Goddess Kali & The Fierce Feminine

The Hindu Goddess Kali is a powerful form of the fierce feminine. She cuts through illusion, ego, and fear with her weapons of truth and wisdom. Some say we are living in the age of Kali, a time of great change. We are being called to let go of our old ways of being so that we can be transformed. Kali is known as the destroyer, but she is also an aspect of the Great Mother, the womb from which all form is born. She is wild, naked, and fearless, severing our attachments so that we can be truly free.

Transcript

Welcome to Spiritual Psychology.

My name is Renée LaValley McKenna and I bring my 30-plus years as a recovering addict and ex-crazy person turned therapist and shamanic healer to bring you snackable teachings on spirituality,

Psychology,

And all things personal growth.

And today I want to talk about the Hindu goddess Kali,

Also called Kali Ma.

And Kali is an aspect of the fierce feminine.

Kali's name translates as dark and time.

And she's honored in India as an aspect of the divine mother from which we all are born and to whom we must all return.

And her skin is usually black or dark blue.

And that represents her roots in the indigenous dark skinned people of India,

The Dravidians.

But it also points to her connection as the earth and the womb of cosmic birth.

There are literally thousands of gods and goddesses in Hindu cosmology.

And although Hinduism is understood as a polytheistic or many god religion,

Hinduism understands that all form,

Including these forms of divinity and gods and goddesses come from the one universal spirit or consciousness which underlies all things known as Brahman.

And Brahman is unknowable.

And from my perspective,

The pantheon of gods and goddesses available through Hinduism actually points to the infinite faces and forms of the divine.

According to Hindu cosmology,

We are now living in the age of Kali and Kali energy is what moves us in times of tremendous change,

Pushing us to grow and face the essential impermanence of life and learn to let go.

Kali energy is also moving and rising in the world today as we face the consequences of suppressing the sacred feminine.

So Kali is absolutely an agent for powerful change,

Both internally and externally.

And Kali,

Not unlike Jesus,

Calls us to die to our old selves so that we can be reborn,

That we are constantly being called to let our old ways of being fall away,

Both individually and collectively.

And with the energy of the fierce feminine,

When we surrender,

We will find ourselves in the world transformed on the other side.

So Kali is an agent of transformation,

Evolution,

And growing into our true potential.

I encourage you to find an image of Kali on your phone or computer.

She's a visual masterpiece.

Kali in her gorgeous dark skin is almost always naked,

Symbolizing her gift of truth.

She has long,

Wild hair full of power and vitality.

And she's usually standing or dancing either on a man,

A decapitated demon,

Or a couple having sex.

When she's standing on a demon,

She's the energy that cuts through human evil and deception with Trigug,

Her knife that cuts through illusion.

When she's standing on a man who's also usually dead,

She's reminding us of the impermanence of life and the human ego.

And when she's shown with the copulating couple,

She's dancing on them,

And they represent the unity of masculine and feminine,

Whose desire brings all creation into being.

Kali is usually wearing a necklace of human skulls or human heads strung together with the umbilical cord of the soul.

And the heads or skulls represent the accumulated wisdom of human existence.

And she wears it as a garland.

She's often accompanied by snakes,

Symbolizing the transformative power of Shakti,

The female life force.

She usually has many arms and can carry lots of different things.

She might carry the sword of wisdom,

Scissors which cut through attachment,

And she's usually holding a severed head representing the release of the rational mind and ego,

And another hand holding the lotus flower of fulfillment.

She usually has her tongue sticking out,

And although she is usually shown as a young woman,

She's not trying to be pretty.

Kali's form is intended to be shocking because she wants to call us to face our fears and snap us out of our illusions of separation and ego.

And she's a feminine aspect of the creator,

The preserver,

And the destroyer.

There's a beautiful verse about Kali.

Kali Ma,

By you this universe is born,

By you this world is created,

By you it is protected,

O Devi,

By you it is consumed at the end.

You who are the eternal form of the whole world,

At the time of creation,

You are the creative force.

At the time of preservation,

You are the protective power.

And at the time of the dissolution of the world,

You are the form of the power of destruction.

I work with Kali energy a lot,

And I've always been drawn to the dark feminine aspects of spirituality.

And there's a lot of reasons for that.

Just personally,

I orient toward wild,

Adventurous,

And irreverent.

I was a tomboy as a younger girl,

Definitely a fuck the rules person as a teenager.

And over and over again,

I have had my life burned to the ground and completely transform itself on the other side.

And although that experience can be disorienting or even terrifying at times,

It has been an amazing and positive adventure.

My first big destruction and rebirth was when I got clean and sober in my 20s.

My second near-death experience was divorce and bankruptcy in my early 30s.

The third was probably on retreat with the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh.

I came home and literally sold everything I owned,

Except for a few boxes of books in my clothes and an old desk,

Which I later sold.

I took a long period of celibacy after yet another failed relationship and really surrendered my life to universal will.

Because by the age of 35,

All of my good ideas had not worked out.

And I ended up coming to California,

Going to graduate school,

Training in shamanism and hypnotherapy,

And becoming a wife and mother.

And in 2018,

We dissolved that marriage.

I wrote my book,

Allies and Demons Working with Spirit for Power and Healing,

And began a whole new incarnation as a content creator,

Moving my work out into the larger sphere.

And Kali sits on my altar every morning,

And I ask her to show me what I need to let go of and what I need to take in as her faithful servant.

And if you don't want change in your life,

Don't call on Kali.

Working with Kali energy has made me unafraid of death,

Of loss,

For the most part.

I'm not enlightened,

Don't get me wrong.

I have my series of attachments for sure.

I was at a yoga ashram not too far from my house,

And they had a workshop on chanting.

And the leader had this really cool Indian instrument and a whole book of songs and chants.

And at the end,

We could pick which one we wanted to do.

And I said,

I'd like to do a chant to Kali.

And she said,

Oh,

No,

We don't chant Kali here.

And immediately picked someone else,

And I couldn't even ask why.

But as I began to go deeper in my exploration and understanding of this energy,

Apparently they didn't want to invite change into their space.

And lots of us fear change.

But change is the nature of reality.

On every level,

Things are in motion.

Atoms are whirling electrons,

Protons,

And neutrons.

Our cells are metabolizing blood flows through our veins.

And we're continually breathing in and out.

The Earth is spinning.

The moon spins around the spinning Earth.

And we spin around the sun.

And our whole solar system is spinning within the Milky Way galaxy,

Which is moving itself through the larger cosmos,

Infathomable as the infinite complexity of all that is.

And Kali can help us navigate it,

The change in our life with wisdom,

With power,

With courage and humility.

Kali also often wears a skirt made of the severed arms,

Representing action without attachment to outcome,

Which is a state of true freedom and power.

I continue to aspire to grow the gonads to be able to tell the truth in all areas of my life.

And wherever I'm not telling the truth or taking positive constructive action,

I'm living in fear.

I'm trying to control the uncontrollable.

And Kali reminds us that control is an illusion.

There are lots of different stories about how Kali came into being.

And my favorite one is there's a terrible demon ravaging the Earth.

And they call the goddess Durga,

Who has 10 arms,

Each carrying a weapon,

Riding a tiger into battle.

And each time she tries to slay a demon,

Its drops of blood turn into more demons and Durga becomes overwhelmed and flies into a rage and Kali bursts from Durga's forehead,

Goes completely nuts and eats all the demons she comes across.

And in that version,

Her necklace of skulls is the heads of all the demons.

She wears the lesser energies or lower resonances of fear,

Evil and destruction like a necklace.

She is so much more powerful than they.

And I'll end with my favorite Kali prayer.

Kali Ma,

Mother Kali,

Give me your courage that I may face my fears.

Let me name them.

Let me offer them to you.

Kali Ma,

I offer you my pettiness.

I offer you my sorrow.

Great Mother,

Consume them,

Cut through them,

Burn them up.

Release me from the illusions of separation and ego.

Free me from the bonds of attachment.

Give me the power to transform my anger and frustration into clear and powerful action that I may create healing change in myself and the world.

Thank you so much for listening.

Blessings on your path until we meet again.

This is Renee LaValley McKenna for Spiritual Psychology.

Reviews

Oh my gosh, I am so glad to have found you. Thank you for your work, for what you are putting out into this world. 🙏🕉

Omg so amazing powerful and informative I love Kali and it so much!!! Many thanks Aho NAMASTE SATNAM!!! LOVE YOU TOO! Keep up the amazing work!!!!!!

Thank you for this beautiful meditation and prayer to our beloved Mother Kali! Namaste

Excellent talk! 🙏 Thank you for paving the way into Kali’s intense energies with your personal anecdotes and stories.

Wow incredible. I need more of this in my life. Thank you