The concept of Kali energy keeps coming onto my path. It started from a Yoga Journal article I read awhile back. Then I’d randomly find myself inspired to strike her pose. And I had an amazing mystical experience involving energy shooting up from my root chakrah. Yeah, that too.

I guess I am a skeptic-mystic because I research my experiences against the full force of human narratives available to me. I value humanity. Its a beautiful thing. And my experiences really aren’t that unusual in the big picture (ie multicultural) account of human experience.

Talk about Kali energy comes up more and more often these days. Like the need for more feminine energy in the world; re-balancing gender relationships. When I had my own mystical experience, there was a an overwhelmingly strong message about the need for feminine power in our culture. An emotive description of why we must return to a more goddess-based culture that I find hard to articulate. I don’t write that because I believe that to be true. I write it because its what I heard.

And then, I started thinking in paradoxes only. Kali, in a sense, is the goddess of paradox. She’s the mother who will love you to death.

“So terrifying do these bloody rites seem that few understand Kali’s spiritual significance. As a symbol of the worst we can imagine, as the most extreme picture of our fears, she offers us a chance to face down our own terror of annihilation. Ramakrishna and other great Indian poets sang rapturously of Kali, for they understood that she is a blissful goddess. Once faced and understood, these mystics say, Kali frees her worshipers of all fear and becomes the greatest of mothers, the most comforting of all goddesses.”

I swear to God, as a mother, that I would eat you before I would let you harm my child. There is something brutal about love, and its a brutality we should respect. I’m keeping my eye on Kali.

Daniel Pinchbeck writes about the Power of Kali in chaper five of his book. He opens the chapter with the following quote:

“It is the self within our selves that we have to sacrafice
It is our own heart that has to be torn out of the false being and offered to the light.”

-Pyramid of Fire: The Lost Aztec Codex

To learn more about Kali, check out this Kali article, which is where I snatched the above quote. Also, check out the Yoga Elements newsletter which is where I snatched the above graphic.