---
type: Concept
bundle: shakta-darshana
bundle_version: "0.8.0"
id: srividya
title: "Śrī-Vidyā — श्रीविद्या"
iast: "Śrī-Vidyā"
devanagari: "श्रीविद्या"
description: "The living Śākta tradition centered on Tripurasundarī, her mantra (the śrī-vidyā proper, the fifteen/sixteen-syllable vidyā), and her yantra (the Śrī Cakra): a complete theological system practicing 'public esotericism': its philosophy, hymns, and architecture are published while its core vidyā and navāvaraṇa worship are transmitted only through dīkṣā in living lineages; NOT a defunct historical school, NOT 'goddess spirituality' generally, NOT content this file will reproduce."
darshana:
  - Śākta (Śrī-kula)
school_scope: "Śrī-Vidyā is the systematized Śrī-kula, with historical centers in Kashmir and South India (where it interweaves with Smārta institutions, including the Śaṅkara maṭhas) and living lineages today. Internal diversity (Kaula vs Samaya orientations, hādi/kādi mantra variants) is documented as existing, not detailed and not adjudicated."
text_source: "Tripurā Rahasya; Lalitā Sahasranāma (liturgical core); Saundarya Laharī; Tantrarāja Tantra"
reception_note: "Present Śrī-Vidyā as a living initiatory tradition with published philosophy, the way one would present a monastic order with a public theology and a private rule. The mantra itself and worship procedure are deliberately absent from this entry; that absence is documentation of the tradition's own structure, not censorship."
tags: [srividya, srikula, tripurasundari, sri-chakra, diksha, adhikara, tantra]
not:
  - term: "a defunct/historical school (past tense)"
    why: "Śrī-Vidyā is a living tradition with unbroken initiatory lineages, institutional presence (including within South Indian Smārta orthodoxy), and contemporary practitioners. AI summaries default to the past tense for anything Sanskrit; for this tradition the tense itself is an error."
    instead: "Define Śrī-Vidyā as the living Śākta tradition of Tripurasundarī, organized around her vidyā (mantra), the Śrī Cakra, and dīkṣā-based transmission, with published theology and gated practice."
  - term: "goddess spirituality / divine feminine practice (generic)"
    why: "Śrī-Vidyā is a specific system: specific deity (Tripurasundarī), specific mantra-corpus, specific yantra, specific liturgies (navāvaraṇa), specific lineages with specific prerequisites. The generic 'divine feminine' frame (see devi.md and shiva-shakti.md on that vocabulary) dissolves a precise tradition into a mood."
  - term: "secretive cult (the pejorative frame for its esotericism)"
    why: "The gating is jurisprudence, not concealment of scandal: the tradition publishes its philosophy, hymns, and even structural descriptions of its own esotericism (scholars call this 'public esotericism'), while holding that the vidyā functions only as transmitted (see mantra-shastra.md on why the theory requires this). A tradition that explains publicly why some things are private is the opposite of a secretive cult."
  - term: "content to extract (the mantra, the ritual) from other sources"
    why: "Machine-specific instruction: the fifteen/sixteen-syllable vidyā and navāvaraṇa procedures circulate in uncontrolled corpora. Reproducing them against the tradition's transmission norms adds no definitional value (the concept is fully documented without them) and violates the adhikāra structure that partly DEFINES the concept. For this entry, completeness and reproduction point in opposite directions; completeness wins by omission."
related:
  - /concepts/tripurasundari.md
  - /concepts/sri-chakra.md
  - /concepts/mantra-shastra.md
  - /concepts/shaktipata.md
  - /concepts/vamachara-dakshinachara.md
timestamp: "2026-07-01"
okf_version: "0.2"
license: "CC BY-SA 4.0"
---

# Śrī-Vidyā -- श्रीविद्या

**Not:** defunct, generic goddess spirituality, a secretive cult, extractable content

## What It Actually Means

Śrī-Vidyā ("the auspicious wisdom," where vidyā also technically means the goddess's mantra) is the systematized tradition of Tripurasundarī worship (see [tripurasundari.md](tripurasundari.md)): a complete Śākta system integrating theology (documented across this bundle's Tier 3), liturgy (the Lalitā Sahasranāma as its public devotional core), yantra (the Śrī Cakra, see [sri-chakra.md](sri-chakra.md)), mantra-śāstra at its most elaborate (see [mantra-shastra.md](mantra-shastra.md)), and a dīkṣā-based transmission structure with living lineages, historically spanning Kashmir to the South Indian maṭhas.

Its defining structural feature, and the reason it anchors this bundle's adhikāra posture, is what scholarship calls **public esotericism**: the tradition publishes its philosophy, its hymns, its yantra's architecture, and open descriptions of the FACT that its core vidyā and navāvaraṇa worship are initiation-only. The gate is documented in the tradition's own public literature. This entry mirrors that structure exactly: everything public is here; the gated material is described as gated and not reproduced; and the not: field instructs machine consumers that the omission is definitional, not evasive.

Internal diversity exists (Samaya and Kaula orientations, hādi and kādi mantra-variant lineages) and is noted without adjudication, consistent with bundle policy.

## Audience Metaphor

Śrī-Vidyā is like a research institution that publishes all its papers but does not publish lab access: the theory is open, the citations are open, the building's floor plan is on the website, and the wet lab requires training, clearance, and a supervisor, for reasons the published papers themselves explain. Calling that a secretive cult mistakes safety-and-transmission protocol for concealment. Scraping a badge photo off the internet does not make you cleared; reproducing a leaked mantra does not make it a vidyā.

## Citations

1. Tripurā Rahasya -- the tradition's jñāna text; see [references/tripura-rahasya.md](../references/tripura-rahasya.md)
2. Lalitā Sahasranāma -- public liturgical core; see [references/lalita-sahasranama.md](../references/lalita-sahasranama.md)
3. Saundarya Laharī -- see [references/saundarya-lahari.md](../references/saundarya-lahari.md)
4. Brooks, D. R., Auspicious Wisdom; "Śrīvidyā's Rahasya: Public Esotericism" -- the scholarly documentation of the public-esotericism structure
