ஶ்ரீகுப்ஜிகாவர்ணநஸ்தோத்ரம்

A description rather than a praise, which is what its title says: the goddess Kubjika set out feature by feature for the meditation to be built on. She is dark as the petal of a blue lotus, six-faced and six-lighted, of eighteen kinds of the power of consciousness, with twelve arms, seated at ease on a lion throne set on a corpse-lotus. What follows is unusual even in this literature: her ornaments are all serpents, and each is named. Karkota is the girdle, Takshaka is above it, Vasuki is the necklace at the throat, Kulika is at her ears, the tortoise makes the circle of the earrings, and Padma and Mahapadma are at the brows. Her twelve hands are then counted out — rosary, skull-staff, conch and book on one side; trident, mirror, sword, jewelled garland, goad and bow on the other — and her faces given their colours.