Criticism
Shaktism has at times been dismissed as a superstitious, black magic-infested practice that hardly qualifies as a true religion at all. A representative criticism of this sort issued from an Indian scholar in the 1920s:
"The Tantras are the bible of Shaktism, identifying all Force with the female principle in nature and teaching an undue adoration of the wives of Shiva and Vishnu to the neglect of their male counterparts. It is certain that a vast number of the inhabitants of India are guided in their daily life by Tantrik teaching, and are in bondage to the gross superstitions inculcated in these writings. And indeed it can scarcely be doubted that Shaktism is Hinduism arrived at its worst and most corrupt stage of development."
Scholars variously attribute such criticism to ignorance, misunderstanding or sectarian bias on the part of some observers, as well as unscrupulous practices by some Shaktas. "It is in this context that many Hindus in India today deny the relevance of Tantra to their tradition, past or present, identifying what they call tantra-mantra as so much mumbo-jumbo."
Within Hinduism, it is not uncommon to encounter assertions that the Shaiva and Vaishnava schools of Hinduism lead to moksha, or spiritual liberation, whereas Shaktism leads only to siddhis (occult powers) and bhukti (material enjoyments) – or, at best, to Shaivism. For example, the late Shaiva leader Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami taught that worship of the feminine manifest is merely a vehicle for reaching the masculine unmanifest, or Parasiva. Subramuniya's successor, Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami, recently published an essay on different Hindu approaches to God that did not discuss Shaktism at all.
Shakta theologians counter that each of the Divine Mother's forms is a Brahma Vidya, or self-contained path to supreme wisdom. The sadhaka of any one of these goddess forms "attains ultimately, if his aspiration is such, the supreme purpose of life – Self-realisation and God-realisation." Mataji Devi Vanamali of the Vanamali ashram in Rishikesh summarizes the Shakta position as follows:
"In her transcendental aspect she is Prakriti, the form of the absolute Brahman. Therefore, when we worship the Divine Mother, we are not only offering adoration to the supreme in its aspect of motherhood but also adoring the supreme absolute. She is that aspect of the supreme power by whose grace alone we shall ultimately released from the darkness of ignorance and the bondage of maya and taken to the abode of immortal knowledge, immortality, and bliss."
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