Śivasaṃhitā 5.61

Tripura Bhairavi—“the Terrible of the Three Cities”—is one of the daśamahāvidyā, the ten great goddesses of Śākta tantrism. Her identification with the mūlādhāra’s bīja integrates two traditions in this verse: the Śākta (the goddess as cosmic principle) and yoga technique (the bīja as energetic seed). The fire-sun-moon trinity she unifies corresponds to the three bindu (energy foci) of the Kaula tradition: the red point (rakta bindu), the white point (śukla bindu), and the mixed point (miśra bindu).

The image of the seed resting in suṣumnā brilliant as the autumn moon (śāradacandra) combines opposites: light of millions of suns (solar intensity, tejas) and coolness of millions of moons (lunar quietude, soma). This paradox of simultaneous heat and cold precisely describes the meditative experience in mūlādhāra: the ardor of concentrated prāṇa and the stillness of the absorbed mind. These qualities are the same that verse 81 will attribute to the seed in the broader context of Tripura Bhairavi.

The purification of pāpa (pāpasaṅkṣaya) through mere contemplation (cintana) of this bīja is a promise of alchemical potency: contact with mūlādhāra’s primordial seed acts directly on the practitioner’s energy structure, dissolving karmic densifications. This is the essence of layayoga: rather than directly combating mental tendencies (vṛtti), consciousness is oriented toward the origin from which they arise, dissolving the cause rather than struggling with the effects.