Nine Nights, Nine Faces

Nine nights of Navratri, and they are not nine nights of praying to the same goddess.

They are nine different forms. Taken one at a time, in a fixed order, each with her own name, her own image and her own domain.

And read in sequence they are not a list. They are a life.

Households and temples that keep the full cycle give each night its own worship, its own mantra, and in many regions its own offering. Nine separate appointments, kept with nine aspects of one presence.

One: Shailaputri

Daughter of the mountain king Himavan.

The Goddess at her most elemental - born of stone and height, before anything that follows has happened to her yet.