ଶ୍ରୀମହାକାଲଵିରଚିତଂ ଶ୍ରୀ କାଲୀ କର୍ପୂର ସ୍ତୋତ୍ରମ୍

The Karpuradi stotra, ascribed to Mahakala himself, and its opening verses do not name the mantra they teach: they spell it in riddles. Camphor without its middle and final vowels, joined to the moon and the left eye; Ishana with the moon on his left ear. Each verse assembles a seed letter by letter out of the conventional names for letters, so the mantra is handed over in the open without ever being written down. Then come the meditations, and they are cremation-ground meditations. Between them stands the verse the hymn is loved for, in which the poet says that neither Brahma nor Vishnu nor Shiva knows her highest nature, that devotion alone is making him speak, and asks her to forgive it, since anger at a beast is unfitting. Its later verses set out the practice of the left-hand tradition, and they go further in that direction than anything else in this corpus.