Kali

The Hindu goddess Kali (in Sanskrit, “she who is black”), well known for her terrifying iconography and general association with death and destruction, is one of the most widely worshipped goddesses in all of India and also one of the most globally recognizable deities of Hinduism.

Kali is typically portrayed as a dark, half-naked, bloodthirsty goddess with a lolling tongue. She has long disheveled hair, multiple arms, a skirt of severed arms, and a necklace of severed heads.

Kali's early history indicates that she was likely a fierce tribal deity on the periphery of Sanskritic Hindu culture. Over time, however, Kali was appropriated by Hindu civilization and transformed, at least partially, to fit its moods and motivations, thus moving beyond her earlier marginal identity and attaining a Pan-Indian and even global importance.

Kali first appears prominently in Sanskrit literature in the roughly sixth-century CE work, the Devi-Mahatmya (Greatness of the Goddess). Though Kali is not the primary goddess of this text (Durga is), she does make several important appearances in it, the most prominent being her confrontation with the demon Raktabija. Raktabija has the uncanny ability of replicating himself whenever a drop of his blood falls to the ground. Durga succeeds in wounding him, but with every drop of blood he sheds, another demon appears, until a veritable army results. This so infuriates Durga that Kali springs forth as a concentrated manifestation of her rage. Kali then wins the day by devouring the demon army with her gaping mouth and sucking Raktabija's blood dry—thus rendering him lifeless and helping to save the cosmos.

Though Kali would go on to assume greater significance after her portrayal in the Devi-Mahatmya, her basic character is clearly articulated in this text. She is ferocious, terrifying, and hungry for blood—a violent agent of death. Such characteristics would figure prominently, for example, in her association with Tantrism, a tradition that often places great value on one's ability to confront and eventually overcome the forbidden or polluting aspects of existence. Due to her association with death and blood (two profoundly polluting realities according to normative Hindu culture), Kali came to be seen as the exemplar of the forbidden and polluting aspects of life. She, therefore, acted as a deity that the tantric practitioner could heroically confront and, through her, overcome the socially constructed forbidden aspects of life. Kali thus helped the tantric practitioner to transcend a duality that was artificially, socially imposed on reality and break through to an underlying primordial unity. It is in such contexts that one begins to see a softer side to Kali—as, here, where she is revealed as an ultimately gracious and benevolent granter of liberating insight.

This somewhat softer side achieves greater importance in bhakti, or Hindu devotional traditions, where, perhaps surprisingly, Kali is viewed as a mother figure. This devotional approach to Kali was exemplified by Ramprasad Sen, an 18th-century poet from Bengal. To this day, in part due to Ramprasad, Kali worship is especially prominent in this region of India. Unlike the tantric practitioner who heroically confronts Kali, the approach of the devotee is typically that of supplication—as a child to a mother. Kali's frightening character persists, but the hope of the devotee is that Kali will, despite her harsh exterior or “tough love,” ultimately respond to her children's needs and show them a more complete vision of reality.

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