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Theology

The central conception of Hindu philosophy is of the Absolute; that is the background of the universe. This Absolute Being, of whom we can predicate nothing, has Its powers spoken of as She — that is, the real personal God in India is She.

— Swami Vivekananda

Shaktas conceive the goddess as the supreme, ultimate, eternal reality of all existence, or same as the Brahman concept of Hinduism. She is considered to be simultaneously the source of all creation, its embodiment and the energy that animates and governs it, and that into which everything will ultimately dissolve. Mahadevi said in Devi Upanishad, verse 2, "I am essentially Brahman". According to V. R. Ramachandra Dikshitar – a professor of Indian history, in Shaktism theology "Brahman is static Shakti and Shakti is dynamic Brahman."

Shaktism views the Devi as the source, essence and substance of everything in creation. Its texts such as the Devi-Bhagavata Purana states:

I am Manifest Divinity, Unmanifest Divinity, and Transcendent Divinity. I am Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, as well as Saraswati, Lakshmi and Parvati. I am the Sun and I am the Stars, and I am also the Moon. I am all animals and birds, and I am the outcaste as well, and the thief. I am the low person of dreadful deeds, and the great person of excellent deeds. I am Female, I am Male in the form of Shiva.

Shaktism's focus on the Divine Female does not imply a rejection of the male. It rejects masculine-feminine, male-female, soul-body, transcendent-immanent dualism, considering nature as divine. Devi is considered to be the cosmos itself – she is the embodiment of energy, matter and soul, the motivating force behind all action and existence in the material universe. Yet in Shaktism, states C. MacKenzie Brown, the cultural concepts of masculine and the feminine as they exist among practitioners of Shaktism are aspects of the divine, transcendent reality. In Hindu iconography, the cosmic dynamic of male-female or masculine-feminine interdependence and equivalence, is expressed in the half-Shakti, half-Shiva deity known as Ardhanari.

The philosophical premise in many Shakta texts, states professor of Religious Studies June McDaniel, is syncretism of Samkhya and Advaita Vedanta schools of Hindu philosophy, called Shaktadavaitavada (literally, the path of nondualistic Shakti).

The Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda, remarked thus; about being an actual Shakti worshipper: "Do you know who is the real "Shakti-worshipper"? It is he who knows that God is the omnipresent force in the universe and sees in women the manifestation of that Force." Shakta-universalist Sri Ramakrishna, one of the most influential figures of the Hindu reform movements, believed that all Hindu goddesses are manifestations of the same mother goddess. The 18th-century Shakta bhakti poems and songs were composed by two Bengal court poets, Bharatchandra Ray and Ramprasad Sen, and the Tamil collection Abhirami Anthadhi was composed by Abhirami Bhattar.