The goddess who is present where everything else has gone
Warning
Do not ask her for prosperity she is the other lesson
Resonance
The bereaved the dispossessed those at the end of a house
Symbols
Winnowing basketCrowChariotSmokeEmpty house
Mythology Summary
Dhumavati is the seventh Mahavidya, the smoke-coloured widow who rides a chariot with a crow banner and holds a winnowing basket. She is the goddess of poverty, loss, emptiness and the cremation ground, often identified with Alakshmi or Jyeshtha, the elder sister of Lakshmi, and her temple in Varanasi is one of the few dedicated to her. The tradition holds that she gives what the other goddesses cannot: liberation by showing that the world is empty.
Modern Practice
She is honoured where a life has been stripped - bereavement, loss of status, the end of a marriage, the failure of a house - and her practice is not the pursuit of prosperity but the recognition that emptiness is not nothing. Her Varanasi shrine and the Bengali Shakta lineages keep the practice.