Shiva is a unique goddess of cosmic scale who names herself “the destroyer of the world” and “lady of time and destruction”. She gives her true name when asked.
| Type | Deity |
| Other names | Mahakala, Lord of Knowledge, Mahayavara, Lord of Time |
| Spanish entry | Shiva |
Description
She has four arms. One hand holds “a kind of bowl, a flame”, the flame of destruction, with which she “controls all the destruction she can carry out”. Another holds a double drum; another, three serpents. The fourth is empty, pointing down beside the leg. Her left leg is raised, a posture meaning liberation.
The objects are separable: taking one takes the power it governs. That “she was said to have four arms” may imply a past loss.
Her body bears her sacred symbols: the OM sign, the third eye, a crescent moon (“about to be filled; it wants its crown”) and matted hair. She has three faces. She “has a thousand names”; recorded among them are Mahakala, Lord of Knowledge, Mahayavara and Lord of Time.
Powers and abilities
She fights with the dance of death, which begins visibly before she strikes. She is a single entity, defined by the end of the world and mastery of time; her place in the trinity makes her part of the pantheon’s structure.
She is associated with a bounded place whose violation brings a curse worse than death, and with an offer of six doors. She mentioned Maya, without saying what binds them.
Conflicting accounts
- One school holds she is the destroying form of the trinity, one of three.
- Another holds she is “creator, destroyer and preserver, all at once, three faces”: the whole trinity in one figure.
Open questions
- The bounded place, its limits and curse, and the six doors are not explained.
- The drum’s and serpents’ functions are not stated.
- Whether she has cult, temple or worshipers in the New World is not recorded.
- A passage about “a symbol given to her by the San Francis” is garbled and unidentified.