Role of Srichakra in Devi Worship
By 
Swami Tapasyananda

In Hindu devotional practice, three kinds of external symbols are used for worship of the Supreme Being, who is actually formless and nameless. The most external is that of divine images cast in human form, with paraphernalia symbolizing supra-human divinity. The most subtle is that of the mantras or divine names with certain -sounds. A mantra is divine power clothed in sound. Between these two come the yantras or chakras, representing the deity in geometrical diagrams. Worshippers of Shakti consider the Srichakra the holiest and most significant of divine symbols.
The Srichakra is conceived as Shiva-Shakti in the macrocosmic as well as microcosmic aspects, as the cosmos and as the individual. The diagram consists of a series of nine triangles superimposed around a small central circle is the Bindu, representing Shiva-Shakti in union in the casual state from which all other parts of diagram representing the cosmos are evolved.
The Bindu is in a central below the base of the apex upwards, depending on whether it is samharachakra or srishti-chakra. Enclosing it and super imposed on one another are the four Shiva triangles with apex upward, and five Shakti triangles inclusive of the central one, with apex downwards. These are surrounded by two circles of lotuses, one with eight petals and the other; with 16. Outside these, there circles around and a rectangular enclosure of three lines for the whole four sides. 
In the Bindu, Shakti is represented as Maha-Tripura-Sundari, the great mother. The Bindu contains the potentiality of the universe within itself. It is spoken of as three to indicate the three stresses when the unified non-dual Shiva-Shakti becomes separated into the two aspects: prakasa, the aham or I –consciousness, and vimarsa, the idam or this –consciousness.
These three stresses are technically called Nada, Kala and Bindu. Bindu is the potential universe ready to separate into various categories.
All these three stresses, mudras of Shiva –Shakti together, is represent the polarity in that supreme category as Shiva Shakti.
The Bindu, the creative Shakti, is the Mahatripura – sundari, the ‘pride of Shiva’ as prakasa luminosity or consciousness who realises Himself through Her, the vimarsa Shakti. The rest of the whole of the cosmos, Brahmananda, as evolved from the Bindu, standing for Tripurasundari or creative cosmic power …
Just as Tripura-sundari the Divine Mother is Shakti, depicted as the consort of shiva, the Supreme Being, the Kundalini is the segment of that power as the Shakti of the Jiva, which is an the masa or particle of the Supreme Shiva embodied as the individual (microcosm). It is this Shakti that evolves in the individual the counter parts of all the 25 cosmic categories…
As the Supreme will, Shakti is described as Consciousness- Bliss. The Saundarya Lahiri describes the universe the universe in its subtle and gross forms as the transformation of Shakti. Though undergoing actual transformation into all these elements in their gross macro cosmic aspects as the universe and their subtle micro cosmic aspect as the six charkas in the body, Shakti is not lost in the effects – she retains her identity as the Supreme will or Consciousness Bliss..
(Excerpted from ‘Saundarya Lahiri of Sri Sankaracharya’)