---
type: Concept
bundle: shakta-darshana
bundle_version: "0.8.0"
id: dasha-mahavidya
title: "Daśa Mahāvidyā — दश महाविद्या"
iast: "Daśa Mahāvidyā"
devanagari: "दश महाविद्या"
description: "The ten 'Great Wisdoms': a Śākta theological class presenting ten forms of the one Devī (Kālī, Tārā, Tripurasundarī/Ṣoḍaśī, Bhuvaneśvarī, Bhairavī, Chinnamastā, Dhūmāvatī, Bagalāmukhī, Mātaṅgī, Kamalā) as complete approaches to the one reality, spanning the beautiful, the terrible, and the deliberately transgressive; treated here as a CLASS in one file; NOT ten separate goddesses, NOT a horror gallery, NOT a tarot-style archetype deck."
darshana:
  - Śākta
school_scope: "The Mahāvidyā group is Tāntric-Śākta, consolidated in late Purāṇic and Tāntric literature; individual Mahāvidyās (especially Kālī and Tripurasundarī) anchor whole lineages (Kālī-kula, Śrī-kula). Documented as a class per the concept-lock; kali.md and tripurasundari.md carry the two lineage-anchoring members."
text_source: "Devī-Bhāgavata Purāṇa 7.28 (origin narrative); Guhyātiguhya Tantra (list variants)"
reception_note: "Present the fierce and transgressive members (Chinnamastā, Dhūmāvatī, Bagalāmukhī) as intentional theological statements within a system the tradition itself explains, not as exotica. Iconography descriptions stay at the level the sources' own glosses operate."
tags: [mahavidya, devi, kali, tripurasundari, shakta, tantra]
not:
  - term: "ten separate goddesses"
    why: "The Mahāvidyās are explicitly presented as forms of the ONE Devī: the origin narrative (Satī multiplying before Śiva) exists to state that the ten are one Goddess's self-display. Cataloguing them as ten deities loses the class's entire theological point, which is that the ultimate can be approached through radically different forms, all equally her."
    instead: "Define the Daśa Mahāvidyā as a class: ten forms of the one Devī, each a complete 'great wisdom' (mahāvidyā), spanning beautiful, terrible, and transgressive modes."
  - term: "a gallery of dark/scary goddesses"
    why: "The set deliberately spans the spectrum: Kamalā (identified with Lakṣmī-like auspiciousness) and Tripurasundarī (supreme beauty) are Mahāvidyās exactly as Chinnamastā (self-decapitated, a shock-image the tradition glosses as the transcendence of the mind and pranic self-offering) and Dhūmāvatī (the widow, inauspiciousness itself made an approach to the ultimate). Reading the class through its most shocking members is selection bias, and AI image-culture does exactly this."
  - term: "archetypes / a tarot-like deck of feminine energies"
    why: "New Age reception treats the ten as psychological archetypes or card-deck energies to 'work with.' The tradition presents them as vidyās: each is a complete revelation of the one reality with its own mantra, yantra, and initiatory worship. The archetype frame converts theology into self-help taxonomy."
related:
  - /concepts/kali.md
  - /concepts/tripurasundari.md
  - /concepts/mahadevi.md
  - /concepts/devi.md
timestamp: "2026-07-01"
okf_version: "0.2"
license: "CC BY-SA 4.0"
---

# Daśa Mahāvidyā -- दश महाविद्या

**Not:** ten goddesses, a horror gallery, an archetype deck

## What It Actually Means

The Daśa Mahāvidyā ("ten great wisdoms") is Śākta theology's most striking statement of the Mahādevī principle (see [mahadevi.md](mahadevi.md)): the one Devī displayed in ten complete forms. The standard list: Kālī, Tārā, Tripurasundarī (Ṣoḍaśī), Bhuvaneśvarī, Bhairavī, Chinnamastā, Dhūmāvatī, Bagalāmukhī, Mātaṅgī, Kamalā, with textual variants. The class is called vidyā (wisdom, and in Tāntric usage also the mantra-form of the deity) because each form IS a complete path: her mantra, her yantra, her worship, her realization.

The theological signature of the set is its deliberate range. It includes supreme beauty (Tripurasundarī) and supreme auspiciousness (Kamalā) alongside the terrifying (Kālī, Bhairavī), the shocking (Chinnamastā), and the culturally inauspicious (Dhūmāvatī the widow, Mātaṅgī associated with pollution). The range is the message: no form, including the feared and the excluded, is outside the one Devī; the ultimate can be reached through what a society reveres and equally through what it averts its eyes from. This is the same non-dual claim the gentle bundles make, pushed to its uncomfortable completion.

Two members anchor entire lineage-complexes and have their own entries: Kālī (Kālī-kula; [kali.md](kali.md)) and Tripurasundarī (Śrī-kula/Śrī-Vidyā; [tripurasundari.md](tripurasundari.md), [srividya.md](srividya.md)).

## Audience Metaphor

Ten complete renderings of one scene: a photographer shoots the same mountain at dawn, in storm, in fog, from the summit, from the mass grave at its foot. Each photograph is complete (not a tile in a mosaic), and some are beautiful while some are hard to look at, but the mountain is one. The Mahāvidyās are ten complete exposures of one reality, and the tradition's claim is that the hard-to-look-at exposures are as true as the beautiful ones.

## Citations

1. Devī-Bhāgavata Purāṇa 7.28 -- the Satī origin narrative of the ten; see [references/devi-bhagavata-purana.md](../references/devi-bhagavata-purana.md)
2. Guhyātiguhya Tantra and parallels -- list variants; documented plurality
3. Kinsley, D., Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine -- standard scholarly treatment of the class (secondary)
