[1.2] Tracing the Story & Symbology of the Dark Goddess
We live in a culture that fears the Dark.
In the Darkness lies Mystery, Death, Time, Chaos, Space. Infinity.1
Everything that reminds us how fleeting our Joy and Life are.
It makes sense hat humans instinctually know to be afraid of the dark. Have y’all seen the freaky looking monsters sweeping the depths of the ocean?
The problem is that the world we live in is too complex to operate unconsciously DARK = BAD/ LIGHT = GOOD binary.
The Colonial and Patriarchal empires that relegated the Divine Feminine and Indigenous Wisdom to the collective’s shadow relied on this simple and stupid framework to quite literally take over the world.
Over Time, Culture, and Continent, the Patriarchal Colonial Empire succeeded in its command-and-control infinite growth and accumulation of power agenda through wielding image and metaphor.
“A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.”
― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
The Man = Light = Good > Woman = Dark = Bad assosiation has single-handedly facilitated the scale of destruction and massive continued momentum of the colonial empire and capitalist interests.
We decolonize in practice by first fighting the war against the oppressor in our own heads.2 We start by examining the stories implanted in the recesses of our brain and complicating them. Eventually we might reclaim very potent sources of power that we’ve lost in this war - our stories and symbols.
There is so much magic in the dark! The the protection of the womb and the cave, the infinite internal experience, emotions, dreams, wisdom, intuition. The moon 🌙 Mother Nature 🌬️🌏 Her cycles of creation, death, and rebirth.
Seeing the beauty in chaos, the meaning in irrationality, mystic mystery in death - these are the keys to liberation. Reclaiming stories and symbols as our sources of power 🏆🦁🧿 And embracing the profane alongside the sacred.3
For the next week - pay attention to the things light and dark in your life and your instinctual reaction to them.
It sounds so basic and simple - but when you begin to become aware of all the ways in which stories and symbols venerate the light and demonize the dark, it’s only then that you can see the complexity beyond the binary. Build your own relationship to light and dark, sun and moon.
Knowing Kali 🌚
Terrifying, destructive, chaotic - it’s appropriate for us to have an instinctual fear response when it comes to Kali. Like a Hurricane or a Tornado or Earthquake - Kali is the rumblings of rapid chaotic transformation that we can only marvel at with humble awe. She is the dark protective Womb and our first Mother, who we come from and return to when we die.
Kali has a light and dark aspect. There is the village or forest Kali, the folk Kali. She comes in the forms of Bhadrakali, Chamunda, and Bhairavi - goddesses of the margins, scary, half-demonic.
They are invoked for protection and magic, associated with nighttime rituals and seasonal dances. This is the Kali associated with Black magic and animal sacrifice.
In the more modern or orthodox Hindu practice, Kali is Kali Ma - the compassionate, benign loving mother who offers every boon and blessing. She’s depicted sweetly with dark beauty - an absolute mesmerising vision.
Remember that in Hindu mythology, Kali is considered an avatar of Durga, not rightfully so as her predecessor. Durga is a Warrior Goddess who fights courageously for Righteousness and Justice. Kali embodies the chaotic mystery of the cosmos - Space, Time, Creation and Destruction. Both are ultimately aspects of Shakti.
All of these versions of Kali simply represent her multiplicity. She shows up in many forms with many aspects, but the core themes remain the same. She is Divine Rage, Infinite Compassion, Transformation, Great Mother.
With Kali’s many faces, she has many stories.4 Today I’m focusing on Kali’s core origin story, which centers on her buzzer-beating emergence from Durga’s third eye during a battle that Good was losing to Evil.
All hope seems to be lost. The Gods have come to Durga to save their butts in a war against dark forces - and they’re losing. In the climax of the battle, Durga faces down demon Raktabija, who is particularly difficult to destroy.
With every injury Raktabija sustains, every drop of his blood on the battlefield turns into another version of him. In trying to destroy this Evil, he only gains strength and multiplies.
So Durga brings forth terrifying Kali, who comes out with a roar slayng demons and chopping off heads. Raktabija is no match for Kali. With her unfurled tongue, Kali laps up all of the demon’s blood before it can touch the ground.
Kali’s outstretched tongue is her weapon, and a reminder for us that Time and Mother Nature ultimately consume all Life.
Integrating Shadow Side of Kali 🖤
The battle ends with Raktabija’s decisive defeat by Kali and Good triumphs over Evil.
But the story doesn’t end there. Kali, drunk on Raktabija’s blood, only gains steam in her wild and frenzied dance. She unconsciously continues her path of destruction across the universe.
The Gods don’t know what to do - they beg Shiva, Durga and Kali’s Consort, to do something to calm her down before it is too late.
Shiva calls out to Kali, but she can’t hear him. In an act of desperation, he lays down at her feet, surrendering to her. Kali continues her dancing, “pounding the life out of her husband,” when all of a sudden she sees who she’s dancing on.
In seeing she is dancing on her beloved, she’s pulled out of her trance and returns back to calm and composed form of Devi, or Durga.
Shiva here represents the divine masculine in our psyche - our awareness, our consciousness. What we pay attention to and what we observe is very powerful. Through this loving awareness, Shiva is able to calm chaos.
Kali’s power, suppressed, will often turn in on us, fester in the form of rage, attack our bodies in the form of illness and accidents and surface in ways that can destroy our love and the love others have for us.
The process of finding and harnessing Kali energy in ourselves is fraught with missteps. We don’t always know how to separate the transformative anger that can stand against injustice from the rage of the wounded feminine, which all of us, hold in our selves.5
Like all shadows, the shadow side of Kali is a distortion of her positive qualities. We must become like Shiva, expanding our Conscious Awareness and Compassion to hold and dissolve the shadow Kali in our life.
Kali’s Wisdom
So much to unpack with Kali’s story. She is the endless expanse that benevolently takes our demons from us - Greed, Arrogance, Pain, Addiction, Disassociation.
Kali is a goddess of the transformation of our consciousness. She teaches us how to detach from the shackles of our ego and find peace from our demons - anything that keeps us from Truth, Enlightenment, Bliss.
This story also shows us how divinity can show up as Sacred Rage. How sometimes evil must be matched with violence and destruction. This is how nature works.
Transformation is not pretty!! It is not a pleasant experience! It is ooey gooey, messy, iterative. When we want something new, old structures must be destroyed. This can also be painful. But knowing that we’re not alone in facing
When all you feel is loss, destruction, tragedy, grief, pain and you feel like you’re swimming in an ocean with no feeling of groundedness or center. THAT’S when you know that Kali is ripping through your life like a tornado. Know that divinity has many faces, not just love and light. The Divine can often come to us disguised in loss, endings, pain, and even violence, not unlike the simultaneously destructive and purifying element of Fire, Kali challenges us to confront our deepest fears and embrace the transformative power of destruction for rebirth.
Embrace the wild ride!! Dance in your chaos!!! Be fearsome! Be messy! Take up space!!
💌 tomorrow we’ll be exploring Kali for political liberation.
Kali Energy 🧿🌚💫
If you havent’t seen the doc on Netflix where mathmeticians wax poetic on the concept Infinity, you must. Infinite Math Netflix Doc. Big Kali energy.
In us all, we all have oppressor and oppressed, colonizer and colonized, . We have ancestors who perpetuated violence and were victims. In each of our tiny pea brains we hold the answer to all the mysteries of the universe, because we each are a mystery of the universe. We each know how the oppressor thinks, because we each have that part in us, and we know the pain of the oppressed, because we’ve felt it ourselves.
This article is a great summary of the history of Kali’s mythology and symbology Kali a Most Misunderstood Goddess
Sally Kempton, Awakening Shakti