śrī bhadrakālyaṣṭakam

Eight verses whose refrain asks one thing throughout: may Bhadrakali, the giver of good, quickly quiet the host of our enemies. The first sets her dancing in the cremation ground when the world has gone into the fire of dissolution, lovely with a garland of heads, the shell of the cosmic egg splitting at her loud laughter. The second recalls Madhu and Kaitabha and the fear the lotus-born was lifted out of. The fifth turns to Raktabija: the countless demons sprung from his blood, with their elephants and horses and chariots, taken into her mouth, and the flood of it drunk down. The closing verse names its use without softening it — this is repeated by one who wants an enemy destroyed, and it also wards off hostile planets.