mahaa lakshmyasht'akam'

Eight verses to Mahalakshmi, and the speaker is Indra — the text opens indra uvaacha, namaste'stu mahaamaaye shreepeet'he surapoojite. Every verse ends the same way, mahaalakshmi namo'stu te, so the hymn works like a refrain you can hold on to. It is printed most often as belonging to the Padma Purana. Friday evenings and Deepavali are when it is heard most.

Significance

Its Lakshmi is not the gentle one alone. The second verse has her mounted on Garuda and terrifying to Kolasura; elsewhere she is mahaaraudra, greatly fierce, and mahaashakti, before being addressed in the next line as jaganmaatah, mother of the world. White garments, every ornament, the lotus seat, and siddhi buddhi prade devi bhukti mukti pradaayini — she gives both the world's enjoyment and release from it. The phala-shruti is unusually exact about count, and worth reporting as the text puts it: recited once each day it is said to destroy great sin, twice each day to bring wealth and grain, three times each day to destroy great enemies. That is the stotra's own claim in the old idiom of phala-shruti, not a guarantee, and the escalating scale is itself the point — what you put in sets what is promised.

How and when to chant

Friday, after a bath, before the lamp. Once through, unhurried, is the normal daily practice; those who want the second or third reading do them at the three junctures, dawn, midday and dusk, which is what trikaalam means. Sit facing east or north. No elaborate materials are needed — a lamp, a flower, a little kumkuma. It is commonly read at the close of the Deepavali Lakshmi puja and on the Varamahalakshmi vrata day after the archana, and many families keep it as the one Friday text they have memorised, because eight verses with a repeating last line are easy to carry without a book.