Kali Yuga :: Our Own Face

Destruction ~ Kali || Dark Goddess Tarot by Ellen Lorenzi-Prince

On my Instagram page I've posting a single card drawn each day from the Dark Goddess Tarot by Ellen Lorenzi-Prince. I'm committed to doing so until the next New Moon so as to hear the wisdom of these dark sisters, mothers, daughters during times when that feels so integral to our awakening as a culture, a cosmos. Today's Dark Goddess wisdom comes through Kali, Hindu Goddess of Time, Creation, Destruction and Regeneration through Fire, traditionally entitled The Tower in the RWS Tarot.

I pulled this after reading today's headlines, asking the question what do we need to hear, what wisdom is asking for a voice. Of course Kali seems less about asking and more about announcing, declaring, commanding and there are so many ways her presence today could be interpreted. My own views could shape it one way, opposing views could shape it 180 degrees the other way. I don't think that's the point, our lens is just that, subjective and thus only a partial view. But beyond 'subjectivity' and 'objectivity' is another realm, untraveled country for the most part. I see her presence here today as partially lifting the veil on the severity of the confusion we are immersed in. Remember, she says, this is my age, the Kali Yuga, 'the age of vice', the face of each of us. Each. Of. Us. All-inclusive.

Drunk with slaughter, she dances crushing all beneath her furious feet until finally Shiva, Lord of the Dance of Life, throws himself beneath her steps and she awakens, her wild dance slowing. None of us are immune because none of us are willing to give up our cherished illusions easily, generously, wholeheartedly. It's these illusions she dances upon, crushing and destroying them out of necessity. Terrible, horrifying, liberating. I don't imagine for a second that awakening comes easily, softly, gently. The Beloved wants all of us. I'm not ready for that kind of offering. And though she defies the circumscription of words, Kali's presence here today is a reminder of how destructive attachment to and identification with the egoic self is.

It's true that we seem to need less reminder of that these past weeks but beyond notions and experiences of 'other' and 'them', where is my own ego so entrenched that only dissolution's dance can purify it? Sobering questions to hold as I navigate my own small, transient but articulated place within this larger and longer Kaliyuga.