Dakini Series 2: Before Creation

This is the second in a series of articles on the Dakini, drawn from our Dakini video series on the Siddha Tantra Arts YouTube channel. If you prefer to receive the teaching by watching rather than reading, the full video is embedded below. And if something in this piece shifts something in you, or raises a question, we would genuinely like to hear from you. Leave a comment at the bottom.

Before Creation

If you ask most people, even most tantric practitioners, where Ḍākinīs come from, they will place them somewhere within creation. Somewhere in the hierarchy of beings. Above pisachas, perhaps below devatas. A category. A species.

Siddha Dharma says something radically different: Ḍākinīs predate creation.

There are beings within the Ḍākinī maṇḍala known as Guhya Ḍākinīs, hidden Ḍākinīs, secret Ḍākinīs, who manifested before the emergence of time itself. Before Kāla. Before the universe had a clock. And they hold the power to dissolve time.

Let that land. Not entities within the cosmic order. Entities that predate the cosmic order.

According to the tradition, before manifestation, Bhagwan Svacchanda Bhairav existed beyond all forms of existence: one, undivided. And from within himself, he manifested a Shakti called Ati Kāla (अति काला), supreme darkness.

This is not darkness as absence. Not the darkness of ignorance. This is the primordial ground, the infinite dark space that holds all stars within it, the womb from which all light and form would emerge. Ati Kāla is considered the primal Ḍākinī. The first. The source from which all other Ḍākinīs originated.

In another telling within the tradition, Ḍākinīs are described as companions of Goddess Yogamaya herself. Not servants. Not creations. Companions.

Now, why does this matter? Why am I not just jumping to the practical material?

Because if you think Ḍākinīs are a category of being within creation, like a species that evolved or was created at some point, then you can classify them, rank them, decide they are "originally malevolent" and "later incorporated." You can write their history as though they have a starting point.

But if Ḍākinīs predate creation itself, then you cannot trace their "evolution." There is no "originally" for something that was there before origins. The textual record, which we will discuss in the next article, becomes what it actually is: not the history of the Ḍākinī, but the history of human beings gradually encountering a reality that was always already there.

The river did not begin where you first saw it emerge from the mountain. It was flowing inside the mountain long before it became visible in the plains.

Now I want to show you the structure. The Ḍākinī Kula Maṇḍala. And I want to teach it not as a list (you can read the list on siddhapedia) but as a living principle.

There are seven primary Ḍākinīs. Each one resides in a different cosmic realm, corresponds to a different chakra in your body, and has a specific number of manifestation forms. And the pattern of those forms tells you something profound.

At the base, Mūlādhāra, the root, sits Ḍākinī, red in color, with sixteen forms. Sixteen ways she can manifest. Maximum diversity. Maximum variation. This is the earthly level, where reality appears in its most fragmented, complex, differentiated state.

As you move upward, through Rākinī at Svādhiṣṭhāna with twelve forms, Lākinī at Maṇipūra with ten, Kākinī at Anāhata with eight, Śākinī at Viśuddha with six, Hākinī at Ājñā with four, watch what is happening. Sixteen. Twelve. Ten. Eight. Six. Four.

The forms are reducing. Diversity is condensing. Multiplicity is moving toward unity.

And at the crown, Sahasrāra, Satya Loka, sits Hiraṇya Sāmrājñī. The golden empress. With one form. One. Singular. Complete. Undivided.

The entire architecture of consciousness is encoded in this maṇḍala. The movement from multiplicity to unity. From fragmentation to wholeness. From the many to the one. This is not a catalogue of deities. This is a map of how reality works: how shakti differentiates as it descends into manifestation, and how it reunifies as consciousness ascends toward its source.

Look at your own life. Sixteen identities. Sixteen tabs open. Sixteen personas, one for work, one for family, one for social media, one for the version of yourself you show when you are afraid. That is Mūlādhāra. Maximum fragmentation. The maṇḍala is not mythology. It is describing your psychological state, and it is showing you the direction home.

And you are living inside this map right now.

The principle of yathā brahmāṇḍe, tathā piṇḍe (as is the macrocosm, so is the microcosm) means the Ḍākinī Kula Maṇḍala maps directly onto your body. Each Ḍākinī presides over a chakra. In the early Kaula texts, the six Ḍākinīs from Ḍākinī to Hākinī are called Dhātunāthās, the tissue-Yoginīs, and the mapping is specific:

Ḍākinī presides over Śukra dhātu (the sexual fluid). Rākinī over Asthi (bone). Lākinī over Majjā (marrow). Kākinī over Medas (fat). Śākinī over Māṃsa (flesh). Hākinī over Rakta (blood). And the tradition speaks of Ojas (vitality itself) as the eighth dhātu, the Mahādhātu, connected to the crown.

Every beat of your heart involves Kākinī at Anāhata. Every thought involves Hākinī at Ājñā. Every moment of grounding involves Ḍākinī at Mūlādhāra. These are not abstract celestial beings "out there." They are the energies animating your physical existence right now, in this moment, as you read this.

And this goes deeper than the chakras. The tradition teaches that Ḍākinī is hidden in the very vibration of all your nāḍīs, every sensory channel, every nerve current. All touch, all seeing, all hearing, all tasting: everything is vibration. And Ḍākinī is the śakti hidden in that vibration. Her presence is not localized. It is everywhere the senses reach.

The body has eight Ḍākinī nāḍīs, subtle channels that connect directly to the brain. The yogamārgī (the practitioner on the yoga path) awakens these eight nāḍīs through Ḍākinī sādhana. This is not metaphor. This is a specific practice within the Kula Kuṇḍalinī system.

The question is not whether you are connected to the Ḍākinī Kula Maṇḍala. You are. The question is whether you are aware of it.

This is why I am sharing this architecture, not as a spiritual catalogue, but as something with practical consequences for how you live.

When you feel creatively blocked, when no new ideas come, when everything feels stale, the tradition would say: Hākinī at the Ājñā is dormant. When you feel emotionally numb, unable to connect: Kākinī at the heart. When your willpower collapses, when you cannot act on what you know to be right: Lākinī at the Maṇipūra. These are not metaphors. These are the tradition's own diagnostic framework, as specific as any system of medicine, and older than most.

The Ḍākinī sādhana path works with these centres directly. Not as visualization exercises but as lived, embodied practice. And the tradition says plainly: with the grace of Ḍākinī, one can awaken the Kula Kuṇḍalinī Śakti. Ḍākinī gives the siddhi (the perfection) of Kula Kuṇḍalinī. She is both the path and the power that moves along it.

At the summit of this entire maṇḍala, Hiraṇya Sāmrājñī, the Parama Ḍākinī, is associated with Ma Kurukullā, the Kula Devi of Kaulantak Peeth. Kurukullā is called the "Goddess of Ḍākinīs," the "supreme Ḍākinī goddess."

She contains the principle without being confined by it. Which is itself a teaching about the nature of supreme shakti: it can express through any form without being reduced to that form.

So you now have two things. The origin: before time, before creation, companions of Yogamaya. And the architecture: seven-fold, descending from unity to multiplicity, mapped onto your body, presided over by Kurukullā.

What you do not yet have is an explanation for why, if all of this is true, the textual record seems to tell a completely different story. That is what we address next, and I promise you, I will not sidestep the evidence.

All teachings in this series are drawn from the authoritative knowledge corpus of Kaulantak Peeth, and the Siddha Dharma tradition as revealed by Kaulantak Nath Mahasiddha Ishaputra.

If you wish to reference this article:

APA: Nath, A. (2026). Before Creation. Siddha Tantra Arts. https://www.siddhatantraarts.com/articles/dakini-before-creation

Chicago: Mahayogi Ashutosh Nath. "Before Creation." Siddha Tantra Arts, 2026. https://www.siddhatantraarts.com/articles/dakini-before-creation