Tarapith

(“Tara’s seat”) Town and sacred site
(tirtha) in the state of West Bengal,
about 130 miles northwest of Calcutta.
Tarapith is famous as one of the Shakti
Pithas, a network of sites sacred to the
Goddess that spreads throughout the
subcontinent. Each Shakti Pitha marks
the site where a body part of the dismembered goddess Sati fell to earth,
taking form there as a different goddess;
in the case of Tarapith, the body part
was Sati’s cornea (tara). Tarapith’s presiding goddess, Tara, is a fierce form of
the Goddess, who has strong associations with tantra, a secret ritually based
religious practice. In modern times
much of the shrine’s fame comes from
an unusual ascetic named Vamakhepa
(1843–1911), whose apparent irrationality and lack of respect for generally
accepted norms—he once urinated on
the temple’s image of Tara to show his
contempt for a deity made of iron—was
a perfect match for Tara herself. Tarapith
is said to bestow supernormal powers
(siddhis) on those who worship there;
this makes Tarapith not only a very powerful place but also a potentially dangerous one. For further information see
E. Alan Morinis, Pilgrimage in the Hindu
Tradition, 1984. See also pitha.