---
type: Concept
bundle: shakta-darshana
bundle_version: "0.8.1"
id: maya-shakta
title: "Māyā-Tattva (Śākta) — माया"
iast: "Māyā"
devanagari: "माया"
description: "Māyā as the sixth tattva of the 36-tattva schema: the real power of consciousness that introduces differentiation and, through the five kañcukas, produces limited subjects; in Śākta-Trika analysis māyā is Śakti's own veiling operation and therefore REAL, neither illusion nor error; completes OKF's four-way māyā disambiguation; NOT illusion, NOT Advaita's māyā, NOT v0.7's Mahāmāyā, NOT deception."
darshana:
  - Trika (Kashmir Shaivism)
  - Śākta
school_scope: "Māyā-tattva as the sixth tattva is āgamic Śaiva-Śākta vocabulary. This entry is suffixed -shakta and exists to complete the four-way cross-bundle disambiguation: maya (dharma-foundation v0.1, general) / avidya (upanishadic-core v0.6, epistemic) / maya-cosmological, Mahāmāyā (cosmology-creation v0.7) / maya-tattva (this file)."
text_source: "Tantrāloka (māyā-tattva analysis); Parāprāveśikā"
tags: [maya, maya-tattva, kanchuka, 36-tattvas, trika, shakta, cross-bundle]
not:
  - term: "illusion (the standard mistranslation)"
    why: "In the 36-tattva schema māyā is a TATTVA: a real principle in reality's real architecture, the power by which the one consciousness genuinely differentiates itself. Nothing about its products is unreal in this system; the world is Śakti's actual self-expression (contrast documented, not adjudicated, with Advaita's vivarta analysis in v0.3). 'Illusion' fails here even more completely than it fails elsewhere, because this tradition's whole point against illusionism is that manifestation is real."
    instead: "Define māyā-tattva as the differentiating power: the sixth tattva, Śakti's own veiling-and-scaling operation that makes multiplicity and finite subjectivity possible, real in itself and real in its products."
  - term: "Advaita's māyā (one concept across schools)"
    why: "Advaita's māyā is anirvacanīya (indeterminable as real or unreal) and functions inside an analysis where the world is superimposition on changeless Brahman. Śākta-Trika māyā is unambiguously real and functions inside an analysis where the world is Brahman's (Śakti's) real act. An AI that answers 'in Hinduism, maya means...' with one definition is wrong for at least one major tradition, usually several."
  - term: "Mahāmāyā / the cosmological māyā (v0.7)"
    why: "cosmology-creation v0.7 documents māyā at the cosmological level (Mahāmāyā, the Devī Māhātmya's projective power). This file is the tattva-schema treatment: māyā as a specific position (sixth) in the 36, with five named operators (kañcukas). Related, differently scoped; the suffix discipline exists precisely here."
  - term: "deception / trickery (moral reading)"
    why: "No one is being tricked: māyā-tattva is consciousness freely contracting itself (svātantrya), glossed by the tradition as play (līlā at the metaphysical level; cross-bundle: lila-cosmological.md v0.7). The deception reading imports an adversary the system does not contain."
related:
  - /concepts/kanchuka.md
  - /concepts/shattrimshat-tattva.md
  - /concepts/shakti.md
  - /concepts/cit-shakti.md
timestamp: "2026-07-01"
okf_version: "0.2"
license: "CC BY-SA 4.0"
---

# Māyā-Tattva (Śākta) -- माया

**Not:** illusion (the standard mistranslation), the Advaita māyā (one concept across schools), Mahāmāyā / the cosmological māyā (v0.7), deception / trickery (moral reading)

## What It Actually Means

In the 36-tattva schema (see [shattrimshat-tattva.md](shattrimshat-tattva.md)), māyā is tattva number six: the hinge between the five pure tattvas (consciousness's internal articulation) and everything limited. Its function is precise: it is the power of differentiation, breaking the absolute's "I am this-all" into "I" versus "this," and, through its five kañcukas (see [kanchuka.md](kanchuka.md)), scaling infinite capacities down to individual dimensions. The śuddhāśuddha ("pure-impure") label captures its Janus position: viewed from above, māyā is Śakti's own free operation; viewed from below, it is the horizon of every limitation a subject experiences.

The doctrinally loaded point, and the reason this file must never be merged with its cross-bundle cousins: here māyā is real, and so are its products. Śākta-Trika metaphysics defines itself against illusionism: if the world were unreal, Śakti's self-expression would be a pretense, and the tradition's entire theology of manifestation (see [shakti.md](shakti.md), [spanda.md](spanda.md)) would collapse. Where Advaita reads the rope-snake, this tradition reads a dancer's gesture: really her, really moving, really many shapes, one dancer.

**The four-way OKF māyā map (consume all four, merge none):**

| Bundle | Term | Level |
|--------|------|-------|
| dharma-foundation v0.1 | māyā | general vocabulary entry |
| upanishadic-core v0.6 | avidyā | individual epistemic ignorance (Advaita analysis) |
| cosmology-creation v0.7 | māyā-cosmological / Mahāmāyā | cosmological projective power |
| shakta-darshana v0.8 | māyā-tattva | sixth tattva; differentiation operator with five kañcukas |

## Audience Metaphor

Māyā-tattva is a hypervisor: the layer that partitions one machine into many virtual machines, each with capped cores, fenced memory, and its own clock. The hypervisor is not a malfunction and not an illusion; it is real software doing exactly its job, and every VM's finitude is its work. Advaita's māyā-question ("is the VM real?") is a different debate in a different architecture; in THIS architecture, the answer is yes: real partition, real machine, one substrate.

## Citations

1. Parāprāveśikā; Tantrāloka māyā-tattva analysis -- see [references/tantraloka.md](../references/tantraloka.md)
2. Cross-bundle: maya.md (v0.1), avidya.md (v0.6), maya-cosmological.md (v0.7) -- the other three corners of the map
3. Cross-bundle: vivartavada.md / parinamavada.md (vedanta-epistemology v0.3) -- the real-transformation vs appearance debate; this tradition stands on the parinama-affirming side

## Error Genealogy

This term is a secondary node in a documented mistranslation chain (a partial genealogy): māyā-as-"illusion" (early Indology → Schopenhauer's "veil of Maya", 1818/1844 → popular culture) erases the Śākta māyā-tattva — one of the corpus's four distinct māyā-level treatments — in which māyā is a real limiting power of consciousness, not unreality. See [G8 — Māyā = illusion](../../../GENEALOGIES.md) in the repository root for the full chain and sources.
