Skt., sakti: energy
Hundreds of pages could be and have been filled with descriptions, discussions and definitions of this most complex goddess of the East - and probably of the entire known world - yet we will try here to give a concise sketch of the essential traits of this deity and of the associated concept of the female/feminine energy in the universe as the primal cause of All and Everything.
In short, we can say that Shakti as goddess and symbol represents the Ultimate Female Principle of Energy and Motion without which there could be no manifested universe. Her name is in fact a feminine noun of India's sacred language which, in our terms, means "(creative) energy" and/or "power".
According to Ajit Mookerjee - an authority on Tantra and Indian religion - this universal principle consists of such important ingredients as cit ("consciousness, intelligence"), ananda ("joy, bliss"), iccha ("will"), jnana ("knowledge") and kriya ("action").
Reading or studying Indian religious and philosophical texts and the associated commentaries, one may also come across terms which combine the name of the goddess with other terms or concepts and one finds expressions such as
each of these terms implying - by the use of Shakti - that the concept/energy in question is a feminine one.
It is no wonder, given an all-encompassing deity as this one, that Indian religion and mythology has somehow sub-deivided that greatness, and thus Shakti is said to have ten major manifestations, known as Mahavidyas.
However, in sacred scriptures and in contemporary works concerning Eastern religion and mythology, we find that the term Shakti is not only used as indicated above, for the Great Goddess, but also as a title of honor for women who practice ritual s.exuality.
Further confusion is caused by the fact that shakti is also used as a term in Tantric subtle physiology; where each chakra has a shakti as ruling goddess representing and expressing the energy of that subtle plexus.