"Tara's seat".
In the state of West
Bengal, some 130 miles northwest of Calcutta, there is a town and a holy
location (tirtha).
Tarapith is one of the Shakti Pithas, a network of holy
locations dedicated to the Goddess that stretches throughout the Indian
subcontinent.
Each Shakti Pitha commemorates the location where a
dismembered goddess Sati's body part fell to earth and assumed the shape of a
separate goddess; in the instance of Tarapith, the body part was Sati's cornea
(tara).
Tara, Tarapith's pre-existing deity, is a ferocious
manifestation of the Goddess with significant ties to tantra, a secret
ritual-based religious practice.
In modern times, the shrine is best known for an unusual
ascetic named Vamakhepa (1843–1911), who was a perfect match for Tara herself,
with his apparent irrationality and lack of respect for generally accepted
norms (he once urinated on the temple's image of Tara to show his contempt for
a deity made of iron).
Tarapith is claimed to confer supernormal abilities
(siddhis) to individuals who worship there, making it both a powerful and
possibly dangerous location to visit.
E. Alan Morinis, Pilgrimage in the Hindu Tradition, 1984, is
a good source of knowledge.
