Exposition on and Invocation of Kali, Living Darkness, Womb at Beginning, End and Recreation of Time
OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU
The Living Darkness
Womb at the Beginning, End and Recreation of Time
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
“Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge”
Kali is a prime example of the Hindu genius for conceptual, imagistic and ritual consolidation and refinement, thereby developing one of the greatest expressive complexes ever created by humanity.
The Hindu intelligence consolidates because it discards nothing in the centuries of its growth. The crudest expressions in sacrifices of animals and humans are refined into the most sublime abstractions.
The most exalted cathedrals of ideas, the most poignant sonic expressions, the most exquisite visual forms, the most elegant rituals, amazing in their baroque multiplicity, may be seen as ultimately rooted in ideas both sublime and barbaric, such as the cosmic scope of the Rig-Veda and its justification of caste, which led to dehumanization of others, the horse sacrifice which identified the horse with the quarters of the cosmos and its eventual transmutation into the sacrifice of the self in relation to the cosmos through meditation as described in Surendranath Dasgupta's History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1, the integration, over centuries, of the bloodthirsty swallower of armies of the Devi Mahatmya, the ferocious Kali, the one who falls into sex lust in the midst of battle, in rivers of blood, in the iconic encounter with Siva’s effort to tame her boundless ferocity, with the Kali who absorbs the cosmos at the end of time to give birth to it again at the beginning of another cosmic cycle, the conflation of the fierce Siva, his neck encoiled by a serpent, animal skin clothed, trident wielder, naked erotic ascetic, with the Siva whose "mind is the fully opened lotus that is the cosmos" an image of delicate beauty in the classical celebration of Siva, the Shiva-Tandava Stotra, all these are examples of the sublime Hindu genius for syncretizing its various developments into one complex unity, varied but ultimately interrelated at various conceptual points.
This video shows an invocation of Kali, the swallower of the cosmos, the nullifier of time, the birth of being.
The devotee uses the sign of the cross as a symbol of universal meaning, here used to identify the Hindu deities in relation to the body, thereby indicating a unity of the microcosm that is the human being and the macrocosm that is the configuration created by the deities and their interrelationship.
The sign of the cross may also be used as a short, quick and effective method of marking sacred space on the body and within the mind, as the ritual act helps to focus the mind on the sacred act, beyond the spatial and temporal activity associated with the zone outside the ritual action.
Regular practice of the simple self-consecration represented by this sign is capable of making it able to instantly create a contemplative state in the mind, in any environment, once the sign is performed.
The OM mantra, Sanskrit for ‘sacred sound’, intoned by the devotee, is believed in classical Indian religions to encapsulate cosmic emergence and enfolding. It is useful in inducing a contemplative state, particularly when chanted in consonance with the rhythm of the breath.
The image behind the devotee is the Kali Yantra, the geometric form understood to be a manifestation of the Goddess. Meditation on this form, on the relationship between its beauty of line and of colour and its symbolic meaning is very helpful for understanding Kali.
It is also a vital site for Kali veneration because the yantra is the Goddess.
Kali texts-literature, images, sonic expressions, and ritual, are very rich but I will mention those I have read at least a part of, seen or listened to and therefore experienced their power.
An excellent work on yantra is Madhu Khanna’s Yantra : The Tantric Symbol of Cosmic Unity. A great online resource is Mike Magee’s encyclopedic site Shiva Shakti Mandalam, which has sections on Kali. The Internet is also very, very rich on Yantra and Kali, both images and descriptions, in writing and on video.
Striking works on Kali are the Wikipedia Kali essay, David Kinsley's great The Sword and the Flute : Kali and Krsna : Dark Visions of the Terrible and the Sublime in Hindu Mythology, a work that is central to his being named “the father of Kali studies”, and his other works on Hindu Goddesses, Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition and The Ten Mahavidyas : Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine on the Ten Mahavidyas, the Ten Great Wisdom Goddesses , of which Kali is one. He provides a survey of Goddesses across religions and makes summative comparative comments in The Goddess’s Mirror: Visions of the Divine from East and West.
A great writer on Kali is the tenth century Kashmiri master Abhinavagupta, as demonstrated in the summation by Ajit Mookerjee in “chapter 6: Supreme Reality” of his fine book Kali : the Feminine Force, rich with wonderful images and far reaching exposition. It would seem that in Abhinavagupta, the sublimation of Kali reaches its conceptual apotheosis, as the adept interprets Kali in terms of a complex and dazzling unfolding of concepts of consciousness and cosmos that may be understood as unifying the history of Indian philosophy and spirituality.
Mookerjee’s summation might come from Abhinavagupta’s epic scholarly, poetic and ritual text, the Tantraloka, Light on the Tantras, of which Gutam Chaterjee has valiantly translated some chapters into English, with careful notes in an ongoing translation project, each chapter being one volume book in a sequence of over 37 chapters, Raniero Gnoli has translated the entire text into Italian and Mark Dyczkowski’s English translation, promising something fantastic, in keeping with his genius, as the tireless sprint of a racehorse, fecund in the primary and secondary fields of the subject, in its theory and practice, immersed in living much of his life in the originating cultures of the tradition and supremely polished in Western scholarship, is eagerly awaited among enthusiasts, as he delivers a series of lectures in preparation for the release of his translation.
Shankaranarayanan’s The Ten Great Cosmic Powers is a fantastic philosophical and mystical discussion of the cycle of Goddesses opened by the figure of Kali, the Mahavidyas, Goddesses who may be described as embracing the totality of possibilities known to humanity.
On the veneration of Kali, Kinsley is useful and the blogging of Aghor Pir in Musings of a Tantric Sorcerer are illuminating. He has closed his blog but sections of his blog, including the posts on the Mahavidyas, are also available on other sites and I will be bringing out his the Mahavidya posts as a free ebook. He states that the custodians of the tradition have not permitted him to publish a book for sale.
A wonderfully poignant Kali song is this Kali Maa Mantra, the moving vocalization of the Sanskrit (?) lyrics in concert with the supporting musical ensemble carry the motive force to the listener even if one does not understand the language.
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