Goddesses of Badassdom: Kali

In the annals of terrifying forces of femininity, one name stands above many others. A name that sends shivers down your spine, and can turn a man's blood to lukewarm piss. A name that is synonymous with death, destruction, and which represents the ultimate mama bear who is not to be poked under any circumstances.

That name is Kali.

We'll get into her story in a moment, but this is our second entry in Goddesses of Badassdom. The first goddess we discussed was Freya, and if you want to stay on top of this series then check out my Futurism page, or just go to my Vocal archive.

A Badass Birth

Kali isn't your average, run-of-the-mill death goddess. She's not some creepy figurehead to use as set dressing in a horror movie. She is cosmic shit. The deva of death, Kali is not just the end of your life...she's the end of everything. Time incarnate, she is a mouth filled with teeth whose hunger knows no end. She is sex, death, and motherhood, and she'll rip your face off.

What some people forget, though, is that Kali is an incarnation of Parvati. Who is Parvati? Parvati is the goddess of love, the source of pure feminine energy, and Shiva is her husband and consort. The mother of gods like Ganesh, Parvati is often thought of as one of those stereotypical goddesses...but just beneath the surface, Kali waits to devour those who cross her.

As if a goddess of beauty and love being up on some Incredible Hulk shit wasn't enough, though, Kali has more than one origin story...and each one is more batshit than the last.

In one origin, the warrior goddess Durga was filled with so much rage that it burst forth from her head Athena-style, and went mad across the battlefield. Kali, a huge black-skinned (or blue-skinned, depending on your DLC) titan with blades in hand, lolling tongue, and necklace of heads destroyed anything in front of her. She was unstoppable, and it was only when Shiva lay down at her feet, and she thought that she'd killed him, that her rage began to ebb.

In another version, Parvati shed her dark skin, and set it aside. This sheathe became Kali, and the two of them were like darkness and light, each connected by the twilight and dawn of motherhood, and feminine energy. But the darkness was hungry in a way the light wasn't, and dangerous in a way that brightness rarely could be. If you've seen Cloak and Dagger, then you know the archetype playing out here, and that it's some grade-A tragedy as far as origin stories go.

Then there are two others that are closely linked. In the first one, men and gods alike were being terrorized by a potent demon called Daruka. Daruka could only be slain by a woman, and that duty fell to Parvati as the embodiment of shakti (feminine energy). Eowyn she was not, though. Parvati needed to gird her shit, and to that end she turned to her husband, and rammed herself down his throat. Because when the gods had made the world, a poison had sprung forth that would slay everything. Shiva had swallowed it, and it was still there. His wife decided to take the substance that occasionally crippled one of the most powerful gods in the pantheon, and rubbed it on like war-time skin cream. What came out was Kali, dark as death and twice as pissed. Daruka didn't stand a chance, and went down without even getting to utter a single one-liner.

In the alternate version of this story the threat was a demon warlord named Raktabija (Blood Seed, for those who don't have subtitles on). He was bad business all on his lonesome, but whenever a drop of his blood touched the ground it would grow into more demons. So any time someone scored a hit, instant reinforcements would swarm them. In this version Kali was a kind of Captain Planet, formed from the energy of the other gods, and wielding their divine weapons in her arms. Rather than teaching a lesson about conservation and kindness, though, she cut a swath through the demon horde, tore of Raktabija's head, and drank down every drop of his blood so that no more demons would rise to aid him.

Whatever version we're looking at, though, Kali had no time for anyone's shit.

Endings and Beginnings

Kali may not be as prominent as some gods in the Hindu canon, but when she is onscreen, she dominates. Kali is the flip-side to Parvati in many ways, but at the same time she makes it clear that it isn't an either-or thing. The feminine is beautiful and loving, but full of potential for untold death and destruction. The energy of mothers, and the energy of love making, is only a hair's breadth from rivers of blood and devoured entrails.

It's not one or the other, and the line where one ends and the other begins can be dangerous to forget about.