Goddess Kali Essay

In the Eye of the Beholder:

Contemplating Kali’s Paradoxical Aspects

Deborah Irvine

University of Queensland 2018

In the Eye of the Beholder:

Contemplating Kali’s Paradoxical Aspects

Om Hrim Shreem Klim Adya Kalika Param Eshwari Swaha

 (Ashley-Farrand 2003, p. 139)

“Who are you, Mother,

clothed in nothingness,

glowing in the deepest recesses of my mind?

Your frenzied laughter terrifies,

While your love, like lightning from a black cloud,

Shocks the world with light.”

(Ramprasad Sen cited in Ellik 2015, p. 76)

“Who art thou, O Fairest One? Auspicious One!

You whose hands hold both delight and pain?

Both the shade of death and the elixir of immortality?

Are thy grace, O Mother!”

(Shankaracharya cited in Vanamali 2006, p. 161)

In offering salutations to Kali we may ask, as did Ramprasad Sen and Shankaracharya who is Kali the supreme primordial feminine, Mother, blackness and light, delight and pain, death and immortality, who both terrifies and loves, offers Grace and cuts through illusion to the unabridged truth of existence? Is it possible to reconcile the paradoxical and extreme aspects of such a Goddess? 

In this essay, I will enumerate the contrasting appearances, forms, functions and import of Kali with reference to major texts, iconography, village, Tantric, Bhakti practices, and by modern-day devotees. In explicating Kali’s origins, epithets, mythologies, theologies and rituals as propounded by key scholars, particularly Kinsley (1975, 1986, 1998, 2005), McDermott (1998), McDermott & Kripal (2005), Gupta (2000), and McDaniel (2012), I will illustrate that success, or not, in unifying or mediating the paradoxical extremes of Kali becomes dependent on “the eye of the beholder.” In other words, each dominant historical milieu, social or theological “beholder” as in Brahmanic-Puranas Tantric, Bhakti-Kali, or non-orthodox householder/villager/Westerner and scholar emphasizes a differing synthesis of Kali’s paradoxical aspects (Kinsley 1975, 1998; Gupta 2000; Dalmyia 2000; Dold 2001, 2005; McDermott & Kripal 2005; McDaniel 2012). 

Kali herself has also matured and mediated her controversial and paradoxical image with her devotees over her lifetime softening, taming and enriching her original terrifying aspects with a realism that unites and reinforces the “otherness” by providing “a striking vision of things as they really are” (Kinsley 1975, p. 149). Of most supreme respect for the Goddess MahaKali, as in any authentic relationship, is the importance not to try and reduce, over-synthesize or mediate divergent aspects simply for the exercise of syncretization (Dold 2001). Kinsley (1975, p. 86) presents Kali as a Goddess with a consistent nature, mythology and iconography throughout her history, underlining important Hindu themes. It is imperative that the complex and paradoxical aspects of Kali retain their integrity, in their unity and diversity, to be bestowed on each of her “beholders” in the manner most appropriate for each one. 

Early Origins and Features of Kali

Kali is generally acknowledged as originating as a widely spread indigenous, tribal Goddess. Often “negative,” her fierce characteristics, powers and relationships with her village devotees (particularly featuring blood sacrifices) have remained fairly consistent throughout history to modern-day folk Saktism and Adivasi religion (Kinsley 1975, p. 96; Nelson 2012; McDaniel 2012). From the Mundakopanishad (5^th-8^th BCE) a fire tongue of Agni named Kali, able to devour sacrificial oblations, could be seen to become Kali’s bloody, demon-devouring tongue, in the Devi-Mahatmya:7 (Nelson 2012). The Agni and Garuda-puranas invoke Kali for success in war and against one’s enemies and her frightening description and actions are repeated in the Mahabharata:10.8.64 and the Devi-Mahatmya (Kinsley 1986, p. 117). In the later Bhagavata-purana Kali’s association with thieves and thugs and that her temples should be built far from towns near cremation grounds and Candalas’ homes emphasize her polluting and socially outcast reputation (Kinsley 1975, pp. 90-94; 1986, p. 117; 1998, p. 70). 

Kali in the Devi-Mahatmya

It is in the Devi-Mahatmya 6^th-7^th CE that Kali becomes officially established in her own right as part of the Great Goddess tradition (Kinsley 1975, p. 70). “Taking delight in destruction and death, Kali epitomizes the wild, fearful aspects of the divine and her role in scripture is clearly defined” (Kinsley 1975, p. 92). Kali’s features that emerge here as part of her iconography are her blackness (Kala; nirguna); “her dreadful face, carrying sword and noose; her strange skull-topped staff, garland of human heads, gruesome, emaciated skin; widely gaping mouth, terrifying lolling tongue, sunken reddened eyes, and a mouth that filled the directions with roars” (D-M:7.4-7.7, trans. Coburn 1991). In the Devi-Mahatmya:8 Kali is called to finish off the demon Raktabija by lapping up all his blood and gnashing the multiplying demons with her teeth (Coburn 1991). 

The symbolism of these abilities and actions in their horrifying ferociousness become sacred, powerful, archetypal and iconic in Kali’s developing roles, revered by her devotees as the Goddess who can overcome forces of ignorance, evil, destruction and death, making her a powerful force for good (Nelson 2012). The paradox emerges in the interpretation of the sacrificing of blood to invoke and placate the Goddess in devotional acts of animal and occasionally human blood-letting, and killing. These sacrificial and ritualized acts embedded in Kali-Puja, Adivasi and Tribal Shakti, and Tantric rituals, ignite their power and meaning for devotees, particularly in going against the “normative” boundaries of Indian society and life and death itself, facing and incorporating the polluting, forbidden, antimonial taboos. Blood is associated with the feminine nature of the Goddess as the animating juice of life, and blood sacrifices merge symbols of blood, purity and nature with Kali’s sacred qualities (Rodrigues 2005, p. 76). However, in contravening ahimsa or the sacredness of life, such aspects were/are viewed negatively by Rammohan Roy, British Colonial, Christian and many Western standards (McDermott 1998, p. 294; Urban 2005, p. 171; McDaniel 2012). 

Kali and Siva: Tantric Devotion

Kali adds to her development and legitimacy as a Terrifying Goddess the role of consort-sakti wife of Siva. That Kali can now be in a romantic and sexual relationship with another could be seen to “tame” or proffer an antithesis to the ferocious, blood-thirsty, sword-slinging, murderous battle queen. Love is added to Kali’s paradoxical character but the expression of her feminine sexuality and mad, frenzied dancing with Siva that threatens to destroy the world remains aligned with her wild, ferocious character (Kinsley 1975, pp. 101-106). Kali’s appearance is not typically seductive being immodestly naked, polluted with wild hair and smeared in blood, sagging breasts and wearing a garland of skulls, girdle of severed arms and earrings of embryos as ornaments, emphasizing her “otherness” and associations with death (Kinsley1998, p. 80). Kali’s appearance is softened, even beautified in the Karpuradi-Stotra (Woodroffe 2001) and in the Mahabhagavata-Purana Kali’s characteristics evolve as both “terrifying and magnificent, terror-inspiring and wondrous, the essence of all goddesses” (Dold 2005, pp. 39-59).

However, Kali’s predominantly fearsome appearance and habits in her Tantric and Mahavidya personifications become an important counterpoint, even violation, to more benign, submissive Hindu Goddess consorts (Pavarti, Sita, Radha) or devoted wives (pati vrata), as challenges to face, overcome and accept as reality and as role models for women seeking inspiration and example, particularly modern-day and Western women (Kinsley 1998, p. 6, 79; Dold 2005; McDermott 1998, 2005). Kinsley (1998, p. 91) posits another successful paradox regarding Kali’s shocking appearance and habits as appropriated more literally by Westerners and more allegorically, mystically by more spiritually, culturally imbued Hindus.

In the Sahasranarma-Stotra Kali is given multiple sexually-themed names: “Whose Form Is the Yoni, Who Is Worshipped with Semen” (Kinsley 1998, p. 80). In earlier texts Kali tends to be eventually tamed by Siva, but from the later Devi-Bhagavata, Adbhuta-Ramayana and Tantric Nirrutara onwards Kali assumes the dominant position in their relationship, with iconography depicting Kali with her foot on Siva’s chest or her assuming the viparitarata (active top position for sexual union) (Kinsley 1975, pp. 106-111; Dold 2005, pp. 39-59). Tantric devotees particularly choose to relate to this iconography as the expression of Primordial Power and Sakti Kali personifies, emulating her in their rituals, particularly the panca-tattva, that seek to confront the forbidden, including sexual inhibitions, blood and death of the ego. The sadhaka uses his/her body in rituals, often in cremation grounds, emulating and unifying the macrocosm/microcosm relationship, overcoming fear, ego, attachments by assimilating Kali, transforming her into a vehicle of transformation (Kinsley 1998, p. 78; Mookerjee 2008, p. 42; McDaniel 2012; Kempton 2103, pp. 138-139). The sexual iconography and aspects of Kali are particularly worshipped by Tantrikas and modern-day feminist women, looking for powerful, independent, rebellious icons and role-models to bring a sense of reality, freedom, liberation and self-empowerment back into their lives (Kinsley 1998, pp. 74-81; McDermott 2005, p. 273-295).

Kali, “beheld” as consort and primordial Sakti with Siva, is invaluable as Prakrti in animating Siva’s corpse-like, impotent, inert Purusa even if she remains a paradoxically willful, defiant, dominant and independent consort (Kinsley 1998, p. 88). Coitus between Kali and Siva is particularly symbolic of her Sakti-Prakrti creative qualities, antithetical to her “battle-queen” and polluting associations with death and cremation grounds, where joined together as male and female polarities Kali and Siva symbolize ultimate reality and Daksina-Kali also becomes Kalasamkarsini (supreme, feminine, transcendent reality), transcending Siva (Gupta 2000, p. 462; p. 467). 

In the Sakti-samgama Tantra, Kali’s paradoxical or “mirror form” of creative aspect as Mahamaya, sovereign cosmic ruler who regulates the system of creation based on cosmic delusion, by playing with Siva’s imagined dualistic separation of their monistic unity, asserts her powers as the eternally existent Reality who transcends creation and dissolution of creation (Gupta 2000, p. 467). Dold (2005, p. 40) highlights Kali’s paradoxical roles as being both Vidya (liberating knowledge) releasing beings from samsara AND Maya (enchanting delusion), she traps beings in it. For the Tantric sadhaka this paradoxically united yet differentiated stance between Kali the supreme Goddess and Siva is perfect for his/her goals of liberation (mukti) because it tests his/her worthiness and knowledge and exemplifies the goal of transcending creation and dualism as presented in the Kularnava Tantra 1000CE and Abhinavagupta’s Krama-Stotra in praise of the Twelve Kalis (Gupta 2000, p. 474; McDaniel 2012; Odier 2016, p. 23; Mookerjee 1988, pp. 85-88). 

It is Siva who praises and names Mahakali, Great Kali, of Time and Death as his feminine aspect of Mahakala in the Mahanirvana-tantra:4.30-34, “she who devours time, who alone remains after dissolution of the universe, and who is the origin and destroyer of all things” (Kinsley 1998, p. 76). McDaniel (2012) highlights Kali’s paradox as Adyakali, “Primordial Kali” because she “originates all things and in the end, devours them.” Kali’s ferocious lust for life, whether in battle or procreation (biologically and metaphysically) compliment and expand her personification of the life-death-rebirth cycle that is the ultimate reality of existence (of samsara) that offers ultimate truth for those brave enough to confront it. As Woodman and Dickson (1996, p. 45) posit, “without the cycle of life-death-rebirth there can be no transformation.”

Kali Ma: Bhakti

Ramprasad Sen and Ramakrishna poets and Bengali saints in the 18^th and 19^th CE both brought a new complimentary, unifying devotional response to Kali’s paradoxes. Both Ramprasad and Ramakrishna “beheld and adored” Kali as their supreme source of Sakti, referring to her as Ma, “Mother, Divine Mother.” Their many lyrical, existential poems and songs (as at the beginning of this essay) describe the ecstasy (mahabhava) and the agony of being madly in love that brought Kali out from her esoteric closet and into the eye of the public, continuing to be beheld and embraced powerfully in the hearts and minds of Bhaktas, notably Shankaracharya, Kamalakanta Bhattacarya and Vivekananda, up to the modern day (McDaniel 2012). 

How Kali’s paradoxical complexities are “beheld,” contemplated, mediated, forgiven and loved by these saints is in the devotional adoration of a helpless, forlorn but stubborn child in love, wonder and awe towards his mother, even if the mother is angry, fierce, independent and unresponsive, “Though she beat it, the child clings to its mother, crying ‘Mother’” (Ramprasad in Kinsley 2005, p. 117; p. 32). Kinsley (1975, p. 118) notes that Ramprasad “never forgets or is repelled by Kali’s demonic, frightening aspects and habits, does not distort her nature and truths” and is able to meditate on her terrifying aspects through acceptance. McDaniel (2012) interprets Ramprasad’s mediating of Kali’s associations with death, funeral pyres and cremation grounds by bringing her “burning ground into his heart, so the dark goddess can dance there forever, bringing love and salvation.” 

Ramakrishna successfully mediated his Bhakti of Kali Ma with his Vedanta philosophy and Tantric rituals, having many bhava-darsans of Kali as an ocean of consciousness as Brahman rather than a fierce Goddess, but also as an intimately anthropomorphic, embodied Mother Goddess with her statue coming alive for him to dance, play, laugh, cry, feed (Prasad) and sleep with (McDaniel 2012). Kali’s mad, frenzied, intoxicated dances with Siva now become mediated as an enactment of the outpouring of love towards her by her Bhakti devotees, particularly Ramprasad and Ramakrishna, not as a sexual lover, but as a devoted child to its Mother. Ramakrishna also acknowledged and payed homage to Kali’s dreadful appearance, wild, bizarre, displeasure, mediating her moods through Prema, adopting the naivety and steadfast devotion of a child and being “redeemed when he lets go of adult pretensions and completely surrenders to the Mother’s game” (Kinsley 1975, p. 122). 

The honesty, reality and acceptance with which a Kali Bhakta approaches Kali’s paradoxical aspects only adds to the power of her darsan, showing her face, as reward for obsequious devotion as both Ramprasad and Ramakrishna so longed for. In appropriating the truths of the reality of life and death that Kali personifies, the Bhakta, like the Tantric Hero overcomes and triumphs over his/her fear of death of the ferocious, uncontrollable, exiled, denied or material aspects of life, fear of the death of the Self or ego and achieves an equilibrium that prevails unperturbed and becomes liberated into her heaven (Kinsley 2005, pp. 32-33; McDaniel 2012). 

Kali’s Iconography

Kali’s iconography, mantras, mudras and yantras are key aspects of her personification and supreme status for her devotees, particularly Tantrikas, but also for all Kali worshipers to varying degrees as detailed in the Karpuradi-Stotra (Woodroffe 2001), the Toldala Tantra (Gupta 2000, p. 476) and recent commentaries (Kindler 1996; Foulston & Abbott 2009, pp. 38-39; Odlier 2016). McDermot (1998, p. 297) posits much modern-day iconography of Kali is recent, 17^th CE Tantric Bengali in origin. Kindler (1996, p. 25) and Gupta (2000, p. 476) cite Kalika’s Dhyana mantra where Kali’s four arms embody paradoxical positive and negative aspects of her powers; the two left arms holding a sword and a skull and the two right arms “gesture fulfilment of the devotee’s wishes and promise fearlessness and protection.” 

Come, offer yourself to me (Severed Head). I will protect you from all dangers (Abhaya-Mudra) by granting you refuge at My Feet (Varuada-Mudra). Give yourself completely (Severed Head) to My path of perfection by practicing disciplines for purification (Sword of Wisdom) and I will remove all dangers (Abhaya-Mudra) and grant liberation (Varada-Mudra) by destroying ignorance (Sword of Wisdom) in your mind (Severed Head) Kindler 1996, p. 25.

Kindler (1996, pp. 9-200) details twenty-four specific icons of Kali’s paradoxical appearance related to twenty-four complimentary, integrated Cosmic Principles (tattvas) all essential in creation’s formation, thereby reminding devotees of their unified divine source of origin.

For “beholders” of Kali, her detailed iconography, rituals and Kali-Pujas offer much by which to relate according to varying theological, psychological needs. Particularly in the modern-day contexts of feminism “beholders” tend to redesign Kali’s iconographical features for their own creatively empowering wholeness often emphasizing her fierceness and downplaying her motherly aspect (Kinsley 1998, pp. 14-18; McDermott 1998, pp. 285-305; McDaniel 2012). In contrast, McDermott (1998, p. 299) notes some Indian iconography has “excessively sweetened and beatified” Kali’s loving mother aspect, downplaying her more sexual, independent side which is now being reclaimed to balance her polarities and paradoxes. 

Modern-day, Global Kali

Whilst it may appear that the differing personifications of Kali according to her Indigenous, Bhramanical-Puranic, Tanrtic-Stotra or Bhakti lineage are independent, “beholding and mediating her paradoxical complexities” can result in mixed marriages of Kali’s lineages, reconciling the Tantric monistic or Bhakti non-monistic worship of the Goddess and becoming “promiscuously associated” (Padoux 1989 cited in Coburn 1991, p. 171).  This “promiscuous association” can be seen particularly in temple worship and modern-day devotion as Gupta (2005, pp. 75-76) observes at Kalighat Temple in the interweaving of Vaisnava, Sakta rituals by the priests with pilgrims’ blood sacrifices included equally with pilgrims’ multivalent social/cultural/religious approaches to Kali, perceiving her as “both compassionate and fierce” (Biardeau cited in Coburn 1991, p. 171; Dold 2005, p. 52). 

Caldwell (2005, pp. 249-72) details ways Kali is “beheld” in Kerala where she is the predominant deity, “regarded with fear, awe, respect,” often hidden privately but “always present, anything but marginal, representing the essential and central values of non-elite religious traditions.” Caldwell (2005 pp. 267-268) observes that Kali’s widespread historical preeminence from Sri Lanka to the Himalayas survived “taming” or turning her into a “philosophical necessity” by high-status religious texts and high-status social groups by “beholding” her original blood sacrifices, strength and complex truths as empowering of transformation rather than repulsive and unacceptable.

Kali has been accepted as Cosmic Kali, and in the 20^th -21^st century she becomes established as Global Kali, particularly in relation to the status of women across wide social, political and religious classes both in India, Asia and the West (McDermott 1998 pp. 281-313; 2005 pp. 273-295). Kali’s paradoxical, all-encompassing, “cosmic embodiment of polarities” is resurrected using multiple modern mediums and platforms from the bias and degradation of her “fragmented, dark and dangerous aspects through the willful intervention of patriarchy” (McDermott 1998, p. 299; Humes 2005, p. 164). 

Psychologically, Kali is also embraced as “The Black Goddess” of the psychological shadow who, like the Tantrika, exposes and unites the opposites of life and death, love and hate, humility and pride, mercy and revenge; yet with Kali ultimately there is no polarity for all experience is one” (Woodman & Dickson 1996, p. 16; Kripal 2005, p. 197; Kempton 2013, pp. 117-145). 

Conclusion

In summing up Kali’s multivalent, paradoxical personifications and thousand-named epithets, particularly the Great Mother and the erotic, Terrifying Goddess I have posited that finding unity or complimentary expression of her paradoxical aspects has rested “In the Eye of the Beholder.” Primarily, I examined major texts, iconography, Indigenous, Tantric, Bhakti and modern-day approaches to Kali to explicate various responses and relationships which successfully mediated and unified Kali’s paradoxical complexities in the “beholder’s” own eyes; from Kali’s bloody, terrifying, cremation-ground and battle-queen beginnings in early texts and Indigenous cults, to Tantric Consort, Cosmic Supreme Creator-Destroyer, to Bhakti-Divine-Compassionate-Mother, to modern-day Global, feminine, psychological, spiritual, political role-model and re-balanced Divine Goddess of Unity, Power, Love and Freedom (Kempton 2103, p. 117-145). Rather than trying to ameliorate or reframe Kali’s Shakti, power, ferocious, bloody and polluting wildness that threatens to disrupt personal, world or cosmic order instead Kali reminds us that reality and life itself is ferocious, untamable, polluted, and unpredictable (Kinsley 1998, p. 84). “To refuse to enter into Kali’s dance of creation and destruction is to get stuck in a one-sided view of reality that can bring anarchy—destruction without creation” (Woodman and Dickson 1996, p. 45).

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