Kalighat Shakti Peeth (Kalipeeth)

The story

According to the Shakti Peeth tradition, after King Daksha's yagya Shiv ji wandered in grief carrying the body of Devi Sati. Vishnu ji's Sudarshan chakra then divided the body, and wherever a part or an ornament fell, a Shakti Peeth arose. The toes of her right foot are believed to have fallen here. A local legend tells how the place was found again. A sadhak named Atmaram Brahmachari used to meditate here. One night he heard the Devi's voice telling him that his seat was a holy altar, the Brahma-vedi, and that her sacred part lay in the nearby Kalikund pool. She also asked him to bring a black stone pillar kept by a sadhak named Brahmananda Giri in the Nilgiri hills. The stone was brought and shaped into the Mother's form. Later, while the two sadhaks prayed by the pool one night, they saw a light in the water and found the sacred stone the next morning. It was the day of Snan Yatra, Jyeshtha Purnima, which is still marked with a special puja. The stone is kept in a chest below the altar and is never shown. Old Bengali poems such as Mukundaram's Chandimangal mention Kalighat. The present temple was completed in 1809 with the support of the Sabarna Roy Choudhury family and was renovated in 2024.