Ma Dhumavati

Color- Brown/Ash

Flower- Bluish white

Special day- Saturday

Anniversary-Jyeshtha Shukla Ashtamee

Shiv(initiating light)- Kaalbhairav

Raatri(energy of Shiv)-Daarunraatri

Worshipped – to remove black magic, curse done by others, to overcome

sadness, sorrow, tragedy, disease, poverty.

Beej Mantra– Dhoom

Direction: East-South (Aaagney)

Mantra: Dhoom Dhoom Dhoomavati Phat Swaha

She is the divine smoke screen (Dhum= smoke, Vati = cover) in the form of old
age and death. Only the ardent devotee is able to see beyond the fear of
mortality to the Goddess’s promise of immortality. Dhumavati is ugly,
unsteady, and angry. She is tall and wears dirty clothes. Her ears are ugly and
rough, she has long teeth, and her breasts hang down. She has a long nose. She
has the form of a widow. She rides in a chariot decorated with the emblem of
the crow. Her eyes are fearsome, and her hands tremble. In one hand she
holds a winnowing basket, and with the other hand she makes the gesture of
conferring boons. Her nature is rude. She is always hungry and thirsty and
looks unsatisfied. She likes to create strife, and she is always frightful in
appearance.

The crow which appears as her emblem atop her chariot is a carrion eater and
symbol of death. Indeed, she herself is sometimes said to resemble a crow.
Crow also denotes the human mind which is never satisfied. It always has this
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or that desire. Every desire cannot to be fulfilled. The dress she wears has
been taken from a corpse in the cremation ground. She is said to be the
embodiment of the tamas gun, the aspect of creation associated with lust and
ignorance. Her thousand-name hymn says that she likes liquor and meat, both
of which are tamsi.
According to some scholars she is “the aspect of reality that is old, ugly, and
unappealing”. She is generally associated with all that is inauspicious: she
dwells in areas of the earth that are perceived to be desolate, such as deserts,
in abandoned houses, in quarrels, in mourning children, in hunger and thirst,
and particularly in widows.
She kills our desires that we neither see nor envisage-like false hopes and ego.

The goddess tends to be in a sad state of mind and is quarrelsome. Her eyes
are glaring red, stern, and without tenderness. Her lips too are red, covered
with blood.

Dhumavati is associated with the moonless night. She is a widow. She is

unmovable and unmoved. She is depicted astride a horseless chariot in a
cremation ground filled with smoke. Her Dush Mahavidya mantra contains
only one beej syllable: the power to obscure, hide but also, protect and
prepare. She is recommended for ‘Saturn afflictions’ which can be understood
as needed to overcome powerful obstacles, impediments and ill-fortune. She
ends ephemeral expectations because the adherent cannot see and nor
imagine them, base desires and false ambitions (for the same reason), and
egoism. She grounds Her worshippers in the transformation of death. She is
regarded as preparing adherents for Kali but is complete in Herself.

She is an amalgam of Nirrti (goddess of death), Jyestha (deity of misfortune)

and Alakshmi ( deity of poverty) , worthy of running away because all the
three are inauspicious goddesses.

All the Mahavidyas have their respective Shiva (centre of consciousness), but
Dhumavati is the only shakti who is without any Shiva hence called Widow.

There are for causes of sufferings/pains for us…Rudra, Yama, Varuna, Niaritti.
All types of fevers, viruses, mass deaths, destruction by fire are caused by
RUDRA. Coma, Death, cutting of organs etc. is caused by Yama. Arthiritis,
asthma, pains in body, numbing of organs are caused by Varuna.

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She is present amidst types of grieves, poverty, widowhood, death of children.
Such is the Great Mother Dhumavati. A mother never leaves her child in
distress.

Beggars, prostitutes, deserted land, naked mountains (without greenery)

deserted Buildings, torn and old clothes, hunger, thirst, weeping, are her
manifestations.
But it is all symbolic. In fact she removes all these problems. The crow is the
symbol of unsatisfied desires. We always have some desire and it is never
pacified. She cures all these evils residing in us. She removes illness. Her
devotees never face any problem of huge manifestation and they themselves
become giving shelter to distressed people.