Unmatta Bhairava Mantra
ॐ उन्मत्तभैरवाय नमःIn Devanagari, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and English — with the meaning of every word, and the one syllable most people pronounce wrongly.
Who Unmatta Bhairava is
Unmatta Bhairava is the fifth of the eight Bhairavas enumerated in the Śaiva tantric cycles that map fierce emanations of Śiva onto the directions and the mātṛkās. The Sanskrit unmatta names a state of sacred intoxication in which ordinary measures of sanity collapse; joined to Bhairava it designates the form whose very presence unsettles fixed identity. The aṣṭa-bhairava dhyana describes him as golden in colour and riding a horse, holding a sword, a skull-cup (kapāla), a pestle and a shield. He is paired with the mātṛkā Vārāhī and guards the west in the aṣṭaka. Within the liturgy he is not approached as a granter of comfort but as the deity in whom delusion itself is made visible and therefore available for dissolution. His worship belongs to the same stream that preserves the other seven Bhairavas, yet his particular mood is the ungovernable clarity that follows the breaking of mental habit.
Madness After the Fifth Head
The Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇa and allied Śaiva narratives recount that when Bhairava severed the fifth head of Brahmā, the skull clung to his palm as the mark of brahmahatyā. Wandering as Kāpālika, he entered states that the texts name unmatta—divine madness in which the boundaries of pure and impure, self and other, ceased to hold. Unmatta Bhairava, the fifth guardian of the aṣṭa-bhairava maṇḍala, bears the name of that state. In the aṣṭa-bhairava scheme he guards the west, golden in colour and riding a horse, with a sword, a skull-cup, a pestle and a shield. The episode is not told as a moral caution but as the mythic origin of a consciousness that has already stepped outside conventional sanity. In temple practice the same narrative underwrites his installation beside Vārāhī, so that the intoxication of the guardian and the boar-faced energy of the mātṛkā face one another across the sacred diagram.
The mantra, in six scripts
The name mantra, and the form most devotees chant daily. No initiation is required — it is open to anyone, including a parent chanting for a child.
- ॐ
- oṃ — the primordial syllable
- उन्मत्तभैरवाय
- unmattabhairavāya — to Unmatta-Bhairava
- नमः
- namaḥ — homage
The syllable people get wrong
The cluster tt in unmatta (उन्मत्त) is a true geminate: both t-sounds must be released, giving un-mat-ta. Speakers often reduce it to a single soft t, producing un-ma-ta or un-mata, which collapses the name’s rhythmic weight and is the error most frequently heard in vernacular recitation of this mantra alone.
When Unmatta Bhairava is chanted
Weekday. Monday
Questions
Have your chart read before you decide
Chanting is yours to do, and free. But which deity your situation calls for — and whether a mantra alone is the right response — depends on your chart. Sometimes it is; sometimes it is not.
- Over 30 years in the Guru–Sishya Parampara, from the age of five
- He reads every chart himself — 60 minutes, one to one, never delegated
- Charts are read only between sunrise and sunset, following tradition
Related
Chanting is yours to do. Some things are performed for you.
Where a matter carries real weight, devotees sponsor the homa alongside their own practice. Performed for you and any family members you name, at our Yagna Ashram, in your name and gotra, on a muhurta calculated from your chart, and telecast live so you can watch it done for you.