Shaktism, centered on devotion to the Divine Mother in forms such as Durga, Kali, and village Amman goddesses, unfolds in richly varied ways across regions while retaining a recognizable core of mantra, ritual worship, and festival. In India, where these traditions are most elaborately developed, eastern regions like Bengal and Assam emphasize Durga Puja, Kali Puja, and powerful Tantric lineages linked to sites such as Kalighat, Tarapith, and Kamakhya. South India gives prominence to village goddess cults—Mariamman, Bhagavati, and other Amman forms—where protection, fertility, and healing are sought through annual festivals, processions, and sometimes intense ecstatic practices. Major temples such as Meenakshi in Madurai, Kamakshi in Kanchipuram, and others in Kerala and Andhra–Telangana integrate these folk currents with more formal Śaiva and Smārta ritual frameworks. In the Himalayan belt and North India, pilgrimage to Shakti Peethas and shrines like Vaishno Devi expresses a vision of the Goddess as a benevolent yet formidable mother, often linked to warrior and protective aspects.

Beyond India, Shakta devotion continues with local inflections. In Nepal, the living-goddess Kumari tradition and the Dashain festival dedicated to Durga exemplify how the Divine Mother is woven into civic and royal symbolism as well as household piety, while Newar Tantric practices maintain sophisticated mantra and yantra worship. In Bangladesh and Pakistan, Hindu communities sustain Durga Puja, Kali Puja, and pilgrimage to shrines such as Hinglaj Mata, preserving older Bengali and North Indian patterns on a smaller scale. Sri Lankan Tamil communities venerate Kali and Amman forms with vows, fire-walking, and possession rituals, showing how Shakti is approached as both fierce protector and compassionate healer. In Southeast Asia, Balinese Hinduism honors Dewi forms such as Durga and Sri within a broader Shaiva–Shakta–local matrix, and historical evidence from Cambodia and Thailand indicates that Devi worship was once deeply embedded in temple culture, even where it later blended into Buddhist and folk traditions.

In the wider diaspora—Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Oceania—Shaktism often centers on temples established by Indian, Nepali, and Sri Lankan migrants, where Navaratri, Durga Puja, Kali Puja, and Amman festivals recreate a sense of sacred homeland. These communities typically combine Sanskrit recitations like the Devi Mahatmya with regional languages, cultural programs, and children’s education, so that devotion to the Mother also becomes a vehicle for transmitting identity. Alongside these more traditional settings, there are lineage-based Shakta and Tantric groups that transmit Sri Vidya and other esoteric paths through formal initiation, structured mantra-sadhana, and study of texts such as the Devi Bhagavata Purana, Lalita Sahasranama, and Saundarya Lahari. Parallel to this, neo-Tantric and New Age circles in many Western and urban Asian contexts reinterpret Shakti as a symbol of cosmic feminine energy and psychological wholeness, emphasizing personal experience, empowerment, and meditation on yantras like the Sri Yantra, sometimes independent of classical rules of purity and lineage.

Across these diverse landscapes, certain threads bind Shakta practice into a recognizable tapestry. The red of kumkum and sindoor, the offering of lamps and flowers, the centrality of mantra and sacred narrative, and the recurring image of the Goddess as both terrifying and tender all point to a shared intuition of the Divine as dynamic power. Women frequently occupy prominent ritual roles—whether in Kerala’s vast Pongala offerings, in household Navaratri observances, or in diaspora temple committees—so that devotion to Shakti often resonates with wider conversations about dignity and strength. At the same time, the tradition accommodates both highly esoteric Tantric disciplines and simple home altars, allowing the Divine Mother to be approached as ultimate metaphysical reality, as village guardian, or as an inner archetype of transformation.