Meeting Kali - a trip down memory lane

I am burning women, burning women that's me

The fire of Kali burns within me and my soul sings her name.

I am daughter of the goddess, I have always been, as we all are.

When I was but four years of age I talked to the moon

as that is where my grandmother had gone.

The sacred divine has always been feminine to me

the idea of a singular male god always struck me as a weird notion.

How can you define the divine as male when you can not even prove it's existence? 

How can you deny the female principle that is creation in itself?

And shouldn't the divine be beyond gender? 

And when we do turn to the divine should we not all call to the aspect of it that resonates with us? That reflects us?

I am of Kali, the warrior goddess who defeats all evil!

The destroyer of demons!

The force of truth and justice that establishes equality in the world.

This was no choice but a calling, a yearning 

and ultimately Kali's will 

to call me to her, her choice to free my soul though her fire.

I have called on many goddesses and I still do. 

Having a patron goddess does not exclude all others.It does not exclude the male divine either. 

I honor Hecate, Cerridwen, the Holler women, Percht, the Babajaga, Hel, Artemis, Maat, Sekhmet, Astrate,Tiamat, Ishtar, Innana, Durga. 

I call on mother earth, Gaia, grandmother sea, the ancestral spirits, the triple goddess and many more.

But always the ones closest to me where the queens of wisdom, the goddesses of witchcraft, the feminine divine of justice and truth, the pathfinders. The crones that that give guidance and test us, the grandmothers of darkness, the givers of death and life. The goddesses that walk alone.

So it is not surprising that Kali took me as hers when I visited her temple on my travels.

A visit firmly ingrained in my memory. 

A horrendous experience that made my flesh crawl. The crowdedness of the temple, the priest that leered at me and wanted to rip me off, the floors stained with blood and dirt on which I tread with my bare feet. 

The animal sacrifice I witnessed. The internal mantra I chanted “Must wash feet” until there was nothing else in my mind, the stench of death and dirt and blood and incense. The flow of power. 

My senses overwhelmed. That is how I encountered Kali for the first time.

Now I can almost hear her laugh as I revisit the memory of our first encounter. I do not agree with animal sacrifice, I prefer temples to be serene and clean, I seek the quiet and solitude you can find in temple gardens so it is sweet irony, which amuses Kali greatly, that I am now hers.  

But hers I am with body and soul. When a goddess steps into your life you can not deny her, or if you do you do so on your own peril. 

Jai Mata Kali!

Jai Kali Maa!

Om Kali Ma!