Kali
Kali, “the black one”, is the Hindu Mother Goddess in her fierce form: dark, with her tongue out, a garland of skulls, a sword in her hand, and in some images standing on Shiva. Her devotees know her as a protecting mother and the giver of liberation.
Meaning
The Himalayan Academy calls Kali the “Black” Goddess, a form of Shakti in her fierce aspect, dark, nude, primordial and fiercely powerful, but from the perspective of devotees the incomparable protectress, champion of spiritual practice and mother of liberation. Her name, the Hindu American Foundation writes, means “she who is black”, and she is the embodiment of time (kaala) and the female form of Shiva. A Kalighat painting of about 1890 in the Cleveland Museum of Art shows her black-skinned and four-armed, her tongue out, with a third eye of divine knowledge, a sword and a demon’s severed head in two hands and her other two hands in gestures of protection and blessing; it is a replica of the image worshipped in the Kalighat temple. Her story, the foundation says, is best told in the Devi Mahatmyam, in the Markandeya Purana.
Origin and history
The Cleveland Museum describes Kali as the wrathful form of the goddess generated in the middle of a battle with a demon the gods could not defeat: she had to drink his blood before any drop of it reached the ground, because every drop would become a new demon. The museum reads the demons as human vices, such as pride and arrogance. The Hindu American Foundation names the killing of the demon Raktabija among the battles the Devi Mahatmyam tells.
Her devotees describe her very differently from the fearful picture. The Bengali saint Sri Ramakrishna, the foundation notes, found in her “the benign all-loving Mother.”
Kali standing on Shiva
In some images Kali stands or kneels on Shiva, who lies beneath her. The Cleveland Museum explains a Pahari painting of about 1810: as the personification of divine energy, shakti, Kali is active, while the male principle, her consort Shiva, lies like a corpse (shava). The scene is a cremation ground, and contemplating such paintings, the museum says, helps followers overcome the fear of death.
The garland and the sword
The Hindu American Foundation reads her fearsome attributes as teaching. Kali is the death of the ego on the way to moksha, liberation from rebirth. She lives among the dead in cremation grounds to remind us that all things born must decay and die; her garland of skulls shows that we too must cut away the skeletons in our closets, and she gives us the implements for it. She drips blood as she consumes all of creation, because every minute is destroyed in the cycle of time.
How outsiders saw her
The Kalighat pictures were sold to pilgrims, local and British. The Cleveland Museum notes that the frightening image of Kali fitted the colonial imagination and Victorian popular culture, and that a painting like its own was a souvenir to show “to intrigued and horrified friends at home in England.”
Her festivals and temples
Her two main festivals, the Hindu American Foundation says, are Navaratri in north, south and west India and Durga Puja in the east, at the same time of year. It also describes the 51 Shakti Pithas, temples in India and nearby countries, each believed to have come from a part of the Mother’s body when Vishnu cut it during her immolation as Sati (see Parvati).
Read next
- Next in Hindu deities and their symbolsBrahmaBrahma is the Hindu god of creation, shown with four heads and four arms, holding a manuscript, prayer beads, a water pot and a lotus, and riding a swan. Few temples are his own, but he receives worship in the temples of Shiva and Vishnu.
- The same shape in Cave and rock artLion ManA figure carved from mammoth ivory about 40,000 years ago, with the head of a cave lion on an upright body with human legs. About 30 centimetres tall, it was found in pieces in Hohlenstein-Stadel cave in southern Germany in 1939 and is in the Museum Ulm. It is one of the oldest known figures of a creature that does not exist.
See also
Durga, Shiva, Parvati, Ganesha, Murugan, Vishnu.
Sources
- Dancing with Śiva: glossary (Kālī), Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, Dancing with Śiva: Hinduism’s Contemporary Catechism, glossary, Himalayan Academy (Kauai’s Hindu Monastery), glossary, s.v. Kālī
- Ma Kali (Sivagami Natesan, Hindu American Foundation), Sivagami Natesan, “Ma Kali”, Hindu American Foundation, 2020, Hindu American Foundation, article text
- Leaf from a Kalighat album: The Goddess Kali (recto); Kali Standing on Shiva (verso) (2003.110, Cleveland Museum of Art), Leaf from a Kalighat album: The Goddess Kali (recto); Kali Standing on Shiva (verso), c. 1890, Cleveland Museum of Art, 2003.110, collection description, Cleveland Museum of Art, Description
- Kali (1956.7, Cleveland Museum of Art), Kali, 900s–1000s, Cleveland Museum of Art, 1956.7, collection description, Cleveland Museum of Art, Description
- Kali on Shiva, from a Tantric Devi Series (2014.650, Cleveland Museum of Art), Kali on Shiva, from a Tantric Devi Series, c. 1810, Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014.650, collection description, Cleveland Museum of Art, Description
The same shape elsewhere
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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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