Symbolism, Mythology, and Meaning

Kali – my name sake

A Most Misunderstood Goddess.

Kali cannot be easily fitted into a typical western narrative of good verses evil, and in fact transcends both.

Kali’s origins begin, as do the origins of most divine figures, with tribal folklore. The name Kālī first appears in the Atharva Veda, a collection of hymns and mantras published between 1200 BCE and 1000 BCE. However she is not a goddess but rather a fierce black tongue, one of seven belonging to Agni, the god of fire.

It is another 400 years before Kali is described as an individual in her own right, when she appears around 600 CE in the Devimahatmya as a battlefield goddess personifying the wrath of Durga. Her aspect at this time, is a skeletal and frightening crone, coloured black (a literal interpretation of her name), wearing animal skins and carrying a khatvanga, the skull-topped staff associated with tribal shamans.

Kali is often associated with Shiva, she is regarded as the shakti (power) of Shiva.

In her earliest appearances, Kali was frequently associated with violent endeavours on the battlefields of the gods. In this story she is brought in to play when decisive action is required, when dark deeds must be matched with dark deeds, when resolve must be shown – attributes not always associated in the west with the archetypal woman.

Kali demonstrates her refusal to be controlled by those who think they understand her and her triumph over the attributes of ignorance and evil, as well as the absolute impartiality of her nature.

One of the meanings of Kali’s name is “force of time.” In this aspect she is considered to stand outside of the constraints of space-time and have no permanent qualities; she existed before the universe was created and will continue to exist after the universe ends. Limitations of the physical world such as colour, light, good and bad do not apply to Kali.

She is a symbol of Mother Nature herself – primordial, creative, nurturing and devouring in turn, but ultimately loving and benevolent. In this aspect of goodness she is referred to as Kali Ma, Mother Kali, or Divine Mother, and many millions of Hindus revere and worship her in this form. In Tantric meditation, Kali’s dual nature leads practitioners to simultaneously face the beauty of life and the reality of death, with the understanding that one cannot exist without the other.

Because of her characteristics and habit of acting unpredictably, at least to those who tried to control her, devotion came late in the game to Kali – even devout Hindus were wary of her wrath.

Today, her image reflects her duality. Kali is depicted in the act of killing but smiles engagingly. Her necklace of severed heads and girdle of severed arms signifies her killing rage but are also tantric metaphors for creative power and severance from the bonds of karma and accumulated deeds.

Many western feminist scholars have adopted Kali as a symbol of female empowerment and a former matriarchal golden age that came before our present state of patriarchal control and decline. New Age Tantric practitioners adapt her obvious sexual manifestations, while Hollywood employs her as a convenient symbol of malevolence.

But Kali, the true Kali, will continue to defy all attempts to tame and domesticate her, as she has since the beginning of time.

Lessons from

The Great Banyan Tree.

The Great Banyan tree is believed to be at least 250 years old. Early travel writers found it to be noteworthy due to its large size and unusually high number of prop-trunks. It has survived three great cyclones.

The Great Banyan is said to appear more like the illusion of a forest, a tight mass of thousands of trees. But look closer and you will see that everything is connected. There is just one tree.

The banyan’s Sanskrit names —nyagrodha, ‘the down-grower’ and bahupada, ‘the one with many feet’— hint at its secrets.

The banyan became a potent symbol of fertility, life and resurrection. It features in Hindu stories of the universe’s periodic death and rebirth, when everything that exists dissolves into a ceaseless sea.

One story says an ‘undying’ banyan is the only thing to survive the deluge. Another says that to ride the sea’s currents, the god Vishnu assumes the form of a baby, lying on his back on a raft formed of a banyan leaf. With one breath, the baby swallows all that surrounds it, taking the turbulent universe into the safety of his stomach before exhaling it into fresh existence.

After the British arrived in India, these symbols of life became agents of death; the British began to use banyans as gallows to execute rebels who resisted their rule. By the 1850s, there had been multiple occasions when they hanged over a hundred men to death from a single banyan.

India restored dignity to these trees when it gained independence and made the banyan its national tree.

The name only arose more than a thousand years later when Portuguese visitors to India modified the Gujarati word vaniyan, meaning merchant. They named the tree banyan after the traders who set up their stalls in its shade.

A banyan is a natural meeting place, a vast umbrella of dark green leathery leaves that blocks out the sun or showers of rain. These trees form the centrepiece of many villages. Entire cities have even grown up around these trees. The city of Vadodara in Gujarat, western India is one example. It is thought to derive its name from the Sanskrit word vatodar, meaning ‘in the heart of the banyan tree.’

Banyans are a powerful symbol of shelter, resilience and adaptability in the face of challenge and change. Its roots ground us, its branches reach upward to the sky, its shade offers us a place to pause and reflect as we grow, they truly are trees of life.