This is an excerpt from the book Celebrating Women.
“The Mother of Enlightenment pervades the heavens; the Mother
of Enlightenment pervades the atmosphere; the Mother of Enlightenment
pervades Mother and Father and child. All Gods of the Universe are pervaded
by the Mother, the five forms of living beings, all Life. The Mother
of Enlightenment, She is to be known.” -Kali Puja
The Mother God has been worshipped in India for five thousand years.
Her name, Shakti, means energy. Hindus pray to Her, “O loving
Mother, thou hast two aspects, the terrible and the peaceful.”
Her “terrible” energy manifests as the warrior goddesses,
Durga and Kali, whose festivals are celebrated throughout India. Both
Goddesses conduct relentless battles with evil.
Durga Puja
Durga Puja (puja means worship) celebrates the Goddess Durga’s
victory against Mahishasura, a shape-shifting demon so intractable that
none of the Gods could stop him from destabilizing the cosmos. The frustrated
deities met to devise a new strategy.
They each breathed fire and from the flames Durga appeared: beautiful
enough to distract enemies and powerful enough to eradicate them. The
God’s returned their great powers to Shakti: each handed Durga
his best weapon, which she brandished in one of her ten hands. Her mount
was the animal-equivalent of her personality: a lion.
When she rode into battle against Mahishasura, he tried to seduce
her with compliments. She roared with rage. Even though he masqueraded
in many forms, Durga pursued him mercilessly. Ultimately, he assumed
human form and stepped from his water buffalo disguise. She slay him
with the trident Lord Shiva had given her, and saved the world.
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Kali Puja
On the night of new moon, 29 days
after Durga Puja, Kali Puja occurs. Who is Goddess Kali to be so beloved
in Calcutta, a city whose very name is an anglicized version of Kalighat,
her temple?
Kali bolted to life during a battle
Durga conducted with particularly malicious, wily demons. When her
enemies brandished their weapons, Durga’s face went dark with
rage; suddenly the fierce Goddess Kali burst from Durga’s forehead
and hurtled into battle tearing the demons apart, crushing them in
her jaws. She grasped two demon generals and decapitated them in one
furious blow.
There was more to do. Durga beckoned
Kali to help her quash demon Raktabija whom Durga and her assistants,
a fierce band of sixteen called the Matrkas, mothers, had
wounded. He was bleeding and every drop of blood he shed reproduced
him a thousand times. There were mini-Raktabijas everywhere. Kali
didn’t hesitate. She sucked the blood from the demon’s
body, then gobbled his countless copies.
Although there are many schools and
methods of worshiping Kali, devotees believe that by approaching the
divine through her terrifying form, they will realize that “opposites”
(death/life, evil/good, destruction/creation, ugly/beautiful, female/male)
are different sides of the same coin; duality is illusion, the world
is whole.
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