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Kali the Mother
Kali: The Dark Mother
The soul that worships becomes always a little child: the soul that
becomes a child finds God oftenest as mother. In a meditation
before the Blessed Sacrament, some pen has written the exquisite
assurance: "My child, you need not know much in order to please
Me. Only Love Me dearly. Speak to me , as you would talk to your
mother, if she had taken you in her arms."
It is in India that this thought of the mother has been realised in its
completeness. In that country where the image of Kali is one of the
most popular symbols of deity, it is quite customary to speak of
God, as "She," and the direct address then offered is simply
"Mother."
But under what strange guise! In the West, art and poetry have been
exhausted to associate all that is tender and precious with this
thought of woman-wordhip. The mother plays with the little One,
or caresses or nurses Him. Sometimes she even makes her arm a
throne, whereon He sits to bless the world.
In the East the acceptedsymbol is of a woman nude, with flowing
hair, so dark a blue that She appears in color to be black, four-
handed---two hands in the act of blessing and two holding a sword
and a bleeding head, ---garlanded with skulls, and dancing, with
protruding tongue, on the prostrate fugure of a man all white with
ashes.
A terrible, an extraordinary figure! Those who call it horrible may
well be forgiven. They pass only through the outer court of the
temple. They are not arrived where the Mother's voice can reach
them. This, in its own way, is well.
Yet, this image, so fearful to the western mind, is perhaps dearer
than any other to the heart of India. It is not, indeed, the only form
in which the Divine Energy presents Herself to Her worshippers. To
the Sikh, She is absorbed, embodied in his sword; all women,
especially as children, are Her incarnations; glorious Sita carries
the great reality to many.
But Kali comes closer to us than these. Others we admire; others
we love; to Her we belong. Whether we know it or not, we are Her
children, playing round Her knees. Life is but a game of hide-and-
seek with Her, and if, in its course, we chance to touch Her feet,
who can measure the shock of the divine energy that enters into us?
Who can utter the rapture of our cry of "Mother?"
---Sister Nivedita. Kali the Mother.
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