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In her essay "Is the Goddess a Feminist?" in the collection Is the Goddess a Feminist? The Politics of South Asian Goddesses (2000) edited by Alf Hiltebeitel and Kathleen M. Erndl, Rita M. Gross discusses traditional images of Hindu goddesses, and Kālī specifically, and the appropriateness of their use by Western feminists as images of empowerment - and their relevance and use by Indian feminists. Most interestingly, she discusses authority versus power, and argues that while Indian society is very patriarchal, the Hindu religion isn't necessarily as patriarchal as many Western feminists think. However, religion does not exist in a vacuum, and the culture heavily influences the practical application of the religion, a distinction which Gross glosses over.

In contrast, C. J. Fuller notes in The Camphor Flame: Popular Hinduism and Society in India (1992) that women's roles are in part defined by goddess archetypes - but contrasts this with the idea that a woman is not considered complete without a husband (chosen, without her consent, by her parents), and that her power is limited by her classification in society as a woman, although being married confers more power upon her. More in agreement with Gross, he states that during certain festivals, women and men alike are reminded that women are the embodiment of śakti, and therefore hold great power and command respect (though outside of those festivals, life returns to the patriarchal norm).

Gross's most insightful commentary comes in the form of a discussion on how appropriate it is for Westerners to use Indian goddesses (or any goddesses from cultures that have been oppressed by Western societies) as personal symbols of power. I agree with Gross's argument that since cultures are always influencing each other, then respectful, thorough inquiry is entirely appropriate. I believe that Kālī is a powerful goddess when she is understood in her own cultural context - however, it is when she and other Hindu goddesses are irresponsibly appropriated, without careful study and cultural context, that Westerners run into problems. It is then that our cultural fears of death and sexuality surface in our reactions to her.

Kālī has often been misappropriated and misinterpreted by Western feminists, and that Western feminist assumptions about Kālī are often the result of being uninformed on larger contextual or language issues. A frequent example is the assertion of some feminist scholars that patriarchal distaste for the female power that Kālī represents manifests itself in the Vedic naming of the kaliyuga, or "terrible age," after the goddess. In fact, if one is versed in the basics of Sanskrit, this assertion will be impossible, as there is no etymological relationship whatsoever between Kālī and kali.[25]

Although Kālī is being imported into the West by feminist goddess worshippers as a powerful and subversive symbol of transformation, many fear her power precisely because of her imagery. The Western concept of the loving mother goddess is of the benign Virgin Mary, not a fierce warrior. In fact, some thealogians have gone as far as to reject Kālī as invalid to the female experience. Carol Christ says in her thealogical work Rebirth of the Goddess (1997):

...the Hindu Durga exults in the slaying of demons; Kali holds a sword, wears a necklace of severed human heads and a skirt of severed human arms, and holds a skull filled with human blood. The death aspect of the Goddess must be affirmed and is integral to our understanding of the Goddess as Giver, Taker and Renewer of Life… (But) the images of the warrior Goddesses, like the images of the warrior Gods, convey the understanding that the unrestrained taking of life in battle is a fundamental or essential aspect of reality. The bloodthirsty warrior Goddesses legitimate warfare and violence, large-scale blood sacrifice, and a dualistic understanding of good and evil. In the long term, they will not help us transform dominator societies. Moreover, I find it racist to identify the "Dark" Goddess primarily with death and destruction.[26]

In fact, although she is often feared in the rest of India, in Bengal Kālī is primarily associated with the life-affirming aspect of mother goddess, the sustainer of the world. Śākta Tantrikas view her as the sacred mother, and the demons she slays are those of the personal ego. The Hymn to Kālī: Karpuradi-Stotra (1953), translated by Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe), is an old Tantric text praising Kālī as the divine mother.

O Mother, Thou givest birth to and protectest the world, and at the time of dissolution dost withdraw to Thyself the earth and all things; therefore Thou art Brahma, and the Lord of the three worlds, the Spouse of Sri, and Mahesa, and all other beings and things. Ah Me! How, then, shall I praise Thy greatness?[27]

Ramakrishna, the great sage reknowned for his love for Kālī, says of her:

The Primordial Power is ever at play. She is creating, preserving and destroying in play, as it were. This Power is called Kālī.[28]

It is clear in passages like this that Kālī is not viewed in the simplistic way that Christ imagines, but rather as the expansive, all-inclusive Great Mother that surpasses gender and duality. Christ reflects in her passage the fundamental misunderstanding of Western feminist scholars who do not, for whatever reason, take a closer, culturally-competent look at the things they seek to criticize, or do not understand.[29] Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum in dark mother: african origins and godmothers (2001) agrees that it belies an institutionalized racism in the West to refuse to acknowledge origins of the mother goddess as dark,[30] but Christ's association of death and destruction as necessarily bad or evil shows her own prejudicial attitudes. Women, in their monthly menstrual cycles, reflect the natural cycles of life, death and rebirth by painfully shedding their own blood, or through the painful, sometimes life-threatening process of childbirth. Kālī's many depictions reflect that process, and while patriarchal culture may interpret the images in ways that seek to justify dominance and control, her true nature is of the life-affirming, life-sustaining, and life-devouring mother.

Śākta Tantra and Western witchcraft have many things in common - both are embodied spiritualities, both sit on the edges of socially acceptable religious beliefs and practices, both revere the divine feminine as supreme. Both believe in the power of magic to transform self and world. Kālī herself is a symbol of many things - destruction, transformation, fierce motherhood, protection, sexuality, female power. But in both the East and the West, she has been misunderstood by those who love her and fear her. Therefore, it is important to dissect the ways in which she is misunderstood, and to understand the ways in which darkness has been treated historically in the Western goddess spirituality movement, especially from its modern inception in England. Western and Eastern feminists face different social paradigms, and I believe it is important to clarify ways in which we may learn from the paradoxical places of political power and marginalization that Śākta Tantra and Western witches seem to straddle. As the primary common ground between these traditions, Kālī can be a potent symbol for personal and social transformation, but only if fully appreciated in her blackness, her other-ness, and her sweetness.

[25] As a student of Sanskrit, I have often lamented this alarmingly frequent misapplication of scholarly analysis. For an example, see Patricia Monaghan's The Goddess Path: Myths, Rituals and Invocations, St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 1999, 197-206. Monaghan is a professor, feminist scholar and thealogian, and the entry is essentially an expansion of an entry in her much-loved The Book of Goddesses & Heroines, St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 1993. But she goes further in her error in The Goddess Path, connoting that kaliyuga means "The Time of Kali," and that this is a positive association. In fact, there is nothing positive about kaliyuga, and it is viewed as the worst of the four ages of humanity.

[26] Christ, Rebirth of the Goddess, 98

[27] Hymn to Kali, 72

[28] Ramakrishna, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (New York: 1952), 135

[29] This is not limited to feminist scholars, but seems to be a cultural epidemic in the West. The increasing popularity of cultural competency courses in the healthcare system, and university regulations for cross-cultural breadth in general education requirements for undergraduate students is evidence of the growing willingness to face and correct such deficiencies in our views of other cultures.

[30] Birnbaum, dark mother, xxix