Kali

Kali is the most fully realized of all the Dark Goddesses. It has been claimed
that Her name is derived from the Hindu word for Time, yet also means "black."
She is also called Durga.

Her very appearance is meant to terrify. She is black and emaciated, with
fangs and claws. She wears a girdle of severed arms, a necklace of skulls or
severed heads, earrings of children's corpses, cobras as bracelets or garlands.
Her mouth is blood-smeared. She is accompanied by she-demons.

Often She is shown standing or dancing on the corpse of the god Shiva. Here She
is feasts on his intestines.

Yet She also is a loving mother, and especially in that aspect is worshipped by
millions of Hindus.

Used to a god that is all-"good", Westerners have found it difficult to
understand why Hindus would worship such a deity, or why their art emphasizes
Her most hideous forms.

"Tantric worshippers of Kali thought it essential to face her Curse, the terror
of death, as willingly as they accepted Blessings from her beautiful,
nurturing, maternal aspect. For them, wisdom meant learning that no coin has
only one side: as death can't exist without life, so also life can't exist
without death. Kali's sages communed with her in the grisly atmosphere of the
cremation ground, to become familiar with images of death. They said, 'His
Goddess, his loving Mother in time, who gives him birth and loves him in the
flesh, also destroys him in the flesh. His image of Her is incomplete if he
does not know Her as his tearer and devourer.'"
-- Barbara Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets

Altered photo, originally black and white, of wood carving from the 18th or
19th century, Nepal, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Further Reading:

* The Goddess Kali, part of a Web site devoted to Tantrism. Warning: very
slow loading.

* The Dark Goddess and me, an intensely personal and well-written account of
beginning to know Kali, by Del Marshall.