Yoni Pitha
The Yoni Pitha is a most famous and sacred site.
Located near Gauhati, a city of the ancient kingdom of Kamarupa (presently Assam - a closely guarded territory in North-Eastern India), it comprises a cave-sanctuary and a shrine.
The foundations of the present temple date from the 16th century, but the cave itself has been a sacred place for much longer.
This cave-sanctuary is the most venerated and most important among the so-called pithas because it is here that the pilgrims come in order to visit and worship the divine yoni, and to drink from the red waters she produces.
The celebrated shrine's name refers to the Goddess Kamakhya, who is thought to reside here and who, in Tantric literature, is regarded as an aspect or manifestation of the Great Goddess Mahamaya and/or Shakti (when prepared for sexual play and enjoyment).
Through the shrine one can access, if allowed, the actual cave-sanctuary that houses the Yoni mandala.
This Yoni of the Great Goddess is, in fact, a natural rock-formation in the Manobhavaguha-cave at Mt. Nila, and it is regarded as axis mundi; the center of the world.
Throughout the year, the cleft is moist due to a natural spring within the cave.
But it is also here that one can witness the menstruation of the Goddess and/or of the Earth, an event that is celebrated yearly during the Indian month of Sravanah or Ambuvachi ; in our terms, a period that is part July, part August.
Here, where the sacred stone has the shape of Her Yoni, a red and intoxicating water wells out of the stone's cleft; water that is regarded as the menstrual fluid of the Great Mother.
In the absence of photographic material - Assam is difficult to get into - we have to rely on the sparse information gleaned from sacred texts and on a few contemporary, non-Hindu travelers who did visit the temple and the secret it hides.
A sacred text of approximately the 14th century, the Yogini Tantra, relates that the well within the cave "reaches down into the netherworld" and that the actual opening of the Yoni "measures twelve fingers all around".
According to local belief, and attesting once more to the miraculous powers usually associated with the Goddess' Yoni, it is said that "one who drinks from it will not be reborn"; i.e. will be liberated in the highest sense of the word - at least within a religion that regards life as being eternally bound to suffering.
