The Story of Kali

Kali is the foremost of the Dasa Mahavidya, the ten wisdom goddesses, the very embodiment of Kala, time itself, before whom all forms arise and into whom all dissolve. Dark as the eternal night, garlanded and unbound, she dances upon the still form of Shiva.

Her fearsome aspect is not cruelty but truth: she devours the ego and every illusion, leaving only the deathless reality. To her devotees she is Ma, the tender mother who frees her children by stripping away all that is false.

The Meaning

Kali teaches that liberation lies on the far side of fear, in the surrender of the ego to the boundless. She is time the destroyer and the mother who liberates, the power that dissolves illusion so the eternal may shine. The most fierce of forms is, for the devotee, the most compassionate.