Angalamman

Angalamman, also called Angala Parameswari, is a fierce Tamil village goddess whose iconography and cult center on cremation grounds and the destruction of evil rather than on a benign or maternal register. She is honored above all at her major temple in Melmalayanur in Tamil Nadu, where her annual festival draws large crowds and has historically involved intense forms of devotional practice, including fire walking, understood as expressions of her terrifying power rather than of an ordinary domestic goddess.