Kali is a major goddess in Shaktism, a branch of Hinduism . Unlike many other goddesses, Kali is worshiped primarily as a fierce, terrifying being.
Images of Kali usually emphasize her terrifying qualities. She appears with black or blue skin, and her name means the black one or the dark one. She has a gaping mouth that reveals fangs and a tongue dripping with blood. Her eyes are red with rage, her long hair is disordered, and she wears a garland of human skulls. Kali often is shown naked or wearing a skirt of severed human arms. She also wears children’s corpses as earrings and serpents as bangles. Kali often is shown holding a cut-off head and a sword, while also offering gestures of blessing and clutching holy objects. Kali’s powers rival, and in some accounts exceed, those of the male gods. Sometimes she is portrayed as Mahakali (Great Kali), with 10 arms, 10 heads, and 10 legs.
According to some stories, Kali inhabits places where people are cremated . She also appears on battlefields, drunk on soldiers’ blood and dancing wildly. Kali sometimes is portrayed as the wife of the god Shiva , but she is often considered independent from him. In one popular image, she appears dancing on Shiva’s corpse, a way of suggesting her superiority. Some of the Puranas describe Kali as the supreme reality and the highest manifestation of Brahman , the divine force that sustains the universe. The Puranas are long stories in verse that tell about Hindu gods, goddesses and heroes.
Images and stories about Kali suggest that life is by nature painful and feeds on death. Historically, people have made human sacrifices to Kali. In India , from as early as the 600’s until the 1830’s, a group called the Thugs committed crimes in Kali’s name. They murdered innocent victims by strangulation. The Thugs often were respectable men who worked at regular jobs by day and served the goddess by night. Human sacrifices to Kali have disappeared almost completely today. However, people regularly offer her animal sacrifices at the Kalighat temple in Kolkata. The Puranas say that sacrificing goats or buffaloes pleases Kali for a while, but a human sacrifice pleases her for 1,000 years.
Kali’s worshipers regard her not only as a terrifying symbol of raw power, but also as a devoted and loving mother. They often address her as Ma or Amma, endearing terms for mother. To be Kali’s child is not only to suffer, but also to know the source of suffering. The tradition of Shaktism holds that Kali does not always give what one wants or expects. That which devotees (devoted people) experience as cruelty causes them to reflect upon their own true nature and the nature of the world and to rise above them. The suffering that one endures, according to Shaktism, is punishment from an ultimately loving mother to whom one must cling in all circumstances.
