Kali's Kites

[Guest guest]

Kali's Kites

by Jacqueline Feather

 

My Kali flies millions of mind kites

in the windy bazaar of relativity

human egos that dart and float

in the empty sky,

secured only by invisible strings,

Mother's power of miraculous activity.

(Hixon 124)

 

To someone like me, brought up under the vestiges of a colonial

Victorianism dusted with the damp of the South Pacific, the dark

figure of Kali engenders fascination and dread. She thrusts herself

at me, roughly nudging aside other candidates for exploration, such

as Ganga, sacrifice, and renunciation. These go flying with one swipe

of her sword and, instead, Kali's face with its bloody tongue lunges,

her eyes hold me in darshan, and I glimpse a stark moment of entry,

yanked out of surface concerns, abducted Persephone-like into the

shadows where I must face my fear and demons. Kali's dynamism, the

force with which she fights, devours, and destroys, is no benign

Christian image offering saintly refuge. A divine energy; compelling

and wild, she is not meant to assuage fear, at least not on first

meeting, nor will she be hidden from. She is a spinning, twirling,

awe-inspiring figure of darkness, shadow, and destruction who demands

a confrontation with these archetypal energies, pushing us to the

edges of our discomfort. Yet she also provides an access into the

ultimate reality, the unity or Oneness beyond dualities. It's a

strange act of grace, like a slap to awaken me, a blunt message:

time - her element - is short and not to be wasted. I must use it as

diligently and powerfully as I can. From somewhere in the pit of my

stomach an energy shoots out, although uninformed and uneducated of

her rites, compelling me to meet her gaze with unexpected intention

and willingness. Like her Russian counterpart, Baba Yaga, Kali wins

her battles for, as Marie-Louise von Franz reminds us, "the last

battle is always defeat by the dark side" (208), or, as Woody Allen

puts it with New York succinctness `we don't leave this planet

alive.'

 

My lens feels small, my eye tiny against the great vision of the

Hindu universe and its cosmic waters of existence. "When we encounter

the mythological eons of the Hindus, we are left, emotionally cold,

absolutely cold" (21) Zimmer tells us. `Cold' seems a strange choice

of word. Bewildered perhaps, fascinated definitely, but hardly cold.

Kali, the black goddess, dwells in a vast pantheon which, until

recently, I have had only the most fragmentary knowledge. Now I see

that Hinduism is almost as deep as it is wide. The images are

endless, the population of gods and goddesses huge, the teachings

miraculous. Foreign, yes, but also intensely personal.

 

This first repulsion to Kali's untamed image, especially in the Durga

paintings where she is emerges ferocious, and ugly, intrigued me -

who was this goddess that so many revered, and why could I not see

beyond the repellent surface to perceive her inspiration and meaning?

Rachel McDermott says Western women writing on Kali are "struck with

her fearsome demeanor which they have blamed on patriarchal

attitudes" (299) whereas Indian women do not "emphasize her dread

character"; if they critique anything "it is the excessive sweetening

of the goddess, downplaying her more powerful, sexual, independent

side" (299) for Kali, as McDermott adds, has become more complex over

time, evolving from a "minor blood thirsty goddess to compassionate

mother" (299). That's quite a journey.

 

Rather than be stopped by my western response I see it as a key - if

anything is going to turn the lock, open a way through my Judeo-

Christian/English heritage it is going to be this - not more

perfection or images of light; not another masculine principle. I

need `ugly', want it in my bones. It sounds perverse yet this thirst

rose out of me, like her I wanted blood, life blood, human/cosmic

blood. No matter how greedy or devouring that sounds, it's the most

simple, ordinary human need: a child's need, to feel the pulse of

love in the body. Love without sex, possession, or even `other';

emanating entirely from within.

 

As a woman I instinctively embrace Kali's power, her virgin,

unrestricted state. Deeply connected to her wrath, able to use it to

rip through falsehoods, Kali's dance is also grounded and of this

world. She "does not transcend the world by denying it in yogic

withdrawal, but by dancing to its inner rhythms and thereby

participating in its creative and redemptive source" (Kinsley SF

157).

 

Zimmer tells us that Shakti, the feminine supreme energy of life, its

creativity and benevolence, is "no less destructive than

creative...Life feeds on life. In the end every creature becomes food

for another" (211). Shakti, "known by the general name devi, from the

Sanskrit word div to shine" (Mookerjee 11)is given different names in

different eras and locations. Yet, essentially, she is the great

Mother symbolized by the yoni symbol, the womb. "She is a

power...always and everywhere compelled to manifest and expand itself

in the manifold aspects of life" (Mookerjee 23). What blooms,

blossoms, grows plump and nourished, so too will be sucked back into

dryness and swallowed into death. It is this "counter-balancing,

negative aspect" (Zimmer 211) of the Goddess that is embraced and

held by the image of Kali. The Goddess alternates between "relative

space and time, which is curved, and Absolute Space and Time, the

utter dark depths, Mahakali" (Mookerjee 23). Her colors are the red

of energy and the black of the void. "Black is the color in which all

colors merge. Or black is the total absence of color...Either way,

Kali's black color symbolizes her transcendence of all form" (Kinsley

TV 87).

 

Kinsley suggests that Kali was once an indigenous, non-Aryan tribal

goddess (SF 84) and that despite efforts made by Aryan male priests

to demonize her by "emphasizing her dark, sexual aspects" (McDermott

287) at some point she ceased to be peripheral and "began to gain an

amazing prominence in the pantheon" (Kinsley SF 85). Harding points

out many versions of the name Kali in other traditions: Celtic,

Caillech; Greek, Kalli; Gypsy: Sara-Kali. She even suggests the

California was named by the Spanish `Califia' (68). Like the Greek

Kore, Kali is the black goddess of the void, the underworld, yet her

the force of her energy is uniquely hers.

 

Indigenous though she is, Kali, over time, "transcends her origins"

(Kinsley SF 85) and becomes a Hindu goddess in her own right. But,

Kinsley adds, she does not do this by simply becoming an epithet for

another goddess for "she keeps her integrity despite various changes

in appearance and function" (86).

 

Kali begins to appear in literary tradition during medieval times,

around 600 C.E.

 

Mythically she springs forth on the battlefields. Her "most famous

appearance" (Kinsley TV 71) is in that of the Durga-Mahatmya: the

great goddess Durga is created by the male divinities when they are

unable to destroy the asuras - demons whose "exaggerated ego sense is

destroying the balance of the universe" (Mookerjee 49). Durga, "one

of the most spectacular personifications of Cosmic Energy" (Mookerjee

49) is born, with many arms and three eyes. She calmly sets to

destroying the monsters, but on the third attack her face grows dark

with anger. "From her frowning forehead issued the awesome goddess

Kali, armed with a sword and a noose" (Mookerjee 54). Black, gaunt,

mouth gaping, teeth as long as fangs, tongue lolling, Kali tears into

battle, "decapitating and crushing" (Kinsley SF 91), slashing and

swallowing monsters, sucking their blood, so symbolically "rendering

harmless the overpowering destructive element, a phallic power"

(Mookerjee 55). "Awe-inspiring, determined and ruthless, she destroys

evil force" (Mookerjee 61),. She always fights alone, never calling

on male assistance, despite being partnered to creator/destroyer,

Siva.

 

As she represents Durga's divine wrath, so she does the same for

Parvati, Siva's calmer "more benign" (Kinsley HG 118) partner. When

Parvati prepares for war "Kali appears as her personified wrath, her

alter ego" (119), manifesting to "play the role of Parvati's dark,

negative, violent nature" (119). Kinsley suggests that, when

associated with other goddesses Kali "represents their embodied fury,

a frightening, dangerous dimension of the divine feminine released

when these goddesses become enraged or are summoned to take part in

war and killing" (HG120).

 

By the tenth century C.E. Kali becomes the primary Mahavidya, one of

ten Tantric goddesses, manifestations of the Great Goddess, known as

the "Ten Great or Transcendental Wisdoms" (Mookerjee 63), that

Kinsley also calls "antimodels" (TV 6), especially for women. In this

cluster of goddesses each has "a specific cosmic function" (Mookerjee

64), representing aspects of dark and light, "forceful and

inert...combining to form a whole, a vision of unity in diversity"

(Mookerjee 64). They shatter stereotypes, offering women a vision of

being that is outside the rules of the social order. It is possible

they were fragmented into ten as a way of breaking up Kali's

totality, thereby diluting her power.

 

Tantra is a "distinctive way of understanding renunciation that

embraces the world and body rather than leaving it behind"

(Mahaffey). It is a worship or pilgrimage that seeks wisdom and

liberation through the vehicle of the body, placing great importance

on Shakti, the energizing feminine principle (Mahaffey); reality

being a result of "the symbiotic interaction of male and female, Siva

and Shakti" (Kinsley HG 122). It is the Shakti energy and vitality

that awakens the sadhaka (practitioner) who, primarily through

ritual, "undertakes to gain his goal by conquest - by using his body

and knowledge of the body to bring the fractured world of name and

form, male and female, sacred and profane, to wholeness and unity"

(Kinsley HG 123).

 

Adorned with necklace of skulls enscribed with the letters of the

Sanskrit alphabet, which she is said to have invented, and wearing

earrings of embryos, Kali is the same black that "Christian mystics

called the Cloud of Unknowing, the radiant blackness of Mother's

womb" (Hixon 7). She is naked, "clothed in infinite space" (Harding

52), beyond the "illusory effects of maya, and not hidden by clothes

of ignorance" (Kinsley TV 88). In one hand she wields a sword

that "cuts through error and ignorance, the veil of individual

consciousness" (Zimmer 214). The other hand holds a severed head, its

thread of life cut, its false consciousness destroyed.

 

"Volleys of arrows from her bow of insight

pierce the very heart of selfish clinging" (Hixon 193)

 

She dances upon Siva's chest in the middle of a cremation ground

amidst bones of the dead and roaming scavenger dogs. She exists on

the margins, beyond the zone where society might find comfort, her

presence associated with criminals (Kinsley HG122) and Thugs, a group

believing they serviced the goddess by committing murder. J.M.Macfie,

a British soldier writing of the suppression of the Thugs, described

Kali's temple as being surrounded by "revolting beggars and

pestiferous smells" (23), her statue a "poor stump of a woman". It is

perhaps understandable why her dark power, when so dangerously

literalized by the Thugs, and at great numbers, was seen as something

to suppress at all costs.

 

The cremation ground's haunting images, when beheld metaphorically

and ritualistically, "help the Tantric get rid of attachment to the

body, for, sitting next to corpses, one is able to transcend the

pairs of opposites faster than one who blocks out the unpleasant

aspects of life" (Harding 38) Clearly Kali is a deeper vision of the

feminine than what society cares to envision on a daily basis. While

Parvati represents Siva's calm, socialized wife, Kali, in contrast,

invites him to a different dance, one that is chaotic and

destabilizing. Together their energy whirls into realms beyond

prohibition and into those of possibility. If she had her way, she

would keep dancing, but it is Siva who perceives the necessity for

restraint, who places himself at her feet despite the fact that, with

erect phallus, it's clear he's excited by the energy of their

connection. In Tantric texts Kali is often in sexual union with Siva

and is said to be voracious and vigorous (Kinsley 80). Her sexual

names are many: Whose Form is the Yoni, Who Loves the Lingam, Who

Dwells in an Ocean of Semen (80). Intercourse, the combining of

semen - Siva - with menstrual blood - Shakti - is said to dissolve

barriers, so uniting the two forces of creation in ideal sexual union

(Lang 43). Kali's hair, loose and flowing, is the auspicious

representation of menstruation, the life-giving powers of female

sexuality (Lang 41), the cyclic ebb and flow of blood as nature

replenishes itself.

 

Like a divine insanity, Kali dances, unfettered by social norms and

rules. To those who worship her, sacrificing in her name, giving

without expectation in return, she is destroyer and Mother, there to

allow them the realization that "underlying the world of fractured

particularity and specificity is a dimension that is completely

unbound, primordially free" (Kinsley SF 157). By contemplating her

life/death opposites the devotee's spirit is "purged of its

infantile, inappropriate sentimentalities and resentments, his mind

opened to the inscrutable presence" (Campbell 114).

 

Kali's stark, raw indifference to proscribed appearances is our

invitation to look beyond rules of conduct, take off the ego-centric

blinders if only for a minute. By offering us an experience of the

blue-black of no-color, devoid of man-made safety nets, we glimpse

the turning and re-turning of the infinite dance, hungry for life and

potent with death.

 

Death is Kali's realm: death from fear of death. For those who

approach her with bold dedication "she is not only the symbol of

death, but the symbol of triumph over death" (Kinsley TV 79). This is

her greatest boon for those who endeavor to realize her true form.

Confronting the forbidden, and affirming its essential worth, so

causes the forbidden to lose its capacity to pollute, degrade or keep

us bound. The tantric sadhaka, with the guidance of his or her guru,

takes in the five forbidden things -wine, meat, fish, parched grain

and sexual intercourse - seeking to liberate the self by overcoming

the duality of "clean and unclean, affirming in a radical way the

underlying unity of the phenomenal world" (Kinsley HG 124). Only by

courageously perceiving this underlying unity is the practitioner

able to see Kali's truth: that all desires, all worldly ambitions,

loves, hopes, ego concerns and self-importance, will be consumed by

her; insatiably and inevitably devoured into Time's midnight black

belly.

 

The Bengal poet, Ramprasad, was one of Kali's greatest devotees.

Though not approaching her as a Tantric hero, "demonstrating courage

equal to her terrible presence" (Kinsley HG 126), Ramprasad

approached the goddess by way of the "devoted child" (127),

uncovering her divinity through longing and devotion. Looking beyond

the horrors of her visage, beyond the duality of terrible

mother/benign Mother, he sought the play of maya, the veiling power

of the divine Mother, at her very source. His poems are said to have

smoothed some of Kali's rougher, more cruel edges. Before Ramprasad

the worship of Kali was primarily esoteric; Kinsley tells us that it

was Ramprasad's work that revealed to the public, that despite Kali's

wild appearance She might be petitioned to grant peace and comfort

(120).

 

All creation is the sport of my mad Mother Kali;

By her maya the three worlds are bewitched.

Mad is She and mad is Her Husband;

mad are Her two disciples!

None can describe Her loveliness,

Her glories, gestures, moods;

Shiva, with the agony of the poison in His throat,

Chants her name again and again.

(Ramprasad qtd. in Harding 231)

 

After Ramprasad came Ramakrishna (1836-86), from West Bengal, who

became a priest of Kali at Dakshineswar at the age of twenty. Like

Ramprasad, "he did not ignore Kali's wild, bizarre nature" (Kinsley

SF 121) and "sang of his Mother dancing out the rhythms of the world

in frenzy or madness" (121). He approached her, childlike, and had

many visions of her for he "cut the hinges of the heavens and

released the fountains of divine bliss" (Campbell 410).

 

It is a frightening thing to glimpse the bottomless dis-order of

infinity: "divine inconceivability, the indefinability of Reality"

(Hixon 7). We are dependent upon our civilized structures, for they

are necessities by which we can exist as an intact society. Yet it

seems vital that to evolve we perceive the strange edges of oblivion

and appreciate that for this fragment of time we have as our gift

Life as we know it. Kali dances upon these edges, archetype of

furious balance, her sword cutting away at our perceptions, shaving

off encumbrances that dull us or drag us too deeply into egocentric

self-importance or, conversely, into blind passivity. Her haunting

howl is a wake-up cry from the void, the sword sharpening us, keeping

us alert and alive to her lila (play), inviting us to lose ourselves

in her dance. She offers us the energy by which to face the inner

demons of our mind, the force and power by which to confront them,

staying alert as new demons spring from the blood of old ones. Time

and again we must go after them, engage them with the same vitality

that she brings to her battle. She is on our side, fighting alongside

us, bearing us from her blood; for the source of blood is the heart,

her heart. She is not only the Black One, but "The Ferry across the

Ocean of Existence" (Campbell 115).

 

To deny her, to pretend that death is not there for us and that our

ego alone is the center of our existence is "to provoke Kali's

mocking laugh" (Kinsley SF 145). Accepting her grants a divine

freedom beyond dualities - "the chronic disease of bondage to

separate individuality" - allowing us the perception of Oneness,

the "wholeness of Mother Reality" (Hixon 12).

Neumann says that in the course of patriarchal development, of sun

and light, the negative aspect of the Feminine was submerged (155).

Depending on the culture - the devouring Kali, Ammit, Medusa,

Demeter, earth womb or Terrible Mother - went down over the horizon

and out of our view, causing us to grow dangerously out of balance,

bereft of images where we need them. We thirst and don't understand

why. We drink up the world, devour nature in her physical forms

because we don't understand where our hunger rises from. We don't see

how:

 

Her vibrant presence enchants

the heart and mind of every being,

yet she remains sublimely terrifying,

as though sister to Death,

transforming into profound humility

the pride of those who oppose her foolishly. (Hixon 187)

 

"Kali likes red," I read in Harding, "the hibiscus flower

especially." Suddenly I am home in Polynesia, the hibiscus bushes

bursting with crimson on a hot Auckland summer's day. Those five

petals, each tongue-like, together womb-like, dance like red kites

against the sky.

 

Her energy sucks blood into life, and sucks it out of life.

 

Kali dances everywhere.

 

May the kite of my mind break free

ride the great wind of divine energy

across the ocean of opacity,

and drift down gently

on the transparent shore

of Kali's mystery.

(Hixon 124)

 

- Jacqueline Feather

 

Works Cited

Fell McDermott, Rachel. "The Western Kali." Devi: Goddesses of India.

Eds. John S. Hawley and Donna M. Wulff. Berkeley: U of California P,

1996.

Harding, Elizabeth U. Kali: The Black Goddess of Dakshineswar. York

Beach, Maine: Nicolas-Hays, 1993.

Hixon, Lex. Mother of the Universe. Wheaton, Il: Quest, 1994.

Kinsley, David. Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in

the Hindu Religious Tradition. Berkeley: U of California P, 1988.

---. The Sword and the Flute: Kali and Krishna. Berkeley, U of

California P, 1975.

---. Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahavidyas.

Berkeley, U of California P, 1997.

Lang, Karen. "Shaven Heads and Loose Hair:Buddhist Attitudes toward

Hair and Sexuality". Off With Her Head! The Denial of Women's

Identity in Myth, Religion and Culture. Eds. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz

and Wendy Doniger. Berkeley, U of California P, 1995.

Macfie, J.M. Thug or a Million Murders. Delhi: Pilgrim Books, 1998.

Mahaffey, Patrick. "Asian Religious Traditions". Pacifica Graduate

Institute. Carpinteria, California, Spring 2002.

Mookerjee, Ajit. Kali: The Feminine Force. Vermont: Destiny Books,

1988.

Von Franz, Marie-Louise. Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales. Boston &

London: Shambala, 1995.

Zimmer, Heinrich. Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization.

Ed. Joseph Campbell. Bollingen Series, 6. Princeton: Princeton UP,

1972.

 

 

©COPYRIGHT 2002 by Jacqueline Feather. . Issue

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