First of all, Sati took the form of Kali. Her form was fearful, her hair untied and loose, her body the color of a dark cloud. She had deep-set eyes and eyebrows shaped like curved swords. She stood on a corpse, wore a garland of skulls, and earrings made from the bones of corpses. She had four hands – on one hand, she had the head of a skull, and the other a curved sword with blood dripping on it. She had mudras on her other two hands – one giving freedom from fear and the other giving blessings. She roared and the ten directions were filled with that ferocious sound.

In the series of the ten Mahavidyas or wisdom aspects of the Divine Mother, Kali comes first, for she represents the power of consciousness in its highest form. She is at once supreme power and ultimate reality, underscoring the fundamental Tantric teaching that the power of consciousness and consciousness itself are one and the same.

The Devimahatmya vividly depicts a scene with Kali and her associated goddesses ready to take on an army of demons. The battle culminates with the slaying of two demon generals, Chanda and Munda, and this act earns her the name Chamunda.

In the next episode, Chamunda takes on the demon Raktabija. In the battle, he sheds blood profusely until the world is teeming with Raktabijas. Just when the battle looks hopeless and the onlooking god’s despair, Chamunda roams the battlefield, avidly lapping up the blood and crushing the nascent demons between her gnashing teeth. Finally, drained of his last drop of blood, Raktabija topples lifelessly to the ground.

Significance: Raktabija’s amazing replicative ability symbolizes the human mind’s ordinary state of awareness. The mind is constantly in motion, and one thought begets another in an endless succession. The mind rarely rests and is never fully concentrated. In the light of Patanjali’s Yogasutra, we can understand Chamunda as the power to restrain the mind’s endless modulations, to stop them altogether. When all mental activity (chittavritti) ceases, that state is called yoga: consciousness resting in its own infinite peace and bliss.

As Dakshinakali, she is portrayed as young and beautiful, standing on the supine, ash-besmeared body of Siva, who looks up at her adoringly. Siva is absolute consciousness, ever blissful in its own glory. Kali is consciousness in motion—the overflowing joy that projects, sustains, and withdraws the universe. Consciousness and its powers are one and the same reality.

In general, we can say that all the dualities of life, the light and the dark, the beautiful and the fearsome, are united and reconciled in Kali. She represents supreme non-duality, for she is none other than Brahman. At the same time, the duality of this world is nothing other than her own self-expression.

From the Absolute to the relative and from the relative to the Absolute, Kali represents the power of transformation. For us, who wrongly think ourselves to be mere mortals, she holds out the promise of transformation from the human to the Divine.

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