Palden Lhamo serves as the main female protector of Vajrayana Buddhism and as a personal protector of the successive lineage of Dalai Lamas. Because of this she is especially popular in the Gelug tradition, and to a lesser extent in the Sakya tradition, as in most of her pictorial representations the Gelug hierarch, Tsongkhapa, appears directly above her. The Tibetan term dmag-zor essentially refers to a magical spell or charm that can repulse an invading army’ who guard the land, lakes and mountain passes of Tibet. In Sanskrit this ‘Glorious Goddess’ (Shri Devi) is also known as Remati or Mahakali, and she is essentially regarded as a wrathful manifestation of the wisdom goddess Sarasvati.

Her young mule gallops swiftly on ‘wings of the wind’, and gazes back fiercely with raised ears, its braying mouth revealing its sharp white teeth and twisting red tongue. A magical golden divination mirror with hanging silk s adorns the mule’s crown, and its golden neck harness is adorned with round golden bells and a white skull with an ornament of silk tassels hanging below. The mule’s bridle and reins are fashioned from long poisonous blue-black serpents. Her serpent reins pass through the mule’s golden breast ornament that bears a severed head, and then through the eye of a cannibal’s skull. The upper part of this white skull forms the front spur of her saddle, with its detached jawbone forming her saddle’s rear spur. The mule’s saddle blanket is made from the flayed skin of her own son, who was a rakshasa or cannibal-demon, with his fierce head hanging downward and his fleshless limbs twisted and knotted around the mule’s body. On the mule’s rump is a third eye that gazes backward, and the symbolism of these three eyes represents the goddess’s magical ability to gaze over the three realms and the three times of past, present and future.

She wears golden bracelets, armlets, anklets, necklaces and earrings that are studded with coral, pearls and gemstones, and the five bone ornaments fashioned from filigree shards of human bone. Hanging around her neck is a long garland of blood-dripping severed heads that are strung together on a cord of twisted intestines, and around her ankles are chained iron fetters that she is described as having broken asunder.

Her neck is taught and she frowns angrily with an extremely fierce expression as wind billows from her snout-like nose. She has three round and piercing red eyes, sharp white teeth, four crescent-shaped fangs, and the tawny facial hair of her cheeks, chin and eyebrows blazes upward like tongues of fire. Her gaping mouth is like a furnace for burnt offerings, and her long red tongue twists like lightening as she bites down upon the small human corpse that lies within her jaws A roaring white lion leaps from behind her right ear, and a hissing blue snake strikes outward from behind her left ear. Her golden tiara is fastened by a green silk ribbon and adorned with blue flowers and five jewel-topped dry white skulls, which are linked together with delicate golden loops. Her tawny orange hair-locks twist upward to the left above her crown, the disc of a golden sun blazes from her navel, the disc of a white full moon adorns her crown, and above her head floats a parasol fashioned from peacock-feathers that symbolizes the perfection of all her activities.