Radha is the beloved of Krishna among the gopis, the cowherd women of Vrindavan, and in the developed theology of Gaudiya Vaishnavism (the tradition of Chaitanya) she is far more than a consort. She is understood as Krishna's own hladini shakti, his pleasure-potency, the very power of bliss and love by which he delights, so that Radha and Krishna are one reality in two bodies, and Radha is in a sense the higher of the two, because she embodies the perfect devotion (bhakti) that Krishna, being God, cannot direct toward himself and so externalizes as her. To worship is to take Radha's side of that love. Her name is often placed before Krishna's, as Radha-Krishna.
Beyond the Vrindavan cycle, Radha is worshipped in her own right at dedicated shrines, most notably the Radha Rani temple at Barsana, her traditional birthplace, where the boisterous Lathmar Holi festival re-enacts, in play, the village women driving off Krishna and his companions with sticks, a ritual inversion that dramatizes Radha's primacy over her divine beloved in exactly the region tradition names as her home. Her birthday, Radha Ashtami, is kept in the Vaishnava calendar roughly a fortnight after Krishna's own Janmashtami, a calendrical pairing that mirrors the theological order in which Gaudiya tradition places her.