One of the most frequently asked questions Shri Praveen receives — week after week, from women across the globe — is about menstrual periods: "I have started a Sankalp (vow), now my periods have arrived. Do I stop?" Most Gurus across traditions will say yes, take a break. Shri Praveen's answer comes not from convention, but from a deeper inquiry into Dhyana and the very nature of Ma Matangi, the Tantric Saraswati, the 227th name in the Sahasranamavali of Ma Adya Kali.
Who Is Ma Matangi?
Ma Matangi is the Tantric form of Ma Saraswati — the Devi of all knowledge, speech, and the arts. She appears in the Sahasranamavali as name number 2-2-7 (totalling 11), immediately after Ma Saraswati at 2-2-6 (totalling 10, still within the Dasa Mahavidyas). Ma Matangi is 11 — she is above the ten.
Her iconography carries specific markers:
- Green colour — Shared with Madurai Meenakshi, Valli Devi, Kanchi Kamakshi, and Ma Kamakhya. All these forms carry the same Shakti. The parrot, a sign of knowledge and beauty, is common to all of them.
- The parrot — A symbol found in the shrines of Madurai Meenakshi, Kanchi Kamakshi, Ma Kamakhya, and Valli Devi — all deeply connected to the Kartikeya lineage and Shakti Peetha energy.
- Sweat on her form — She is depicted not at her most comfortable. The sweat represents that she is worshipped outside of ease, outside of societal comfort.
- Unkempt hair — Not arranged or managed to society's standards. Dishevelled, free, un-groomed.
These are not arbitrary artistic choices. Each marker is a teaching in itself.
The Great Transition: From Saraswati to Matangi
The journey from Ma Saraswati to Ma Matangi is the journey from the external deity to the internal Devi.
When you go to Ma Saraswati, she is placed on a pristine altar. You offer Naivedyam (food offerings) without tasting it — first bite goes to the deity, because she is above and outside you. The home of a Sri Vidya upasaka will be immaculate, arranged with crystal clarity, every vessel shining, every inch clean. This is the Sattvic form of worship — utterly valid, but it still places Devi outside the body.
Ma Matangi reverses this entirely. She says: "Take the first bite yourself. Give me the second."
Will you ever offer the second bite to a deity? Never — your conditioning will not allow it. Yet that is precisely the teaching. Because Ma Matangi is not external to you. She is within. When you consume the first bite, she consumes it through you. You are the Yantra. She is inside.
The principle is direct: Ma Saraswati — look outward. Ma Matangi — look within. The photograph becomes secondary. You become the living shrine.
Inauspiciousness as the Path to Realization
Ma Matangi's very vidhi (worship method) is built on what the world considers inauspicious. Her entire teaching is a systematic dismantling of comfort, social expectation, and conventional standards of purity.
- Unkempt clothes — If you take an 11-day or 48-day Sankalp in her name, you do not wash the clothes you wear during that period. Society will say you are dirty. But if the stink is within you, and she resides within you, and the first bite is yours — then the sweat and stink are also hers.
- Unwashed hair — You do not comb your hair for the duration of the Sankalp. Society will judge. But he who sees beauty in the unkempt, divinity in the dishevelled, has taken a step beyond physicality.
- Allowing flowers to fully decay — In Shri Praveen's own shrine, every flower offered is allowed to rot completely inside the Garbhagriha (inner sanctum). If you accept the flower at its most fragrant and beautiful, you must also accept it at full decay. The flower's complete cycle is God's. Throwing it out the next day means you only accept Sattva. You cannot reach Tamas. And without Tamas, you cannot reach the ultimate.
The Sri Vidya worshipper who arranges perfect bowls and perfectly clean floors will, in the next birth, have a life in which they will find godliness in dirt itself. That birth is inevitable for one who cannot embrace the Tamasic nature of final realization. Devi continuously projects these shadows to push you past the boundary of what you consider inauspicious — because she lives there.
Respecting the "Lower" as Devi
One of the most practical expressions of Ma Matangi's grace is in how you treat people at the lowest rungs of your daily life. The sanitation workers, the security guards, the delivery boys, the house cleaners — especially the women who do that work. The instruction is simple: give them the same respect, the same soft tone of voice, the same consideration you give your boss or manager.
This is not sentimentality. If the position of the Sun in your career is your boss — and you honour that — then the woman cleaning your office building is Ma Matangi herself. Honour her equally. This is a direct practice for her grace.
Shri Praveen shares a personal story here: on the day he completed 13 years of career service — his Agnyaathavaasa (year of losing one's identity) — he arrived first at an empty office. He noticed the restroom commode was filthy. Without a second thought, he cleaned it with tissue paper. No revulsion, no ego, no corporate-grade calculation. In that moment, Ma Matangi's teaching had become action: no work is below your dignity when you have stopped worshipping your own physicality.
The Sarangi Revelation
During deep Dhyana on Ma Matangi, Shri Praveen was asking Devi: "Is Bhajan and Kirtan the only way to you, or are all forms of music your path?" The answer came through a remarkable chain of inquiry.
He found himself researching microtonality — the interval between two adjacent piano keys like C and C-Sharp. That gap, which cannot be produced by a standard piano key, exists as pure sound in the Indian instrument called the Sarangi. The Sarangi, with only three strings (Trigunatmika — three qualities of nature), can perfectly mimic the human voice and traverse every possible tone. It is called "the instrument with a thousand voices." Yet it is a dying art, rapidly being replaced by the easier harmonium.
Then came the revelation. Split the word: Sara-ngi. Sara = root of Saraswati (name 2-2-6). Angi = root of Matangi (name 2-2-7). Sarangi is the union of Saraswati and Matangi. He who walks both paths — the Sattvic outer path of Ma Saraswati and the Tamasic inner path of Ma Matangi — becomes, in spirituality, like the Sarangi: capable of producing every raga, every branch of knowledge, every state of realization. The most complete spiritual instrument. And the masters of Sarangi are, like this combined path, nearly extinct.
Periods and Sadhana — The Direct Answer
The answer to the original question is now clear from first principles. During menstruation, a woman's body is doing exactly what Ma Matangi represents: it is expressing what society labels inauspicious, it is operating beyond the comfortable and the clean, it is functioning through the very Prakriti that the body is.
If you have received vidhi (initiation) from Shri Praveen, the answer is unambiguous: sit and do your Sadhana during periods. Do not stop. During your menstrual cycle, Ma Matangi herself is seated in your home. The correct practice is to offer pranams to her and continue. The idea that you are ineligible during this time belongs entirely to the four heads of Brahma — to the Sattvic, outer path. In the Fifth Head, your periods are not impurity. They are you. And she lives within you.
If you are following another Guru's guidance, follow that Guru's instruction without conflict. But for those on this path, the question need not be asked again.
Para Sanatani — Beyond All Branches
The teaching of Ma Matangi points toward something even larger. Devi is not Vaishnava. She is not Shakta. She is not Shaiva. She is Para Sanatani — above all of these categories, which exist only within the four heads of Brahma. Ma Adya Maha Kali, the form toward which all this Sadhana points, is Para Sanatana. Even Western Hip-Hop, as Shri Praveen notes in referencing the contemporary artist Hanumankind's viral rise, carries her voice: "We feeling the weight of our ancestors... we healing with ways that don't last too long." Devi is speaking through every art form, every culture, every music. No path is inauspicious to her.
The keyword to carry from this teaching is: Para Sanatani. If someone asks whether you are Shaiva, Vaishnava, or Shakta — the answer is none of these. You are Para Sanatani. Everything that exists is her path. Even from Hip-Hop, she is there.
Conclusion
Ma Matangi is not simply a deity to be worshipped. She is the threshold at which the external search for Devi ends and the internal recognition begins. She lives in the sweat, the unkempt hair, the decaying flower, the dirty restroom, the menstrual cycle — in everything that society marks as inauspicious. When you consume the first bite, you declare that the boundary between you and Devi has dissolved. When you honour the sanitation worker as much as your director, you become the Sarangi of spirituality — capable of every tone, every branch of knowledge. In the inauspicious, she resides. Seek her there.