If you’re not already familiar with her, let me introduce the ferocious, Hindu Goddess, Feminine Archetype—Kali:

A beautiful young woman, with dark blue skin, naked except for what looks like a hula skirt made of severed arms. Her round breasts are full and firm….Wild black locks flow down her back….wide, lustrous eyes so luminously beautiful that it is impossible not to be drawn in…..

The Kali archetype celebrates the power and relevance of strong feminine energy in modern times.

Goddess Kali increases our ability to bring about spiritual transformation both on a personal level and the world at large.

Kali energy often presents during times of unparalleled stress, which can lead to an undoing, a redefining and restructuring of our life from the inside out.

In other words, Kali is the one who is there when we lose our sh*t.

Sometimes goddess energy will come to us on her own accord. When this happens we may experience major shifts and/or upheavals.

This energy is extremely potent. It’s as if the universe, via feminine archetypes, is contacting us directly, whether we like it or not.

This sort of thing happened to me. While I endured great upheaval that upended my life during this Goddess Archetype activation, I also experienced intense, ecstatic goddess love and energy.

The old adage You will not be given more than you can handle didn’t hold true for me.

I broke under the weight of it.

Yet through this kind of breakage I began my transformational journey, which entailed brutal honesty and tremendous courage, as I confronted my shadow self. Yet each swipe of Kali’s blood-covered sword led me closer to true authentic selfhood.

Following the path of the goddess awakens us in every fiber of our being.

While I still have much work to do, I consider myself to be a goddess in training.

Everyone has their own path, their own story to tell, which folds into the tapestry of the human experience.

There were times where I doubted, both myself and this strange, fiery, gorgeous energy. Yet, I couldn’t escape the truth of my own knowingness.

I am on the path of awakening to the goddess within me and to help bring all her healing juiciness into the world. Perhaps we can heal this world, one goddess at a time.

Will you join me?

When goddess energy was activated within me I became unusually perceptive to other people’s energies and their effect upon myself and others.

I also become more artistically expressive, as seen in the poems I wrote while embodying the energy from goddess Kali.

While a voracious reader, I never wrote before this happened, other than the occasional term paper in college.

Other goddess archetypes can be called upon as well. Their energy can be equally potent yet manifests in different ways.

I humbly offer my Kali inspired poems that are the embodiment of Kali energy as I received it—

Shifting Reality

It seemed like yesterday

when I stood

upon two tectonic plates,

left foot on one

right foot on the other.

When suddenly began

a great churning,

a sliding,

a shifting,

a gliding

away from the Known

and a rising up

of the Unknown. 

A new reality emerging

old reality submerging. 

Cresting like a wave

and then down, down it came

crashing, colliding,

causing collateral damage

along the way

for all passing

through its wake. 

Blood-curdling screams ring the air 

Yet no emotions can compare

to the utter maniacal revolt

as a New Way ascends

and the Old Way descends,

gouged beyond recognition. 

Creative destruction unearths

the rich, fertile soils of Yestertime. 

There ensues a cacophonous onslaught

to my senses. 

I am heady and gobsmacked

as my reality is highjacked.

 

Goddess expression is not necessarily in the form of poems or even prose. Listen to your inner voice, she will not lead you astray.

There may also be intense sensual energy that arises. The goddesses are sensual and they will not be denied their authentic expression.

There may need to be a re-defining of things, especially if one is in a committed relationship. It’s all about being true to ourselves while maintaining balance—nurturing our whole authentic self as well as our loved ones.

Luckily, we have other goddess energies to call upon, such as Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati, to name just a few.

Kali is the one to call upon when we’re willing to leave the familiar behind, if that’s what it takes.

Kali is the fierce goddess who is activated when our masculine and feminine energies are imbalanced. She brings the gifts of our shadow side into the light

The Kali archetype both frightens and fascinates us. While Kali renders our old attitudes and adaptations powerless, she gives us a new understanding and the tools to mange our life and its traumas—both in the present as well as the past.

Sometimes, it feels like we don’t have a choice—but we do.

Ultimately the decision is ours.

Kali is here to destroy our masks and to celebrate our full, unadulterated authenticity.

Kali will dance on our bones of self-deceit. She will gorge on our unseeing eyes and throw our precious ego-earned medals into a fiery pit.

Kali takes no prisoners.

Our carefully coifed exterior that was built upon samsaric pleasures will be gleefully peeled off, layer by layer by this wanton goddess.

Until finally, we lay at her altar, naked and free.

It is frightening at times but beneath it all, Kali is riding on the sacred wings of love.

Kali is the embodiment of fearlessness, authenticity and freedom. She brings energetic spiritual liberation and also tremendous ferocity—which makes her quite enigmatic.

Kali is creating transformation within us with lightning-like illumination, she slays our demons that keep us small with her never-erring sword of destruction.

I offer this prayer to invoke Kali (but you can also make you own)—

I invoke the almighty Goddess Kali who is the embodiment of

fearlessness, authenticity and freedom. Please help me to

transform my fear and free myself from limitations of my own design.

I call on Kali to lend me her swift sword

so I may cut away my false attachments and be my most authentic

 The key thing to know about Kali is that she is here to—transform our fear.

It is important to have an open heart and be willing to share. The more you share your own goddess experiences the more the goddesses will show themselves, within you and within your life.

The goddess may show up when you least expect it, but you can also choose the goddess energy which resonates for you in your life at this time.

You can call in goddess energies through prayer/invocation, mantra, through meditation and song. And lastly, through sheer openness to divine, feminine activation.

Music is a great portal for goddess energies. The music you connect with, after actively calling on the goddess, will be the music of the goddess your soul is yearning for.

My experience with goddess energy is that it is bountiful. But we must ask for her. At times she’ll come on her own accord, but she prefers to be beckoned.

Join me in welcoming the goddesses back into our lives in their fullest, wildest, most empowering female expression—

 

When Kali Comes A Knockin’

There’s a Kali wind on the loose tonight,

nipping at my heels, pelting

me with icy pokers, penetrating through

layered sheaths of morose acceptance and purblind conformity.

Poke, poke, poking, ceaseless, relentless,

drawing blood, 

sucking marrow out of my bones of sorrow.

It’s okay, I say, trying to unfurl her furrowed brow and

place a kiss upon her scowl.

Yet, she does not smile.

There’s a Kali wind out there tonight pounding on my door, refusing

to be ignored.

I invite her in.

A blinding light

dispatches all defenses.

Now stripped down to bare essence,

a ghost of my former presence—

there is no fighting her.

I bow to you, oh beautiful, terrible one. I follow your lead with no heed to consequences.
 
Where are you taking me?

Will they serve tea upon our arrival?

Will there be a murder of crows lining our entrance?

Will the honey bees lift us off the ground with their ecstatic vibration?

Almighty Kali drags me across hot
coals by my hair.

She hurls me through a ring of fire.

I fall to my knees in supplication.

Almighty Kali has called me to her altar.
I drink from her chalice of blood-colored water.

She frees me from the fear-leeches that suck me dry.

         Kali licks my beads of sweat with her terrible, blood-red tongue.

Her blue-black form pulsates with goddess energy

as she takes from me—

my dark secrets.

A bitter, gray substance

oozes from of my body.

Shame, blame, my misplaced anger—Kali alchemizes them into resplendent, all-loving, life-affirming elixir.    

And, I know:

I am home.

I will honor my goddess without fear of rejection

for she will be by my side always even in

my darkest hour.

I will sip goddess wine from a chosen consort and

I will beg for more.

The door behind me has closed but the one in front is

wide open.

~

Author: Melanie Jackson

Image: Hindu Goddess Kali 

Editor: Travis May