Shaktism - Expansion Beyond South Asia

Expansion Beyond South Asia

The practice of Shaktism is no longer confined to South Asia. Traditional Shakta temples have sprung up across Southeast Asia, the Americas, Europe, Australia and elsewhere – some enthusiastically attended by non-Indian as well as Indian diaspora Hindus. Examples in the United States include the Kali Mandir in Laguna Beach, California; and Sri Rajarajeswari Peetam, a Srividya temple in rural Rush, New York. The Rush temple was, in fact, recently the subject an in-depth academic study exploring the "dynamics of diaspora Hinduism," including the serious entry and involvement of non-Indians in traditional Hindu religious practice.

Shaktism has also become a focus of some Western spiritual seekers attempting to construct new Goddess-centered faiths. An academic study of Western Kali enthusiasts noted that, "as shown in the histories of all cross-cultural religious transplants, Kali devotionalism in the West must take on its own indigenous forms if it is to adapt to its new environment." However, these East-West fusions can also raise complex and troubling issues of cultural appropriation.

Some writers and thinkers, "notably feminists and participants in New Age spirituality who are attracted to goddess worship", have explored Kali in a new light. She is considered as a "symbol of wholeness and healing, associated especially with repressed female power and sexuality." These new interpretations mainly originate in "feminist sources, almost none of which base their interpretations on a close reading of Kali's Indian background", and tend to demonstrate the difficulty of "import the worship of a goddess from another culture when the deep symbolic meanings embedded in the native culture are not available."

A powerful motivation behind Western interest is that many central concepts of Shaktism – including aspects of kundalini yoga as well as goddess worship – were once "common to the Hindu, Chaldean, Greek and Roman civilizations," but were largely superseded in the West, as well as the Near and Middle East, with the rise of the Abrahamic religions:

"Of these four great ancient civilizations, working knowledge of the inner forces of enlightenment has survived on a mass scale only in India. Only in India has the inner tradition of the Goddess endured. This is the reason the teachings of India are so precious. They offer us a glimpse of what our own ancient wisdom must have been. The Indians have preserved our lost heritage. Today it is up to us to locate and restore the tradition of the living Goddess. We would do well to begin our search in India, where for not one moment in all of human history have the children of the living Goddess forgotten their Divine Mother."