Kali: The Black Goddess Most major religions do not acknowledge the feminine power of God. Nevertheless, the mysterious spirit of the feminine strikes a chord in most people's hearts. The Christian concept of the Holy Mother--a meek, ever-loving, patiently suffering female--is very different from the image of Kali in the Hindu pantheon. Kali is not a typical Hindu woman. She is not bashful; she is not subservient to her husband. She walks around in the nude. Her hair is a mess. She is drunk on the blood of demons. She is present within every human body as Kundalini. She is the Goddess of Tantra. The Dakshineswar Temple in India is devoted to the worship of Ma Kali. A new book, Kali: The Black Goddess of Dakshineswar (Nicholas Hays), by Elizabeth Harding, provides a guided tour of this temple, the practices of the Kali worshipers, and insights into the Goddess Herself. Perhaps the most famous exemplar of Kali was Sri Ramakrishna, the Hindu saint who was born in 1836. He became a Kali priest when he was twenty years old and lived in poverty at Kakshineswar for most of his life. His best-known disciple was Swami Vivekananda, who was not only an Indian national hero, but also a very influential teacher of Hinduism in the West. Kali is also universal, not just a Hindu. One of Her most striking manifestations was among the Aztecs, as Coatlicue. There is a magnificant statue of her in Mexico City's famed Anthropological Museum. It is an enormous sculpture of a nest of rattlesnakes, and she is wearing a necklace of human hearts. "The Divine Mother's magic is ancient as life itself. She existed before gods and mortals, and she will still exist even after the great dissolution. Mother is pure energy in subtle form, but in times of need or just out of a desire to play, she manifests." |