Devibhagavatapurana 5.22.25

5.22.25

namo devi viśveśvari prāṇanāthe sadānandarūpe surānandade te |
namo dānavāntaprade mānavānā-manekārthade bhaktigamyasvarūpe ||

O Goddess! Salutation to Thee! O Thou, the Lord of the Universe! the Lord of our hearts! Thou art the Everlasting Bliss and the Giver of bliss to the Devas! Salutation to Thee! Thou art the Destroyer of the Dânavas and Thou art the Giver of all desires of human beings. Thou canst be approached with devotion. Salutation to Thee! O Thou, the Incarnate of all the Devas! Thy names are endless; Thy forms are endless; none can count them. Thou residest always as the Force Incarnate in all the actions, in the Creation, Preservation and Dissolution of Beings. O Goddess! Thou art the Memory, Constancy, Intelligence, Old Age. Thou art the nourishment, contentment; Thou upholdest all; Thou art the beauty, peace, good knowledge, prosperity and happiness, Thou art the Goal, fame, and intellect and Thou art the Eternal Seed unmanifested. We now bow down to those forms of Thine through which Thou dost serve the purpose of the Devas in this world as we are now in need of peace. Thou art forgiveness and mercy; Thou art the Yoga Nidrâ (a state between sleep and wakefulness); Thou art the kindness and Thou residest in all the beings in so many forms, great and grand, and so very celebrated; O Goddess! Thou hadst already served the cause of the gods in killing our great enemy Mahisâsura, puffed up with vanity. Therefore Thy mercy is well known amongst the gods; what more, Thy mercy is known, since very ancient times and it is narrated in the Vedas.

What wonder is there that a mother nourishes gladly her own sons and preserves them carefully! For Thou art the Mother of the Devas; Thou art the great source of help to them; therefore dost Thou fulfill all their desires with Thine whole heart. O Devî! We do not know the limit of Thy qualities nor of Thy forms; O Goddess! Thou art worshipped by the whole Universe. Thou art fully competent to save all from dangers; we are objects of Thy pity; dost Thou save us from our present troubles! Thou art capable to kill enemies without shooting any arrrows, without striking any blows, without hurling any trident, axes, S’aktis, clubs, or any other weapons; merely by Thy mere will Thou canst kill; still for sports and for the good of all beings Thou incarnatest and fightest for the sake of Lîlâ. The ignorant persons know such things as birth, death, etc., that this world is not eternal; that no actions can be without any cause; we, therefore, ascertain by reasoning and inference that Thou art the Supreme Cause of this whole Universe. Brahmâ is the Creator, Visnu is the Preserver, and Mahes’a is the Destroyer; so it is related in the Purânas. Thou again hast given birth to these three Gods in the respective cycles; therefore Thou art the Mother of all; there is no doubt in this. O Devî! In days of yore, these three Devas worshipped Thee; Thou Wert pleased and gavest them all the best powers.

Being thus endowed with Thy powers, they have been able to create, preserve and destroy this Universe beautifully. Art they not foolish, though they be Yatis (persons of self-controlled nature), who do not worship the Universal Mother, the Consciousness Incarnate, the Giver of liberation, on Whose feet are worshipped by the Devas, and worshipping Whom, one gets the fruits of all one’s desires? Certainly those Vaisnavas, Sauras (worshippers of the Sun) and Pas’upatas (worshippers of S’iva) are foolish braggarts who do not meditate Thee as the embodiment of Kamalâ (prosperity), modesty, beauty, continuancy, Fame, nourishment. O Mother! The Asuras, Hari, Hara and other great Devas worship Thee in this world; therefore those mortals are certainly deceived by their Creator that do not worship Thee on the surface of this earth. O Devî! Hari himself serves the lotus feet of Laksmî by colouring them (toes and other fingers of the feet) red with lac juice; Hara is very anxious to serve the lotus feet and take the dust thereof of Parvatî; Laksmî and Parvatî are but Thy part manifestations; therefore to serve them is, in other words to serve Thee. What to speak of other persons, even those who can discriminate between real and unreal and those who have left their worldly homes and have become dispassionate towards worldly objects, even those Munis worship forgiveness and mercy, that are but Thy parts; therefore who is there in this world that does not serve Thy lotus-feet! O Devî!

Those human beings plunge into the dreadful wells of this Samsâra, the round of birth and death, and are deprived of all pleasures, who do not serve Thy lotus feet. What more can be said than the fact that those fallen beings suffer terribly from poverty, humility, leprosy, headache, and the chronic enlargement of spleen. O Mother! Those persons are void of any wealth and wife; they are the carriers of loads of wood and collect grass and leaves and show their skill in such acts; they are of little understanding and never they served in their previous births Thy lotus-feet. This we have come to know very well within our heart of hearts.