Origen Hindu (Puranic) [India]. Goddess of destruction.

Known period of worship circa 400 AD, but known from much earlier times, until present.

“The black mother”; Dark Goddess; the Terrible; goddess of death; Great Goddess; the Crone; Mother of Karma; Patroness of Witches. Dual personality exhibiting traits of both gentleness and love, revenge and terrible death. Governs every form of death but also rules every form of life. She is always a trinity manifested in three forms: three divisions of he year, three phases of the Moon three sections of the cosmos, three stages of life, three types of priestesses at her shrines. Said to command the weather by braiding or releasing her hair. Her karmic wheel devours time itself.

Kali is the most terrible and malignant aspect of the goddess Sakti (also known as Durga) though the name Kali is an epithet applied to several goddesses. She is the central figure of the sakta cult in Bengal. Her consort is generally perceived as Siva, whom she aids and abets in his more malignant aspects. Also one of the mahavidya personifications of he Sakti of Siva. In her earliest form she may have been the personification of the spirit of evil.

She is depicted variously with long ragged locks, fang-like teeth or even tusks, lips smeared or dripping with blood, bare breasts, her brow has a third eye and claw-like hands with long nails. Her tongue often protrudes. She has no special vehicle but may be seen dancing on a prostrate Siva. She possesses ten (sometimes as many as eighteen) arms and may wear a necklace of skulls, a belt of severed arms, earrings of children’s corpses, and snakes as bracelets. Often she is half-naked with black skin. Kali is depicted wading through gore on the battlefield and drinking the blood of her victims. Frequently she holds a severed head in one of her hands and a large sword in another. At cremation sites she sits upon the body of the deceased surrounded by attendant jackals.

There are also more benign aspects of Kali. She slaughters demons and sometimes her hands are raised in blessing. The conflict of her personality follows the widely held notion that out of destruction comes rebirth.

Kali is worshiped in Bengal during the Dipavali festival. In southern India she is worshiped as a distinct plague goddess associated with cholera.

Goddess of learning. Jain. One of sixteen headed by the goddess Sarasvati.

This fearsome and four-armed creature has double-edged power – power both to deal out dreadful retribution and to offer love. Once she is bent on a frenzy of destruction, only Shive – Kali’s consort, whose seed she carries as the promise of new life – is able to control her insatiable lust for blood.

Violence against any woman is forbidden by her. Regeneration, revenge, fear dark magick, sexual activities, time reincarnation, intuition, dreams, defender of the helpless such as women and children.