raktāmbarālohitālakṣmyaṣṭottaraśatanāmāvaliḥ

A Lakshmi almost nobody expects: red-robed and red-tongued, eight-armed and four-faced, three-eyed, her body the colour of vermilion, terrible to look at, carrying a red discus and mace, a sword, a skull, a lotus and a red conch. The meditation verses come first and set that image plainly, and only then do the hundred and eight names follow, offered with a shifting head of seeds — sometimes Shrim and Hrim, sometimes Aim, Hrim and Klim — as the tantric namavalis in this collection tend to do. It belongs to the stratum in which Lakshmi is approached as a fierce goddess rather than a gentle one, and it is a useful corrective to the assumption that the Lakshmi literature is all lotuses and gold.