THE ARCANE ARCHIVE
	a cache of usenet and other text files pertaining to occult, mystical, and spiritual subjects.

Subject: Rishi Excerpt on Kali

49970223 AA1  Hail Satan!   Ka os ya 

om krim namah Kaliya

some excellent fiction for your sweet altar, om my lovely Devi(l):

	"Thuggee is a secret religious sect in India, handed down
	from father to son.  Their main goal is to murder through
	strangulation to appease the bloodlust of the goddess Kali.
	The practitioners are often robbers as well.  Also they're
	called Deceivers, since they could be your next-door
	neighbor and you'd never be able to detect it."

	...

[ after a long, dangerous trek into the upper reaches of the Himalyas,
  Chundra Bala, a Thuggee chieftain, enters a hidden cave, continuing
  to follow a visionary sadhu and a young pilgrim, all having a strong
  connection to Kali....]
 
	With one of his groping steps Chundra felt he'd finally met
	a barrier.  Stretching his arms about before him, his hands
	passed through a filmy substance, up to his wrists.  But
	nothing was there, no fabric, no gossamer curtain, even
	though it was filmy.  He held his breath and urged the rest
	of his body forward.

	The barrier clung to his face -- his nostrils -- for an
	instant.  Then he was beyond it, and his ears popped; a
	giddiness swept him and quickly settled.

	Chundra Bala covered his eyes against the blinding effulgence
	that, without warning, he'd emerged into.  He stood in a
	place of vivid, startling colors, a mercurial chromatic swirl
	of a place, massive and full of clamoring hush.  The very
	stillness screamed its presence.  He could barely withstand
	the intense, palpable silence.

	Daring to look, he gradually adjusted to the change.  Motes
	of color darted, moved in all directions.  He saw the pilgrim
	and the sadhu, at least ten yards ahead.  He headed for them, his
	spirit buoyant.  He felt transformed, a younger Chundra Bala,
	as young as Dhan [his son].  Perhaps the dead boy had united 
	with his soul.

	There were no walls, or, if they existed, they were constantly
	in flux, colors weaving in wavelets.  Streaming like festoons,
	first nearby, then abruptly diminishing in the far distance,
	instantaneously near again.  Everything shaping, dissolving,
	reshaping.  Concave, then convex spillings of pink, blue, gold,
	aquamarine, vermilion, lavender, saffron.  A semblance of walls
	that sprang up, dropped, hurtled, meshed into each other; a
	blending of liquid, sinuous runs of color like dyes spilled and
	mixed at random.  Sometimes a section of vermilion or aquamarine
	thickened, freed a descending globule from the rest, and trailed
	like a bloodstain across the lower waves of blue, yellow and
	pearl white.  Here a streamer imploded, as with that wavelet of
	gold about shoulder-high that suddenly burst darting points from
	its core.

	The joy was short-lived, however.  A pall seemed to descend
	upon the cavern.  Chundra suddenly saw shadow.  Like a smear

	it grayed, wedged into the walls, the air.  A gray bar, ever
	darkening.

	The sadhu stirred.  His head seemed separated from his waist,
	since his torso was in the darkness.  The shadow dimmed the
	colors close to its edges, and Chundra was finally able to
	see what the holy man was facing.

	Ahead, each in lotus position, were four rishis, flush against
	each other, slowly rotating.  The shadow hadn't touched them.
	Ancient, their faces were heavily lined, their heads crowned
	with long, white tresses that draped their naked shoulders,
	their beards hoarier still, reaching nearly to their loincloths.
	Each might have been an identical twin to another.

	Endlessly rotating back to back, they chanted in unison.
	"We are the rishes who experienced shruti.  Directly we heard
	from Brahma the sounds of timeless finality.  Directly we 
	heard and directly we remembered.  *Atma devanam, bhuvanasya
	garbho*."

	And, like a chorus, the speakers from the timeless wind
	repeated, and, as before, Chundra understood: "Spirit of all
	the gods, seed of all the worlds."  Racing through him, a
	shock electric along the outer layers of his skin.

	Tricklings of the utterance undulating in rising, ebbing
	tides of sound.

	"Hear the Rishes of the First and the Last.  Here, when there
	was naught but the mountains of the World," the four continued,
	"we did directly receive each akshara.  Know ye that a syllable
	of the Word of God is the roar of Creation.  No man hears the
	entire roar at once.  No man may withstand its might, its
	tremor.  Only Brahma hears the mighty, the sound of the terrible
	Silence.  O Brahma.  *TAT TVAM ASI.  TAT TVAM ASI.  TAT TVAM ASI.
	Thou are that."

	And ending, the shadow bar diffused, thinned, swiftly changed
	from its menacing nightness to a translucent gray, like a cloud
	that dims a radiant morning with its unexpected presence.  This
	time the four rishis, too, were engulfed, darkened, for a brief
	instant...

	A half-breath...

	Then a burst, an eruption from their center, and each figure was
	hot, made molten by a fire unknown.  No more the gray wash.  No
	longer the ancient rishis.  But instead creatures young and bold,
	their eyes glowing like fumaroles, their tresses still long, but
	now black and sleek.  And beardless, with voices firm and
	strident.

	"We are the Lords of Being-Nonbeing, of Breath and Nonbreath,
	of Light and its Absence.  The Sun gives us Shadow, the Night
	gives us the Moon's Glow.  All waits for the Balance.  All
	waits for the Good.  All waits for the Evil," they cried out.

	Chundra's stare shifted to the Huzoor pilgrim, who was moving
	closer.

	The rishis continued to rotate, still twins to one another....
	But now each of them held something in his left hand.

	"Ours is the flowing of history, the mighty illusion that
	flows as the sacred Ganga, that weaves with the light, that
	churns in the night, that overflows with purpose, that recedes
	without meaning."

	One of them hurled what he held at the pilgrim's feet.

	"Here is the Scroll of the Great Truth.  Here is the Scroll
	Transcendence.  Read, and we shall record it in our hearts."

	Chundra's parched throat gurgled as the pilgrim picked up
	the cylindrical object.  The pilgrim unrolled the scroll,
	read aloud.  Strangely, the words were unintelligible, though
	Chundra was certain the pilgrim's voice was loud enough.

	The four Lords spun around even faster, blurred, then slowed
	once the Scroll of the Great Truth was ended.

	"Here," the second of them shouted, while he tossed another
	cylinder.  "Read the Scroll of Events, where Destiny is
	written.  Read to us, that we may record it in our hearts."

	Again the pilgrim's words were unintelligible to Chundra.
	who knew at last that he wasn't meant to hear.  His eyes
	looked for the old sadhu.  He was gone!

	More blurring.  The rufous blaze returned, bit at the eyes,
	a whirling circle like a pinwheel sun in a spreading twilight.
	The vermilions, lavenders, pinks, aquamarines, golds -- all
	of the spectrum had dimmed.  The wavelets had slowed in their
	motion, solidified, structured into the walls of an extensive
	cavern.

	Turning back to the Lords, Chundra saw for the first time
	that they were floating.  At least, no dias was discernible.

	"Here," bellowed the third of them.  "Read the Scroll of the
	Chosen.  Read of the heritage, of the sons of the gods, the
	avatars who beat the rhythm of the Balance of the Earth, to
	balance the ways of men.  Read, that we may record it in
	our hearts.  For we are Lords and Rishis reborn: Lords of the
	Present and What is to Come."

	Once more the scroll was given to the pilgrim Huzoor.

	Chundra's heart swelled.  Except for the Huzoor, he was the
	sole witness now.  The aged sadhu now seemed to have 
	disappeared into the heavens.  Anything was possible.

	And at last the fourth Lord, whose eyes lashed out fire with
	the fervor of his decree.  His mightly arm raised, the scroll
	sailed.  This time the pilgrim, who'd ventured very near,
	caught it.

	"Here," came the final command: "the Scroll of Power.  Summon
	and know thy Mother.  Read, that we may record it forever in
	the timeless heart of the Eternal, that it will forevermore be
	written on the forehead of Brahma."

	This, the most important reading to Chundra, since he was
	certain it was of Kali, was longer than the others.  At its
	end the yellow-reddish circle whitened.  Chundra felt a scream
	coming from himself.  Terror shattered his concentration,
	spread through his very marrow.  The white core was about to
	implode, he sensed.  The ground quaked.  He tossed about,
	barely able to stand.  The air ripped a rent in the fabric of
	the supernal atmosphere.  A hissing noise, as of gas escaping,
	made him convulse.

	Chundra was sucked into an invisible vortex, hurtled backward.
	He hit something that dissolved like a fragile web, and found
	himself miraculously still on his feet....

[he walks for a time through an underground cavern-network....]

	Now he was moving with strange, heavy, slow strides.  He passed
	a wheel -- at least as high as a three-story house.  Chundra
	touched it to convince himself, and the porous, rubbery, massive
	rime was solid enough, if a bit soft.  The presence of his fingers
	left their imprint, and it was then, with a shock that made him
	swiftly back away, that he realized he'd touched flesh.

	Flesh.

	Chundra shuddered, but it was the shudder of release, a letting
	go, and his shock subsided.  What he was observing was suddenly
	bearable again, and he neared it once more.  He judged the
	width of the wheel's rim at six feet.  Though he could barely
	see beyond the spokes and hub, he mentally calculated nine or 
	more yards of depth.  The imprint of his fingers was rapidly
	fading, the pores expanded and contracted, quarter-inch dark
	pits mottling a surface that ranged from white to lustrous
	black.  The flesh of every race, he concluded -- Caucasion,
	shades of yellow, red, and brown, the final streaks of the
	deepest ebony.  And -- studying closer -- here and there among
	the variations of flesh tone was a parade of tattoos.

	He'd not seen them before, but that was part of the nascent
	quality of everything around him.  The place heaved with constant
	birth.

	Chundra bent forward, squinting in the milky twilight,
	fascinated by the progression of tattoos.  Reminiscent of a
	religious ceremonial train, they told a story.  The figures
	were entirely in red, and as the dimness eased a bit, he soon
	saw the markings were in blood, as raw as the first imprint from
	the tattoo needle.

	The central figure, Chundra thought, was an ordinary bayadere,
	a temple dancing girl, poised in the dancing style of the
	Bharata Natyam.  Chundra was aware of the mudras, the traditional
	hand and figure gestures.  But the bayadere shifted with a new
	stance and rearranging of the arms, and the pretty, smiling woman
	was replaced.  Chundra had no time to question that the figures
	were moving.

	The woman now lost her beauty.  The blood coagulated to a
	glutinous black.  A hag stared back with fangs and protruding
	tongue.  Two additional arms holding a sword and a strangler's
	noose emerged into view, moving in unison with the gestures of
	the arms above to a silent music that jarred Chundra's nerves.
	A discordant clamor.  A paean of strife and disorder, of war
	and death, unheard and yet picked up by Chundra's nerve endings.

	The din was meant to be sensed, not heard, the ultrasound of
	the terrible Silence.

	Recognizing his Goddess, Chundra Bala could barely look upon
	Her aspect.  Naked, except for Her ornaments, a garland of
	skulls and a girdle of severed hands.  She danced down the
	broad curving rim of flesh... danced and glowered and darted
	and fought.

	The other figure, who remained red in color, was the demon
	Raktavija.  The Thug knew the famous myth and watched it
	unfold.  Each time Kali touched him with Her sword, Raktavija
	reproduced himself from the drops of blood.  The blur of
	countless demons made Chundra's head swim, and for a moment
	the wheel seemed to disappear and he faced an infinity of
	jeering, monstrous Raktavijas.  Then the rim was present again,
	and now the dancing, thrusting Goddess held the demon high
	and drank all his blood before it could fall and restructure
	itself.

	Thus it was, it was written, that Kunkali acquired the bloodlust
	that is insatiable.  This it was, and Chundra turned his head
	from the now bloated, hideous thing that blared back with the
	shattering sonic glare of Her triumph.

	His body taut, his nerves like wires overloaded with current,
	Chundra stiffly passed beyond the rim.  He tottered for a moment
	against the spokes, clutching seaweed-like tresses.  But his
	clammy hands dropped the tresses when he realized that they were
	human hair, woman's hair, long and tangled in the cables of
	flesh.  Somewhere, too, whenever the hair parted sufficiently,
	there were the faces, lovely faces, weighted with despair,
	their eyes filled with endless sorrow.

	Chundra reached the hub, evading sinuous arms that coiled
	around the spokes, grabbed at his clothing.  There, at the
	wheel's center, his eyes riveted upon an array of vulvas
	linked in a quivering ecstatic design.  A powerful sexual
	magnet, it tugged at his instincts, his pubic hairs rising
	like a bed of dark anemone.  He experienced a surge of desire
	so strong it battered him, even as his strange new defenses
	bade him leap free of the spot.

	Hitting ground again, Chundra slipped, fell on his haunches,
	and continued to slide down an incline leading to a lateral
	chamber.  He raised himself to his knees and faced the jutting
	profiles embedded in the rock at the turn into the room.  He
	blinked until it registered: the profiles were human skulls.
	He forced himself to stand, wobbling for an instant, and then
	walked to the column of leering bone on both sides of the
	entranceway.

	His hand brushed the top of his head.  It felt bristly.

	Otherwise, the fear had left him again, totally.  How miraculous,
	to be able to move on into this world of death!

	There was, nevertheless, a seeping into his consciousness of
	unsurpassed despair like an invisible miasma.  But he went
	on, shielded from the nightmare.

	Now, more blackness.  A faint luster to everything, a murmur
	of light.  His foot kicked an object, soft, mushy, then another.
	Chundra bent, strained until the writhing thing was but inches
	from his nose.  A severed hand.  Two.  No -- many severed hands,
	the fingers extended in hopeless surrender.  Maggots glistened,
	poured forth from the palms.  The luster, whiter than flesh,
	whiter than bone, etched the quivering outlines.

	Chundra crossed the space, kicking the hands aside, telling
	himself it was all so much cosmic refuse.  Nothing to concern
	himself with, really.  Nothing, nobody important.  All that
	was important was to follow the alcove to the last nook, to 
	reach that glaucous arc ahead that danced and licked so
	desperately at the walls.  There, he knew, was the finale,
	the truth he was seeking.

	No time to pause, hesitate, even tremble.  No time.  No time
	anywhere, anyplace.  Yes, this was no Time.

	Deeper into the nightness and beyond Chundra went.  He stopped,
	staring at a dias covered by a flickering, translucent membrane.
	It heaved, pulsed, a living green tissue.  Chundra thought of a
	diseased placenta.  Suddenly greatly excited, he knelt at the
	dias's base.

	Detectable through the translucency were two shapes.  Chundra
	recognized the cowl of the Huzoor, who clung to a gigantic
	figure on a throne of stone.  Two black left arms were
	wrapped around the Huzoor, holding him tight and fast.  One
	right hand stroked his head, the other pressed his face to the
	sheen-rimmed mound of a naked breast.

	The Huzoor was suckling on the hard, dish-sized nipple.

	Kunkali!

	Kunkali!

	Chundra screamed the name in his soul.  Her face was hidden
	in the blackish green mesh above.  Only two iridescent points
	lit the area above Her shoulders.  The command came from the
	points, clawing into Chundra's entrails.

	"Chundra!  Protect my son!"

	After that, he collapsed in a swoon.

	_Rishi_, a novel by Leo Giroux, Jr., pp. 21, 45-53. 
	___________________________________________________


[Chundra translates the Huzoor's proclamations in Ramasi]

	"Hear me, children of Kali," Bala began, as the Huzoor's
	staccato continued.  "I've come to you all, summoned by
	the Mother to do Her will.  She who held me as a child
	suckling at Her breasts that I might be nourished with
	the power and zeal of Her great purpose.  She who defeated
	the demon Raktavija and drank every drop of his hideous
	blood, thereby blackening Her aspect the more, thereby
	conjoining Herself with death, with war, with plague,
	and their meaning in the Eternal Balance of Creation.

	"Since that which lives must die.  And that which dies,
	if by the hand of one of you, my children -- then indeed
	Mother Kali is pleased.  Then indeed is your reward great.
	Then indeed have you done what She long ago decreed."

	Someone cried out, "Merciful is Kali.  Merciful is She
	to Her Chosen."

	Once the prayers subsided:

	"How long ago, my brothers?  Think now what your fathers
	and their fathers passed on...."

	It was a condensed histoy of Thuggee.  That as distant in
	time as the reign of the Persian king Xerxes, his horsemen,
	the dreaded Sagartii, had skill with the rumel.  That the
	writings of Zia-ud-Din Barni seven centuries ago recorded
	the great works of Thuggee.  On and on the Ramasi of the
	River Thugs continued, praising one Thug saint after another.

	But -- and a somber note mellowed th Huzoor's unrestrained
	pride -- the Thugs had often been humiliated.  As he
	recounted each instance, a groan that increased to a drawn-
	out wail sounded.  What of the thousand Thugs captured at
	Delhi, grieved the Huzoor, who were branded on their buttocks
	with a heated copper coin?  What of the inglorious day when
	Nanha, the Rajah of Jalun, executed Budhu and his brother
	Khumoli, those two wondrous saints of Thuggee?

	"But did not Kali avenge them?" implored one, shaking a 
	fist in the air.

	"Aye," agreed their Lord.  "Nanha, the Rajah, was punished
	with the affliction of leprosy for his evil-doing.  And the
	very next day!"

	A sigh of relief everywhere, a unified suspiration.

	"And the final humiliation was at the hand of the British
	Raj.  The Raj has silenced the children of Kali for over
	a century.  The sacred rumel, the blessed pickax have been
	stifled.  Is this to continue forever?"

	"No!" came the cry.

	"Is the will of the Mother to be forever ignored, even
	thwarted?"

	"No!"

	"What then, is to be done?"

	"Kill!"

	"Yes, kill."

	"Kill, destroy, O Chosen One, for Kali!"

	"For Kali, Merciful Mother!"

	Then the Huzoor added, "Merciful indeed.  Are not the victims
	guaranteed Paradise through such an end?"

	"Merciful Kali!  Merciful Mother!"

	Mother so Bountiful, the praise rang.

	-------------------------------------

	Ibid, pp. 66-8.
	_______________ 

[Swami Hanuman counsels his chelas and visitors]

	"Learn, indeed, this lesson for you and me.  Life is only sweet,
	exciting, memorable when we are faced either with total Light
	and the Radiance of things that cradles our spirit or -- and
	mark this particularly -- when the *Darkness* comes and broods
	around and about this world, clouds everything.  Then Life
	has been touched by the Frown of Evil.  Thus, with either Light
	or the Darkness at their greatest extremes, do we feel truly
	awakened."
	----------

	Ibid, p. 111.
	_____________

[Chundra's wife, Gauri, encounter's Kali and then speaks of Her to him.]

	The cloud neared.  The walls again susurrated.  "Think of me.
	The foul and decaying sweetness is everywhere.  The dead and
	the dying are my bounty.  I am a monsoon that rises unexpectedly,
	to ravage the time of Man with a merciless flood of war and
	pestilence.  I am Kali.  Think only of Me!"
	-------------------------------------------

	Ibid, p. 207.
	_____________ 

	"...Kali gives and grants frugally to most of us who serve Her...."

	"...Kali grants and takes at random always.  She has whims, dark
	unfathomable desires, secret purposes that over-ride any
	consideration for Her followers.  Kali is not of us or like us,
	my husband, rest assured."

	...

	"...Kali neither loves nor knows hatred in the same fashion as
	we do.  Her thoughts, Her desires, spring from a different
	source, have grown from that which is beyond our limited ken."

	-------------------------

	Ibid, pp. 212-3.
	_____________

[Kurt, a knowledgeable acquaintance, explains]

	"Kunkali means Man-Eater, the worst aspect of the Goddess Kali,
	the aspect that is connected with the spilling of blood, with
	destruction.  She's sometimes represented as quaffing drafts
	of blood from men and demons...."
	---------------------------------

	Ibid, p. 248.
	_____________

[Swami Hanuman explains his experience of the opening of the Portals 
 which Chundra witnessed, quoted above]

	..."Months ago, while meditating, I witnessed the reopening of
	the Dark Portals."

	...  "Think in Modern Age analogues, if you must.  A great Force
	of Resistance quantitatively speaking, a universe of ohm
	resistance against a life-force circuit.  Or, instead, think of
	a mysterious black hole in space, a possible sucking vortex of
	contraterrene matter.  Yes, that will do.  Anything that
	contradicts natural law, natural order.

	"It has been released before.  In commonplace terms, this 
	polarity from beyond the Dark Portals is called evil.  Sometimes
	it's represented in the abstract as a negative spirit, always
	very powerful.  Sometimes it's personified, the devil, or, in
	this instance, the black Goddess Kali, Bhowani, Kunkali --
	use whatever name you choose.  A Force of Resistance that
	permeates almost everything and anything.  Very few persons
	can fight its overwhelming power.  Almost no one has succeeded
	in defeating it totally.

	"So we're stuck with the world, the flesh, and the devil,
	Swami.  So what's new?"

	"What is new is that this resistance is so tremendous, 
	so anti-life in the purest sense, that it stagnated, nullified
	itself.  The devil, all the Dark Gods died, or at least became
	ineffective.  Mankind became its own demon.  Now it can 
	obliterate with nuclear devastation.  Indeed, if the devil
	were still alive and strong, such an event would defeat his
	very purpose for existence.  Total devastation means there are
	no more souls to tempt, to lure into his domain.  The playground
	is gone and so are the players therein.

	"Cosmic evil has been in stasis.  Mankind continues to do bad,
	since the results, the philosophies, the instincts of evil still
	linger -- which is exactly the problem.  A dark god or goddess
	would force man to expand his spirit, fight for his soul again.

	..."You're stating that the cosmos has reopened the portals
	to allow Kali to step forth and maintain balance between good
	and evil."

	"Yes, Kali is trying to regain her position on the cosmic
	scale.  Now, if the rumor about these sacred rishi's scrolls
	is true, kinetic supernatural evil has reentered the world
	with them."

	-----------
	
	Ibid, pp. 276-7.
	________________

[our heroes face the cosmic evil directly as Gauri summons Her to their
 abode, through the second-story entrance.]

	Hanuman had entered the room, his finger before his lips.  
	Hanuman gestured that they all listen.  They did and heard it.

	Susurrating, it came from upstairs.  Unintelligible words,
	rasping sounds.  Floorboards began to creak.  A tread, slow,
	powerful, as if to a beat, dancing while it walked.  With it,
	the metallic clinking of an Indian woman in motion.  But along
	with it, an unfamiliar, hollow sound that made everyone in the
	room bolt upright.

	It was coming down from the attic....

	Hanuman spat into his palms, then faced Stephen Wrench.  He
	placed the palms over the big man's eyes.  Stunned, Wrench
	reached for a hankerchief to wipe them but gaped instead.
	Reaching to the ceiling, no more than half a foot above them,
	was a transluscent gray bar that went across the room, into
	the hall, and up the stairs.

	Hanuman was busily moistening the eyes of the rest....

	Whatever was coming was close to the second landing.   Rama
	Shastri went quickly into the living room.  There the rest
	waited, every pair of eyes fixed on the staircase.  Its end
	was visible from where they stood, half immersed in the gray;
	then the bar ran obliquely into the living room.

	The temperature had dropped.  George, who was closest to the
	doorway, began to rub his arms and tried desparately to stop
	his teeth from chattering.  Yet his gaze remained fixed on the
	final steps.  Slowly, louder came the rhythmic strides.  George
	saw a naked foot covered with anklets jut out, step upon the
	boundary of the gray plane.  Still the stairs creaked as if
	they bore the weight.  Then he saw the bent knee, the thigh,
	the girdle, the abdomen, and they were very black.  Not human
	black, George thought of tar.  He thought of a heavily greased
	axle, full of black sheen.  The figure was shaped like a human,
	but there was a sense of machinery to the body, of something
	robotic.

	The figure reached the oblique angle and turned in its
	rhythmic, jerking motions toward the living room.  George
	backed; he could barely breathe in the sweep of arctic air
	that pushed at him from the hall.  Frost hung from his hair,
	his brows, the top of his nose.  It rimed the furniture.

	...

	"*Bivo viswaneth*," George heard and, turning back, saw
	Hanuman heading toward the figure.  "*Pahi.  Pahi*."  Over
	and over, Hanuman appealed to the Lord of the Universe,
	Vishwanath, to protect them.  The figure paused, its left
	leg raised about to complete a stride.  Then came a loud
	susurration, like a miasma.  It thickened the air, soured
	it for an instant, and they felt nauseous.  The arctic cold
	had left, but not the terror.

	The intruder continued its weird dance and walk, scaling
	the vast, gray angle until it was above their heads.  Walking,
	swimming, wading, dancing, she gradually came to them through
	the murk.  Her four arms jerked and bent and arced sinuously,
	in cadence to the strange, discordant music of her
	appurtenances.  In one hand she held the dripping sword that
	had decapitated the demon, Raktavija; in another, a rumel
	noose; in a lower arm, the sacred pickax; while the fourth
	was free, and it gestured, pointed at each man below her.

	"Don't look at her face," warned the Swami, but his warning
	was too late.  Up to this point her features had been unclear,
	lost in the gray haze.  They now started to form, become
	human, and her dance lost its abrupt, mechanical starts and
	pauses.  Everything, the features, the limbs, flowed suddenly,
	with a wild, sensual pulse.  Even the horror of her girdle of
	thonking skulls was lost beside the humanity of the face.

	Wrench cried out, then the others in succession, except
	Hanuman.  Stephen Wrench saw Kamala [his dead wife], then
	Santha [his living daughter] looking down at him; Shastri,
	the brooding face of Ileana [his abandoned lover]; George,
	Santha [his lover], mouthing her pet name for him, kesari;
	and Nirmal, the face he'd seen only in photographs -- his
	mother.  The goddess knelt, her eyes speaking with a
	thousand pain-filled memories.  She returned to each man
	all the sorrow and yearning and love his being craved.  She
	spoke without words, and they wept and cried out to her.

	But Hanuman saw the demonic eyes, the pointed fanglike
	teeth, drooling with her blood-craving, the lolling tongue
	flickering, flickering.

	Having lured the others spiritually, Kunkali, the Man-Eater,
	squatted.  Her vulva opened and spoke in a different
	language.  Sex, blatant, compelling beyond reason, clawed
	at them, tugged at vital needs.  The black pubic hairs
	smothered, promised a sweet oblivion; the glistening vulva
	lips kissed softly, at the four paralyzed men.

	Swami Hanuman raced from one to the other, covering their
	eyes again with spittle.  When next they looked, the gray
	tunnel of space and the apparition were gone.  Placing a
	finger before his mouth again, Hanuman silently directed
	that they leave the building.
	-----------------------------

	Ibid, pp. 405-8.
	________________ 

	via tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com

	get the book, it's swell.  published by Ballantine, 1985.
	I have no connection with Ballantine or Mr. Giroux, Jr.

	omkali omkali omkali