4 2 S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 5 - 1 S p r i n g 2 0 1 9 3 Kālī One of the myths about the birth of Kālī sees her appearing from the Durgā forehead on a battlefield. She embodies Durgā anger and fury. Her skin is night-blue, her hair luxuriant and wildly ruffled. On a battlefield in the midst of corpses and mutilated bodies she shows off her nudity under a skirt of human arms. Around her neck, a skulls’ necklace. She inspires fear and terror. Her body is young and beautiful, the bosom generous, firm. She is beautiful, a beauty that hypnotizes. Her four arms symbolize the rhythm of the universe: on the right, the gesture of protection (abhayamudrā) and the gesture of giving (varadamudrā), on the left: the upper hand holds a bloody sword, the lower hand grasps by the hair a freshly-cut head. This is the cycle of birth and death, of creation and destruction. Kālī is frequently represented dancing or walking on Shiva’s body lying on the ground. The Goddess right foot (most of the time) takes support from Shiva’s rib cage. Shiva is lifeless, Kālī, his life energy, his Shakti left him. The background of the scene is a crematory field. Fires and jackals devouring corpses. The face of the Goddess is red, her eyes filled with blood, her tongue hanging. Sometimes the fangs are represented. On other representations she is shown in full sexual intercourse seated on Shiva’s body, in a dominant position. Kālī is the Goddess of creation and destruction. She teaches us that for the new to be born, the old must be destroyed. The saber and the severed head symbolize the destruction of ignorance, of all misconceptions that prevent us from recognizing our true nature. It is also the abandonment of all attachment, but especially the sacrifice of the ego. Kālī’s sword opens the door of spiritual liberation. Kālī is the feminine of time (Kālā). Time does pass and overcomes all things, destroying, consuming everything. It is in time that the world develops, that we are born, live our life and it is the time that takes us to start again the spiral of another cycle. Time is the rhythm of our lives. Their origin and their end. It is the mother who swallows her children; one of the terrifying aspects of Kālī (Frawley 1996, 66). The night-blue, the color of her skin, is also that of space and infinite time. Kālī is also the angry and expanding female principle – formidable principle, who has the audacity to transgress social norms, who laughs upon taboos and prohibitions, who freely displays her sexual appetite, which asserts herself with violence. Fierce and uncontrollable, Kālī dominates Shiva, and it is she who incites him to destructive madness. 3.1 Kālī Creation Notebook My creative process had been initiated by a notion of Kālī associated with time, transformation, violence, explosion, revolution and fire. She is the force of liberation through a radical change. Through her dances, the movement transforms itself, bringing rhythm, freedom, evoking the frank and captivating beauty of femininity. She will be movement; she will be trance. To represent her twisting, the shapes will come in circles and spirals. For this effect, I had to start from a central point, then spread out this exploding energy towards the limits of the sheet. It is a concentrated energy that bursts and unfolds on all sides. I was inspired by the work of Cao Guo Kong, a Chinese artist who works with canon powder; and listened toDead Can Dance music during the creation process. I also experienced the power of kālīmudrā and of kālīāsana. I chose to associate deep black, black gray, midnight blue with red, yellow and mauve fire colors. I experienced with materials such as acrylic, soot mix, ash, pastel bold, pencil on linseed oil, so the line is thicker, stronger, the pencil slips and its movement is faster than the thought. The shapes came in circles and spirals. So transgression and acceptation of uncontrollable overflows were the key to the drawing gestures: no hesitation, they had to be spontaneous, free, fast, decided and sharp. No desire to master the gesture ever led me during this act of creation. Kālī is stucking-out her tongue. In the dictionary of symbols: “The tongue is considered a flame. It has its shape and its mobility. It destroys or purifies. As an instrument of speech, it creates or annihilates, its power is unlimited.” (Ronnberg and Martin 2011, 561). David Kingsley (1997, 87) sees in Kālī’s stucked-out tongue the symbol of the conquest of rajasic power (the red tongue) by the sattvic forces (the white teeth). Kali is purely sattvic, having passed all the impurities of the two other Gunas. This organ of the body as a symbol contains all the nature of the Goddess. Now, I often realize that my best paintings are those that came to me spontaneously. Their execution usually takes only but a short time. Everything leading up to execution is not too intellectualize leaving space for randomness. As a matter of fact, it is as if all of a sudden, I was charged with an energy and I released myself in the act of creation. Questions that find unexpected answers, that seem self-evident.
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