Myth Pages: The Goddess Kali

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Kali, A Hindu Goddess,

According to J.E. Cirlot's A Dictionary of Symbols, imagery is complex and multifaceted. Cirlot says this about the symbol of the mother:

Mother-symbols are characterized by an interesting ambivalence: the mother sometimes appears as the image of nature, and vice-versa; but the Terrible Mother is a figure signifiying death. For this reason, Hermetic doctrine held that to "return to the mother" was equivalent to dying. For the Egyptians, the vulture was a mother-symbol, probably because it devours corpses; it also stood for the means whereby Hammamit (the universal soul) was split up into separate parts to form individual souls....Jung mentions that in Jean Thenaud's Traite de la Cabale (of the 16th century) there is a mother figure actually represented in the form of a god of destiny. He mentions further that the Terrible Mother is the counterpart of the Pieta representing not only death but also the cruel side of nature--its indifference towards human suffering (Cirlot 218). [Kali is the Hindu goddess who embodies this symbol.]

Cirlot, J. E. A Dictionary of Symbols. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1971.

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