Some Hindu scholars demur to this derivation of Saktism from lower cults.  They point to its refined and philosophic aspects; they see in it the worship of a goddess, who can be as merciful as the Madonna, but yet, since she is the goddess of nature, combines in one shape life and death.  May not the grosser forms of Saktism be perversions and corruptions of an ancient and higher faith?  In support of this it may be urged that the Buddhist goddess Tara is as a rule a beautiful and benevolent figure, though she can be terrible as the enemy of evil and has clear affinities to Durga.  Yet the history of Indian thought does not support this view, but rather the view that Hinduism incorporated certain ancient ideas, true and striking as ancient ideas often are, but without purging them sufficiently to make them acceptable to the majority of educated Indians.

The Yajur Veda[687] associates Rudra with a female deity called Ambika or mother, who is however his sister, not his spouse.  The earliest forms of the latter seem to connect her with mountains.  She is Uma Haimavati, the daughter of the Himalayas, and Parvati, she of the mountains, and was perhaps originally a sacred peak.  In an interesting but brief passage of the Kena Upanishad (III. 12 and IV. 1) Uma Haimavati explains to the gods that a being whom they do not know is Brahman.  In later times we hear of a similar goddess in the Vindhyas, Maharani Vindhyesvari, who was connected with human sacrifices and Thugs.[688] Siva’s consort, like her Lord, has many forms classified as white or benignant and black or terrible.  Uma belongs to the former class but the latter (such as Kali, Durga, Camunda, Canda and Karala) are more important.[689] Female deities bearing names like these are worshipped in most parts of India, literally from the Himalaya to Cape Comorin, for the latter name is derived from Kumari, the Virgin goddess.[690] But the names Sakta and Saktism are usually restricted to those sects in Bengal and Assam who worship the Consort of Siva with the rites prescribed in the Tantras.

Saktism regards the goddess as the active manifestation of the godhead.  As such she is styled Sakti, or energy (whence the name Sakta), and is also identified with Maya, the power which is associated with Brahman and brings the phenomenal world into being.  Similar ideas appear in a philosophic form in the Sankhya teaching.  Here the soul is masculine and passive:  its task is to extricate and isolate itself.  But Prakriti or Nature is feminine and active:  to her is due the evolution of the universe:  she involves the soul in actions which cause pain but she also helps the work of liberation.[691] In its fully developed form the doctrine of the Tantras teaches that Sakti is not an emanation or aspect of the deity.  There is no distinction between Brahman and Sakti.  She is Parabrahman and paratpara, Supreme of the Supreme.