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| "Kali" (2013) |
I've been working on a Kali/Black Tara mask, and reference a wise article about the Dark Goddess, "Endarkenment", that I have been wanting to share for quite a while. I take the liberty of re-printing here a wonderfully insightful article by Theologian Molly Remer, from the Feminism and Religion website.
Black Tara is the ferocious, evil destroying aspect of Tara, and in many Tibetan Buddhist paintings it is easy to see the symbolic overlay of Hindu Kali. Kali's name derives from "Kala", which means Time. In the Mahanirvana-tantra, Kali is one of the epithets for the primordial sakti":
"At
the dissolution of things, it is Kala [Time] Who will devour all, and
by reason of this He is called Mahakala [an epithet of Lord Shiva], and
since Thou devourest Mahakala Himself, it is Thou who art the Supreme
Primordial Kalika. Because Thou devourest Kala, Thou art Kali, the
original form of all things, and because Thou art the Origin of and
devourest all things Thou art called the Adya [primordial Kali].
Resuming after Dissolution Thine own form, dark and formless, Thou alone
remainest as One ineffable and inconceivable. Though having a form,
yet art Thou formless; though Thyself without beginning, multiform by
the power of Maya, Thou art the Beginning of all, Creatrix,
Protectress, and Destructress that Thou art"**
It is from this dark space that we emerge—whether from our own
mothers or from the more mysterious cosmic “sea” of soul—and it is to
darkness that we return when we close our eyes for the final time.
I find that within Goddess circles the idea of “the dark” remains
commonly associated with that which is evil, negative, bad, or
unpleasant. The Dark Mother, while acknowledged and accepted, is often
at the same time equated with death, destruction, challenge, trials, and
obstacles. While I recognize that the concept of a dark, demonic, and
destructive mother might too have a place in goddess traditions (as with
Kali or Durga), I also think this is unnecessarily limiting and that
the idea of the “Dark” in general is in need of re-visioning. It is not
just with regard to the role or place of death within the wheel of life
or the Goddess archetype that Goddess as Dark Mother and destroyer can
be honored or recognized, but the Dark as a place of healing and rest
can also be explored.
In her article “Revisioning the Female Demon” (1998),
Elinor Gadon
explains that there is a tendency in the contemporary Goddess movement
to “ignore her dark side” and she remarks that, “in the fullness of her
being she is both creative and destructive…The women’s spirituality
movement needs a more inclusive mirror in which to recognize and recover
elemental female powers that have been split between the peaceful, good
nurturer and the evil, warlike destroyer” (p. 2).
In the book
Fire of the Goddess by
Katalin Koda, in the chapter
Reclaiming the Dark Mother the author says:
The feminine qualities of darkness, moistness, birth, and
blood symbolize the dark mother and our inner Initiate. We have been
taught to deny these parts of ourselves and bodies; honoring the sacred
feminine invites you to reclaim these as not only part of who you are,
but a powerful aspect of your life. When we face our shadow, we are
initiated into our deepest powers. We may be afraid of these parts;
these howling, undernourished, repressed, and rage-filled aspects of
ourselves that demand to be heard, but which we cannot bear to face.
But what if the Dark side of the Goddess is
not an evil, raging, and destructive side? In fact, what if the Goddess Herself is
found in the dark? Judith Laura
writing about dark matter in the cosmos writes, “might we call this
‘unseen force’ Goddess? Dark matter could be identified with the womb of
the Mother, continually gestating particles, suns, galaxies, which flow
from her in a continual stream…Dark matter might also be represented as
the Crone aspect of the Goddess—dark and powerful” (
Goddess Spirituality for the 21st Century, p. 181).
Part
of thealogy’s task has been to re-evaluate the concept of darkness.
Jacqueline daCosta notes, “
This darkness…equates with the darkness of
innate, instinctive knowing, where we are within the womb of the
Goddess” (
p. 115).
DaCosta’s observation is consistent with my own experiences and
observations of the world. In darkness, things germinate and grow. The
dark is a calm, holding, safe, welcoming place—we come from darkness and
that is where we return. The womb is a place in which I’ve nurtured and
grown my children and it is dark and safe in my experience of it. In
fact, isn’t darkness the womb of all creation? It is from this dark
space that we emerge—whether from our own mothers or from the more
mysterious cosmic “sea” of soul—and it is to darkness that we return
when we close our eyes for the final time.
Darkness holds our DNA. Our
link to the past and the future. At the birth of the universe, some part
of us was there, in that explosion from darkness. In the book
Meditation Secrets for Women,
Camille Maurine writes about the idea of descent and “going down” into
one’s own dark places: “There are times in a woman’s life when the call
downward is a transformative journey, a summons to the depths of the
soul. People tend to think of spirituality as rising upward into the
sky. In the traditional (male) teachings, enlightenment is often
described as a flight from the lower centers of the body, the
instinctive and sexual places, to the upper centers in the head and then
out. By contrast, a woman’s spiritual quest at some point leads to a
soulful sinking down into herself. Everyone fears this descent, this
sinking down. Yet sinking down connects us with the earth, with our
personal ground, with our foundation.
There is a secret in ‘endarkenment.’” [p. 210, emphasis mine]
The Dark Goddess need not automatically associate or translate into
“bad” or “suffering” or “negative” or “shadow side.” I think of the
darkness as a cocoon. I think of the womb. I think of germination. I
think of a place to rest, to wait, to be still, and to transform.
Emergence. Deepness. Rich earthiness.
I love the notion of endarkenment and that the downward call, the
downward journey, like Inanna’s descent, is a hera’s journey of
transformation, courage, and potency. In the same book, Maurine
describes the soul in very different terms than in classic Christian
conceptions:
“The realm of the soul is not light and airy, but more
like mud: messy, wet, and fertile. Soul processes go on down there with
the moss and worms, down there with the decaying leaves, down there
where death turns into life. Deepening into soul requires the courage to
go underground, to stretch our roots into the dark, to writhe and curl
and meander through rick, moist soil. In this darkness we find wisdom,
not through the glaring beam of will, but by following a wild, blind yet
unfailing instinct that senses the essence in things, that finds
nourishment to suck back into growth. Rare is the man who can take it.
That’s why male spirituality is so often about getting out of the mess,
about transcending the passions and bloody processes of life. Who can
blame them, really?
It takes a woman’s body and strength of spirit for this journey.” (p. 211)
My
experiences with pregnancy loss have played a profound role in the
development of, articulation of, and engagement with my spirituality.
One of my favorite songs to listen to after my miscarriage experiences
had a refrain of, “
it is dark, dark, dark inside.” While
previously not connecting to “darkness” as a place of growth or healing,
during these experiences I learned, viscerally, that it is in the
darkness that new things take root and grow. I also created a series of
black and white mandala drawings during the year following my
miscarriages and the subsequent year of conceiving, gestating, and
birthing my new daughter.
Gloria Orenstein refers to
endarkenment as, “a bonding with the Earth
and the invisible that will reestablish our sense of interconnectedness
with all things, phenomenal and spiritual, that make up the totality of
our life in our cosmos. The ecofeminist arts do not maintain that
analytical, rational knowledge is superior to other forms of knowing.
They honor Gaia’s Earth intelligence and the stored memories of her
plants, rocks, soil, and creatures. Through nonverbal communion with the
energies of sacred sites in nature, ecofeminist artists obtain
important knowledge about the spirit of the land, which they can then
honor through creative rituals and environmental pieces” (
Reweaving the World,
p. 280). This speaks to me because of my theapoetical experiences of
the presence of the Goddess in my own sacred spot in the woods behind my
house, where I go to the “priestess rocks” to pray, reflect, meditate,
do ritual, think, and converse with the spirits of that place.
I attended a presentation about birth stories at a conference in 2011
during which the speaker, Pam England, used Inanna’s descent as a
metaphor to explain some concepts. She said that the place “
where you were the most wounded—the place where the meat was chewed off your bones, becomes the seat of your most powerful medicine and the place where you can reach someone where no one else can.” This is what I feel like the Dark Goddess also offers. She is
present when
the meat is chewed off. She is there in the healing of the wounds and
knowing Her, walking with Her, facing Her, leads to powerful medicine.
For each of us as women, there is a deep place within,
where hidden and growing our true spirit rises…Within these deep
places, each one holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of
unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling. The woman’s place of
power within each of us…it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep.
–Audre Lorde
Molly Remer is a certified birth educator, writer, and activist who
lives with her husband and children in central Missouri. She is a
breastfeeding counselor, a professor of human services, and doctoral
student in women’s spirituality at Ocean Seminary College. This summer
she was ordained as a Priestess with Global Goddess. Molly blogs about
birth, motherhood, and women’s issues at http://talkbirth.me and about thealogy and the Goddess at http://goddesspriestess.com
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