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Kali Conway, D.J. The Ancient & Shining Ones. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1993. 280-281 ~~~~~ Kali/Kali Ma--"The black mother"; Dark Goddess; The Terrible; Goddess of Death; Great Goddess; the Crone; Mother of Karma. Dual personality exhibiting traits of both gentleness and love, revenge and terrible death; wife of Shiva. Female Principle; patroness of witches. As Kalika, or Crone, she governs every form of death but also rules every form of life. She is always a trinity manifested in three forms: three divisions of the year, three phases of the Moon, three sections of the cosmos, three stages of life, three types of priestesses at her shrines. As the female Holy Trinity she is called Prakriti (Nature); she commands the gunas, or threads of Creation, Preservation, and Destruction, and embodies the past, present, and future. She is said to command the weather by braiding or releasing her hair. Her karmic wheel devours time itself. She is pictured with black skin and a hideous face smeared with blood, four arms, and bare breasts. (Walker, Barbara. The Crone: Woman of Age, Wisdom and Power. The typical pose of Kali shows her squatting on top of her dead consort Shiva, pulling his

intestines into her mouth while her vulva devours him sexually. Sometimes she has two hands, other times four. She wears a necklace of skulls and is draped with snakes. Her brow has a third eye. Her four hands holds weapons and heads. Violence against any woman is forbidden by her. The Hindus revered the trefoil as an emblem of her three-fold divinity. Her worship includes garlands of marigolds, strings of tinkling bells, incense smoke, and gifts of sweetmeats and spices on fresh green leaves. Kali requires the blood sacrifice of a goat or sheep each day. Regeneration, revenge, fear, dark magick, sexual activities. (Neumann, Erich.The Great Mother. Kali Ma is considered the archetypal Crone, or the hungry Earth that devours and births her children or creatures).

~~~~~ Kali allegedly invented the Sanskrit system. She is also known for dancing on the skulls of her foes.

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Kali Thomas, P.. Epics, Myths and Legends of India. Bombay, India: D. B. Taraporevala Sons & Co.Private Ltd., 1961. 5, 57-57 ~~~~~ Kali, who destroyed Kal (Time itself), is widely worshipped in India as the goddess of terror and the lower classes are particularly devoted to her. Most of the devil dances, dark rites and obscene ceremonies practiced in India by the lower orders can be traced to her. She is the Goddess of Epidemics and cataclysms. She is evidently of non-Aryan origin, a relic of aboriginal savagery incorporated in Hinduism as the personification of destruction. ~~~~~ Kali is propitiated by sacrifices of animals and birds. At one time, it is believed , men were also offered to her as victims. The proper method of ritual killing the victim is thus described:- ~~~~~ "Let the sacrificer repeat the word Kali twice, then the words Devi, Rajeswari; then Lawah Dandayai, Namah! which words may be rendered---Hail, Kali! Kali! hail Devi! goddess of thunder; hail! iron-sceptered goddess!---let him take the axe in his hand and again invoke the same by the Kalaratriya text as follows; Let the sacrificer say Hrang!

Hring! Kali Kali! O horrid toothed goddess! eat, cut, destroy all the malignant---cut with this axe; bind, bind; seize, seize; drink blood; Spheng, Spheng; secure, Secure; salutation to Kali---thus ends the Kalatriya Mantra."

~~~~~ Bhavni, whom the Thugs used to invoke before starting on their depredatory expeditions, was a form of Kali. Kali is also worshipped in different forms by thieves and many criminal tribes in India.

~~~~~ Kali's insatiable thirst for blood was occasioned by circumstance of her having killed an Asura named Raktavira whose blood she drank. This Asura had received a boon from Brahma by the power of which every drop of his blood that fell on the ground became capable of creating innumerable Asuras like himself. Kali in her fight with him held him aloft, pierced him with a spear and drank every drop of blood that gushed from his wound and thus managed to kill him.

~~~~~ Kali is represented in art as a black, half-naked woman of terrible aspect, with claws, and tusks, wearing a garland of skulls, her tongue hanging out of her mouth dripping blood. The reason she is painted black is because of her supposed mastery over time. Shiva as the god of destruction is identical with the all-devouring Time and his distinguishing color is white. In contrast to him Kali represents the dark abysmal void which is above time, space and causation.

~~~~~ In Indian villages during certain festivals, crowds with phallic emblems can be seen parading the streets, singing obscene songs. Kali may not, at present, claim human victims but is content with the meat and blood of goats and fowl; her form, however, is not changed. In temples dedicated to her, she is still seen in her characteristic dancing pose, wearing a garland of human skulls, her mouth dripping blood, ready to devour the worlds if her lust for blood is not sated.