Nothing in Hindu iconography shocks a newcomer like Kali. Her skin is black or deep blue, her hair loose, her tongue out, her eyes red. A garland of severed heads hangs to her knees and a skirt of severed arms circles her waist. One hand holds a sword, another a dripping head. Under her feet lies Shiva, apparently dead. And in Kolkata a small child pulled along by her grandmother will look up at this figure and say, quite naturally, "Ma."
This article is about how those two facts fit together.
Born from Durga's brow
Kali's scriptural birth is in the Devi Mahatmya, the seven hundred verses on the Goddess embedded in the Markandeya Purana and recited throughout Navaratri. The demon kings Shumbha and Nishumbha have sent their generals Chanda and Munda with an army to seize the Goddess. Ambika, the serene Durga seated on her lion, watches them approach. Her face darkens with anger, and from her forehead Kali springs out: gaunt, black, with a sword and a noose, a garland of skulls, a tiger skin, a gaping mouth and a lolling tongue. She devours the army whole, horses, elephants, chariots and all, crunching them between her teeth, and brings the heads of Chanda and Munda to Ambika, who gives her the name Chamunda.
The first thing to notice is that Kali is not a different goddess from Durga. She is what Durga's composed anger looks like when it is let out: one Shakti wearing different faces.
Raktabija
The next chapter gives her defining act. The demon Raktabija has a boon: every drop of his blood that touches the earth becomes another Raktabija. The gods strike him and the battlefield fills with copies. The more they fight, the worse it gets. Then the Goddess tells Kali to spread her mouth wide and drink the blood before it can fall. Kali does, swallowing the demons as they form, until Raktabija is bled dry and falls.
Hindus have always read this as more than a battle. Some things cannot be beaten by hitting them. Anger answered with anger multiplies; a rumour denied spreads; a craving fought head-on grows another head. Raktabija is every problem that feeds on the effort to kill it. What ends him is not force but absorption: the Mother takes it all in. Her outstretched tongue, in this reading, is the tongue that caught the blood.
The dance over Shiva
The famous image of Kali standing on Shiva comes from later Puranic and Tantric tradition, and from Bengal, rather than from the Devi Mahatmya. After her victory she dances in a frenzy, drunk on blood, and the earth begins to shake under her feet. The gods beg Shiva to intervene. He lies down among the corpses on the battlefield. Her foot lands on his chest, she looks down and sees her husband, and she stops.
There is a well-known play on letters here. Shiva with a vowel removed becomes shava, a corpse: Shiva without Shakti is inert. He is pure consciousness, still; she is the energy that makes anything happen. Without her nothing moves; without him there is nothing for her to stand on. The image is not of a wife humiliating her husband but a diagram of how the universe works.
Reading the image
Every element of Kali's figure is a symbol, and devotees are taught them from childhood.
- Her colour: black is the night sky, the colour into which all colours dissolve. Kala is time; Kali is time's feminine form, she who eventually devours everything that exists.
- The garland of heads: usually fifty, the number of letters in the Sanskrit alphabet, so she wears all speech and all knowledge round her neck. The heads are also the ego, the "I" that must fall before one can see her clearly.
- The skirt of arms: arms are the organs of action, and action is karma. She cuts the bonds of karma; actions offered to her no longer bind.
- The four hands: on her left, the sword of knowledge that cuts through illusion, and a severed head, the ego already dealt with. On her right, the gesture of fearlessness and the gesture of granting boons. The frightening hands and the gentle hands belong to the same mother.
- Her nakedness: she is digambara, clothed in space. Truth has no covering; the veil of maya has been dropped.
- Her loose hair: freedom from every convention and restraint.
- The cremation ground, where she is often shown: the place where everything ends and every pretence burns.
The tongue
The lolling tongue is the detail most asked about, and Hindus give several answers, all held sincerely. The domestic Bengali reading is lajja, modesty: she has just realised she is standing on her husband, and bites her tongue the way a child does when caught. The scriptural reading is Raktabija: the tongue is out to drink. A Tantric reading sees the red tongue as rajas, passion, held between white teeth that stand for sattva, purity: the Goddess holding passion in check. Others see simply the war face. And the poet Ramprasad treated her as a naughty daughter sticking her tongue out at the world. None of these readings excludes the others.
Kali in Bengal
Kali is worshipped across India, as Bhadrakali in Kerala, as the fierce village mothers of Tamil Nadu, and in the Shakta traditions of Assam, Odisha and the hills. But Bengal made her its own. In the eighteenth century Ramprasad Sen composed the songs known as Shyama Sangeet, in which he argues with his mother, complains to her and refuses to let go of her sari. The Kalighat temple in Kolkata is one of the great Shakti Peethas, where a toe of Sati is said to have fallen.
In 1855 Rani Rashmoni built the temple at Dakshineswar on the Hooghly, and its young priest Ramakrishna became the most famous devotee of the Goddess in modern times. He longed for her until he nearly died of despair, then saw her, and spent the rest of his life talking with her as with a living person. He taught that Brahman and Shakti are not two, as fire and its power to burn are not two: the absolute at rest is Brahman, the absolute in motion is Kali. His disciple Vivekananda wrote a poem titled "Kali the Mother".
Kali Puja falls on the new-moon night of Kartik, the same night as Diwali. While the rest of India lights lamps for Lakshmi, Bengal, Assam and Odisha stay up until midnight for Kali, with red hibiscus garlands, lamps around the image and, in some temples, the older practice of animal sacrifice, which many shrines have now replaced with pumpkins and sugarcane.
Why a frightening image is loved
A mother is not less a mother when she turns terrifying towards the thing that threatens her child. A small child does not run from a fierce protector; it runs to her. Kali's devotees feel exactly that: the sword and the severed head are not pointed at them but at what would harm them, including their own ego and fear.
There is also honesty in her. A god of pure sweetness leaves out half the truth, because the world contains death, loss and time. Kali leaves nothing out. She is the universe as it is, birth and destruction together, and whoever can look at her without flinching has stopped being afraid of anything. Ramakrishna put it simply: those who fear her see the terrible one; her children see the mother.
Bringing it home
Not everyone's chosen deity is Kali, and Tantric practice properly needs a guru. But her teaching is available to anyone.
- When frightened, say "Jai Ma". Fear addressed to the Mother becomes something she can hold.
- Reread the Raktabija story the next time you face a problem that grows with every blow. Ask what it would mean to absorb it rather than strike it.
- Look at her image until it stops being frightening. That shift, from terror to trust, is the whole of her teaching in miniature.
- Remember whose name she carries. Time will take all of this. Hold it lightly, and love what is in front of you while it is here.