śrīṣoḍaśīvidyākavacam (siddhayāmala taṃtra)

An armour of the Ṣoḍaśī Vidyā from the Siddhayāmala Tantra, framed as the Goddess asking Mahādeva for the kavaca he had previously only hinted at. His reply sets the terms before giving it: hear, goddess, I shall declare the armour that is hard for the gods to obtain, not to be made public, supremely secret, and giving the practitioner what he seeks. The record keeps the viniyoga and the placings that a kavaca requires. Its closing verse states the relation between armour and mantra in the sharpest form found anywhere in this corpus, and it is a warning rather than a promise: whoever recites the Śrīvidyā constantly without knowing this armour does not obtain its fruit, and obtains instead a wound from a weapon. The armour is presented as a precondition of the practice, not an addition to it.