Kali is seen as a destroyer not because of any evil in her. She is well above the potential for evil. What they observe is that many things in life are unstable. They can’t persist for very long. So Kali is the destroyer of evil because with time weakness inevitable emerges.
Ah, time is the ultimate destroyer. Time grinds down mountains.
But Kali is also the mother as energy and change. Destruction doesn’t actually exist in any form. Shiva divides things, gives order and form. Kali unites things, and recreates the entire universe. This is why they speak of the rampages of Kali. The world seems to change simply because it wants to, simply for the joy of it, and Kali is seen as periodically drunk in the process of exercising her energy.
Change like justice has a blind element to it. Everything that is, has it’s roots in things that already are. All potential being is already immanent in matter even if the form hasn’t yet emerged. It’s only with the dance of time and energy that any new form emerges. Like a gentle nurturing mother she can coax out the child in rest, but also like an angry frustrated mother she can take on a frightening aspect. Even war brings change.
Change happens because of the behaviour of energy. Kali dances to the song of Shiva. Time moves along the path of matter. All that you become was something that you already were previously. Kali dwells in all things. Some say they loath time or death, both of which are Kali, yet these same things are revered by them in the form of experience and discovery, learning. Interesting no?
For some, enthroning Kali in their heart would not help them. Not because Kali is limited or a burden to a believer, but for some their path of karma leads them away from considerations of change. For others, embracing the “flow” is not only useful but inspiring, musicians especially, some artists really in every artistic path, and also those who still contend with what we still very much need, food, and have to contend with the cycles of nature. Teachers would be well served by embracing the spirit of Kali, as they best serve the children or students in their teaching by accepting who and how they are, and drawing them out from there and along the path that leads to understanding math or reading. Education. The word comes from an archaic word which means to draw out. How can that be done without time and energy/effort?
Now Kali does also carry with her a warning. Any activity persisted in without respect to its necessity can lead not to growth but instead to destruction. Again Shiva steps in here. Shiva is not as stable and concrete as we think of matter in the west. He too is dynamic. Where Kali is the mother of words or mantras, Shiva is the father of music or rhythm. Time cannot pass freely without respect to circumstances. Drive your car into a brick wall and your “time has come”, but that’s not Kali’s doing, that’s Shiva’s. Continuity, everything being absorbed in that principle.
Shiva stops the music. Yes. Between the two they more or less create the world, from one point of view.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~