One of My Favourite Goddess whom i also pray to .
Marici in China is worshiped as both a Buddhist and Taoist deity
where she is known as Dipper Mother (traditional
Chinese: 斗母元君; pinyin: Dǒumǔ Yuánjūn) or
Maritchi Deva (traditional
Chinese: 摩利支天菩萨; pinyin: Mólìzhītiān Púsà).
Most often she depicted with three eyes in each of her four faces;
with four arms on each side of her body. Two of her hands are held
together, and the other six hold a sun, moon, bell, golden seal,
bow, and halberd. She is either standing/sitting on top of a
lotus or
pig, or on a
Lotus on top of seven pigs. She is celebrated on the 9th day of the
9th lunar month.
In Chinese Buddhism, especially in the south where Tantric
Buddhism hardly penetrated, she is often confused with
Cundī. Among Chinese Buddhists she is
worshiped as goddess of light and as the guardian of all nations,
whom she protects from the fury of war. [1]
In Taoism she remains a popular deity and is often referred to
as Queen of Heaven (traditional
Chinese: 天后; pinyin: Tiān Hòu) and is
widely worshiped as the Goddess of Beidou (the Chinese equivalent of
Ursa Major
except that it also includes 2 "attendant" stars). She is also
revered as the mother of the Nine Emperor
Gods who are represented by the nine stars in the Beidou
constellation.[2]
Legend has it that one spring day a queen went to bath in a pond.
Upon entering she suddenly felt "moved" and nine lotus buds rose
from the pond. Each of these lotus buds opened to reveal a star
which then became the Beidou constellation.
She is still worshiped today in Taoist temples like the
White Cloud
Temple and the Tou Mu Kung
Temple which has both Taoist and Buddhist
influences.
Japan
Marici was adopted by the Bujin or Samurai in the 8th century CE as a
protector and patron.
While devotions to Marici predate Zen, they appear to be geared towards
a similar meditative mode in order to enable the warrior to achieve
a more heightened spiritual level. He lost interest in the issues
of victory or defeat (or life and death), thus transcending to a
level where he became so empowered that he was freed from his own
grasp on mortality. The end result was that he became a better
warrior.
The worship of Marici was to provide a way to achieve
selflessness and compassion through Buddhist training by incorporating a
passion for the mastery of the self.
Samurai would
invoke the mantra of Marici at sunrise to achieve victory on the
battlefield[citation
needed], or would invoke Marici by other
means to attain magical powers that would assist them in battle. An
example of the martial characteristic was that Marici could provide
was the ability to confuse the enemy by preventing them from
"seeing," effectively turning the invoker "invisible."[citation
needed] Since Marici means "light" or
"mirage", she was regarded as the deification of mirages and was
thus invisible or difficult to see and was thereby accordingly
invoked to escape the notice of one's enemies.[citation
needed]
full article on
http://medbib.com/Marishi-Ten