Great Cosmic Power Bhuvaneshwari’s symbolic description
Bhuvaneshwari’s beauty is often mentioned. The famous Tantrasara treaty describes her as a woman of beauteous face, outlined by the weighty hanging curly hair resembling a swarm of black bees. She smiles kindly with her large warm, radiant eyes, her high straight nose and fully red lips. Her firm breasts are smeared with sandal and saffron paste. Her slender waist, thighs, hips and navel are delightful. Her shapely neck is adorned with jewels while her beauteous arms are meant for embraces.
In the hymns dedicated to her, the Shaktapramoda treaty describes her as a beautiful young girl with a mysterious smile and a charming yoni (the feminine sexual organ). It is said that her symbol is the triangle (symbolic representation of the yoni). Here she is described as having four arms, two of them performing gestures that grant boons and respectively dispel fear. These gestures express her kindness to the whole world and especially to devoted disciples. In her other two hands she holds a noose and a goad. Divine Mother Bhuvaneshwari uses the nose to control the adorer’s energy and the goad to discipline the aspirant, thus helping him attain spiritual enlightenment as she bestows Her Grace upon him.
As for the iconographic image of Great Cosmic Power Bhuvaneshwari, she resembles Tripura Sundari, radiating and beneficent. Bhuvaneshwari is the color of the rising sun with the crescent moon in her hair, four hands and three eyes. With two of her hands she holds a noose and a goad, while with the other two hands she dispels fear (abhaya mudra) and grants wonderful spiritual gifts. Sometimes she is represented as holding a lotus and a bowl of jewels in two of her hands and at other times her left leg is depicted as resting upon a bowl of jewels. Bhuvaneshwari is seated on a bed resembling a throne consisting of the representation of Shive’s five forms (such as they were described in the case of Great Cosmic Power Tripura Sundari) where she controls and organizes motion in the entire Universe (Macrocosm).
At other times Bhuvaneshwari is depicted as holding a fruit in one hand while with the other hand she grants protection (raksha). She is also described as golden-yellow, red or blue, each of these colors symbolizing the three Guna-s. Another image depicts her as having 20 arms holding various objects such as: bow and arrows, scissors, sword, spear, club, disc, trident, noose, and mace, conch and garland of flowers displaying a protective boon-giving fear-not pose (abhaya mudra). In another pose, she holds a red lotus and a jewel box with her two hands. She sits naked on a red lotus in a pond full of lotus flowers.
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