Goddess Kali

Running head: EASTERN RELIGIONS GODD/GODDESS ROUGH DRAFT

Kali the Devine Mother

Michael Boutte

Leighann Fontenot

Eileen Valenzuela

University of Phoenix

REL-133 World Religious Traditions

Vanessa Puniak, M.A.

9/16/2009

Kali the Divine Mother

In Hinduism the Goddess Kali is both the Divine Mother and the Goddess of Destruction. Kali comes from the root Sanskrit word "kala" which means time. Tibetan Buddhism embraces a similar figure as Maha Kala though he is male in gender. Kali is thought to have originated as a tribal goddess indigenous to one of India's inaccessible mountainous regions. The Matsyapurana gives her place of origin as Mount Kalanjara in north central India, east of the Indus Valley floodplain. But, due to the late date of the Puranas' composition, this evidence regarding Kali's place of origin cannot be taken as particularly reliable.

Kali's Indian experience reveals that an originally fierce tribal goddess gradually assumed universal characteristics, including those of beneficence and motherhood, and eventually became identified with the cosmic creative energy and the dual ultimate reality.

According to the eighth chapter of the Devimahatmya, in which paints an even more gruesome portrait. Having slain Chanda and Munda, Kali is now called Chamunda, and she faces an infinitely more powerful adversary in the demon named Raktabija. Whenever a drop of his blood falls to earth, an identical demon springs up. When terror seizes the gods, Durga laughs and instructs Kali to drink in the drops of blood. While Durga assaults Raktabija so that his blood runs copiously, Kali avidly laps it up. The demons spring into being from the blood flow, perish between her gnashing teeth until Raktabija topples drained and lifeless to the ground. This is but one version of the birth of Kali.

In an academic sense the Goddess Kali is the primordial energy which animates space and is seen as...