Philosophia

“For God so loved the world…”

In this post, I intend to lay out a ‘Christian’ interpretation of the Hindu goddess Kali, particularly in her most popular form standing upon the god Shiva. The word ‘Christian’ must remain in quotes, because what initially appeared to be Christianity may look rather different by the end of the attempt. My aim is not to explain away a Hindu image as really referring to Christ, but to point out a similarity that could inform and expand both traditions.

The image of Kali is incredibly complex, and many layers of complementary and contradictory meaning have built up around it. I will have to leave most of this out, and even most of Hindu theology, in explaining the resonance with Christianity. So bear in mind the following is somewhat of a simplification, and seek out fuller information.

In short, Kali is a form of Shakti, the Goddess who is the active and immanent energy of the trascendent God who is pure consciousness. This God is her husband Shiva, who in the image lies beneath her feet. As the story goes, Kali had just destroyed an army of demons. Yet she continued her rampage, intoxicated by her fury and the demons’ blood, threatening the existence of the very world she had just helped to save. No one could stop her but Shiva, who laid in her way and let her trample him. As soon as she stepped on the supreme God, her beloved husband, she came to her senses and ceased the carnage.

Compare this to the central Christian myth: God came as Christ, sacrificing himself to a grisly death at the hands of a corrupt and deluded world, to save that very world. The image of Kali standing upon Shiva can be seen as an icon of the Crucifixion. Implicit in both images or myths is the idea that only love can save the world; opposing violence with violence is futile, and worse than futile. In both stories, God submits himself to the out-of-control violence of the fallen world, and in doing so makes manifest his limitless self-sacrificial love for her, which awakens and redeems her.

Her—and here we move from the way Kali points to Christ and pick up on the way Christ points to Kali—or rather, that God loves creation as a whole. Traditionally, Christianity has held that Christ’s sacrifice only saves some of God’s creatures, and perhaps very few (i.e. those humans who believe). But this is untenable, because the whole of creation is interdependent and intertwined. This is particularly apparent in the webs of love and empathy that connect all human beings and make them who they are. To save one creature is to begin to save all; could God’s work end before the whole cosmos is liberated from evil and restored?

In the effort to find correspondences between the two traditions, Kali has been compared to the Virgin Mary (as the holy feminine) or God (as God is portrayed as violent and awe-inspiring in parts of the Bible)—that is, when she isn’t simply dismissed as demonic. But I think the real correspondence is between Kali and the world itself. After all, this is what she represents in Hinduism: shakti (energy) and prakriti (matter). The difference is that in Hinduism these are also divine; whereas within a Christian framework they tend to be seen as the inanimate background upon which the real drama of human fall and redemption is played out (although curiously entwined with their fate). For most, if not all Christians, the world itself is not a personal being.

And yet, there is a quasi-divine feminine being in the Bible. She is Sophia, or Wisdom, and in the Book of Proverbs she says:

The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.

[…] when he marked out the foundations of the earth then I was beside him, like a master worker, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.

One way of interpreting this figure is as the personal essence of the unfallen world. God loves the world (indeed, loves it into being)—but love is personal. God created a personal universe to love and to blissfully return his love, and this is Sophia. A closer analogue to Sophia within Hindu theology might be Parvati, a beautiful and benevolent form of the Goddess (as Kali is the same Goddess’ terrifying form). To simplify a bit, Parvati could be considered unfallen creation and Kali the fallen world as we know it.

It is a tenet of Christianity that when we fell the world fell—we are intertwined. It was therefore not just human corruption that afflicted Christ, but the corruption of the physical world also (the flesh that was tormented and died; all the material conditions that pushed his killers to their act). In Christ we can say that God let the world trample upon him. And if the radiant love of this act transforms humanity for the better, it may also transform the very matter and energy of the world. Perhaps we glimpse the latter in miracles. And certainly, it seems at the very core of the Christian story: Christ rises in a perfected physical body.

In the image, Shiva is implicitly incarnated (how could Kali truly tread on him if he was still pure spirit?), and Kali is spiritualized as she wakes up to who she is and what she is doing. These tendencies are emphasized in another, somewhat different story: Shiva has retreated to a Himalayan cave and become lost in meditative bliss, heedless of the world falling apart around him. Only Parvati (not yet his wife) can rouse him. Initially, he cares nothing for her physical beauty, but she practices intense meditation and austerities to win his love. This is successful; he falls in love with her, takes her as his wife, and they produce (interestingly) the son who will save the world.

As the Church is to Christ (i.e. his bride), Sophia is to God. And as the imagery of erotic love has been used to describe love for God, it may be used to describe God’s love for creation. When Shiva sees Kali rampaging he doesn’t see a demon but his beloved Parvati. Likewise, God always sees the immaculately beautiful Sophia at the core of this raging, self-devouring cosmos. This is not to affirm fallen nature, but to confront it in the only way that might truly restore it—with love.