Kali, the Black Goddess of Yore
Kali is not what one imagines a typical Hindu woman to be. She is neither gentle, bashful, nor subservient toward her husband. She moves around in the nude; her hair is disheveled; and she gets intoxicated from drinking the blood of demons..
Kali is a Goddess who fights alone. And if she wants help, she accepts it from other females but does not seek it from men. Whenever the male Gods are unable to subdue the demons in battle, they ask the Great Mother Goddess for help, and not until after she has scored a victory can they go back in peace and perform their normal godly duties..
The fact that Ma Kali is black makes one wonder whether this Goddess originated with an ancient African super culture. Most scholars don't believe she is ancient. They call her a relatively "young" Goddess who did not reach full popularity in India until the 18th or 19th century. Their opinion is based on the Vedas which are perhaps the most ancient scriptures in the world. They hardly mention Kali. The earliest references to Kali are found in the Mundaka Upanishad, in the Puranas, dating back to the early medieval period--around A.D. 600..
But, one asks, what about the time before the Vedas were conceived? Could it be that God in ancient times was a She? According to Judeo-Christian tradition, this idea is "unthinkable," but if one seriously studies history with an open mind, one cannot exclude the possibility of a Great Mother Goddess that reigned long before the Father God appeared. Primitive man, observing women giving birth, perceived her as magic and prayed to her to make his tribe strong and give him more sons and daughters..
Dating back to Neolithic times, the most ancient images found were always female and depicted fertility. Many are black and mysteriously related. One can't help but ask, "Was the Black Goddess Kali at one time worshiped by peoples all over the world?" Modern research by Westerners certainly points in this direction..
We find Kali in Mexico as an ancient Aztec Goddess of enormous stature. Her name is Coatlicue, and her resemblance to the Hindu Kali is striking..
The colossal Aztec statue of Coatlicue fuses in one image the dual functions of the earth
which both creates and destroys. In different aspects she represents Coatlicue, "Lady Of the Skirt of Serpents" or Goddess of the Serpent Petticoat"; Cihuacoatl, "the Serpent Woman"; Tlazolteotl, "Goddess of Filth"; and Tonantzin, "Our Mother," who was later sanctified by the Catholic Church as the Virgin of Guadalupe, the dark-faced Madonna, La Virgen Morena, la Virgen Guadalupana, the patroness and protectoress of New Spain; and who is still the patroness of all Indian Mexico. In the statue her head is severed from her body, and from the neck flow two streams of blood in the shape of two serpents. She wears a skirt of serpents girdled by another serpent as a belt. On her breast hangs a neck-lace of human hearts and hands bearing a human skull as a pendant. Her hands and feet are shaped like claws. From the bicephalous mass which takes the place of the head and which represents Omeyocan, the topmost heaven, to the world of the Dead extending below the feet, the statue embraces both life and death. Squat and massive, the monumental twelve-ton sculpture embodies pyramidal, cruciform, and human forms..
As the art critic Justino Fernandez writes in his often-quoted description, it represents not a being but an idea, "the embodiment of the cosmic-dynamic power which bestows life and which thrives on death in the struggle of opposites." (1)
We find Kali in ancient Crete as Rhea, the Aegean Universal Mother or Great Goddess, who was worshiped in a vast area by many peoples..
Rhea was not restricted to the Aegean area. Among ancient tribes of southern Russia she was Rha, the Red One, another version of Kali as Mother Time clothed in her garment of blood when she devoured all the gods, her offspring. The same Mother Time became the Celtic Goddess Rhiannon, who also devoured her own children one by one. This image of the cannibal mother was typical everywhere of the Goddess of Time, who consumes what she brings forth; or as Earth, who does the same. When Rhea was given a consort in Hellenic myth, he was called Kronus or Chronos, "Father Time," who devoured his own children in imitation of Rhea's earlier activity. He also castrated and killed his own father, the Heaven-God Uranus; and he in turn was threatened by his own son, Zeus. These myths reflect the primitive succession of sacred kings castrated and killed by their supplanters. It was originally Rhea Kronia, Mother Time, who wielded the castrating moon-sickle or scythe, a Scythian weapon, the instrument with which the Heavenly Father was "reaped." Rhea herself was the Grim Reaper.... (2)
We find Kali in historic Europe. In Ireland, Kali appeared as Caillech or Cailleach, an old Celtic name for the Great Goddess in her Destroyer aspect..
Like Kali, the Caillech was a black Mother who founded many races of people and outlived many husbands. She was also a creatress. She made the world, building mountain ranges of stones that dropped from her apron..
Scotland was once called Caledonia: the land give by Kali, or Cale, or the Cailleach... "Scotland" came from Scotia, the same goddess, known to Romans as a "dark Aphrodite"; to Celts as Scatha or Scyth; and to Scandinavians as Skadi..
Like the Hindus' destroying Kalika, the Caillech was known as a spirit of disease. One
manifestation of her was a famous idol of carved and painted wood, kept by an old family in Country Cork, and described as the Goddess of Smallpox. As diseased persons in India sacrificed to the appropriate incarnation of the Kalika, so in Ireland those afflicted by smallpox sacrificed sheep to this image. It can hardly be doubted that Kalika and Caillech were the same word..
According to various interpretations, "caillech" meant either an old woman, or a hag, or a nun, or a "veiled one." This last apparently referred to the Goddess's most mysterious manifestation as the future, Fate, and Death--ever veiled from the sight of men, since no man could know the manner of his own death..
In medieval legend the Caillech became the Black Queen who ruled a western paradise in the Indies, where men were used in Amazonian fashion for breeding purposes only, then slain. Spaniards called her Califia, whose territory was rich in gold, silver, and gems. Spanish explorers later gave her name to the newly discovered paradise on the Pacific shore of North America, which is how the state of California came to be named after Kali..
In the present century, Irish and Scottish descendants of the Celtic "creatress" still use the word "caillech" as a synonym for "old woman." (3)
The Black Goddess was known in Finland as Kalma (Kali Ma), a haunter of tombs and an eater of the dead. (4)
The Black Goddess worshipped by the gypsies was named Sara-Kali, "Queen Kali," and to this present day, Sara is worshipped in the South of France at Ste-Marie-de-la-Mer during a yearly festival..
Some gypsies appeared in 10th-century Persia as tribes of itinerant dervishes calling themselves Kalenderees, "People of the Goddess Kali." A common gypsy clan name is still Kaldera or Calderash, descended from past Kali-worshippers, like the Kele-De of Ireland..
European gypsies relocated their Goddess in the ancient "Druid Grotto" underneath Chartres Cathedral, once the interior of a sacred mount known as the Womb of Gaul, when the area was occupied by the Carnutes, "Children of the Goddess Car." Carnac, Kermario, Kerlescan, Kercado, Carmona in Spain, and Chartres itself were named after this Goddess, probably a Celtic version of Kore or Q're traceable through eastern nations to Kauri, another name for Kali..
The Druid Grotto used to be occupied by the image of a black Goddess giving birth, similar to certain images of Kali. Christians adopted this ancient idol and called her Virgo Paritura, "Virgin Giving Birth." Gypsies called her Sara-Kali, "the mother, the woman, the sister, the queen, the Phuri Dai, the source of all Romany blood."
They said the black Virgin wore the dress of a gypsy dancer, and every gypsy should make a pilgrimage to her grotto at least once in his life. The grotto was described as "your mother's womb." A gypsy pilgrim was told: "Shut your eyes in front of Sara the Kali, and you will know the source of the spring of life which flows over the gypsy race. (5)
We find variations of Kali's name throughout the ancient world..
The Greeks had a word Kalli, meaning "beautiful," but applied to things that were not particularly beautiful such as the demonic centaurs called "kallikantzari," relatives of Kali's Asvins. Their city of Kallipolis, the modern Gallipoli, was centered in Amazon country formerly ruled by Artemis Kalliste. The annual birth festival at Eleusis was Kalligeneia, translatable as "coming forth from the Beautiful One," or "coming forth from Kali."
Lunar priests of Sinai, formerly priestesses of the Moon-Goddess, called themselves "kalu." Similar priestesses of prehistoric Ireland were "kelles," origin of the name
Kelly, which meant a hierophantic clan devoted to "the Goddess Kele." This was cognate with the Saxon Kale, or Cale, whose lunar calendar or kalends included the spring month of Sproutkale, when Mother Earth (Kale) put forth new shoots..
In antiquity the Phoenicians referred to the strait of Gibraltar as Calpe, because it was considered the passage to the western paradise of the Mother. (6)
The Black Goddess was even carried into Christianity as a mother figure, and one can find all over the world images of Mother Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, depicted as a black madonna..
(1) Frank Waters, Mexico Mystique: The Coming Sixth World of Consciousness, pp. 185-186..
(2) Barbara G. Walker, The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, pp. 856, 857..
(3) See Sir J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, p. 467..
(4) The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, p. 492..
(5) The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, pp. 890-891..
(6) The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, pp. 491-492..
