December 2, 2004
The Goddess behind the Demon:
An adventure with Kali
By Mari P. Ziolkowski, Ph.D.
After a career working in non-profit organizations in the inner city and border communities, my interest in social justice and liberation theology 'liberated' me. Departure from my religious tradition of origin initiated a search for a path that could honor me as an embodied woman. The journey led ultimately to the graduate Women's Spirituality program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where dissertation work involved systematic self study of altered states (dreams, meditations, and holotropic breathwork). The following is an excerpt.
After beginning a meditative practice years ago, I also began to have more encounters with 'negative entities' in the dreamtime. As my spiritual tradition of origin only knew how to exorcise, distance or vanquish these energies, that is what I practiced. However, when the time came that these strategies no longer worked, I found myself shaken. Were the negative forces stronger than myself, and my spiritual retinue? Was this a consequence of my departure from 'the church?' I was unsure where to turn.
Cautiously, I proceeded onward -- exploring books on psychic protection, and gathering feedback from trusted others. Later, I was to discover that shamanic sources indicated if these energies have shown up, it is part of one's myth to confront them -- until the way of thinking changes, or until they turn into allies….
In my second semester at CIIS, in a class called the 'Dark Mother,' darkness moved away from its connotation as negative and scary. As I found it instead linked to African origins, goddess traditions, Magdalene, and black madonnas a paradigm shift was initiated. A new definition of darkness as positive -- primal, earth based, mysterious, and with profound connections to the divine feminine, manifested. Thus, when I encountered a scary dark force (two red, seemingly demonic eyes) in my second holotropic breathwork session, I actually felt safe enough to go towards it/them. Was this a function of the safe container provided, or the paradigm shift that had begun? Or both?
To acquire power one must master one's own instability, said the shamanic traditions. When one confronts fear or mythological demons, the transpersonal task is to surrender into the experience and trust one will survive. The Jungians say it is only in confronting fear and the negative within that we will recognize our true identity…. So it seems that wherever this energy was coming from, an opportunity was being provided.
As I took up the challenge, most of my preconceived notions were blown to bits. Not with how much rage/anger energy I was able to release -- I was used to the process of discharging emotion -- but by finding a goddess behind what looked like a demon. How could this be? The transpersonal pioneer Stan Grof would explain it as part of the titanic struggle of my birth process (20 hours long in reality). Could this biological process be defining my life experience, and be the gateway to the transpersonal realms?
As had often proven true on my path, follow up research was a guide in and of itself. The literature I reviewed on the Greek Gorgon -- whose face was strikingly similar to what I had seen in my session -- identified her function as 'guardian at the gate.' She was said to scare off those not meant to enter -- and be a test for those who wished to pass within. Was this another reason why I had to conquer my fear? To pass a test? If so, who was giving it? Myself, or someone else? As the two red eyes first seen in the breathwork session were now with me even when I went to sleep, this better be a goddess -- an ally -- or I was in trouble . . .
More research in the shamanic realms indicated that one must learn to navigate the realms of spirit, if one wanted to be a 'person of power.' Suggestions included having an ally to do this. Is that what I had just found? An ally?
In Jungian terms, the dark, or the shadow could be said to contain psychic features that are unlived or frightening. Had I encountered my own shadow (emotional intensity) -- often disowned by women in western culture -- and had it rather become a way of accessing power? Hearing how my astrology chart fit in with shamanic journeying and that I was here to work on spiritual warriorship fit right into this picture. I cried because it all made sense now -- that likely from the personal (familial) as well as the collective level, I have inherited this task.
Was this then another reason for my movement out of the church and towards feminist spirituality? A search for a positive context for this forceful energy? Did I meet Kali in response to this search?
It is said that rage must be released before the repressed power of women can turn into creativity. Is this the process that was set in motion? As I owned this fierce energy, would I access a new source of power? Would I walk differently in the world? What would shift as this inner female warrior energy was recognized, acknowledged, given a purpose?
Another unexpected part of the journey soon made itself known. In a continuation of work started in the dreamtime, in the next holotropic session I found myself grieving and raging for the masculine that was not present for me growing up -- the masculine church that could not acknowledge me as a woman -- and the culture that had little place for my power. And this time I was met.
In all the sadness, in all the rage, in all the intensity I was witnessed by a strong, male guardian who was not intimidated. A facilitator who not only encouraged the process, but who named the power he saw, and acknowledged the difficulty of the road I had traveled. The reverberations moved through life memories, through past lives, all the way down to the cellular level. If the damage could not be undone, it could be healed. Like receiving new imprints to replace, or balance off, the old -- I felt I was being reconfigured. The inner masculine, as well as inner feminine, was being healed . . .
Then, in what seemed to be an unrelated session, I found myself embodying tiger energy, priestess energy, and kundalini energies. As the ecstatic vibrations initially seemed to be 'not her,' at first I desired another showing of fierceness. But as the journey continued, I realized I was likely experiencing the multivalent nature of this goddess -- her shamanic, sacred-sexual, and temple priestess connection. Even her connection to the kundalini was making itself known through bodily vibration. It appeared that early on, I was receiving both a research-based and experiential demonstration of the continuum of her energies….
The following fall, I found myself embodying the whole continuum in one session -- both the all-compassionate loving energy I had come to know in meditation, and the breakout energy of the warrior. Only this time, the compassionate energy came through me -- the archetypal mother energy. An axiom of the Hindu tradition demonstrated itself literally for me. "To worship the goddess, you must become the goddess." In a most powerful, collective way I was a channel for her seeming polarities: loving energy that could hold the masculine (my partner's process), and warrior energy that was intent on breaking the psychic bonds of patriarchy for women (as my hands moved from a bondage position into swords -- and I slashed the pillows again and again and again). Throughout this session, it became apparent that the goddess energy was not separate from me. She was in me. I was in her. A slightly changed version of the doxology of the Catholic mass came to mind: "Through Her, with Her, and in Her, in the unity of the Sacred Masculine, All glory and honor is yours, Almighty Mother. Amen."
One must relate personally to a symbol, say Tantric Buddhists. Though they emerge from the unconscious, symbols can have connections to divine power outside the self, say the Jungians. When we confront the dark figure of our dreams -- the energy of death turns into life…. She crystallizes the wrath of all women, of all cultures, say the feminists -- she is a symbol of those powers suppressed and denied by patriarchy. Hindu Tantrics say the goddess hearkens back to tribal matrilineal roots, and the time when shamans were women.
Sprung from the anger and rage of the goddess Durga when she could not defeat the demons, what does it mean that this goddess, Kali, for the second time in holotropic breathwork, manifests out of my own anger and rage? This time she clearly demonstrates, not only on a personal level, but on the collective as well, the constructive power of female source energy to slay the demons of oppression. All that conditioning I have internalized about how women aren't supposed to get angry. All the societal controls to 'keep us in our place.' All the shadow of anger that in Western culture men have taken on -- Kali continues to deconstruct. In no uncertain terms, Kali demonstrates that anger, as well as all-compassionate love, is a function of the goddess. I believe that as women claim this powerful source energy, as the dark goddess moves in and through us, there will be less projection of the cultural shadow of violence onto men. A space may be freed up for men to consider other options. We may not be able to change them. But we can change ourselves. In this changing, according to systems theory, we allow space in the whole human system for new alternatives….
You, the dark one, Kali, awesome power. You who began your journey with me long ago, you who have been with me from the beginning.... You who confounded me with your presence in the creative and destructive forces of nature and human alike.… You it must have been who called me out of my spiritual tradition of origin. Who first appeared in your snaky sister form. You who hinted at your power in the sacred sexual stirrings of my meditations. You who called to me as black madonna. You who appeared in altered states in your wrathful form, calling from me all my anger, pain and rage. You, with your two staring red eyes, standing as guardian at the gate of my inner knowing. You, in your warrior form, who broke the bonds of women throughout the centuries, my bonds.... You who came to me as the all-compassionate loving mother energy. You, who could hold it all. You who overwhelmed my 'heart of darkness' - you who brought me to the ground in surrender. You whom I have come to know: You, the dark one, Kali, awesome power. . .
NOTES
May Sarton, "Invocation to Kali," in She Rises Like the Sun, ed. Janine Canaan (Freedom, California: Crossing Press, 1989) as quoted by Rachel Fell McDermott, "The Western Kali," in Devi, eds. John Hawley and Donna Wulff (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996): 290.
Coatlicue -- encountered in my travels in Mexico -- the Aztec snake headed, skull necklaced, serpent skirted Mother of the Gods, see John Mini, The Aztec Virgin (Sausalito: Trans-Hyperborean Institute of Publishing, 2000).