Who is kali

The manifestation of the goddess as Kali is the most shocking appearance. She is depicted standing on the prostrate body of Shiva, who is lying on a lotus bed. She has absorbed the inexorability of Rudra and Shiva as Bhairava. Yet there is both life and death in this form of the Divine Mother. The name Kali comes from the word "kala," or time.

She is the power of time which devours all. She has a power that destroys and should be depicted in awe-inspiring terror. Kali is found in the cremation ground amid dead bodies.

She is standing in a challenging posture on the prostrate body of her husband Shiva. Kali cannot exist without him, and Shiva can't reveal himself without her. She is the manifestation of Shiva's power and energy. While Shiva's complexion is pure white, Kali is the color of the darkest night-a deep bluish black. As the limitless Void, Kali has swallowed up everything without a trace. Hence, she is black.

Kali's luxuriant hair is disheveled and, thereby, symbolizes Kali's boundless freedom. Another interpretation says that each hair is a jiva individual soul , and all souls have their roots in Kali. Kali has three eyes; the third one stands for wisdom.

Kali's tongue is protruding, a gesture of coyness-because she unwittingly stepped on the body of her husband Shiva. A more philosophical interpretation of Kali's tongue is that it symbolizes Rajas the color red, activity and that it is held by her teeth, symbolizing sattva the color white, spirituality. Kali has four arms. The posture of her right arms promises fearlessness and boons while her left arms hold a bloody sword and a freshly severed human head.

Looking at Kali's right, we see good, and looking at her left, we see bad. Kali is portrayed as naked except for a girdle of human arms cut off at the elbow and a garland of fifty skulls. The arms represent the capacity for work, and Kali wears all work action , potential work, and the results thereof around her waist. The fifty skulls represent the fifty letters of the Hindu alphabet, the manifest state of sound from which all creation evolved.

Kali's nudity has a similar meaning. In many instances she is described as garbed in space or sky clad. In her absolute, primordial nakedness she is free from all covering of illusion.

She is Nature Prakriti in Sanskrit , stripped of 'clothes'. It symbolizes that she is completely beyond name and form, completely beyond the effects of maya illusion. Her nudity is said to represent totally illumined consciousness, unaffected by maya.

Kali is the bright fire of truth, which cannot be hidden by the clothes of ignorance. Such truth simply burns them away. Despite Kali's origins in battle, she evolved to a full-fledged symbol of Mother Nature in her creative, nurturing and devouring aspects. Some groups of people, unfamiliar with the precepts of Hinduism, see Kali as a satanic demon probably because of tales of her being worshipped by dacoits and other such people indulging evil acts.

The Goddess Kali is represented as black in color. Black in the ancient Hindu language of Sanskrit is kaala. The feminine form is kali. So she is Kali, the black one. Black is a symbol of The Infinite and the seed stage of all colors. The Goddess Kali remains in a state of inconceivable darkness that transcends words and mind. Within her blackness is the dazzling brilliance of illumination. Kali's blackness symbolizes her all-embracing, comprehensive nature, because black is the color in which all the colors merge; black absorbs and dissolves them.

On the other hand, black is said to represent the total absence of color, again signifying the nature of Kali as ultimate reality. This in Sanskrit, the color black is named as nirguna beyond all quality and form.

Either way, kali's black colour symbolizes her transcendence of all form. She appears black because She is viewed from a distance But when intimately known She is no longer so The sky appears blue at a distance, but look at it close by And you will find that it has no colour The water of the ocean looks blue at a distance But when you go near and take it on your hand, you find that it is colourless".

Kali is a great and powerful black earth Mother Goddess capable of terrible destruction and represents the most powerful form of the female forces in the Universe.

Worship of the Goddess Kali is largely an attempt to appease her and avert her wrath. The Goddess Kali constantly drinks blood. She has an insatiable thirst for blood. As mistress of blood, she presides over the mysteries of both life and death.

Kali intends her bloody deeds for the protection of the good. She may get carried away by her gruesome acts but she is not evil. Kali's destructive energies on the highest level are seen as a vehicle of salvation and ultimate transformation.

Kali is the central deity of Time. She created the world and destroys it. She is beyond time and space. After the destruction of the Universe, at the end of the great cycle, she collects the seeds of the next creation. She destroys the finite to reveal the Infinite. This Black Goddess is death, but to the wise she is also the death of death. This can only be revealed through the worship of Kali, and meditation on her mysteries.

To her worshippers in both Hinduism and Tantra she represents a multi-faceted Great Goddess responsible for all of life from conception to death. Her worship, therefore, consists of fertility festivals as well as sacrifices animal and human ; and her initiations expand one's consciousness by many means, including fear, ritual sexuality and intoxication with a variety of drugs.

Her three forms are 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 stages of life, the three trimesters of pregnancy, and so on.

Women represent her spirit in mortal flesh. These priestesses attend the dying, govern funerary rites and act as angels of death. All have their counterparts in the spirit world. To this day, Tantric Buddhism relates the three mortal forms of woman to the divine female trinity called Three Most Precious Ones.

Kali's three forms appear in the sacred colors known as "Gunas": white for the Virgin, red for the Mother, black for the Crone, the three together symbolizing birth, life, death. Black is Kali's fundamental color as the Destroyer, for it means the formless condition she assumes between creations, when all the elements are dissolved in her primordial substance.

As Kundalini the Female Serpent, she resembles 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. Spirals therefore appeared on tombs, as one of the world's first mystical symbols. Kali is considered to be the most fully realized of all the Dark Goddesses, but even though Kali was originally worshipped as a warrior goddess, and her followers gave her offerings of blood and flesh, her followers still found her greatest strength to be that of a protector.

Kali is not always thought of as a Dark Goddess; rather, she is also referred to as a great and loving primordial Mother Goddess in the Hindu tantric tradition. Kali is also associated with intense sexuality. Myths tell of the Yoni vagina of Kali when she existed as Sati - wife of Lord Shiva falling down to the Earth on the sacred hill near Gauhati in Assam India , the same place where the Temple of Kamakhya is now located. The temple's outer walls are highly decorated with carvings showing Kali as a Triple Goddess: squatting, and exposing her Yoni vagina ; as a mother suckling Her child; and as a warrior woman drawing back Her bow.

While these carvings show Kali as a sexual being, they also show her as a protective and motherly woman, full of compassion. Known as the "Dark Mother," the Hindu Triple Goddess of creation, protection, and destruction, now most commonly known in her Destroyer aspect, is very often depicted as squatting over her dead consort Shiva and devouring his entrails, while her yoni sexually devours his lingam.

Kali is:. 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 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. Kali's paramount place of worship is in the cremation ground, preferably at the dead of night, on a suitable day of the waning Moon.

Here, her nature becomes clear and apparent. For an adept in the worship, the whole world is a cremation ground, and She, the true form of time, who by herself creates and destroys all, is personified as the pyre. There, after life, all mortals and their wishes, dreams and reflections come to their fruition, a pile of worthless ashes.

Kali's dwelling place, the cremation ground denotes a place where the pancha mahabhuta five elements are dissolved. Kali dwells where this dissolution takes place. In terms of devotion and worship, this denotes the dissolving of attachments, anger, lust and other binding emotions, feelings and ideas.

The heart of devotee is where this burning takes place, and it is in the heart that Kali dwells. The devotee makes her image in his heart and under her influence burns away all limitations and ignorance in the cremation fires.

This inner cremation fire in the heart is the gyanagni fire of knowledge , which kali bestows. Kali is the universal mother. Kali is the quintessential embodiment of shakti , female power. She emerges as an independent goddess around BCE and evolves as a controversial character: she is a scary, bloodthirsty embodiment of destruction , and the ultimate protector against evil.

Duplicity and multiplicity was a trait associated with female divinity in antiquity, she explains. Kali and other early female goddesses were the expression of nature. Like nature, she has a destructive side as much as a benevolent one.

As a female, the power of creation rests with her; and as a female, too, so does the sheer force of nature. The myth wants her to be bloodthirsty and uncontrollable, while Shiva, the male god, is wise and in control: But this, Singhal notes, is just the male retelling of the story, shaped by centuries of patriarchal values.

There is another way to think about it, one in which the goddess is not trying to dominate Shiva—she is dancing, celebrating her victory against the demon, and got carried away. She represents nature at its rawest and most untamed. She is the culmination of all that is strength and power. She is loving without being devoted. She is the ultimate mother—the mother of all power—without being reduced to the role of a mother. When Kali eventually stepped upon her husband she realized her mistake and bit her tongue in shame.

The Tantric interpretation of Kali standing on top of her husband is as follows:. Shiva, or Mahadeva represents Brahman , the Absolute pure consciousness which is beyond all names, forms and activities. Kali, on the other hand, represents the potential and manifested energy responsible for all names, forms and activities.

She is his Shakti, or creative power, and is seen as the substance behind the entire content of all consciousness. She can never exist apart from Shiva or act independently of him, i. While this is an advanced concept in monistic Shaktism, it also agrees with the Nondual Trika philosophy of Kashmir , popularly known as Kashmir Shaivism and associated most famously with Abhinavagupta.

There is a colloquial saying that "Shiva without Shakti is Shava" which means that without the power of action Shakti that is Mahakali represented as the short "i" in Devanagari Shiva or consciousness itself is inactive; Shava means corpse in Sanskrit and the play on words is that all Sanskrit consonants are assumed to be followed by a short letter "a" unless otherwise noted.

The short letter "i" represents the female power or Shakti that activates Creation. This is often the explanation for why She is standing on Shiva, who is either Her husband and complement in Shaktism or the Supreme Godhead in Shaivism. To properly understand this complex Tantric symbolism it is important to remember that the meaning behind Shiva and Kali does not stray from the non-dualistic parlance of Shankara or the Upanisads.

According to both the Mahanirvana and Kularnava Tantras, there are two distinct ways of perceiving the same absolute reality. The first is a transcendental plane which is often described as static, yet infinite.

It is here that there is no matter, there is no universe and only consciousness exists. This form of reality is known as Shiva, the absolute Sat-Chit-Ananda — existence, knowledge and bliss.

The second is an active plane, an immanent plane, the plane of matter, of Maya , i. This form of reality is known as Kali or Shakti, and in its entirety is still specified as the same Absolute Sat-Chit-Ananda. It is here in this second plane that the universe as we commonly know it is experienced and is described by the Tantric seer as the play of Shakti, or God as Mother Kali. Kali and Bhairava the terrible form of Shiva in Union, 18th century, Nepal. From a Tantric perspective, when one meditates on reality at rest, as absolute pure consciousness without the activities of creation, preservation or dissolution one refers to this as Shiva or Brahman.

When one meditates on reality as dynamic and creative, as the Absolute content of pure consciousness with all the activities of creation, preservation or dissolution one refers to it as Kali or Shakti. However, in either case the yogini or yogi is interested in one and the same reality — the only difference being in name and fluctuating aspects of appearance.

It is this which is generally accepted as the meaning of Kali standing on the chest of Shiva. Although there is often controversy surrounding the images of divine copulation, the general consensus is benign and free from any carnal impurities in its substance.

In Tantra the human body is a symbol for the microcosm of the universe; therefore sexual process is responsible for the creation of the world. Although theoretically Shiva and Kali or Shakti are inseparable, like fire and its power to burn, in the case of creation they are often seen as having separate roles.

With Shiva as male and Kali as female it is only by their union that creation may transpire. This once again stresses the interdependencies of Shiva and Shakti and the vitality of their union.

Gopi Krishna proposed that Kali standing on the dead Shiva or Shava Sanskrit for dead body symbolised the helplessness of a person undergoing the changing process psychologically and physiologically in the body conducted by the Kundalini Shakti. In the later traditions, Kali has become inextricably linked with Shiva. The unleashed form of Kali often becomes wild and uncontrollable, and only Shiva is able to tame her.

This is both because she is often a transformed version of one of his consorts and because he is able to match her wildness. The ancient text of Kali Kautuvam describes her competition with Shiva in dance, from which the sacred Karanas appeared. Shiva won the competition by acting the urdva tandava , one of the Karanas, by raising his feet to his head.

Other texts describe Shiva appearing as a crying infant and appealing to her maternal instincts. While Shiva is said to be able to tame her, the iconography often presents her dancing on his fallen body, and there are accounts of the two of them dancing together, and driving each other to such wildness that the world comes close to unravelling.

Shiva's involvement with Tantra and Kali's dark nature have led to her becoming an important Tantric figure. To the Tantric worshippers, it was essential to face her Curse, the terror of death, as willingly as they accepted Blessings from her beautiful, nurturing, maternal aspect. For them, wisdom meant learning that no coin has only one side: as death cannot exist without life, so life cannot exist without death.

Kali's role sometimes grew beyond that of a chaos — which could be confronted — to that of one who could bring wisdom, and she is given great metaphysical significance by some Tantric texts. Although this is an extreme case, the Yogini-tantra, Kamakhya-tantra and the Niruttara-tantra declare her the svarupa own-being of the Mahadevi the great Goddess, who is in this case seen as the combination of all devis.

The final stage of development is the worshipping of Kali as the Great Mother , devoid of her usual violence. This practice is a break from the more traditional depictions. The pioneers of this tradition are the 18th century Shakta poets such as Ramprasad Sen , who show an awareness of Kali's ambivalent nature.

Ramakrishna , the 19th century Bengali saint, was also a great devotee of Kali; the western popularity of whom may have contributed to the more modern, equivocal interpretations of this Goddess. Rachel McDermott's work, however, suggests that for the common, modern worshipper, Kali is not seen as fearful, and only those educated in old traditions see her as having a wrathful component.

Some credit to the development of Devi must also be given to Samkhya. Commonly referred to as the Devi of delusion, Mahamaya , acting in the confines of but not being bound by the nature of the three gunas , takes three forms: Maha-Kali, Maha- Lakshmi and Maha- Saraswati , being her tamas -ika, rajas -ika and sattva -ika forms. In this sense, Kali is simply part of a larger whole. Like Sir John Woodroffe and Georg Feuerstein , many Tantric scholars as well as sincere practitioners agree that, no matter how propitious or appalling you describe them, Shiva and Devi are simply recognizable symbols for everyday, abstract yet tangible concepts such as perception, knowledge, space-time, causation and the process of liberating oneself from the confines of such things.

Shiva, symbolizing pure, absolute consciousness, and Devi, symbolizing the entire content of that consciousness, are ultimately one and the same — totality incarnate, a micro-macro-cosmic amalgamation of all subjects, all objects and all phenomenal relations between the "two. Worshippers prescribe various benign and horrific qualities to Devi simply out of practicality. They do this so they may have a variety of symbols to choose from, symbols which they can identify and relate with from the perspective of their own, ever-changing time, place and personal level of unfolding.

Just like modern chemists or physicists use a variety of molecular and atomic models to describe what is unperceivable through rudimentary, sensory input, the scientists of ontology and epistemology must do the same.

One of the underlying distinctions of Tantra, in comparison to other religions, is that it allows the devotee the liberty to choose from a vast array of complementary symbols and rhetoric that which suits one's evolving needs and tastes.

From an aesthetic standpoint, nothing is interdict and nothing is orthodox. In this sense, the projection of some of Devi's more gentle qualities onto Kali is not sacrilege and the development of Kali really lies in the practitioner, not the murthi. An academic study of Western Kali enthusiasts noted that, "as shown in the histories of all cross-cultural religious transplants, Kali devotionalism in the West must take on its own indigenous forms if it is to adapt to its new environment.

The majority instead rely chiefly on other popular feminist sources, almost none of which base their interpretations on a close reading of Kali's Indian background. Find more about Kali on the following Wikimedia projects :. Religion Wiki Explore. Religion portals. Sunni Islam Shia Islam. Contributing Getting Started Advanced. Register Don't have an account?

View source. History Talk 0. Main article: Mahakali. Kinsley p.