---
type: Concept
bundle: shakta-darshana
bundle_version: "0.8.0"
id: shattrimshat-tattva
title: "Ṣaṭtriṃśat-Tattva (the 36 Tattvas) — षट्त्रिंशत्तत्त्व"
iast: "Ṣaṭtriṃśat-Tattva"
devanagari: "षट्त्रिंशत्तत्त्व"
description: "The 36-tattva map of reality shared by Śākta and Trika traditions: Sāṃkhya's 25 tattvas reinterpreted and preceded by 11 more that unfold consciousness itself, organized as 5 pure (śuddha), 7 pure-impure (śuddhāśuddha: māyā + the five kañcukas + puruṣa), and 24 impure (aśuddha); NOT the Sāṃkhya 25 with extras bolted on, NOT a periodic table of substances, NOT a literal cosmogonic timeline."
darshana:
  - Śākta
  - Trika (Kashmir Shaivism)
school_scope: "Shared inheritance of the Śaiva-Śākta āgamic traditions; this entry documents the schema as Śākta-Trika vocabulary. Full Trika metaphysics (the system built ON the schema) is out of scope per concept-lock and points to a future bundle."
text_source: "Tantrāloka (tattva sections); Parāprāveśikā (Kṣemarāja's summary); Sāṃkhya Kārikā (for the inherited 25)"
tags: [tattva, 36-tattvas, kanchuka, maya-tattva, trika, shakta, samkhya]
not:
  - term: "the Samkhya 25 tattvas (same system, higher count)"
    why: "The 36 is not the 25 plus trivia. Sāṃkhya's map is dualist: puruṣa (consciousness) and prakṛti (matter) are ultimate and separate, and its 25 tattvas analyze prakṛti's evolution before a passive witness. The Śaiva-Śākta schema REINTERPRETS the 25 as the lower, 'impure' band of a single consciousness's self-manifestation, and adds 11 tattvas ABOVE puruṣa-prakṛti that Sāṃkhya cannot name: the stages by which the one consciousness-power contracts itself into the possibility of a limited knower at all. Same station names in the lower band; different railway."
    instead: "Define the 36-tattva schema as the Śaiva-Śākta map of one consciousness's self-manifestation: 5 pure tattvas (Śiva, Śakti, Sadāśiva, Īśvara, Śuddhavidyā), 7 pure-impure (māyā-tattva plus the five kañcukas, yielding puruṣa), and the 24 aśuddha tattvas inherited and reread from Sāṃkhya."
  - term: "a periodic table of cosmic substances"
    why: "Tattvas are not substances or building blocks; they are principles or stages of manifestation, phases in the logical unfolding from unlimited consciousness to limited experience. The schema reads bottom-up as a liberation map (recognizing each tattva as consciousness) as much as top-down as cosmology."
  - term: "a literal temporal sequence (first Siva, then Sakti, then...)"
    why: "The unfolding is logical-ontological, not chronological: all 36 are simultaneously operative in every moment of experience. Reading it as a creation timeline recreates the ex nihilo error the satkaryavada doctrine (cosmology-creation v0.7) already blocks."
related:
  - /concepts/kanchuka.md
  - /concepts/maya-shakta.md
  - /concepts/shiva-shakti.md
  - /concepts/cit-shakti.md
timestamp: "2026-07-01"
okf_version: "0.2"
license: "CC BY-SA 4.0"
---

# Ṣaṭtriṃśat-Tattva (the 36 Tattvas) -- षट्त्रिंशत्तत्त्व

**Not:** Sāṃkhya-plus-extras, a periodic table, a creation timeline

## What It Actually Means

The 36-tattva schema is the Śaiva-Śākta traditions' complete map of manifestation, and the architecture inside which most of this bundle's metaphysics lives. Its three bands:

1. **Śuddha (pure) tattvas, 1-5:** Śiva, Śakti, Sadāśiva, Īśvara, Śuddhavidyā: the internal articulation of the one consciousness-power before any limitation, phrased as the shifting balance of "I" (aham) and "this" (idam) within the absolute's self-awareness.
2. **Śuddhāśuddha (pure-impure) tattvas, 6-12:** māyā-tattva (see [maya-shakta.md](maya-shakta.md)) and its five kañcukas (see [kanchuka.md](kanchuka.md)), the contraction-operators that scale unlimited consciousness down to a limited knower; their joint output is puruṣa (13th), the individual conscious subject.
3. **Aśuddha (impure) tattvas, 13-36:** the Sāṃkhya-inherited 24 from prakṛti through the mahābhūtas (see wiki sankhya-25 and v0.7 trigunas-cosmological for the inherited band), reread as consciousness's own furthest self-articulation rather than as a second, alien reality.

The schema's philosophical payload sits in band 2: Sāṃkhya begins with an unexplained duality (why is the witness bound to matter at all?); the 36-tattva map answers by deriving both the witness's limitation and matter's apparent otherness from the one consciousness's free self-contraction. That is also why, read upward, the map is soteriology: liberation retraces the contraction (see [pratyabhijna.md](pratyabhijna.md)).

Per the concept-lock, this entry documents the schema as vocabulary; the full Trika system built on it (upāyas, absolute idealism debates) is future-bundle territory.

## Audience Metaphor

Sāṃkhya's 25 tattvas map the user space of an operating system: processes, memory, drivers, down to hardware, with the user (puruṣa) sitting outside as an inexplicable given. The 36-tattva schema adds the kernel: the eleven privileged operations by which the system instantiates a user at all: session creation, permission masking, resource quotas (the kañcukas are literally limitation-operators). Same user-space diagram below; an entirely different claim about where users come from.

## Citations

1. Parāprāveśikā (Kṣemarāja) -- the compact classical summary of the 36
2. Tantrāloka, tattva analyses (Abhinavagupta) -- see [references/tantraloka.md](../references/tantraloka.md)
3. Sāṃkhya Kārikā -- the inherited 25; cross-bundle: v0.7 references samkhya-karika.md
