This is so interesting. My family deity or kuladevi as well - Namakal
Srinivasa Ramanujan was an observant Hindu, adept at dream interpretation and astrology. Growing up, he learned to worship Namagiri, the Hindu goddess of creativity, who is also known as Namagiri Thayar or Namakkal. She is the consort of Narasimha, an avatar of Vishnu, who is depicted as a lion-headed man. Namagiri is said to bestow wisdom, knowledge, and artistic skills to her devotees.
e often understood mathematics and spirituality as one. He believed that an equation had no meaning unless it revealed the mind of God. He also said that Namagiri would appear in his dreams and place equations on his tongue, which he would later write down when he woke up. Some of these equations were so novel and complex that they baffled his contemporaries and mentors, such as G. H. Hardy. Even today, some of Ramanujan’s discoveries are still being explored and proved by mathematicians and physicists.
Ramanujan’s belief in the Hindu goddess was not a mere superstition or a psychological crutch. It was a source of inspiration and intuition that guided him to explore the hidden patterns and symmetries of the mathematical universe. He saw the divine feminine as the mind beyond the mind, the awakening that happens when awareness is raised to the highest possible state. He also followed the Visishtadvaita philosophy of Sri Ramanuja, which asserts that the individual soul is not separate from the supreme soul, but rather a part of it. Ramanujan’s faith in Namagiri was a manifestation of his non-dualistic worldview, where mathematics and mysticism were intertwined.