Matangi is often associated with pollution, inauspiciousness and the periphery of Hindu society, which is embodied in her most popular form, known as Uchchhishta-Chandalini or Uchchhishta-Matangini.

While Uchchhishta-Matangini carries a noose, sword, goad, and club, her other well-known form, Raja-Matangi, plays the veena and is often pictured with a parrot.

[2] The Dhyana Mantra of Raja-Matangi from the Purashcharyarnava describes Matangi as green in colour with the crescent moon on her forehead.

She has long hair, a smiling expression and intoxicated eyes, and wears a garland of kadamba flowers and various ornaments.

The Dhyana Mantra describes her to be four-armed, with a dark emerald complexion, full breasts anointed with red kumkum powder, and a crescent moon on her forehead.

She carries a noose, a goad, a sugarcane bow and flower arrows, which the goddess Tripura Sundari is often described to hold.

[6] The green complexion is associated with deep knowledge and is also the colour of Budha, the presiding deity of the planet Mercury who governs intelligence.

[11] The Devi Bhagavata Purana describes Matangi and her fellow Mahavidyas as war-companions and forms of the goddess Shakambhari.

While eating, the deities dropped some food on the ground, from which arose a beautiful maiden, a manifestation of Goddess Saraswati, who asked their left-overs.

Shiva decreed that those who repeat her mantra and worship her will have their material desires satisfied and gain control over foes, declaring her the giver of boons.

[13] The Pranotasani Tantra (18th Century) and Naradpancharatra [14] narrates that once Parvati longed to go back to her maternal house for some days and asked Shiva's permission to do so.

[16] Matangi is often associated with pollution, especially left-over or partially eaten food (Uchchhishta or Ucçhishṭa, उच्छिष्ट) considered impure in Hinduism.

These social groups deal in occupations deemed inauspicious and polluted like the collection of waste, meat-processing and working in cremation grounds.

The goddess is described as one who helps a person to use words in the right way and to go beyond it to seek the soul and inner knowledge, which lie outside the demarcated boundaries of tradition.

[24] Matangi is regarded as a Tantric form of Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge and the arts of mainstream Hinduism, with whom she shares many traits.

[26] Tantric sadhakas are regarded to have transcended the pollution by offering her left-over or partially eaten food (Uchchhishta) and thus overcome their ego.

[26] Matangi is often worshipped with the mantra syllable Aim, which is associated with Saraswati and is the seed-syllable of knowledge, learning, and teaching.

A longer mantra is also used:[19] Om Hrim Aim Shrim Namo Bhagvati Ucchishtachandali Shri Matangeswari Sarvajanavasankari Swaha "Reverence to adorable Matangi, the outcast and residue, who gives control over all creatures" Her mantra may be repeated ten thousand times, repeated one thousand times while offering flowers and ghee in a fire sacrifice, or repeated one hundred times while offering water (Arghya) or while offering food to Brahmin priests.

[19] Offering certain items to a fire sacrifice—particularly those performed at cremation grounds, riverbanks, forests, or crossroads—while repeating the mantra is said to fulfill specific goals.

It is likewise said that it is possible to make a person one's slave by feeding him or her the ashes of a crow whose stomach was stuffed with a conch and burnt in a cremation ground while repeating the goddess' mantra.

[18] Another taboo that is broken in Matangi worship is the offering to the goddess of a cloth stained with menstrual blood to gain the ability to attract a mate.

[18] The outcaste Matangi community of Nepal collect polluted substances and items related to death and bad luck such as sacrificial animal heads and clothes of the deceased, and offers them at special stones kept at crossroads called chwasas, where the Matangi "consumes" them as an offering, thereby getting rid of the pollution.

[20] The Tantrasara also advises offerings to Matangi of meat, fish, cooked rice, milk and incense at crossroads or cremations grounds in the dead of the night to overpower enemies and gain poetic talent.

[26] A text proclaims Matangi's worship becomes fruitful only if the devotee reveres women as goddesses and refrains from criticizing them.

[21] The recitation of the Sanskrit alphabet, the chanting of mantras, the loud reading of the scriptures, and performance of music and dance are also described as constituting acts of her worship.

[19] Matangi along with the other Mahavidyas finds place in the Kamakhya Temple complex, one of the many important Shaktipeeth for Tantra worship.

There are several temples in South India where Matangi is venerated as Shyamala or Mantrini, the Prime minister of Goddess Lalita in Srikula tradition.