Kali Gleanings III

While the devotee approaches Kali emotionally, the sage approaches her intellectually. He tries to understand why she appears the way she does. What is the meaning behind her horrific appearance? The initial revulsion is questioned, the fear introspected. He finds that in her form and her worship there is a conscious effort to embrace all that conventional society distances itself from: unbridled sex and violence, lack of control, and celebration of ugliness and decay. Kali reverses all cultural standards bad things become good in her worship, the inauspicious becomes auspicious. Death and blood, which are considered polluting, become Kali’s adornments. Meat and alcohol that ‘good’ people stay away from, are central to her worship. Decent women may cover their bodies, bind their hair, deny their sexuality and live lives of self-denial and self-discipline, but Kali dances naked with hair unbound, unaffected by the disapproving stares of those around. By behaving thus, Kali forces the individual to look at all things one fears, represses, denies and suppresses, things that exist outside man-made moral and ethical codes, things that fill life with uncertainty and restlessness.

The sage realizes that culture is an artificial construct within Nature, built by man so that the law of the jungle is abandoned and even the weak have rights. Within culture, it is not about the survival of the fittest. Every act is regulated by duties and responsibilities. A structure is created based on standards which distinguish the good from the bad, the right from the wrong, the acceptable from the unacceptable, the appropriate from the inappropriate. Culture works hard to appropriate all that is good and acceptable, all that contributes to stability and order. Culture strives continuously to abandon all that is bad, wrong, unacceptable and inappropriate, all that threatens the sense of permanence and predictability. Over time, culture invalidates all that it rejects. Standards shove all that is undesirable outside the threshold, into the subconscious. Kali stands on the frontier of culture, reminding of all things in Nature that are repressed, suppressed, denied because of fear, standards and judgments.

Kali is a reminder of the fragility of culture. She is the goddess of war war represents the collapse of all that culture seeks to uphold. She is the goddess of death death represents the failure of cultural boundaries to keep out things that pollute and decay. She is the goddess who is naked nakedness represents the collapse of modesty that culture tries so hard to impose. Kali is the goddess who steps on her husband, challenging patriarchal values that form the foundation of most societies.

For the sage, the idea of the Devi taking blood closes the loop that opens when the Devi gives milk. Thus, the idea of a bloodthirsty Kali complements the image of the milk-giving Gauri, the motherly form of the Devi. Together they make up the cycle of life.

Nothing in Nature appears spontaneously. Everything is a transformation of something else. According to Tantra, the essence of mineral is transformed by plants into sap which is then consumed by animals and humans as food. In the body of animals and humans, sap transforms into plasma, flesh, bone, nerves, semen and blood. Thus all things in Nature are different forms of the same essence.

A popular form of Kali is Dakshina-Kali, which means ‘Kali who comes from the south.’ According to Vastu Shastra, south is the direction of death and change, hence the source of uncertainty, restlessness, insecurity and fear. Facing the south is Shiva in the form of Dakshinamurthy a teacher who sits under the banyan tree, facing the south. As teacher, Shiva is the source of wisdom; the banyan tree is an ancient symbol of permanence. Siva’s wisdom, or gyana, calms the mind of the sage so that he can turn south and transform Kali from the source of fear to the cause of bliss.

From The Book Of Kali, by Seema Mohanty, pp. 130-131
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