She is regarded as the shakti (power) of Shiva, and he her consort. Her very name is the feminine form of Kāla, an epithet of Shiva, thus tying her inextricably to him. When Shiva addresses Parvati as Kali, "the black one," she is affronted and performs certain austerities to lose her dark complexion, ultimately generating Kali as a separate entity. The Vamana Purana (900 – 1100 CE) has a different version. Parvati merges with Shiva, reappears as Kali and does the deed, but at a terrible cost her bloodlust becomes uncontrollable, only calming when Shiva intervenes. The Linga Purana (500 to 1000 CE) describes how Shiva asks his wife Parvati to defeat the demon Daruka, whom only a female can kill. Other texts of the period associate her beginnings with Shiva. Her aspect at this time is terrible – a skeletal and frightening crone, coloured black (a literal interpretation of her name), wearing animal skins and carrying a khatvanga, the skull-topped staff associated with tribal shamans. It is another 400 years before Kali is described as an individual in her own right, when she appears around 600 CE in the Devimahatmya as a battlefield goddess personifying the wrath of Durga. However she is not a goddess but rather a fierce black tongue, one of seven belonging to Agni, the god of fire. The name Kālī first appears in the Atharva Veda, a collection of hymns and mantras published between 1200 BCE and 1000 BCE.
It is likely that Kali’s origins begin, as do the origins of most divine figures, with tribal folklore deeply rooted in the history of humankind. However her story is far more complex and far-reaching she cannot be easily fitted into a typical western narrative of good verses evil, and in fact transcends both. In the eyes of westerners, Kali is a goddess dark of mind, body and soul, a mysterious goddess of death and destruction.
Here, Kali is depicted in classical form as a terrifying black skinned skeletal figure. Title: Durga Slaying the Buffalo Demon, Raktabij, and Kali Lapping up the Demon's Blood, Illustration from a Markandeya Purana Publication, 1800 - 1825.
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