Palden Lhamo or Shridevi, the female companion of Mahakala and his equal in power. She is depicted in a peaceful form as Machig Palden Lhamo, sitting on a lotus, wearing a crown of jewels, holding a bowl of jewels in her left hand and holding a standard of rainbow colors in her right. In her wrathful form, she rides a mule, has flaming red hair, three red eyes and sharp fangs. Palden Lhamo is of the major protector deities in Tibetan Buddhism and the only female among the powerful group of the Eight Dharma Protectors (skr. Dharmapalas). She is particularly favored by the Gelukpa, for whom she is a special protector of Lhasa and the Dalai Lama. She is known to appear at a mysterious lake, known as Lhamo Latso, about ninety miles southeast of Lhasa. This lake is renowned for revealing on its surface the reflections of the future. Palden Lhamo is Tibetan for Shri Devi, as she is the Tibetan vision of the terrific black goddess of India.
Legends associate her with both Tara and Sarasvati. The unusually large, closeup, figure of Lhamo rides her wild mule through a sea of blood and fat. She is blue-black and haggish, with pendulous breasts, flaming eyebrows and mustache, and red hair standing on end. She brandishes a vajra-topped, long-handled club and a bowl made from the skull of a child of an incestuous union, which is filled with sense organs, including heart and plucked-out eyeballs. She sits astride her mount garbed only in the terrific ornaments of the fierce deities. A garland of freshly severed heads hangs around her body, snakes hold up her orange-streaked tiger-skin skirt, and five skulls topped with flaming jewels form her crown. A moon disc in her hair and a radiating sun disc at her navel are said to be gifts from the god Vishnu, just as her other accoutrements are gifts from various other gods. Across the back of the mule lies the flayed skin of her own son, drawn in pink lines, the head hanging down in front of her and the hands and feet tied together to keep the skin in place.
All our palden lhamo thangka paintings are exclusively painted on cotton canvas with natural colors extracts and gold powder paintings based on tibetan meditation buddhist texts. We offer you various collection of palden lhamo thanka painting for online sales directly from artisans workshop.