Shakti of the Shaktas is not the consort of Shiva. In her cosmic self, Shakti-Shiva are eternally conjoined. The significance of viparita- rati is the copulative cosmogony is of the feminine principle constantly aspiring to unite. The feminine urge to create unity from duality, whereas the masculine principle, with each thrust, invariably separates representing the phase of dissolution of the universe.

The male form, the female form, any form - all forms are undoubtedly Her Supreme Form, says the Gandharva Tantra. Even the powerful gods crave to enter feminine form. Vishnu had to transform himself into a female as Mohini, who entranced and almost seduced Shiva. Shiva as Bhairava took on many aspects of Kali. The transformation of male to female is narrated in the legends of many Puranas.

In one of such stories, King Ila, while hunting came upon a grove where Shiva was making love with Parvati and had taken the form of a woman to please her. Everything in the woods, even the trees, had become female, and as he approached King Ila was turned into a woman. Shiva, laughing, told him he could ask for any boon except masculinity. In some temples Shiva's powerful bull-vehicle, Nandi , is portrayed almost as if it were a feminine deity. Approaching Shiva and his bull-vehicle, a worshipper will step upon a masculine outline laid into the floor, a symbolic shedding of the egocentric male outlook.

"The feminine power has been given expression in a multitude of female figures, both in sculpture and in painting, in which the emphasized forms of breasts, belly, hips, yoni and thighs seem an incarnation of the rhythms of the universe. From the medieval period, tantra's bold depiction's of the themes of sexual union menstruation, pregnancy and childbirth restored to sacred art essential symbolic figurations virtually suppressed.