as description but as invocation, calling the very power they…