Reframing the Ashtasiddhi: A Character-Ethics Reading of the Eight Siddhis in the Kedi Purana Tradition

The concept of Ashtasiddhi — the eight siddhis (Anima, Mahima, Garima, Laghima, Prapti, Prakamya, Ishitva, and Vashitva) — occupies a canonical position within classical yogic and Puranic literature, most notably in the Vibhuti Pada of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, where the siddhis are typically described as supernormal powers arising from advanced meditative absorption (samyama). This paper examines an alternative, non-literal reading of the Ashtasiddhi as presented in a chapter titled "The Origin of Ashtasiddhi," drawn from Kedi Ganapati's contemporary text Kedi Purana. Rather than treating the siddhis as physical or paranormal capacities — the power to shrink or expand the body, to become weightless, or to compel obedience through occult force — the source text reinterprets each siddhi as a disposition of character, will, and social conduct attainable through ordinary ethical and psychological discipline. This study extracts, systematises, and critically discusses that reinterpretation in extended detail, siddhi by siddhi, situating it in relation to the classical tradition, tracing the internal logic that links the eight attainments to one another, and considers its implications for understanding siddhi literature as a resource for character ethics and applied self-cultivation rather than as a claim about supernatural embodiment. Particular attention is given to the diagnostic method employed by the source text, in which each siddhi is paired with an account of the specific obstacles that prevent its attainment, and to the cumulative, developmental structure that emerges when the eight siddhis are read as a sequence rather than as a list of unrelated virtues.