Kali Ma: Mad mother, demon destroyer, and loving wife of India’s pot god
Kālī | /ˈkɑːliː/| काली
Kali is a lot of things to a lot of people, but to Shiva, aka the destroyer, she was bae. Depending on who you ask, she started life as one of Agni’s seven tongues, Parvati’s discarded skin, or a rage-induced growth on Durga’s forehead. In any case, Kali wasn’t to be fucked with.
If there’s one quality that defines her most, it’s blood lust. In one of her most popular incarnations, Durga, Shiva’s other, more chill, but no less fierce boo, is wrapped up in an endless battle with the demon Raktabija. Durga and her crew were no match for Raktabija, who had a totally mind-blowing advantage: every drop of blood that hit the battlefield produced a whole new him.
Battling the endlessly reproducing blood demons made Durga furious. She got so mad that Kali popped straight out of her forehead, a feral, knife-wielding manifestation of her rage, with an appetite for blood and destruction. Kali straight up ate Raktabija and his minions for lunch, leaving the battlefield and her enemy bloodless.
Kali can be found throughout Hindu literature, murdering with abandon, drinking blood, and devouring her enemies. She’s also often found standing on her husband’s chest. Shiva, the destroyer, also known as the god of cannabis, is apparently the only one who can stop Kali’s destructive streak. Some people believe that Shiva actually threw himself under Kali’s feet to stop her from destroying the universe. It seems fitting that the Hindu pot god would be the chill that Kali needs.
But Kali isn’t just a baddie with a bad temper, she’s variously worshipped as the creator of the universe, mother of language, destroyer of demons, and divine protector.
This week at The Grass Agency, we’re paying respect to the mother of darkness with a little help from one of our favorite artists, Kali die-hard Jessica Gill. We’ll be updating this page all week long with more on this radical being, her tongue, her ten heads, and the murderous cult that strangled travelers in her name.
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The Rolling Stones and the mainstreaming of Kali's tongue
More than a millennia since its literary debut, Kali’s tongue is still popping. Whether it’s a symbol of shame or craving, Kali’s tongue has become an unmistakable mark thanks in part to another famous kisser: Mick Jagger.
Before she was depicted in her full, fierce form, Kali was just a tongue. Well, not just any tongue. She was one of seven tongues of Agni, the Hindu god of fire. It wasn’t until centuries after her debut in the Atharva Veda that Kali got the demon-slayer treatment in the Devi Mahatmya. It’s here that we see Kali pop out of Durga’s forehead, skeletal, feral, wearing a tiger’s skin, her mouth open and tongue hanging out. It’s also where we first hear of her famous appetite for blood, sucking Raktabija’s veins dry and devouring his clones with her giant mouth.
When you see Kali today, she’s often standing on her husband’s chest, draped in human appendages with a fierce look in her eye, her menacing tongue extended, ready to give evil a licking. Some believe that her protruding tongue is a display of embarrassment, triggered by the realization that she’s trampled her boo in a fit of blind rage. It could just as easily be seen as a sign of taunting or insatiability. Whatever the case, the image of Kali’s tongue has become an entity of its own, spreading globally without mention of its divine source.
In 1970, the Rolling Stones paid John Pasche, a student at the Royal College of Art in London, 50 pounds to design a logo based on Kali’s tongue for their upcoming record, Sticky Fingers. In addition to an interactive front cover featuring an Andy Warhol photo of a man’s giant bulge in a pair of tight fitting jeans, the album also featured one of the most recognizable marks in rock and roll history: the iconic “tongue and lips” logo. While many mistake those juicy lips for Mick Jagger’s Pasche says the real inspiration came from Kali’s maw.
In a 2016 interview with the Victoria and Albert Museum, Pasche, recalled Jagger bringing him an image of Kali with her tongue out as inspiration for the band’s logo. “But I didn’t want to do anything Indian, because I thought it would be very dated quickly, as everyone was going through that phase at the time,” he said in a 2015 interview with The New York Times.
Pasche was apparently unaware of the billions of people for whom “Indian” is more than a passing fad.
Heidi Klum and Kali's split identities
Heidi Klum is blue. Rather she was blue. On the night of her annual Halloween party in 2008, the German supermodel stepped out in an elaborate Kali costume, displaying the deity’s darkest side. While her interpretation was either packing four arms too many or two arms too few, depending on who you ask, she seemed to nail Kali’s vibes. Or at least one of them.
Whether she knew it or not, Klum was stepping into a political quagmire with her ridiculously valuable azure stems. Not only did she court controversy through appropriation, she also chose to represent Kali in a form many believe to be dated, even offensive. In a 2003 interview, Rachel Fell McDermott, professor of Hinduism at Barnard College, broke down Kali’s complex representations and how they’ve morphed over time:
“In Bengal, Kali has been viewed increasingly through a very maternal, sweet lens ... You can see it in her images, which have become less and less frightening. She's become more mainstream; the rough edges are toned down. Westerners are not attracted to this sweetened Kali; they're attracted to the more death-defying Kali who presents a spectrum of opposites.”
While early depictions feature her as a knife-wielding, blood-sucking demon slayer, who wears the severed heads of her enemies as accessories, her image in the East has shifted. In parts of India, she’s known as much for her mom vibes as her killer instincts. Among, goddess worshiping feminists in the West, she’s become a symbol of sexual liberation, power, and even rage. Bottomline is, there’s no one way to interpret Kali, which makes total sense for a figure who’s been described as everything and nothing all at once. Word to the wise: If you’re trying to fit Kali in a box, you better bring one big enough for all ten arms and a whole lot of cultural conflict.
Thuggee Life
They say there are no atheists in a fox hole. For some of us, faith is a revelation that only hits when shit gets real, for others devotion is a 24 hour grind. Take the Thuggees, a cult of murderous Kali worshippers said to have been active from at least the mid-1500s to the mid-1800s. Thugs (for short) traced their existence back to seven Muslim tribes but worshipped the Hindu goddess of destruction with a level of adherence that can only be refered to as homicidal.
Depending on who you ask, they either murdered hundreds of thousands or millions of travelers in ritual sacrifice to Kali. They preyed on foreigners to avoid detection, getting in with groups of travelers and picking them off one-by-one, strangling them with handkerchiefs, cummerbunds, or turbans, looting their corpses, and disposing of their bodies in ritual ceremonies. Thug Behram, the most notorious of the Thuggee, reportedly killed more than 900 people. Behram’s weapon of choice? A medallion sewn into his scarf that would crush his victims’ tracheas as they gasped for air.
The Thuggee apparently justified mass murder with the old “god made me do it” defense. They offered the ironic argument that their human sacrifices were actually saving lives by satiating Kali’s appetite for destruction. Without them, Kali might just destroy the whole damn universe. A British-led anti-Thug campaign eradicated the Thuggees in the 1830s. Hundreds of Thugs turned snitch and hundreds more were executed by the government, bringing their centuries-long killing spree to an abrupt end. Today, the Thuggee’s are long gone, but their legacy lives on through the racially charged slur, “thug.”
Though there’s substantial evidence to support the story, some have disputed accounts of the Thugs’ existence, dismissing them as “colonial imaginings.”
Why’s it gotta be blue?
To modify a phrase from Salt n’ Peppa’s 1993 banger, Shoop, “If looks could kill, she would be an uzi.”
Today Kali’s seen as a blue stunner and benevolent mother, but when she first popped up in sacred texts she was a wild woman, more feral feminist than darling deity. “Dreadful,” “utterly gruesome,” “terrifying,” that’s the Kali we know and love. In the Devi Mahatmyam, her first embodied incarnation, Kali, also known as Mahakali in her ultimate form, sports four or ten arms, respectively. As Mahakali, she has ten arms, ten legs, ten heads, and thirty eyes, three for each of her ten faces. Her tongue hangs out of a glittery grill. She’s draped in a tiger sari and dripping in human skulls. In each hand she clutches a different weapon. Her eyes are red with rage and her mouth agape, the better to swallow her enemies with. Today, Kali worshippers tend to favor her softer side. They’ve even changed her skin from the darkness of night to a cool blue, likely a nod to her boo, Shiva.
Truth is, how you choose to view Kali is entirely up to you. Anyway, it’s not like it matters. In addition to all of the above, some believe the divine protector is time itself, a formless energy that predates the universe, imperceptible to mortal eyes. You may think you know Kali, but you have no idea ....