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What do the myths of the Devī Māhātmya mean?
What do they signify for the spiritual life?
What do they tell us about the mechanics of consciousness, capture, freedom, and power?
Ancient India's most celebrated scripture to the Goddess, the Devī Māhātmya has been chanted across the Indic world for millennia to summon her grace. Its three episodes narrate the Goddess's triumphant battles against demonic forces — but these are no mere battle stories. Beneath the mythic surface lies a precise map of spiritual transformation: from cosmic sleep to sovereign awakening, from capture to freedom, from fragmentation to the recognition of the One who underlies the many.
This course decodes the Devī Māhātmya's rich symbolism to reveal what it teaches about consciousness and its liberation.
- What does divine delusion look like — and how is it dissolved?
- What does the slaying of the Buffalo Demon tell us about tyranny, power theft, and the path of empowerment?
- What does the Goddess's multiplication of forms reveal about māyā — and her ultimate triumph about the nature of reality?
- And what does her promised return, age after age, tell us about how to live?
The Devī Māhātmya's themes are not ancient curiosities. Shapeshifting leaders, collective capture, the commodification of the sacred, the toxic masculine, the search for sovereignty — the demons the Goddess slays are reigning still.
Drawing on over twenty years of study, recitation, and reflection — including two scholarly monographs on this very text — this course brings the Devī Māhātmya's depth into direct contact with the inner life and the modern moment. Each episode is read closely for its narrative craft and spiritual significance, in the tradition of the best mythological storytelling: not lecturing about the text, but letting the text speak. This is the Devī Māhātmya as it has rarely been taught — with scholarly precision, symbolic depth, and the clarity that only long intimacy with a text can produce.
Six modules released Mondays
March 23, March 30, April 6, April 13, April 20, April 27.
Live Zoom Tutorials on Thursdays 1pm-2pm
March 26, April 2, April 9, April 16, April 23, April 30.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
• Identify the structure, narrative frame, and literary significance of the Devī Māhātmya within the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa tradition.
• Interpret the three episodes and their hymns as a unified map of spiritual transformation — from divine slumber to sovereign awakening.
• Analyze the symbolic significance of the text's central demons — Madhu-Kaiṭabha, Mahiṣāsura, Śumbha-Niśumbha — as archetypal forces within both the cosmos and the individual psyche
• Articulate the text's core teaching on consciousness: how capture operates, how delusion is sustained, and how the Goddess enacts liberation.
• Recognize the Tantric dimensions of the text: embodiment, blood, initiation, subtle body
• Engage the Devī Māhātmya's feminine vision — divine immanence, shared power, ecology, and the Goddess-and-God relationship — as a coherent metaphysical and ethical framework.
• Situate the Devī Māhātmya within its living tradition — understanding how a text of this depth continues to function as a source of grace, guidance, and renewal.
• Apply the text's wisdom to the question of the life well lived: world affirmation, devotion, asceticism, and the Dharmic Double Helix.
• Recognize the Devī Māhātmya not merely as ancient scripture but as a living map for navigating the modern moment — its demons operative, its Goddess victorious.
• Articulate the text's ultimate teaching: that consciousness, rightly oriented, is sovereign — and understand what the Goddess's promised return demands of the one who has heard it.
REGISTER NOWCourse Structure
Module 1: Divine Darkness: The Goddess as Cosmic Slumber
Module 2: Demonic Delusion: Sovereignty, Slaughter and Sacred Empowerment
Module 3: Mother’s Māyā: The Goddess Deals with Demons
Module 4: Righteous Wrath: The Invincibility of the Fierce Feminine
Module 5: Divine Dispensation: Boons, Blessings and the Grace of the Goddess
Module 6: Glory to the Goddess: Living Wisdom
12+ Hours of Video Lessons
Valuable for the simply curious, longtime yogis, expert practitioners and everyone in between
Downloadable Notes
Easily follow along with and refer back to the class slides
Access Anytime, Anywhere
Whether day or night, wherever you are, you have forever access to this on-demand course
Ancient Wisdom, Modern Applications
Learn mantra and other techniques to apply teachings to your life
Join The Indian Wisdom School
Become a part of our community and gain access to exclusive events and lessons
Yoga Alliance Credit
This course counts as 12 hours of YA Continuing Education Credit
"I first came across Dr. Balkaran through his work with the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and have since taken a number of courses with him, all of which have been fabulous. Dr. Balkaran has a gift for synthesizing complex information and teaches with a storytelling style that supports comprehension."
Natalie Rousseau
Yoga Educator
"Dr. Balkaran is a teacher who understands the needs and quests of today’s spiritual seekers and practitioners and his School is a unique and a much-awaited opportunity for any interested-minded students to access the complex realm of the Indian philosophy and mythology explained in an approachable and engaging manner."
Aijan Kenenbaeva
Yoga Practitioner and Hinduism Student
"As a graduate student in the blossoming field of Yoga Studies, I cannot express the proper gratitude for Dr. Raj and his method of mystical swagger. He has tremendously assisted my personal understanding of inherently foreign concepts embedded within Indian wisdom and myth."
Dustin Nicholas Holmes
Naropa University, Wisdom Traditions
M.A. Yoga Studies
"I have greatly enjoyed taking Dr. Balkaran’s online classes! His style of presenting content is a rich synthesis of rigorous academic scholarship and his own experiential insights which add depth, humor and clarity to the often misconstrued concepts of Indian mythology."
Srinalini Sankar
French Teacher and Lifelong Student
Meet Your Instructor
Dr. Raj Balkaran is the founder of The Indian Wisdom School and a scholar of Sanskrit literature specializing in the Devī Māhātmya. He holds a doctorate in Religious Studies, serves as a Continuing Studies Tutor at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, and is the author of two academic monographs on this very text — including The Goddess and the King in Indian Myth: Ring Composition, Royal Power, and the Dharmic Double Helix. He is the author of the popular The Stories Behind the Poses — with over 35,000 copies sold — hosts the New Books in Indian Religions podcast, and has been interviewed by the BBC, CBC, and other major media as a public intellectual on Indian wisdom traditions.
Alongside his academic career, Dr. Balkaran was initiated into Indian wisdom traditions by multiple lineal teachers and spent over a decade in apprenticeship with a renowned spiritual master. What he brings to this course is the fruit of over twenty years of daily practice, academic study, recitation, initiation, and spiritual contemplation — the Glories of the Goddess not merely as object of study, but as living wisdom much needed for our modern moment.
