Lakṣmī Hṛdayam

The Lakṣmī Hṛdayam is an esoteric stotra of twenty-eight verses preserved in the Atharvaṇa Rahasya stratum, in which Mahālakṣmī is revealed as the very Hṛdaya — the heart — of Sriman Nārāyaṇa. The work is never recited in isolation. Traditional prescription pairs it with the Nārāyaṇa Hṛdayam: the Nārāyaṇa Hṛdayam is recited first to invoke the Lord into the worshipper's own heart, then the Lakṣmī Hṛdayam is recited to invoke the Mother into the same heart, with the doctrinal teaching that the Lord and the Mother do not occupy two separate dwellings but a single Hṛdaya in two utterances.

The work occupies a distinctive place in the Sampradāya pārāyaṇa tradition. For the most serious material crises — protracted illness in the family, the collapse of livelihood, the threat to lineage — the prescribed observance is the maṇḍala pārāyaṇa of the paired Hṛdayas: forty-one days, or one hundred and eight days, of disciplined recitation. The Atharvaṇic stratum gives the work its tantric character — bīja syllables, specific nyāsa, and dhyāna ślokas precede the verses themselves — and the Pāñcarātra Āgamas integrate it into the Mahālakṣmī Vrata observance. The complete text with the paired Nārāyaṇa Hṛdayam is available through the external sources linked below.