THE DIVINE DESTRUCTRESS   Darkmoon

Midsummer marks the point of balance between the light and dark halves of the seasonal year. We are approaching the season of Winter, traditionally associated with a time in which the Great Goddess assumes Her dark aspect of Crone.

As Goddess of death, the Crone is reflected in numerous cultures in which it is customary for old women to take care of the dead by dressing, anointing and watching over them until the funereal rites are completed. The Great Goddess in Her Crone aspect is also closely linked with the deepest secrets of Witchcraft and Women's Mysteries. When a woman is beyond child-bearing age, she may be described as 'Drawing in her blood'. The womb, although no longer obviously productive, may now become a vessel of regeneration, much like the cauldron of the Celtic Goddess Cerridwen, in which she could boil up the dead so as to resurrect them. Because of her command of a woman's mysteries, the Crone's womb often becomes synonymous with the tomb, a place that represents the terrors of the unknown and the realm of the dead.

In traditional Maori mythology the Goddess Hine-nui-te-po ('Great-Woman-the-Night') is generally credited with introducing death into the world. She is believed to be part of every human being's life cycle: from birth, when an infant leaves the womb of a woman, disappearing at death into the grave - which is Hine-nui-te-po's mouth.

As the bringer of death the Crone is also the ultimate judge. Her accouterments often include books of records, like those of the Sumerian Goddess Ereshkigal and her Semitic counterpart Husbishag. In this role her name is used to swear the most solemn oaths, and death-bringers from Tellus Mater in Rome to Yabme Akka in Scandinavia have become the most formidable guarantors of truth and goodness.

Kali - The Beginning and the End

No Crone Goddesses are more formidable that the Dark Mother Kali, the Hindu Goddess of Life and Death. Either under Her own name or as Shakti (the embodiment of female energy), the Great Goddess Maha Devi is most often encountered in Indian iconography, art and literature. Kali's titles include Shyama - the Black One, Chandi - the Fierce One, and Bhairava - the Terrible One, and it is in these forms that she receives blood sacrifices, usually from male animals.

At one time animal sacrifices were common in many Hindu temples, but this practice has gradually declined with the advent of Buddhism and Jainism with their emphasis on non-violence (Ahimsa). Today animal sacrifice is practiced only by a few remote tribal cults and in a few temples dedicated to Kali or Durga, or to the terrible forms of Shiva. The majority of Hindus as well as most Shaktas (Shakti or Goddess worshippers) disapprove of animal sacrifice which was legally banned in India as early as 1835.

Kali is commonly depicted as a towering black-skinned Goddess whose tongue stretches from her blood-dripping mouth. She is heavily garlanded with serpents and skulls. Her skirt is made of severed arms and hands of evil-doers. She brandishes a sword in one of four hands while another hand holds the decapitated head of the demon Mahisa (who at one point threatened to destroy the Gods and humanity).

One of the many aspects of Devi-Kali is the Goddess Machilottu, a young girl who was wrongfully accused of prostitution and licentiousness. She was attacked by an angry mob and driven from her village. After pleading her case with the God Shiva she received a vision from him. She built her own funeral pyre and, unharmed, roared into the sky on a pillar of flame as a triumphant new-born Goddess.

In a third hand, Mahakali, the mistress of time, holds a pair of  scissors. Kali occupies both the time and space of the mortal dimension and the still point at the centre of infinity. Hindu cosmology describes a universe that undergoes a series of cycles or ages. At the end of each age, all creation crumbles into Mahakali and returns to the seed, from which the next age arises. According to the sacred text Devibhagavata, the Goddess at the end of time has no tangible form or quality and represents absolute truth.

Kali and Isis

No historical material links the worship of Kali with that of Isis, yet both Goddesses are claimed as forebears to the Black Madonna, the dark image of the virgin Mary revered throughout Christian Europe. It is a historical fact that the Gypsy people of Romany who have long been associated (rightly or wrongly) with Isis and her worship, spring from the Indian subcontinent, the land of Kali's worship. No myths link these two deities per se, though Isis in her dark aspect is known as the 'Breaker in Pieces', a title shared by Kali.

Isis and the Black Virgin

In Christianity some of the most extravagant miracles have been claimed for the so-called Black Madonnas. There have been many explanations for these figures, that they have been darkened by candle soot after years of worship, that they are folk memories of ancient African idols, that they are Pagan images brought back from the Crusades, or even that they reflect the aspect of the ancient Goddess as dark ruler of the Underworld.

Isis may be behind many of the mysterious statues. Ancient Egyptian iconography of Isis and her son Horus have influenced representations of the virgin with the infant Jesus. In her book The Goddess Book of Days, Diane Stein suggests that the season of Lent in the Christian calendar is derived from Isis' search for and resurrection of Osiris. In modern Egypt Coptic Christians still shake sistrums, a symbol sacred to Isis, and also worship an Isis among their saints, though it is unclear whether she is named after the Goddess, a martyr or other church celebrity.

The Black Goddess of Time

Kali is not what one expects a stereo-typical Hindu woman to be, for Kali is neither gentle, bashful, nor subservient towards her husband. Kali is depicted naked, her hair matted and disheveled, intoxicated from the blood of demons. One wonders whether this untypical image of a Hindu Goddess perhaps originated in another culture? There are many examples of similar deities in distant countries. We find Kali in ancient Crete as Rhea, the Aegean Universal Mother Goddess who was worshipped over a vast area by many different peoples. Rhea was not restricted to the Aegean area. Amongst ancient tribes of southern Russia she was Rha, the Red One. Obviously another version of Kali as Mother Time clothed  in her garment of blood as devourer of her offspring. The same Mother Time became the Welsh Goddess Rhiannon, who was accused of devouring her child. The image of a cannibalistic Mother-Goddess was typical in many cultures around the world of the Goddess of Time who consumes that which she brings forth, or as Earth Mother who does the same.

When Rhea received a consort in Hellenic myth, he was called Kronos/Chronus, Father Time (Roman Saturn), who devoured his own children in imitation of Rhea's earlier activity. He also castrated and killed his own father, the Heavenly God Uranos. He in turn was castrated and slain by his son Zeus. These myths reflect the primitive succession of sacred Kings castrated and killed by their supplanters.  It was originally Rhea Kronia, Mother Time, who wielded the castrating moon sickle or scythe, a Scythian weapon, the instrument with which the Heavenly Father was harvested. Rhea herself was the original 'Grim Reaper'.

In Ireland Kali appeared as the Caillech or Cailleach. Like Kali, the Cailleach was Black Annis, a black Mother who founded many races of people and who outlived many husbands. She was credited with the control of the weather and with the creation of the world, building mountain ranges from stones that had fallen from her apron. Scotland was called Caledonia - the land given by Cale, the Caillech - Kali. the word Scotland comes from Scotia, the same Goddess, known to Romans as a 'Dark Aphrodite', to the Celts as Scatha or Scyth, and to Scandinavians as Skadhi.

Like Kalika, the Cailleach was known as a spirit of disease. One of her famous manifestations includes a painted wooden idol kept by an old family in County Cork and described as the Goddess of Smallpox. As diseased persons in India sacrificed to the appropriate incarnation of the Kalika, so in Ireland those afflicted by smallpox sacrificed sheep to the image of the Caillech.

The Black Goddess was known in Finland as Kalma (close to Kali Ma) a haunter of tombs and an eater of the dead. She is worshipped by the Gypsies as Sara Kali, 'Queen Kali', and to this present day, Sara is worshipped in the south of France at Ste-Marie-De-La-Mer during a yearly festival. Some gypsies appeared in 10th century Persia as tribes of itinerant dervishes calling themselves Kalenderees, 'People of the Goddess Kali'. A common gypsy clan name is Kaldera or Calderash, which descended from past Kali-worshippers, like the Kele-de of Ireland.

European gypsies relocated their Goddess in the ancient Druid Grotto underneath Chartres Cathedral, once the interior of a sacred mount known as the Womb of Gaul, when the area was occupied by the Carnutes, the 'Children of the Goddess Car'. Carnac, Kermario, Kerlescan, Kercado and Carmona in Spain, and Chartres itself were named after this Goddess, probably a Celtic version of Kore or Q're, traceable through nations to Kauri, another name for Kali. The Druid Grotto housed the image of a black Goddess giving birth, similar to certain images of Kali. Christians adopted this ancient idol and called her Virgo Paritura, 'Virgin Giving Birth'. Gypsies called her Sara Kali, the 'Mother, woman, sister, queen, the Phuri Dai, the source of all Romany (Gypsy) blood'.

Bibliography

The Goddess by Shahruhk Husain - Living Wisdom Series, Duncan Baird Publishers
Kali: The Black Goddess of Dakshineswar by Elizabeth Harding , Nicholas Hays Inc.
The Mysteries of Isis by DeTraci Regula, Llewellyn Publishers
Gods and Demons by Amanda O'Neill, Grange Books
Hinduism: The Eternal Law by Margaret Stutley, Aquarian Press