Abstract:

BEARING THE HEAT: MOTHER GODDESS WORSHIP IN SOUTH INDIA presents wide-ranging ways devotees worship the Mother Goddess in South India. These include carrying fire pots, becoming possessed, feeding young girls or old women, worshipping female ancestors, dancing, drumming, exorcising, tongue-trilling, darshan (seeing the auspicious divine), wearing the preferred color yellow, waving burning camphor before the Goddess, prasad (receiving sacred gifts from the divine), body piercing, singing devotional hymns, and assuming the appearance of the Mother Goddess. Human suffering and pain are conceived of as heat. Devotees transfer their heat to the Mother Goddess, then lovingly cool her (with such substances as milk, lemons, and coconut water), and worship her."