NAVARAATHRI SPECIAL SERIES #8: Kaali – The Goddess of Revolution Part II

If Kaali symbolizes feminine audacity and youthful intensity, she also symbolizes more shadowy and problematic forms of power, especially the angry and aggressive energies that are hard for many women to own and many men to handle. Even in India, to call a woman ‘a regular Kaali’ is not a compliment – instead, it’s a shorthand for foul-tempered or rageful.
Women, as we know, have suppressed their power for thousands of years, becoming masters of passive aggression and vicarious backstage manipulation. So the process of finding and harnessing that 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, whether we know it or not, hold in our cells. The boldness and audacity that is as much a part of the divine feminine as her softness can be channelled into powerful and effective protest.
The dark goddess lives in us all. Often suppressed and denied, she will eventually leak out in hostility and sarcasm, with sly cutting digs, nagging gossip and putdowns. For many women, especially third-wave feminists in their twenties and thirties, owing to their Kaali side is a metaphor for learning to love their own rage and sexuality. Kaali storms through us as the repressed power that women hide as they try to live up to the image of the loving, nurturing feminine archetype that every society idealizes.
A demon has appeared who can only be killed by a woman. So, at Shiva’s request, Paarvathi enters his body and transforms herself by drinking the poison that Shiva holds in his throat. In this way, she takes in all the negativity of the collective consciousness, which she turns into wrath. She emerges as the naked, bloodthirsty Kaali.
Kaali quickly dispatches the demon, but afterward she’s so intoxicated by battle lust that she refuses to return to her beautiful form as a devoted wife. Instead, she threatens to bring down the worlds. Revolution, once started, can tend to get out of control. The local sages petition Shiva for help, but even he is unable to get Kaali’s attention. Finally, Shiva begins his own dance, which is so intense that it causes so much destruction that it arouses Kaali’s compunction, and she comes to her senses and returns to her ‘normal’ form.
The story expresses both male terror of the uncontrollable side of feminine power and the masculine instinct to show his strength in order to control the feminine. In this instance, Shiva tames Kaali by acting so wild that she has to calm down in order to soothe him. In another version, Shiva transforms himself into a baby, which arouses Kaali’s motherly instincts.
This story also expresses our collective terror at the rage of the feminine. After several thousand years of patriarchy, we’re used to masculine anger and rage, even when we fear it. Like all shadow behaviours, the expressions of negative Kaali energy are distortions of the positive qualities of Kaali. They twist and mask a quality that is essential and sublimely transpersonal: the force of liberation through radical change. Kaali can manifest sublimely through the intense activism of the women who fight to expose human sexual trafficking, rape, the exploitation of women, etc.
If you pay attention, Kaali can teach you how to channel power so that you recognize, integrate and deeply honor the forces of change, including the change that comes about through your encounter with the dark events of the world.
~ Dynamite Draupadi ~ #OnlyAtKK