Goddess Kali, The Black Mother

         Kali, the Black Mother is feared, revered, misunderstood and loved and is one of the most enigmatic and ambivalent deities of the Hindu pantheon. She is somberly esoteric to tantriks, a loving mother to the Shakta devotee, the formless acquiring form for Krishnananda Agamavagisha, a playful mother to Sri Ramakrishna, an archetype of the paradoxical feminine to Jungians and repressed feminism gone wild to New Age feminists.

          Origins and Evolution: In the Rig-Veda She is mentioned as the terrible goddess Nirriti and also as goddess Ratri. In the Mundakyapanishad, Kali is one of the seven tongues of the fire god Agni  and in the Mahabharata, She is the agent of death who carries off the dead.  Her divine cult took shape in the Markandeya Purana , in the  Devimahatmya, the Shri Durga Saptashati, or the Chandi. Kali is the abstraction of primal energy and is the inherent power of ever-turning time, the relentless devourer that brings all created things to an end. Even the gods are said to have their origin and dissolution in Her.

         The secular texts of the medieval period paint a horrifying picture of Kali as exacting and receiving human sacrifice. But Her image was redeemed by the seventeenth century Bengali Tantric, Krishnananda Agamavagisha. At that time Kali did not have any standard iconography. It is said that the Goddess appeared to him in a dream during the night and instructed him to imagine Her in the very form of the woman whom he would first behold  in the morning. Krishnanada saw a tribal woman pasting cowdung on the wall. Her hands were thus raised in the action but as soon as she saw Krishnananda she stuck out her tongue in shame because her head was not covered.The lolling tongue, according to a more domestic version of the goddess symbolizes her shame and embarrassment as she stepped on her husband’s body.  Esoterically speaking the red tongue is the symbol of raja guna, bitten by her white teeth that stand for sattva guna

          The Darkness, The Blackness: The Rig-Veda says that before creation everything was sheathed in darkness. This primitive darkness is Kali from which all creation emerges and to which it returns,  illustrating the paradox that death feeds on life and life feeds on death in a ceaseless round. According to Mahanirban Tantra just as all colours disappear in black, so all names and forms disappear in the Goddess. Kali’s dark skin symbolizes the absorption of the universe within Herself. Infact Her name is derived from Kaal, which means both ‘black’ and ‘time’.

          But Ramakrishna Paramhansa said that the Divine Mother appears to be black because we behold Her only from a distance, just as the sky appears blue when we look from the earth. But if we go near and know Her intimately, we will find She has no colour at all. The water of the ocean looks blue from a distance but when we go near and see the reality we see it is colourless.

         Her blackness can also be interpreted as the astronomical reality of the black hole that sucks up all light due to its intense gravity. It is the Law of gravity that is behind the concept of Kali sucking up everything and condensing Herself into a tiny point, the bindu.

        The discussion about her dark hue remains incomplete without a reference to the great scholar Sir John Woodroffe. He says “She is naked and dark like a threatening rain cloud. She is dark for she, who is herself beyond mind and speech, reduces all things into the worldly nothingness, which is the Void…at the same time the All, the purna”

        Merging of Paradoxes: Kali embodies wrath and fury.  Her fearful aspect is brought out by her traditional epithet, “Karalbadana”, describing her terrible face. Yet She stands for the reality of Nature in all her benign and also malevolent aspects.  In the form of Uma and Sati , She represents fertility and life generating powers. As Kali, Chamunda and Chinnamasta, She is destruction, violence and death. She symbolizes the paradoxes of life and death, creation and destruction, time and eternity,  passivity and aggression,  beautiful and grotesque, tender and terrifying. Her essence seems to lie in her ambiguity and contradictions.

         I end by quoting two poems. The first one is by Ramprasad, with its familiar tone of talking to a mother. The second is a part of the poem by Swami Vivekananda, deep and cosmic in its significance.  The poems represent the two sides of the Goddess.

“Good grief, haven't you any shame?
Mother don't you have clothes?
Where is the pride of a king's daughter?
And Mother, is this some family duty--
This standing on the chest of your man?” 

-By Ram Prasad

Kali the Mother-

Come, Mother, come!

For terror is Thy name,
Death is in thy breath,
And every shaking step
Destoys a world for e'er.
Thou Time, the All-destroyer!
Come, O Mother, come!

Who dares misery love,
And hug the form of Death,

Dance in destruction's dance
To him the Mother comes.

-        Swami Vivekananda

Nandini Basu