Jagannath

Material: Museum Quality Archival Print

Jagannath is the Lord of the Universe, the all-encompassing form of Vishnu worshipped at the sacred Dham of Puri in Odisha, one of the four cardinal pilgrimage seats of Bharatavarsha. His form is unlike any other in the Hindu tradition: vast, dark, with enormous eyes that see all of creation at once and arms that are incomplete, for Jagannath is eternally in the process of manifesting, never fully contained within any form. In the esoteric Tantrik and Pancharatra traditions, this unfinished form is deeply significant, pointing to the truth that the absolute can never be fully captured in matter, that the divine always exceeds every image made of it. Jagannath is also the great equaliser, the deity before whom all caste distinctions dissolve, where the highest and the lowest share the same Mahaprasad from the same sacred kitchen. His annual Rath Yatra, the chariot festival, is the living Tantrik teaching that the lord of the universe moves freely through the world, and that the devotee who pulls his chariot with love is pulling the very wheel of cosmic time toward liberation.