Hymn to Kali: Maithuna

VERSE 20

O Mother [Kali], he who, being a controller of his passions, eats haviṣyānnaṁ [pure ritual food], and, being proficient in meditation on Thy feet, rightly recites Thy mantra a hundred thousand times by day, and he who afterwards naked at night, when united with his Śakti [spouse], rightly recites Thy great mantra another such hundred thousand times, becomes on earth like unto the Destroyer of Smara [who is the god Shiva].

Commentary

'Naked' (Nagnah): That is free from the covering of Māyā [illusion]; Nirvikāra.

'Amorous play' (Nidhuvana-vinodena): That is enjoying the bliss of union between Ātmā [inner Being] and Paraśakti [universal energy]. The Kulārṇava-Tantra says, 'That is coition (Maithuna) in which there is the bliss arising from the union of Ātmā and Paraśakti. Others are but 'enjoyers of women.'

'Becomes' (Syāt): That is, becomes liberated whilst yet living (Jīvanmukta) like Śiva.

Excerpted from the Vimalānandadāyini Commentary on that Lord of Hymns called the Karpūrādi-Stotra to Śrimad Dakṣiṇa-Kālikā as reproduced in Hymn to Kali, by Arthur Avalon (Sir John George Woodroffe), [1922]

Arthur Avalon