Kali followed me home from India. She's an unexpected travel companion, and I've always been a bit scared of this most formidable of Hindu goddesses, but this year, I couldn't ignore her if I tried. Each waking moment of this locked down world taps you on the shoulder to remind you that the coronavirus is there and might come for you at any minute, and so we turn to who we must for answers and guidance, even the most terrifying of deities. So it is that as I walk the narrow lanes in the dawn sunshine and the lee of the hills where the light fails to reach in damp cool splendour, Kali is with me. She's with all of us, most particularly so as COVID-19 paralyses the world. She doesn't just reside in India. I see her in this landscape more than faerie queens, and the Green Man, whom I don't doubt she would hold to the ground as she shook her wild black locks and roared. She seems more immediate than those green spirits of old. She seems to stare me down and force me to grapple with a few things, but it's okay.

She's doing it so I can bear it better.

I love the complexity of Kali. Sure, she's not an easy goddess to love, or to even know. But she's the mother of the entire world, so I know I better bow at her feet as best I would any other deity, and then some.

The earth quakes under Your leaps and bounds.
You are frightful with that sword in Your hand.
Kamalakanta Bhattacharya

Some have other Gods to turn to, but I'm glad for this nature goddess, because she is nature, in my interpretation of her. The few red holly berries that still cling to the vine or tangle amongst browned and muddy leaves are her tongue. Her black skin is the coal that coats these old mining towns, the chunks of iron ore uprooted by badgers, the rotting leaves of Autumn gone, the crows and the blackbirds. The unfurling red shoots of sycamore are the severed hands she wears as a necklace. Dandelion clocks are the skulls she wears on her skirt. Apt too - these bones are are symbolic of severed egos, reminding us perhaps that we are not in charge of time, nor the universe - we cannot break free of these bonds not matter how hard we try. The dandelions loose their seed, following the wheeled circle of time in perfect symbolism. The swelling seeds loosen and leave the dead flower behind - once buttery in it's flush of youth, the dead head lolls, it's seeds spent. Everything cycles through. I'm grateful to Kali for these reminders, though they can be painful. No one wants all these deaths, these troubled times, these anxieties - but they are there, amongst the laughter and the joys that also exist alongside the trauma.

Even in Spring, there are reminders that winter is very sharp behind us, and is yet to come again

As this goddess of time, I see her present in the Spring as much as she is the crone hearthside of Winter - no matter that violets and primroses bloom, there are still things dying as much as being born. She's in the dead dormouse with it's guts pouring onto the tarmac, the spent spider webs, the fallen ash from this year's dieback, the shrivelled berries and the tattered peacock butterflies who arrive from Northern Africa. Even in the bright light there are many shadows. Don't get too secure, she seems to say. It'll rain next week.

`Is my Mother Kali really black?
People say Kali is black,
but my heart doesn’t agree.
If She’s black,
how can She light up the world?
Sometimes my Mother is white,
sometimes yellow, blue, and red.
I cannot fathom Her.
My whole life has passed trying.

She is Matter,
then Spirit,
then complete Void.

Kamalakanta Bhattacharya (1769 - 1821)

How many centuries passed whilst these whorls formed on this oakwood? How many people died? Kali knows.

She's bigger and vaster than the passing seasons or changes in the weather or even the life cycles of human beings as we splutter and choke, our lungs full of pheglm and our fevered brains. She's outside of time, existing after the universe fizzles and splutters it's last breaths and she was around way before it even drew a weak breath. All this history written on the British landscape, of the Roman road I'm living on to the iron age fort on t'other side of the hill is nothing on the time she deals with. We moan about three weeks quarantine - she blinks and eons pass. She completely devours time. Utterly consumes it into her blackness.

But this is not neccessarily frightening.

This reminder of impermanence can bring hope to the heart, if we choose. This time too will pass. Things always grow and die - we cannot escape that. These are the severed skulls she wears - the death of the ego must be entire to break free of these cycles of birth and death, and that's a hard task for humanity, otherwise we'd be truly enlightened already. But the heart can be a bit easier knowing that these trials are just part of a bigger picture, and things won't stay this way forever. We're meant to struggle, so that we can be better.

Kali is shadows and the light.

I adore Kali her refusal to be controlled by those who think they've got her pegged. In one story, devotees slaughter a brahmin monk to gain her favour in a macabre sacrifice. In return, she decapitates them and drinks their blood. She's intolerant of ignorance, is she. I like to think it's her that's responsible for this bite back against man's transgression against the natural world. There is much science that suggests industrialisation and agriculture cause disease because it intrudes on natural cycles - think the Hendra virus where a fruit bat left droppings in a pig farm and the meat was consumed by humans. Scientists expect they can predict a virus outbreak where big roads are built and forests decimated. This virus too was predicted - it was just too big for us to really see it coming.

And so we're forced to face a few things, both on a personal level as well as the whole of humanity. Where have we been, and where are we going, once we get out of this dark cave we're in? So many of us are shedding what we don't need, or are brought to our absolute knees by this, abandoned by governments, left penniless and alone. The more priveleged amongst us don't fare as badly, but we're still rattled, and forced to reassess.

`She said we all fall apart and there are ways to get back up again, if we just open our eyes' - Kali Mother by Vivekanda

Kali might be the coronavirus, because it's the one that can bring us to our knees and force us to stare at what we've done and wonder what kind of new world is going to emerge from the ashes. That's her modus operandi too. But she's not scary - she's also the green growth emerging from the blackened forest after a fire, or the tree that grows so tall and majestical after being planted atop corpses. She's the understanding that comes from the darknest blackest nights of the soul, the painful birth that brings forth the beautiful child, the seed cracked open.

she is not meant to appease you
make you happy
or smooth over your ruffled feathers like sweet whipped cream with honey.
she's made to reach inside your throbbing heart
make you face yourself
pull out the poison
kill your pain
and help you
set yourself
wildly
fucking
free.

from KALI'S SONG: THE DESTRUCTIVE BLESSING OF THE DARK GODDESS by Sarah L Harvey

And so, I embrace this black mother of the world for all she brings me, even in the most painful of times.

With Love,

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