Kali Gleanings IV

For most people, the divine is associated with beauty and love. Images of gods and goddesses are therefore expected to please the eye and the heart. Kali, however, defies these expectations. She is neither beautiful nor loving; she is dark, gaunt, and bloodthirsty. Her form takes one by surprise frightening at first, then confounding. Kali forces a re-examination of all preconceived notions associated with divinity.

Re-examination of the notion of divinity leads to re-considering one’s understanding of the world. For, in the Hindu scheme of things, divinity cannot be distinguished from the world: world is divine and divinity is world.

In the Puranas and the Tantras, male deities represent the spiritual world while female deities represent the material world. God is the spirit within, Goddess, the substance without; God observes, Goddess is the observation; God sees, Goddess is the scenery. Goddess is the world around, stimulating God into action, flooding God with emotions and ideas, until God realizes himself. Thus world-understanding leads to self-understanding which leads to God-realization.

Devi, the Goddess, embodies nature. Nature is wild and free until culture comes along, disciplines and domesticates her with laws, ethics and values. The forest becomes a field as culture decides what must be in and what must be out. Culture judges, making some things beautiful, some ideas good and some actions appropriate. The rest become ugly, bad or inappropriate. A time comes when judgements are perceived as natural. Society forgets that its opinions are based on artificial parameters. Society thus prejudices everyone’s worldview. Even nature, hence the Devi, comes to be seen through culture’s eyes.

The eye insists that nature is beautiful and bountiful: the serene wisdom-bestowing Saraswati playing her lute or the enchanting wealth-bestowing Lakshmi with her pot of gold and grain. The world-embodying Devi comes to be visualized as Mangala-Gauri, auspicious and motherly. She is worshipped as Durga, fiercely protective of her children. Then Kali comes along, searing the vision of the seers: naked with hair unbound, copulating in the open, killing and drinking blood. She overturns the cart of divine imagery and becomes the grit in culture’s eye.

Culture struggles to explain Kali. Desperate attempts are made to rationalize her as the ‘killer of demons’ and the ‘protecting mother.’ Images are created that edit out her wild sexuality. Paintings embellish her with jewellery meant for tame wives. The men she decapitates are depicted as outlaws and demons. Society does what it has always done transforming or denying what it cannot, or does not, or will not, understand.

But Kali gives this cultural manipulation a slip. She remains a dark and wild enigma challenging the seer, the devotee, and the sorcerer, mocking all preconceived notions. She demands acceptance of all that she represents. Her form and narratives about her throw up questions: Why is she dark and naked? Why is her hair unbound? Why does she copulate openly sitting on top of her lover? Why does she drink blood? Why does she favor sorcerers? The answers force us to confront the dark secrets we shove into our subconscious.

Kali is life who feeds on life. Kali is the unbridled and impersonal se and violence that makes the cycle of existence go round. Kali stirs the consciousness by copulating with Shiva. She is the raw primal power that existed before there were culture and society, before there were laws, ethics, and morality. She stands beyond the pall of prejudices, values and judgments. She encompasses the totality of nature and of life, unfettered by social norms and cultural values.

Kali reminds us that beneath our social indoctrination fester thoughts and desires that do not conform to what is culturally appropriate. The beast within us may be tamed but if we deny its existence or repress it beyond a point, it may slip out and strike, manifesting as rape or riot. Hidden in our hearts are ideas that may not be spoken, but need, at the very least, silent acknowledgement.
Beneath the mask, beneath the self-denial and the self-discipline exists a Kali in all of us.

From The Book Of Kali, by Seema Mohanty, pp. 136-137
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