Kali is the hindu goddess that represents true empowerment. Kali is known as the consort of Shiva and is known by several names, as well as being known as the ‘shakti’ energy. Shiva, symbolizing pure, absolute consciousness, and Kali, symbolizing the entire content of that consciousness, are ultimately one and the same.
Kali is depicted in many stories and pictorials as a vicious goddess, symbolizing time and death - as in ‘the time has come’. She is seen wearing fifty human skulls around her neck, each skull stands for a letter in the sanskrit alphabet.
My personal experience with Kali is unconventional in the sense that I had never heard of Kali, or any of the hindu gods or goddesses when a beautiful woman came to my dreams to tell me about true compassion, where it starts and how it is expressed, she told me her name was Kali. In the dream I remember feeling a security that I had never felt before, a sense of peace and knowing and comfort. The next morning I googled Kali and was aghast at the depictions of her, I read about her for about an hour and decided that wasn’t the Kali that I met.
A few weeks later she appeared in my dreams again, I had forgotten about her, believing she was just a dream. I was informed that she was indeed Kali, there are many forms of Kali, they are called the mahavidyas. She expressed to me that I had a journey to start, the journey of creating myself and she was here to support me. She continued to appear in my dreams for some time, through out that period of my life
I transformed not only my beliefs, thought patterns and ideas about who I was, but my outside reality also transformed with it. This could have been a very painful process, but through the guidance of Kali I was supported, comforted and always taken care of, just as if I was her child. In the time that I personally worked with Kali I never said a mantra, I never studied the hindu meanings of her, they terrified me! I just trusted that this goddess was appearing to me for the guidance I had been asking for and cultivated a relationship with all forms of the mahavidyas before it was complete. By understanding each of the energies of the mahavidyas one is able to understand all polarities of the energies that we have within us, one is able to learn to use these energies in the creation of their own reality.
Kali is not only the first of the mahavidyas, she is the most important.The rest of the Mahavidyas emanate from Kali and share her virtues and powers to varying degrees.
Mahavidyas are symbols of female independence; and, Kali demonstrates that freedom with great abandon. She is never depicted as a submissive consort luring with charm. She is always dominant, striding on the male with a destructive frenzy. She challenges and demolishes the conventional notions about looks, manners and the limited ways of understanding things. Kali is the symbol of eternal time (Kala) she presides over all stages of the life. Kali is consciousness in motion—the overflowing joy that projects, sustains, and withdraws the universe. And her destruction has a dual aspect; she gives birth to new life as the old dies away.
Tara the blue goddess is a guide and a protector; and helps us to find our strengths during times that think we cannot go on. Tara is the deity of accomplishments and is often worshipped by business persons for. She is the goddess of speech, she is related to breathe that manifests sound. Breath is the primal sound of life. Breath in which the sound originates is the carrier of knowledge conveyed through the sound of speech. Tara is the un-manifest speech that resides in breath and consciousness.
Tripura Sundari (she who is most beautiful in all the three worlds) also known as Sodasi (the girl of sixteen). Sundari as Sodasi of sixteen years is at a delightful stage of a woman’s life. Her nature is to play, to seek new experiences, and to charm others to her. Her innocence attracts all towards her The three cities (tri-pura) symbolize body, mind and consciousness. The triangle is the main motif of Tripura Sundari carrying various symbolisms: three fold process of creation, preservation and destruction. Tripura Sundari as Mahavidya combines in herself the determination of Kali, the knowledge of Tara; and her own beauty and grace.
Bhuvanesvari is closely associated with the five elements: space, air, fire, water and earth principles. She pervades all space – the inner and the outer- with that she confers awareness and all other knowledge of life. It is explained; the inner space is the space within Hridaya (heart) the centre of awareness or consciousness. The world is said to emerge from her just as a web emerges from the spider or as the sparks crackle out of fire. Bhuvanesvari is also linked to the sound which arises from space and thus to the sound of the speech Bhuvanesvari is consistently associated with the here and now. She helps us to go beyond all identities that we associate with ourselves.
Chinnamasta, standing naked having chopped off her own head with her own sword, holds her decapitated head in one of her hands. Three jets of blood spurt out of her bleeding neck, and one streams into the mouth of her severed head, while two others streams fall into the mouths of her two female associates.Yet Chinnamasta’s face is happy and smiling. Chinnamasta refers to ridding ourselves of false notions and the limitations in which we are bound. Her depiction also helps to overcome self-pity, fear, and pain of death. She stands for essential freedom. This idea of freedom is expressed by her nudity.
Chinnamasta, makes a stunning presentation of varying and conflicting aspects of life and death; of self destruction while nourishing others, of gory violence spilling blood and smiling blissful face; death and destruction placed next to creation, the joy of transcending the body and not the pain of losing it; and of giving up the ego to attain wisdom. Her worship is said to yield health, wealth, freedom from fear, ability to influence family, friends, women, enemies, and rulers, and liberation. Chinnamasta’s act of parting with her head – her identity- is one of extreme sacrifice for the good of all, so that the others might live and thrive. If the act of her decapitation is viewed as an act of self-sacrifice, then that selfless acts will not hurt us.
Bhairavi stands for terror, decay and destruction. She is also the goddess of creation and maintenance. Her name Bhairavi, it is said, is derived from Bharana (to create), Ramana (to protect) and Vamana (to eject).She is kundalini, Bhairavi is also the name given to a yogini (female yogi) adept in Kundalini tantra. She is the power over the senses and elements. Bhairavi is the destructive force in nature .She represents the decay, weakness, aging and finally death that occur everywhere, in everyone and in everything. None can escape her wrath. She is the matrix on which the universe ages, dissolves and re-generates itself. Bhairavi as the goddess who presides over the transformation of the world- from birth to death and from death to birth. 
Dhumvati is old, ugly and sulking. She is the only Mahavidya without a consort. She is a widow associated with strife, loneliness, unfulfilled desires and inauspicious things of life. Also known as Alakshmi, the dark, reverse image of Lakshmi. She is everything that Lakshmi is not. Alakshmi symbolizes bad temper, hunger, thirst, need, poverty and all the misfortunes of life Dhumavati projects the end and the miserable part of woman’s life. She is an old and a sulking widow who has nowhere to go. She is lonely, a social outcast, free from its obligations and constraints. Dhumavati thus represents a stage of woman’s life that is beyond worldly desires, beyond the conventional taboos of what is polluting or inauspicious.
Bagalamukhi means the goddess with the ‘face of a crane’. The crane with its ability to stand still attracts its prey, lures it into a false sense of safety and then snaps it up quickly. Bagalamukhi’s strength is said to be her magical attraction, to immobilize and strike the enemy. Bagalamukhi is portrayed as a woman of immense beauty who can transfix anyone. One other name of Bagalamukhi is Brahmastra Roopini meaning that she exercises her magical powers of delusion (bhrama) as a weapon (astra) to confuse and confound. With that she makes everything look like it’s opposite. She turns speech into silence, knowledge into ignorance, power into impotence, and defeat into victory. It is explained; she represents the knowledge whereby each thing must in time become its opposite. To see the failure hidden in success, the death hidden in life or the joy hidden in sorrow is the way of understanding her reality. Bagalamukhi is the secret presence of the opposites wherein each thing is dissolved back into its un-manifest state. Bagalamukhi exercises control over the vital breaths; she enables one to conquer the tongue, which means self-control over greed, speech and taste. Bagalamukhi wrenching the tongue of the demon is symbolic of removing the impurities associated with speech and tongue.
The Mahavidya Matangi, the erotically powerful intoxicated with passion like a female elephant in heat (masth) is described as a sixteen year old girl in the flush of her youth seated on an altar. She brings focus, rather very disturbingly, on the notions of distinctions between purity and impurity, clean and polluted, auspicious and inauspicious, puritanical notions and unrestrained sex, high caste and low caste. The central message of this myth is to set free the Tantric devotee from the strangling obsession with ‘purity’ which can be dangerous and destructive. Matangi is associated, in particular, with magical powers that exercise control over enemies.She challenges the normally accepted concepts and values in an established social order. She brings into question the very notions of beauty, goodness, honor, respect, decency, cleanliness and physical comfort etc.
Kamala is said to be a reflection of Shri the Vedic deity as also of Lakshmi the goddess of wealth and beauty. Kamala as Mahavidya is a tantric deity who is invoked mainly in rituals seeking wealth, power and hidden treasures. Kamala, the Tantric form of Lakshmi, combines in herself many auspicious virtues and attributes along with a few terrible aspects. Like Kali, the Tantric Kamala embraces the light and the darkness, for she is the totality. She can be worshipped for both worldly goods or spiritual boons.
These ten forms of Kali represent different aspects of our own feminine side. These stories do not just reflect women, they reflect a feminine energy that is present within us all. Each of these goddesses can be studied and seen to embody specific energies that we as humans need to enact at times within our lives. Similar to the letters that reflect a specific vibration, each of these mahavidyas are also showing us that vibration in a a story form.When we work with these energies we are asking ourselves to remove our identity from the situation for the purpose of re creating that identity, when we resist that energy the path may be perceived as harsh, however if we understand that we are being asked to recreate ourselves instead of hold onto our current perception of self, the process is actually quite freeing.
My partner, Joshua and I decided to do a 10 week discipline to the mahavidyahs- one day I will write about that, I think I have to recover first....
For more information about Joshua and I, or to see more information on stones and dieties, please visit:
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