Shaktas affirm the Goddess (Devi, Shakti, in forms such as Durga, Kali, and Parvati), as the supreme reality: not the consort of a male god but the ultimate power (shakti) from which all, including the gods, arises. On this view the divine feminine is the active, creative energy of the cosmos and its very ground, at once fierce and maternal, destroyer of demons and giver of liberation. Worship centres on the Goddess in her many aspects and, in its Tantric forms, on the awakening of her power within the practitioner. The foundational Shakta text is the Devi Mahatmya (also called Durga Saptashati), part of the Markandeya Purana and generally dated to around the fifth or sixth century CE, which narrates the Goddess's defeat of the buffalo-demon Mahishasura and proclaims her the source of all divine power.
Later Tantric elaboration systematised her forms into the Ten Mahavidyas (wisdom goddesses), including Kali, Tara, and Chinnamasta. The Kamakhya temple in Assam, one of Shaktism's most important pilgrimage sites, venerates the Goddess in aniconic form as a cleft rock associated with the yoni and observes an annual festival, Ambubachi, marking her yearly menstruation, a ritual calendar without real parallel in Vaishnava or Shaiva practice.