Kali and Shakti

 Kali is closely connected with Shakti, the divine power of the Goddess. Shakti is the power through which the Divine becomes active, and Kali is one of the forms in which this power is revealed.

The Goddess is not separate from her power. In the stories of the Goddess, her power appears in many forms, and Kali represents one of its most powerful and terrible expressions. She appears in the midst of the battle with the demons, where the power of the Goddess is required to overcome forces that cannot otherwise be defeated.

Shakti is therefore not simply an attribute of the Goddess. It is the power of the Goddess herself. Through Shakti, the Goddess acts, creates and destroys. Kali belongs to this power, and her fierce form reveals its terrible aspect.

The idea of Shakti also has an important place in the understanding of the Divine Mother. The Mother is not passive. She is power, and this power can appear as creation, preservation or destruction. Kali is the form in which the destructive power of the Mother becomes most clearly visible.

Swami Vivekananda also spoke of Kali and Shakti. His understanding of the Divine Mother was closely connected with the idea of power, and Kali became an important expression of the Mother for him.

Kali is therefore not only the dark Goddess of the battlefield. She is Shakti, the power of the Divine Mother, appearing in a form that is fierce, terrible and beyond ordinary human understanding.

Source & Note

This article is based on Elizabeth U. Harding’s Kali: The Black Goddess of Dakshineswar (Nicolas-Hays, 1993). The material has been edited and adapted for this publication.