A reflection on history, devotion, and right relationship
By Veronica Paige G - SĀ
Intro | Deities and Bringing Them Into Our Practices
In yoga and wellness spaces, Sarasvati and other deities are invoked often, on altars, in creative rituals, in branding, in breathwork playlists, and more. She arrives dressed in white, carrying a veena, accompanied by a swan.
What does it mean to call upon the name of a goddess from a sacred cosmology different from our own? Not mythology. Not an archetype. Not inspiration. A living tradition.
This piece is not meant to be a list of rules, but an invitation to slow down enough to truly meet her, her history, her purpose, the communities honoring her in a good way.
With this, my hope is you can decide what relationship you will have with her.
This is for those of us who already keep or are considering placing emblems of her or any other deity in our homes or practice spaces, studio owners who intend to bring her or any other deity into their studio, and practitioners in yoga, Ayurveda, or other holistic spaces who feel called to her and want to move with integrity.
Who is Sarasvati? | Messages From The River
As arguably all things we know well begin, her story starts with the earth and the elements.
Sarasvati, as many know her, did not begin as a goddess.
She begins as a river.
The name Sarasvati first appears in the Rigveda, the oldest of the four Vedas - the oldest scriptures of Hinduism - composed around 1500 BCE. In these early passages, the word refers to the Sarasvati River, one of the most sacred rivers of ancient northwestern India [1]. She was honored for her life-giving waters, a source of nourishment, fertility, and civilization. The communities sustained by her banks became known for much more.
Rivers in Vedic wisdom and many holistic indigenous cultures are recognized for sound, speech, movement, and creativity. The sound of flowing water was linked to the sound of language and music.
Vac- the goddess of speech- merged with her. In Ayurveda, we recognize Vac not as the tongue, not even as sound itself. Vac is the conscious capacity to bring something from the inner world into the outer world. Thus, Sarasvati, as the mother of Vac, is the goddess of that threshold.
Sarasvati governs the moment of becoming, thought into form, knowing into saying, wisdom into word, idea into essence.
In the Rigveda, Sarasvati and Vac (goddess of sacred speech) appear together and over time became understood as the same being. Speech, in Vedic tradition, was the most sacred creative act; the Vedas themselves were oral before they were ever written. So the goddess of the sacred river and the goddess of sacred speech became one [1].
The river nourished and sustained learning. People drank from it, bathed in it, built entire civilizations on its banks. The Sarasvati River was central to the civilization that produced the Vedas. Where the river was, knowledge was. Even as that river disappeared, the knowledge cultivated on her banks remained, and so did she.
From river deity, she grew into the goddess of learning, speech, music, wisdom, and the creative arts [1]. She is known by many names: Bharati (eloquence), Vedamata (mother of the Vedas), Vac (goddess of speech) [1]. She is part of the Tridevi, the trinity of primary goddesses alongside Lakshmi and Parvati [2].
Her reach extends beyond Hinduism. She is honored in Jainism and Buddhist traditions, and is known in Japan as Benzaiten, the goddess of eloquence and creative talent [2]. She is said to have invented Sanskrit itself [1].
What She Represents
To look at Sarasvati carefully is to receive a teaching.
She is most often depicted in white, purity, and undivided knowledge.
Her four arms hold a veena (the harmony of sound and intellect), the Vedas, prayer beads, and water [3]. The four arms also represent the four dimensions of learning: mind, intellect, alertness, and ego [3].
Her swan embodies viveka, discernment, the ability to separate truth from illusion [2].
During Vasant Panchami, her seasonal festival, her color is yellow: the blossoming of what was dormant, the vibrancy of spring returning [2].
Every element is deliberate. This is a cosmological map, not decoration.
Living Devotion
Sarasvati is woven into daily life.
Musicians pray to her before concerts. Students invoke her before exams. Teachers dedicate lessons to her [1]. The relationship is ongoing and embodied, as it is with all deities for those who carry these traditions.
Vasant Panchami (Sarasvati Puja) falls on the fifth day of the Hindu lunar month of Magha, in late January or early February [7]. Families offer yellow flowers, sweets, and diyas (traditional clay lamps holding oil and a wick to hold fire). Books and instruments are placed on the altar to receive her blessing. It is considered inauspicious to study on this day, even though knowledge rests in the presence of the goddess of knowledge.
One tradition I find especially moving is Vidyarambham: children are guided to write their very first letters on this day, under the blessing of Sarasvati, of sacred waters, of wisdom, of creativity [8].
Devotion in this way is far from aesthetic. It is a living relationship.
Appropriation and Appreciation
Cultural appropriation is extraction. Taking from a culture without asking, without understanding, without giving credit, without reciprocity, without building a relationship — and profiting from it [5]. The dominant gets richer. The indigenous communities, the marginalized culture, the source, get further from themselves.
One culture's sacred becomes another's aesthetic.
One community's survival becomes another's brand.
We see this pattern across communities: African, Native American, Indian, Indigenous Amazonian, and beyond.
Disney took an entire region's culture in Aladdin, flattening the Arab world into a cartoon villain accent and a magic lamp, making billions, and opening the film with a lyric describing the homeland as "barbaric" before public outcry forced them to change it.
"Smudging" kits sold at Urban Outfitters, Sephora, and Amazon, white sage is sacred to Indigenous communities of Southern California, the only place on earth it naturally grows. Mass-producing smudge kits has led to illegal overharvesting and shortages [12]. Native people have arrived at their traditional gathering grounds to find whole hillsides stripped bare. The plant is now on the United Plant Savers At-Risk Species list.
Rihanna posed topless in a Savage X Fenty lingerie shoot wearing a diamond-studded Ganesh pendant as an accessory. Hindus responded directly: "My religion is not your aesthetic." No apology was issued [13][14].
Unfortunately, wellness spaces are notorious for this kind of mess. Well-intended or not, appropriation is harmful.
Images of deities like Ganesh, Lakshmi, and Sarasvati appear on swimwear, tattoo flash sheets, and bathroom decor, stripped of sacred context. The LSE notes it is not the depiction itself that causes harm, it is the collapse of the conditions of reverence [4]. In India, sacred imagery is treated reverentially wherever it appears. The distinction is not location. It is orientation.
Where did this begin?
Britain invaded India over 200 years ago. India gained independence just 79 years ago. Britain dismantled what was once called the "golden bird”, a country that held nearly 25% of global net wealth.
Economist Utsa Patnaik calculated that Britain extracted the equivalent of $45 trillion from India between 1765 and 1938 [15].
Where did this money go? It has been used for Britain's industrialization, as well as much of the industrialization to build the "Western world" as we know it. In other words, the "Western world", best referred to as the Global North, was built on this extraction. They took the land, the labor, the textiles, the knowledge, and left.
A note worth sitting with, offered by one of my mentors, Adriana Ocelot [9]:
Colonialism was a product of the imperialist mindset, and imperialism is not, and was not, exclusive to Britain. It may be understood less as a political system and more as an energy. A sickness. An imbalance of the mind that drives taking far more than what is needed; from people, from land, from each other. It has no single face. It can seep into any corner, including into Indigenous communities themselves. No one is exempt from the ways this energy moves.
Healing from the imperialist mindset is strong medicine. True devotion, integrity, and practice. It is good work.
So when Indian independence leaders reclaimed sacred symbols- the charkha, the Om, the deities- it was resistance. Gandhi's khadi was a rejection of British textiles and an assertion of Indian identity [16]. The sacred and the political, deeply intertwined.
Now those same symbols are products. The Om symbol (Om), present in the Rigveda, said before every prayer and sacred recitation [17], is a font on a water bottle.
Ganesh toilet seats.
Kali underwear.
Krishna bathmats [18].
I will say it again: good intentions without deeper action do not dissolve the harm of erasure.
Cultural exchange is different. It is built on acknowledgment, relationship, and reciprocity [5]. It requires learning from the source, not just about the source.
Practical Invitations
Reverend Briana Lynn, founder of the Liberation Mystery School, offers a framework to bring with us as we integrate cross-cultural spiritual practice:
1. Permission.
2. Prayer.
3. Payment.
Did you receive permission- from someone rooted in the tradition, through study, relationship, or direct lineage- to work with this practice?
Are you approaching it with genuine prayer, true reverence and honor - not performance, not as a means to attain something outside the highest good?
And if you are profiting from it, are you giving back? A good place to start is 10% [10]. And if you are not yet in a position to give financially, your time, your voice, and your platform are also currency. Amplify the voices of the community who carry this wisdom in their bones. The practice of giving back does not begin when you have "enough." It begins now, in whatever form you actually have to give with integrity.
Learn from teachers and scholars native to the lineage that honors the deity calling to you, not only wellness influencers.
Go to the temples built to honor the deity you wish to work with. Kali Mandir Ramakrishna Ashram in Laguna Beach is a traditional Hindu temple, ashram, and seminary dedicated to the worship of the Divine Mother, open to people of all faiths. Bring your symbol with you if you can. Showing up in person is different from scrolling or assuming. Let it cost you something: your time, your presence, your humility, your reverence, your willingness to be a beginner [11].
If you place her image in your space, understand the relationship with these deities as a two-directional practice. In these traditions, they look back at us.
Are you ready to be seen by what you are invoking?
When you share their story- Sarasvati's, or any deity's- in teaching, in writing, in conversation, name Hinduism.
Name Sanskrit.
Name India. Name Bharata - the land named long before colonial borders were drawn.
Do not let "ancient wisdom" language erase the specific, very much alive tradition she and all of these deities come from.
Support Hindu-led educators, artists, and organizations with your attention, your research, your time, and your money.
Before including Sarasvati in your practice, ask honestly: have I done the study, or am I in study with her? Am I in relationship with anyone from this tradition? Am I holding this with open hands?
In Closing
She has been honored for over three thousand years by communities who built entire civilizations of learning in her name.
She holds, and is held by, specific, embodied, relational truth.
We do not have to be Hindu to be moved by her.
But being moved by her is an invitation to know who she is, her stories, where she comes from, and what she means to the people who have carried her through centuries of survival.
What knowledge are you seeking that flows from a river others tended long before you?
And what would it mean to honor the source before you drink?
SOURCES
[1] World History Encyclopedia - "Sarasvati"
https://www.worldhistory.org/Sarasvati/
[2] World History Edu - "Saraswati in Hinduism: Origin Story and Significance"
https://worldhistoryedu.com/saraswati-in-hinduism-origin-story-and-significance/
[3] Vedicfeed - "Goddess Saraswati: Origin, Existence and Significance"
https://vedicfeed.com/goddess-saraswati/
[4] LSE Religion & Global Society Blog - "Cultural appropriation: Analysing the use of Hindu symbols within consumerism."
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2017/09/cultural-appropriation-analysing-the-use-of-hindu-symbols-within-consumerism/
[5] Feminism in India - "Cultural Appropriation and Appreciation: Traversing The Line Between Expression And Exploitation"
https://feminisminindia.com/2022/07/15/cultural-appropriation-and-appreciation-respectful-exchange-and-exploitation/
[6] PDBY - "Whitewashed Wellness: The appropriation of Hinduism and Indian culture"
https://pdby.co.za/whitewashed-wellness-the-appropriation-of-hinduism-and-indian-culture/
[7] Ketto - "Vasant Panchami: Meaning, Significance, Traditions and Celebrations"
https://www.ketto.org/blog/vasant-panchami-saraswati-puja
[8] Ease India Trip - "Vasant Panchami 2026: Dates, History, Rituals, Timings"
https://www.easeindiatrip.com/blog/vasant-panchami-dates-history-rituals-timings/
[9] Adriana Ocelot - medicine woman, sweat lodge leader, sun dancer in. Tamoanchan - Mexico and Crow Dog's. Paradise - USA, leader of Vision Quest, moon dance Abuela of Menee Waka Meztli
http://medicinasdaterra.com.br/adriana-ocelot/ (Note: site may be restricted outside of Brazil)
[10] Reverend Briana Lynn - Liberation Mystery School
https://www.theearthtemple.com/
[11] Freedom Cole - Jyotishi, Ayurvedic teacher, and author of Science of Light
YouTube lecture, 2024: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANSY5kLJXHA
[12] Vice - "The White Sage Black Market"
https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-white-sage-black-market-v27n3/
[13] CNN - "Rihanna's Savage X Fenty photo and Ganesha pendant spark backlash in India"
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/rihanna-ganesha-india/index.html
[14] Al Jazeera - "Rihanna's topless Hindu god photo sparks outrage in India"
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/17/rihanna-sparks-india-outrage-over-topless-hindu-god-photo
[15] Al Jazeera - "How Britain stole $45 trillion from India"
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2018/12/19/how-britain-stole-45-trillion-from-india
[16] LinkedIn / Trupti Patil - "How Khadi Became a Symbol of India's Independence Movement"
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-khadi-became-symbol-indias-independence-movement-trupti-patil-yplrf
[17] MindBodyGreen - "What Does The Om Symbol Mean?"
https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/what-does-the-om-symbol-mean
(Source: Dheepa Sundaram, Ph.D., assistant professor of religious studies, University of Denver)
[18] Hindu American Foundation - An American non-profit Hindutva advocacy organization founded in 2003.
https://www.hinduamerican.org/
[AI] Research assistance, reference sourcing, and structural drafting supported by Claude AI, developed by Anthropic. All editorial decisions, voice, and final content are the author's own. claude.ai
