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[from http://www.csulb.edu/~persepha/Kali.html ] Subject: Kali [WOODEN CARVING OF KALI] I am going to burn down the world I am going to tear down everything that cannot stand alone I am going to turn ideals to shit I am going to shove hope up your ass I am going to reduce everything that stands to rubble And then I am going to burn the rubble And then I am going to scatter the ashes And then maybe SOMEONE will be able to see SOMETHING as it really is WATCH OUT -- Mel Lyman Some may find this, written by a male, disrespectful as a preamble to an essay on a Dark Goddess. But I've never seen anything anywhere that better conveys what facing Kali's destructive power can feel like. Kali is the most fully realized of all the Dark Goddesses. It has been claimed that Her name is derived from the Hindu word for Time, yet also means "black." She sometimes is called Durga, though that is properly the name of the Goddess who spawned Her from Her own brow during battle with demons. Her very appearance is meant to terrify. She is black and emaciated, with fangs and claws. She wears a girdle of severed arms, a necklace of skulls or severed heads, earrings of children's corpses, cobras as bracelets or garlands. Her mouth is blood-smeared. She is accompanied by she-demons. Often She is shown standing or dancing on Her husband, the god Shiva; here, She squats feasting on his intestines while offering one breast. Yet Kali is not always dark. She also is a loving mother, and especially in that aspect is worshipped by millions of Hindus. Used to a god that is all-"good", Westerners have found it difficult to understand why Hindus would worship such a deity, or why their art emphasizes Her most hideous forms. But: "Tantric worshippers of Kali thought it essential to face her Curse, the terror of death, as willingly as they accepted Blessings from her beautiful, nurturing, maternal aspect. For them, wisdom meant learning that no coin has only one side: as death can't exist without life, so also life can't exist without death. Kali's sages communed with her in the grisly atmosphere of the cremation ground, to become familiar with images of death. They said, 'His Goddess, his loving Mother in time, who gives him birth and loves him in the flesh, also destroys him in the flesh. His image of Her is incomplete if he does not know Her as his tearer and devourer.'" -- Barbara Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets EOF
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