ଶ୍ରୀ ଲଲିତା ଅଷ୍ଟକାରିକା ସ୍ତୋତ୍ରମ୍

Eight verses that do not praise Lalita so much as call her into being, which is what its subtitle says — a hymn of manifestation. Every verse ends on the same imperative: Lalita, supreme mistress, arise out of the fire of consciousness. That line is the whole point, since it is the Lalitopakhyana's account of her origin, the gods making an offering into a fire pit and the goddess rising out of it, and the hymn puts the reciter in the position of those gods. What changes from verse to verse is only the vocative before it: you whose form is the universe, you who are the self of all; you whose form is bliss; you who are knower and knowing and known at once; you who delight in the destruction of the world, Kalika, Bhadrakalika; and then, immediately after, you who delight in the rescue of the world.