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"O DESTRUCTRESS of the sins of the three worlds, auspicious Kalika, who in Thy upper lotus-like left hand holdest a sword; and in the lower left hand a severed head; who with Thy upper right hand maketh a gesture which dispels fear, and with Thy lower right hand that which grants boons; they, O Mother with gaping mouth, who reciting Thy name, meditate in this way upon the greatness of Thy mantra, possess the eight great powers of the Three-Eyed One in the palm of their hands." From Sri Mahakala's 'Hymn To Kali' (Karpuradi-Stotra), translated by Sir John Woodroffe in Hymns to the Goddess, Madras: Ganesh & Company, 1973

The hymn discribing Kali the Destructress, the popular Hindu goddess, is attributed to Siva.. On the one side, Kali reflects evil, and on the other side, good. Most of us fear evil and love good. In our ignorance we may do much evil in the name of good, but we also see good arising from evil; indeed, the progress of good is from prior evil. 

Several ancient cultures regarded the left side of things as weak, evil and female, and the right side as strong, good and male. When might is right, might seems to be the highest good; therefore ignorant people worship whatever power happens to preside as established authority regardless of its viciousness. The powerful man in high office, as long as he holds that office, can do no wrong as far as some compliant people are concerned, and anyone who doubts him is wrong.

Powerful men have nevertheless complained about being ruled by their compliant women and slaves in one way or another. Since men are more physically powerful and are able to have their way with women as a matter of force, they naturally conceived of themselves as the incarnation of the highest good. That was the political reality - politics distributes Power. Since religion is the worship of Power, we are not surprised to discover males dominating the "higher" personal religions, religions centered around supreme male deities. Men tend to make their gods in their own image; as it is on Earth, so it is in Heaven. But ethically speaking, the sexual attributes are as arbitrary as the primeval deities who represented both good and evil.

It is to the advantage as well as disadvantage of  women to be feared by men, many of whom believe women are a great evil when they are not good. And women tended to develop their own ambiguous religious forms along with their own secret language - and potions that might kill a mighty man at table. Of course men and women may dispense with ambiguous deities and even deny that there is an absolute difference between male and female or good and evil in the world. Or they might retain their favorite gods and goddesses and gloss over the dark side of divinity. Others attempt to rationalize evil away. Male theologians have excelled at theodicy - explaining away the father-god's brutish or "evil" conduct - a multitude of women and children have been righteously "chastized" instead of viciously "abused" as a consequence.

Most of us prefer love to hate, and would have universal love rule the world that all may live without hate and fear. So badly is love wanted that the existence of evil is denied as a "negative", a mere absence of good, and nothing in itself; hence the reality of evil is accordingly ignored and submitted to as if it were part of the greater good. But there is no good without evil, hence no genuine love of good without fear of evil. Therefore he who ignores evil is good for nothing.

The original Zoroaster of Dualism (in contrast to the later, Zurvanian heresy) took the rational approach to the world: it takes two to tango; there is a ratio between good and evil - good wins over evil in the end. Zoroaster protested the Hindu con-fusion of good and evil into one big, self-satisfying gray area; he presented humankind with a great gift or moral truth: to live morally, we must do our best to make a clear distinction between good and evil; and this is done by recognizing evil as a positive force in the world.

Not that any particular distinction is necessarily the correct one; the distinction is an ongoing moral project, and, in order for it to proceed successfully, we must look into the grimacing face of unadulterated evil as well as into the smiling face of good. But in our thin-skinned, post-modern, politically correct, "contemporary-art"  epoch, the mere mention of the fact, for instance, that Kali has "ghastly, ghoulish, and gruesome features" and was suitably the revered goddess of the legendary Indian thugs who poured the blood of their victims into a hole before throwing them in as an offering to the goddess, is deemed to be a fabrication, the product of "Western ignorance"; in other words, a racist and bigoted insult - to a race which is actually mixed and to a religion which is really an umbrella for many religions.

Nevertheless, the shining pot is as black inside as the kettle that would blacken it with dirty words. Since ordinary history is replete with legend and myth and philosophical fictions, it is constantly being revised today in order to be used as a political tool to advance one ethnic or "racist" agenda or another with politically correct language - it is all right to abuse one another providing we are nice about it. Our old heroes become today's villains; that is, if those who despise us would have their way. We see the focus on the supposedly unique evil of some enemy while the critic's own evil features are ignored.

The fact that some of the ancestors of our human race were headhunters, sacrificed humans, worshiped a goddess who loved to drink human blood; or more recently, the fact that the founding fathers, for instance, of the glorious United States of America,  were often vicious hence placed little trust in goodness of the human race; and so on, should not disturb the pessimist, nor should it bother the optimist who believes in the moral evolution of humankind.

Now Kali the great black ace remains an ambivalent goddess today despite the efforts to "whitewash" her with post-modern hogwash. We might not feel any qualms over the graphic representation of her "dark" side, and may even find some beauty in it: she is, in fact, as black as a moonless night some times. And black is beautiful for many reasons: note that the Greek goddess of night protects not only murderers but lovers as well. One of Kali's greatest devotees, Sri Ramakrishna, praised Kali's blackness:

"(Kali is she who is), black as midnight and who has eyes of fire.... Is Kali, my Mother, really black? The Naked One, of the blackest hue, lights the Lotus of the Heart..." The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1969

The Hebrews, Egyptians, and Bharatas, did not find the juxtaposition of good and evil in a divine arbitrator absurd in the early stages, for, wherever love and good is found, hate and evil is present as well. For instance, it was once said of the pharoah in Egypt, son of the supreme god:

"Exulting is he, a smasher of foreheads, so that none can stand near him... He fights without end, he spares not, and there is nothing left over from his destruction. He is a master of graciousness, rich in sweetness, and he conquers by love. His city loves him more than its own self and takes more joy in him than in its local gods." Franfort, Henri, Before Philosophy, New York: Penquin, 1946.

Now the description of Kali in the hymn supposedly written by her husband Siva is not so terrifying on its remote literary surface despite the indication of decapitation. Yet we do not have to know Sanskrit or be versed in native folklore to suspect that something frightful has actually occured. The Hindus are not iconoclasts; there is no whitewash over Kali; her symbols of kindness and cruelty are obviously displayed. A more exhaustive literal description will yield more fruit for our edification: Kali traditionally wears a belt of severed arms; dead-infant earrings dangle from her ears; blood trickles out of her gaping mouth, from which protrudes a red tongue rolling between sharp white teeth; her hair is disheveled; around her neck she wears a necklace of severed heads; she is dancing erotically on her dead husband's corpse. The lore includes several blood-curdling myths of Kali's adventures.

Sophistivated objections are often raised over the literal descriptions of the goddess and her activities, depictions and accounts allegedly only enjoyed by "vulgar" people. It is the function of intellectuals to exalt mind over sensation in order to civilize people and accomplish a "sublimation" of the "lower" nature. The high priests - the creative thinkers - interpolate their higher religion into the vulgar mythology. High-class, civilized people can still enjoy horrible things, but they are terrified at a safe distance, a distance from whence evil can be Sublime, awesome and quite beautiful if explained rightly.

For example: the severed heads on Kali's necklace are really the distinct letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. Her sword, the Khadga, a peculiar curved sword used to sacrifically behead animals, is, ideally ("really" if you are an idealist) the sword of Jnana that severs the bonds of ignorance. Et cetera, ad infinitum. 

Westerners accustomed to a male supreme god may not realize that the female principle is ostensibly or purportedly exalted by the Hindu faith. Of course that would be no surprise to the Romantics who looked East for inspiration. Kali, a name for Sakti, is Energy; her husband Siva is Form. Since it takes two to tango on Earth, some thinkers say Siva and Sakti are equal; if there were no Siva or Form, Sakti or Energy would not have her Cosmic Dance on her "dead husband." Yet Siva, Kali's pedestal, controls; and women should beware of being put on a pedestal lest they suffer the cruelties suffered by Indian women over the centuries.

Thinkers who would transcend dualism imagine a sort of Nothing clothed by Space from which and into which all proceeds and returns. This non-entity is Nothing, hence cannot be male nor female, yet is conceived of as female - the abstract Kali or Black One - since both sexes come from woman. Woman can have no issue unless she is prior, so woman can be considered as that first cause some call the one and only "god" (a popular "pagan" term). A few devout Hindus have taken the sublimation of the sublime Kali to the ultimate transcendental "level"; or so they say. Kali is admired then as the supreme deity. Brahma himself proclaimed:

"Thou art the Supreme Goddess of the people. Thou doth favor all of them. The world begins in thee but thou art without beginning. Thou art the cause of the universe but thyself art causeless. Thou alone doth cause the end of the entire world while thou hast no end... I offer my obeisance to Thee, who is the cause of emergence and disappearance of the world, who is the embodiment of creation and existence of the world, the strength of the movables and immovables, who is the eternal, and enchantress of all." Kali Purana, translated by B.N. Shastri

Perhaps Brahma was being Romantic. Theosophists may intrude to reassert the manhood if not the neutrality of the gods and the godhead. Nonetheless, there are some for whom Kali is the name of the supreme deity if not the deity herself. We might have no objection to that given the violent history of the male deity, nor to the more frightening aspects of Kali which the invading Aryans believed were "ghastly, ghoulish and gruesome" - they had better believe it for their own good.

Kali would not be herself without her dark side. Yet the prudent moralist, no matter how tolerant, might still insist that the distinction between good and evil be made and struggled for unto death. He is repulsed by the antinomian practice of some of Kali's most devout devotees, who would transcend the good and evil by engaging in unsavory practices designed to annihilate cultural mores deemed good. Kali then becomes the forbidden truth: if the awful truth of death is actually faced in the corruption of decaying flesh, or if the devotee, say, eats feces, Kali's devotee is supposedly rendered triumphant over his horror and merges with the godhead. Such forbidden conduct was been taken to extremes by the necrophilic cult - the kapalikas who inhabited cemetaries, fornicated with corpses and used skulls for begging bowls. This thought leads us to close with a quote from one of Kali's foremost devotees, Swami Vivekananda:

"Worship the Terrible! Worship Death! All else is in vain. All struggle is vain...this is not the coward's love...it is the welcome of the strong man who knows there is no alternative...May the Mother dance in your hearts and bring infinite strength to your arms. Victory to Kali! Victory to Kali! Mother is coming, what to fear? Whom to fear? Victory to Kali!" The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Calcutta: Advaita Ashram, 1955

 
  
 
 Contemporary (non-traditional) image of Kali

For More Popular Hindu Religious Pictures
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~pm9k/pop/ghar.html