{"id":3602,"date":"2019-04-21T14:12:51","date_gmt":"2019-04-21T18:12:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.isvara.org\/archive\/?p=3602"},"modified":"2021-12-17T01:11:26","modified_gmt":"2021-12-17T06:11:26","slug":"3602-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.isvara.org\/archive\/3602-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Goddess Kali: some historical notes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This particular divine form it\u2019s not for love but to incite fear. Infact Kali Devi came for the destruction of demons.
\nThe devotees of Kali worship her for their own protection and for the material advantages she easily grants.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I take advantage of this excellent question to say something more about Kali for the pleasure of history lovers. I know there are quite a few especially in the Dominican Republic.<\/p>\n

What follows will be only a very few historical cues.
\nThose who want more can go to our Archive (www.isvara.org) and find over 20 pages of historical information about goddess Kali, the ones I managed to find in the various Puranas and Itihasas so far.
\nOnce you are inside the Archive the path is:
\nhistory \/ personalities, others \/ PPP \/ Parvati<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At the dawn of this creation, Brahma had many children, including Daksa. One of Daksa\u2019s daughters was Sati, an incarnation of Mahamaya. She married Lord Siva.
\nDaksa did not like like Siva for some reasons told in the Puranas, and did not invite him to an important yajna he was organizing. Because of this Sati felt offended and abandoned her body so that he had no contact with a person who insults Siva.
\nSiva\u2019s revenge resulted in Daksa being killed. Later he had another opportunity in another life.
\nYou find this nice story in Srimad-Bhagavatam.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Following the threat of asuras like Taraka, Prasena, Jambha and Kalanemi, the Devas urged that Sati be reborn for their protection and be reunited with Siva.<\/p>\n

As a result of that Himavan (the personality of the Himalaya) and his wife Mena had three daughters: Ragini, Kutila and Kali (which means pitch black). Brahma excluded that the first two were qualified enough to be Siva\u2019s wives but he considered Kali qualified.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kali had many names and expansions, each with names that have meanings and histories. For example she was called Parvati because she was the daughter of the king of the mountains; she was called Uma because when asked to stop performing austerities she refused saying \u201cno\u201d (\u201cma\u201d means \u201cno\u201d).
\nAlthough her most known name is Parvati, her original name was Kali.<\/p>\n

Eventually Kali married Siva.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One day she had the impression that Siva didn’t like her black color so she did austerity to change it to a lighter color. Thus Kali obtained a white-gold colored body and she was called Gauri.<\/p>\n

By the time Kali became Gauri, her skin got peeled off and fell to the ground and eventually this skin became Katyayani, born to destroy great demons like Mahisasura.
\nIt is a very common picture in India to see Katyayani (Kali, or Parvati, it\u2019s the same person) with one foot on a demon. That is Mahisasura conquered. The scariest pictures you see of Kali (like the ones you see here) is actually Katyayani killing demons.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There are some paintings with Kali defeating Siva Himself, but that is another story.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Camundi, Brahmani, Mahesvari, Vaisnavi, Varahi and Narasimhi are the different forms of Katyayani. They are called Saptamatrs, the seven mothers.<\/p>\n

\nSome of Kali\u2019s names are Uma, Katyayani, Gauri, Kali, Haimavati, Isvari, Siva, Bhavani, Rudrani, Sarvani, Sarvamangala, Aparna, Durga, Mrdani, Candika, Ambika, Arya, Daksayani, Girija, Menakatmaja, Camunda, Karnamoti, Carccika, Bhairavi.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

– Manonatha Dasa (ACBSP)
\n21 apr 2019<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This particular divine form it\u2019s not for love but to incite fear. Infact Kali Devi came for the destruction of demons. The devotees of Kali worship her for their own protection and for the material advantages … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3605,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-24 07:28:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.isvara.org\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.isvara.org\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.isvara.org\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.isvara.org\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.isvara.org\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.isvara.org\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.isvara.org\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.isvara.org\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.isvara.org\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.isvara.org\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}