Lecture Series with Ellen Coon
Hosted by Bodhisattva Gallery
Date: 19 October 2024
The Bode Pyakhan: How Shakti Takes Form and Dances in the Kathmandu Valley
Ellen Coon is an independent scholar of religion who has been collecting Newar narratives of feminine divinity in the Kathmandu Valley for almost forty years. In this talk, she will share stories of her early efforts to understand the meaning of shakti, and how this primordial female power comes to be embodied in goddesses and in many other forms that we can worship.
The story of the origin of the Bode pyakhan, one of the many masked Astha Matrika dances in the Kathmandu Valley, reveals how goddesses are living energies that move through...