Who is Kali the Goddess?

 

KALI MA KILLER HISTORY OF DEATH AND LIFE

Typed out for Mother God by William Bond

Kali Ma – from the book by Barbara G. Walker, “The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets”

With Comments by Guru Rasa Von Werder

"Dark Mother," the Hindu Triple Goddess of creation, preservation, and destruction; now most commonly known in her Destroyer aspect, squatting over her dead consort Shiva and devouring his entrails, while her yoni sexually devours his lingam (penis). Kali is "The hungry earth, which devours its own children and fattens on their corpses…It is in India that the experience of the Terrible Mother has been given its most grandiose form as Kali. But all this – and it should not be forgotten – is an image not only of the Feminine but particularly and specifically of the Maternal. For in a profound way life and birth are always bound up with death and destruction."

RASA SAYS: PLEASE NOTE THAT KALI IS KILLING SHIVA – SHIVA THE MALE GOD. TO ME, THIS IS A VIVID AND PRECISE SYMBOL OF MALE EXTINCTION.

Kali was the basic archetypal image of the birth-and-death Mother, simultaneously womb and tomb, giver of life and devourer of her children: the same image portrayed in a thousand ancient religions. Even modern psychologists face this image with uneasy acknowledgement of its power. It seems the image of the angry, punishing, castrating Father is somehow less threatening than that of the destructive Mother – perhaps because she symbolized the inexorable reality of death, whereas he only postulated a problematic post-mortem judgment.

RASA: PLEASE BEAR IN MIND AS YOU READ ALL THIS, EVERYTHING IS ATTRIBUTED TO KALI. BUT MOTHER GOD HAS A MYRIAD OF FORMS, AND YOU CAN SEE ABOUT THE SAME THING FOR ALL HER FORMS—IT’S ALL HER IN VARIOUS APPEARANCES. BUT AGAIN, WHY IS SHE SO SPECIFIC IN THIS APPEARANCE? IT IS WITHOUT A DOUBT THE KILLING OF MALE—ALL MEN AS SHE STANDS NOT JUST ON ONE MAN OR ONE DEMON, BUT THE GOD OF ALL MEN, THE MASCULINE GOD SHIVA, NOT GIVING HIM LIFE AS SHAKTI DOES ON TOP OF HIM, BUT GIVING HIM DEATH. TAKE NOT THAT WHEN MOTHER GOD GIVES LIFE TO SHIVA HE IS ON THE GROUND INERT. SHE GETS ON TOP OF HIM AND BRINGS HIM LIFE. THIS, AS KALI, IS THE OPPOSITE.

Tantric worshipers of Kali thought it essential to face her Curse, the terror of death, as willing as they accept Blessings from her beautiful, nurturing, maternal aspect. For them, wisdom meant learning that no coin has only one side: as death can't exist without life, so also life can't exit without death. Kali's sages communed with her in the grisly atmosphere of the cremation ground, to become familiar with images of death. They said: "His Goddess, his loving Mother in time, who gives him birth and loves him in the flesh, also destroys him in the flesh. His image of Her is incomplete if he does not know Her as his tearer and devourer."

Few western scholars understood the profound philosophy behind the hideous image of Kali the Destroyer. The London Museum displayed such an image with the label saying only, "Kali – Destroying Demon." The Encyclopaedia Britannica devoted five columns to Christian interpretations of the Logos without ever mentioning it origins in Kali's Om or Creative Word; Kali herself was dismissed in a brief paragraph as the wife of Shiva and "a goddess of disease."

RASA SAYS: IMBECILIC MALES AND THEIR POLITICIZED ACADEMIA, DISCREDITING ALL FROM MOTHER GOD AND WOMEN. THEY WILL DIE FOR IT.

Certainly, as the Kalika or Crone she governed every form of death including disease; but she also ruled every form of life.

Kali stood for Existence, which meant Becoming because all her world was an eternal living flux from which all things rose and disappeared again, in endless cycles. The gods, whom she bore and devoured, addressed her thus:

RASA SAYS: NOTICE SHE BORE THE GODS. MOTHER GOD IS THE SOURCE OF MALE GODS.

Thou art the Original of all manifestations; Thou art the birthplace of even Us; Thou knowest the whole world, yet none know Thee…Thou art both Subtle and Gross, Manifested and Veiled, Formless, yet with form. Who can understand thee?...It is Thou art the Supreme Primordial Kalika…Resuming after dissolution Thine own from, dark and formless, Thou alone remainest as One ineffable and inconceivable…though they self without beginning, multiform by the power of Maya, thou art the Beginning of all, Creatrix, Protectress, and Destructress.

Brahman's assigned Kali's three functions to three male gods, calling them Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Kali's archaic consort Shiva the destroyer; but many scriptures opposed this male trinity as offensively artificial. A prayer in the Tantrasara said: "O Mother! Cause and Mother of the World! Thou art the One Primordial Being, Mother of innumerable creatures, Creatrix of the very gods; even of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer! O Mother, in hymning Thy praise I purify my speech!" The Nivana Tantra treated the claims of male gods with contempt:

RASA: TREATED MALE GODS WITH CONTEMPT. INDEED. HER KIDS.

Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesvara [Shiva], and other gods are born of the body of that beginningless and eternal Kalika, and at the time of dissolution they again disappear in Her. O Devi, for this reason, so long as the living man does not know the supreme truth in regard to Her…his desire for liberation can only give rise to ridicule. From a part only of Kalika, the primordial Shakti, arises Brahma, from a part of only arises Vishu, and from a part only arises Shiva. O fair-eyed Devi, just as rivers and lakes are unable to traverse a vast sea, so Brahma and other gods lose their separate existence on entering the uncrossable and infinite being of Great Brahma and the other gods is nothing but such a little water as is for a hollow made by a cow's hoof. Just as it is impossible for a hollow made by a cow's hoof to form a notion of the unfathomable depths of a sea, so it is impossible for Braham and other gods to have a knowledge of the nature of Kali.

RASA: NO GOD STANDS BEFORE MOTHER GOD.

Even the arrogant Vishnu, who claimed to have brought the whole earth out of the primal abyss, received the grace of enlightenment concerning Kali and wrote a poem about her: "Material cause of all change, manifestation and destruction…the whole Universe rests upon Her, rises out of Her and melts away unto Her. From Her are crystallized the original elements and qualities which construct the apparent worlds. She is both mother and grave…The gods themselves are merely constructs out of Her maternal substance, which is both consciousness and potential joy."

The Yogini Tantra said of Kali, "Whatever power anything possesses, that is the Goddess." Shakti, "Power," was one of her important names. Without her, neither man nor god could act at all.

RASA SAYS: AGAIN, LET US REMEMBER, THAT ALL THESE TERMS GO BACK TO “MOTHER GOD” AS WE IN THE WEST UNDERSTAND IT. MOTHER GOD IS SHAKTI, DURGA, KALI, AND ALL OTHER NAMES, AND ALL THE QUALITIES HEREIN WORSHIPED AND EXPRESSED GO TO “MOTHER GOD.” MOTHER IS CALLED DURGA, SHAKTI, KALI, ETC.

It is She as Power (Shakti) who takes the active and changeful part in generation, as also in conceiving, bearing, and giving birth to the World-Child. All this is the function of the divine, as it is of the human, mother…It is thus to the Mother that man owes the World of Forms of Universe. Without Her as material cause, Being cannot display itself. It is but a corpse…primacy is given to the Mother, and it is said, "What care I for the Father if I but be on the lap of the Mother?"

A Tantric scholar points out that "the poets have found much more intimate cries of the heart when they spoke of the Deity as their 'Mother' than when addressed themselves as God as Father." Kali's poets approached her through love: "By feeling is She known. How then can lack of feeling find Her/" In their view, "All is the Mother and She is really herself. 'Sa'ham' (She I Am) the Sakta says, and all that he senses is She in the form in which he perceives her. It is She who in, and as, him drinks the consecrated wine, and She is the wine." She feeds him as a mother feeds her child, and he becomes immortal: "Deathless are those who have fed at the breast of the Mother of the Universe." The Yoginihrdaya Tantra says, "Obeisance to Her who is pure Being-Consciousness-Bliss, as Power, who exists in the form of Time and Space and all that is therein, and who is the radiant Illuminatrix in all beings."

As a Mother, Kali was called Treasure-House of Compassion (karuna), Giver of Life to the world, the Life of all lives. Contrary to the west's idea of her as a purely destructive Goddess, she was the fount of every kind of love, which flowed into the world only through her agents on earth, women. Thus it was said a male worshipper of Kali "bows down at the feet of women,” regarding them as his rightful teachers.

RASA SAYS: THIS LAST PARAGRAPH IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT TO WOMEN FOR THEIR MATRIARCHY AND TO MEN FOR THEIR RESTITUTION THROUGH THE WORSHIP OF MOTHER GOD AND WOMEN.

The name Eve may have originated with Kali's Ieva or Jiva, the primordial female principle of manifestation; she gave birth to her "first manifested form" and called him Idam (Adam). She also bore the same title given to Eve in the Old Testament: Mother of All Living (Jaganmata).

RASA SAYS: MOTHER GOD, THROUGH FEMALE, GAVE BIRTH TO THE FIRST MAN THROUGH PARTHENOGENESIS. THE “OUT OF THE RIB OF ADAM” IS A FAIRY TALE OF OLD HUSBANDS AND THEIR WISHFUL THINKING-LIES.

As the primal Deep, or menstrual Ocean of Blood at creation, Kali was certainly the same as the biblical tehom, Tiamat, or tohu bohu, the "flux" representing her state of formlessness between manifested universes. As Mahanila-Sarasvati the great blue River-Goddess, she was probably the original namesake of the River Nile. As Kundalini the Female Serpent, she resembled the archaic Egyptian serpent-mother said to have created the world. It was said of Kundalini that at the beginning of the universe, she starts to uncoil in "a spiral line movement which is the movement of creation." This spiral line was vitally important in late Palaeolithic and Neolithic religious symbolism, representing death and rebirth as movement into the disappearing-point of formlessness, and out of it again, to a new world of form. Spirals therefore appeared on tombs, as one of the world's first mystical symbols.

RASA SAYS: KUNDALINI SHAKTI IS SHAKTI, ALSO CALLED CHITI-SHAKTI, AND REPRESENTS THE HOLY SPIRIT OF GOD, THE FEMININE DIVINE SPIRIT.

Luna priests of Sinai, formerly priestesses of the Moon-goddess, called themselves Kalu. Similar priestesses of prehistoric Ireland were kelles, origin of the name Kelly, which meant hierophantic clan devoted to "the Goddess Kele" (see Kelle). This was cognate with the Saxon Kale, or Cale, whose lunar calendar or Kalends included the spring month of Sproutkale, when Mother Earth (Kale) put forth new shoots. In antiquity the Phoenicians referred to the strait of Gibraltar as Calpe , because it was considered the passage to the western paradise of the Mother.

RASA SAYS: AHA, NOW I KNOW WHY ST. PATRICK ALWAYS BLESSES ME ON HIS DAY. I USED THE NAME KELLIE FOR MUCH OF MY LIFE, AS THE DANCER/PREACHER OF MUCH FAME, AND NAMED MY DAUGHTER KELLIE.

Indo-European languages branched from the root of Sanskrit, said to be Kali's invention. She created the magic letters of the Sanskrit alphabet and inscribed them on the rosary of skulls around her neck. The letters were magic because they stood fro primordial creative energy expressed in sound – Kali's mantras brought into being the very things whose names she spoke for the first time, in her bold language. In short, Kali's worshippers originated the doctrine of the logos or creative Word, which Christians later adopted and pretended it was their own idea,

RASA SAYS: HERE IS THE EXAMPLE OF MALES STEALING FROM WOMEN, THEN PRETENDING THEY INVENTED IT. ALL MALE RELIGIONS ORIGINATED FROM WOMEN’S TEACHINGS, INCLUDING THE KORAN.

Kali's letters magically combined the elements, which were previously separate as fiery-airy (male) or watery-earthy (female) forces. The former were "cruel"; the latter "benevolent." This distinction seemed to reflect the Tantric view of Kali as Lady of Life and her spouse as Lord of Death.

Though called "the One," Kali was always a trinity: the same Vigin-Mother-Crone triad established perhaps nine or ten millennia ago, giving the Celts their triple Morrigan; the Greeks their triple Moerae and all the other manifestations of the Threefold Goddess; the Norsemen their triple Norms; the Romans their triple Fates and the triadic Uni (Juno); the Egyptians their triple Mut; the Arabs their triple Moon-goddess – she was the same everywhere. Even the Christians modeled their threefold God on her archetypal trinity.

Her three forms were manifested in many ways: in the three divisions of the year, the three phases of the moon, the three sections of the cosmos (heaven, earth and the underworld), the three stage of life, the three trimesters of pregnancy, and so on. Women represented her spirit in mortal flesh. "The Divine Mother first appears in and as Her worshipper's earthly mother, then as his wife; thirdly as Kalika, She reveals Herself in old age, disease and death."

Three kinds of priestesses tended her shrines: Yoginis or Shaktis, the "Maidens"; Matri, the "Mother"; and Dakinis, the "Skywalkers" who attended the dying, governed funerary rites and acted as angels of death. All their counterparts in the spirit world. To this day, Tantric Buddhism relates the three mortal forms of women to the divine female trinity called Three Most Precious Ones.

Kali's three forms appeared in the sacred colors known as Cunas: white for the Virgin, red for the Mother, black for the Crone, symbolizing birth, life, death. Black was Kali's fundamental color as the Destroyer, for it meant the formless condition she assumed between creations, when all the elements where dissolved in her primordial substance. "As white, yellow, and other colors all disappear in black, in the same way…all beings enter Kali."

The Black Goddess was known in Finland as Kalma (Kali Ma), a haunter of tombs and an eater of the dead. European "witches" worshipped her in the same funereal places, for the same reasons, that Tantric yogis and dakinis worshipped her in cremation grounds, as Smashana-Kali, Lady of the Dead. Their ceremonies were held in the places of ghosts where ordinary folk feared to go. So were ceremonies of western "witches" – that is, pagans. They adored the Black Mother Earth in cemeteries, where Roman tombstones invoked her with the phase, Mater genuit, Mater recipit – the Mother bore me, the Mother took me back.

RASA SAYS: CONTACT WITH SOULS IN PURGATORY IS AN IMPORTANT FORM OF MINISTRY. I HAD IT FOR 30 YEARS, HELPED THOUSANDS OF SOULS BY MY PRAYERS AND SUFFERINGS.

Sometimes Kali the Destroyer wore red, suggesting the blood of life that she gave and took back: "As She devours all existence, as She chews all things existing with Her fierce teeth, therefore a mass of blood is imagined to be the apparel of the Queen of the Gods at the final dissolution. The gypsies, who worshipped Kalika as a disease-causing Goddess they called "the Aunt," clothed her in red, the proper color for gypsy funerals.

Blood was as much a part of Kali's worship as it was of the worship of the biblical God who said blood must be poured on his altars to bring remission of sins (Hebrew 9:22). The difference between the western God's demand for blood and Kali's was that Jewish priests took away the meat and ate it themselves (Numbers 18:9), whereas devotees of Kali were permitted to eat their own offerings, as in Calcutta :

The temple serves simply as a slaughterhouse, for those performing the sacrifice retain their animals, leaving only the head of the temple as a symbolic gift, while the blood flows to the Goddess. For to the Goddess is due the lifeblood of all creatures – since it is she who has bestowed it – and that is why the beast must be slaughtered in her temple; that is why temple and slaughterhouse are one.

This ritual is performed amid gruesome filth; in the mud compounded of blood and earth, the heads of the animals are heaped up like trophies before the statue of the Goddess, while those sacrificing return home for a family banquet of the bodies of their animals. The Goddess desires only the blood of the offerings, hence beheading is the form of sacrifice, since the blood drains quickly from the beheaded beasts…the head signifies the whole, the total sacrifice.

RASA SAYS: THIS HAD TO HAVE BEEN INTRODUCED BY MEN. MOTHER GOD DOES NOT WANT US TO SACRIFICE LIVING CREATURES, BUT WANTS US TO SACRIFICE OUR SINS; ADDICTIONS, BAD HABITS, VICES, ATTACHMENTS TO EARTH THAT KEEP US FROM GOD. IN MATRIARCHY THEY DID NOT SLAUGHTER ANIMALS, THEY KEPT GOATS AND SHEEP FOR MILK AND WOOL BARBARA WALKER SAYS ELSEWHERE. BUDDHA, A VERY MATERNAL SPIRITUAL LEADER, SAID NOT TO SACRIFICE ANIMALS. THIS HAD TO BE INVENTED BY THE MALES.

Beheading or throat-cutting were common methods of sacrificial killing in the western world too. "Kosher" killing for Yahweh consisted, and still consists, of draining the animal's blood, because blood was the special food of deities. Kali demanded sacrifice of male animals only, for they were expendable – a custom harking back to the primitive belief that males had no part in the cycles of generation. Shiva himself, as Kali's sacrificial spouse, commanded that female animals must never be slain at the altar.

Kali was the Ocean of Blood at the beginning and end of the world, and ultimate destruction of the universe was prefigured by destruction of each individual, though her karmic wheel always brought reincarnation. After death came nothing-at-all, which Tantric sages called the third of the three states of being; to experience it was like the experience of Dreamless Sleep. This state was also called "the Generative Womb of All, the Beginning and End of Beings." Kali devoured Time itself. At the end of Time, she resumed her "dark formlessness," which appeared in all the myths of before-creation and after-doomsday as elemental Chaos.

The mystical experience of Kali was often described as a preview of formlessness beyond the veil of death: a psychic return to the womb, to be united with Kali's oceanic being. Thus Ramakrishna described it:

I was suffering from excruciating pain because I had not been blessed with a vision of the Mother…I feared that it might not be my lot to realize her in this life. I could not bear the separation any longer; life did not seem to be worth living. Then my eyes fell on the sword that was kept in the Mother's temple. Determined to put an end to my life, I jumped up and seized it, when suddenly the blessed Mother revealed herself to me…the temple and all vanished, leaving no trace; instead there was a limitless, infinite, shining ocean of consciousness or spirit. As far as the eye could see, its billows were rushing towards me from all sides…to swallow me up. I was panting for breath. I was caught in the billows and fell down senseless.

RASA SAYS: I ALSO SAW GOD AS THE INFINITE OCEAN OF BLISS, THE HORIZON KEPT OPENING, IT WAS THE GOLD OF LOVE. I WAS GOD, GOD WAS ME. PRIOR TO THIS I HAD HAD THE EXPERIENCE OF DROWNING IN THE OCEAN OF GRACE WHICH WAS NOT BLISSFUL.

Ramakrishna revitalized the worship of the Mother, as his pupil Vivekananda said; "It was no new truths that Ramakrishna came to preach, though his advent brought old truths to light." Vivekananda predicted the resurgence of the Mother into the consciousness of the world's population, after patriarchal religions had forced her into concealment in the unconscious. "One vision I see clear as life before me, that the ancient mother has awakened once more, sitting on her throne rejuvenated, more glorious than ever. Proclaim her to all the world with the voice of peace and benediction. Clearly, this Goddess was much more that the London Museum 's "Destroying Demon."

RASA SAYS: BRAVO TO RAMAKRISHNA AND VIVEKANANDA

5 20 14 by Barbara G. Walker, comments Rasa Von Werder