Psychic Adventures An Angel For The Road

I seem to be in a funny psychic space right now.  Since my recent birthday in fact. I don't usually do anything special to mark my birthday but this year I had a small group of friends around for an informal buffet and we had an hilarious evening helped along a little by champagne and various South African wines, but mostly it was the energy of sheer joy in getting together that made the evening and I seemed to be on an energy high ever since. There are probably astrological and numerological explanations for this but I can 't recall this sort of energy boost on previous birthdays. Everything was going beautifully - until yesterday. I was preparing to go out to a meeting when I had a strong feeling that I would be late getting there but I had no idea why that would happen as I had adequate time to get there. However, the feeling was sufficiently strong that I called ahead and said I might be a few minutes late. No problem, there was plenty of coffee and no one was rushed. So I put the concern out of mind and finished getting ready to go. As I walked out my front door,  something about my car popped up on my radar but it didn't feel scary so I ignored it.  Just as I was about to insert the key in the ignition I had another stronger feeling that there was something amiss. Hmmmm. Turn the key and nothing. Silence. Nada. What the…? I had never had difficulty starting the car before. There was a history of problems with oil pumps, gaskets, and various other things that were never clearly accounted for but ignition had not been amongst them. Could it - I hoped - be the battery? That would be easy to remedy. If it were the starter or the alternator, I was in big trouble. But it didn't feel that way. It felt annoying but ok as though whatever was wrong would not prove serious. Hoping for the best, I went to my neighbour on the off-chance that she might have jumper cables and she did!  A comical and fruitless effort ensued to get the cables connected  correctly and finally we agreed that she would drop me off for my meeting and the person I was meeting with would bring me back as it was not far off her normal route. Problem solved. Temporarily.  A few hours later I came home and tried my mute car again. Still nothing. Zilch. The Auto Club would have to come out in the morning.

Psychic Adventures An Angel For The Road

Today dawned bright and warm, a lovely day after weeks of cold and rain. The auto club took my call and promised a rescue vehicle would arrive within several hours but they would call me a few minutes before that so I could be beside the car when the technician arrived. No call came.  But I did hear someone in the driveway and went out to greet my rescuer. And here's where it gets a bit unusual - at least in my experience.   As I approached the Auto Club technician, I felt a return of the complete ease and openness that had made my birthday so enjoyable. This was unexpected but when I thought about it for a second I realised that at no point in the past 24 hours had I been particularly perturbed about the car. Ordinarily, when anything is wrong with a major piece of equipment that I depend on, I'm a bit frantic until the problem is resolved. This time something was definitely different.  I smiled as the young man quickly introduced himself and asked how he could help. I explained what the problem was and he set about attaching the booster cables which I watched with great interest to see if I could spot where my neighbour and I had gone wrong. Except that he had a charging unit attached to the cables and was not using his vehicle to charge my battery. Oh, well, maybe I could find one of those charger thingys at the local hardware store and carry it with me,  just in case it ever happened again. I noticed the young man listening carefully to the engine and he asked me a few questions about how the car had been performing lately. Given that the car is 15 years old and still on the road, it was a valid concern. I gave him the 'Reader's Digest' version of the car's checkered history and he proceeded to check out several things that might be contributing to the problem. The battery was only a little over a year old and there could be something electrical draining it. He answered my questions and laughed at my wry humour about car mechanics and women customers all the while doing a very thorough once over of the car's major parts - not something I would have expected for a simple jump start.  He cleared up a few mysteries regarding some of the car's idiosyncrasies that no one had bothered to explain to me in the past and I sincerely thanked him for taking the trouble to do so. He advised me to drive the car around for a while to charge the battery as much as possible and I was about to hand him my auto club card. He waved it off and said it was not necessary, just a standard call-out. In the past when I had had to call for help it was to tow my car in for major repairs and the paperwork had been considerable so I was prepared with an extra pen, my card, licence, registration, etc. But for once, there was no 'red tape' at all. I thanked him again and told him he had made my day! And he had. I only caught his name as he was getting into his vehicle. Alvin.

My Angelic Driving Companion

One thing you should know about me is that I never drive my old car without invoking the protection of an Angel. Call it superstition, but since the time I was hit and trapped in a burning car by a suicidal maniac I figure any form of insurance I can invoke is a good idea! So, on the chance that there really is an Angel for every blade of grass, I figure an Angel who accompanies me in my car is not too far OTT. [Give me a break  - I don't keep a plastic statue of her on the dash or anything!] It's a mental invocation and so far it seems to be working.There have been a few very close calls over the decades but no more accidents or injuries. Anyway, they say that Angels appear to us in many different guises and I believe that is true. Sometimes they come as friends who are all on the same wavelength and fill our days with joy and laughter and sometimes they come as rescuers in times of need, in this case an exceptionally kind and considerate rescuer whose kind energy borders on the angelic. Who knew that there was an Angel named Alvin?

Image credit: Angels courtesy of Wikimedia. Andy Lakey Angels from Art, Angels, and MiraclesHERE.

© Delia O' Riordan 2012

Crop Circles:  The Unanswered Questions

Crop Circles are back in the news and with them the apparently endless debate about who or what creates them.  The problem with addressing the issue of how the circles or formations are made is clouded by the usual "Woo-Woo Factor", the self-proclaimed experts or channellers whose fantastic claims scare away most sober scientists. I admit I am fascinated by the intricacy and aesthetic appeal of the most complex crop formations like this one photographed by Thomas Sutter, Jr.  I would have no difficulty believing them to be human-made IF there weren't so many unanswered questions surrounding them.  Let's take a look at the most popular "debunking" explanations.

Crop Circles: The Unanswered Questions

The argument advanced most often in defence of the human-made theory is that they are created by commercial interests who stand to profit from the sale of photos, DVDs, postcards, calendars, tee-shirts, totes, etc. bearing the images of the formations.  This argument presumes the involvement of corporate 'sponsors' or film companies who somehow commission and create the formations,  photograph them and then manufacture goods for sale using the images.  Sounds plausible, right? Except that the vast majority of formations bear no evidence of connection with any corporate or commercial entity.  The exceptions were a Swedish Rail Company that put its logo in a field next to a highway (Image courtesy Swedish Rail) and two other similar 'ads' in the landscape. The formations employing images of cultural "icons" like Homer Simpson are obviously human-made but since copyright law has not been applied to the crop formations no lawsuits have resulted from what would normally be considered a breach of copyright although there have been some exceptions. One man in the UK in Devizes was sued for damages to a field and two Hungarian Agricultural students were charged and fined for creating an image on land owned by a food production corporation.The corporate agriculture sector is no more enamoured of crop formations than commercial farmers. Most crop formations are made in farmers' fields overnight and some have been documented by hikers as having formed in the space of an hour or less. The sheer size and intricacy of most formations means that humans would take many hours or even several nights in succession to create them. The complicated ones that formed apparently in minutes would rule out human participation.

The abiding fact remains that most crop formations appear overnight in farmers' fields sewn with rapeseed, corn, or other mixed-use crops. The farmers are not pleased to see their hard work undone and many would like nothing better than to have a rich corporation to sue. And what about the corporations themselves? It would take only one successful prosecution or even civil suit by a farmer against a corporation for trespass, damaging property, theft or fraud to irreparably damage the corporation's reputation and to end the entire crop circle phenomenon IF it is being perpetrated by corporate interests. No such case has come before the courts.

Some farmers who despaired of ever catching the culprits, much less bringing criminal charges, have placed donation boxes at the entrances to their fields in the hope that visitors will respect the fact that the object of their fascination has been created without permission on private land. Donations can help to reduce the loss of income from the  formation crops. In addition, an entire Crop Circle Etiquette has been adopted by those who study the phenomena to ensure that no further damage is inflicted on the farm properties by visitors and tourists.

The Fable of Doug and Dave

The next popular explanation we have is the overall claim  that hoaxers are the source of all of the circles and formations and the "Doug and Dave" story is trotted out to "prove" it.  The Doug and Dave theory claims that two pensioners with time to kill and nothing better to do with themselves, created the circles using boards and ropes and the BBC filmed the pair demonstrating their technique in a field of rapeseed.  Unfortunately for the debunkers, the Doug and Dave hoaxer theory itself turned out to be a hoax when two pieces of evidence emerged that made the claim untenable.  In the crop formations that have been studied by scientists from University of Michigan in America and by Eltjo H. Haselhoff in the Netherlands, it was found that circles and formations made by humans with boards and ropes crushed the nodes on the cereal crops and broke stems off as they bent the stalks.  However, the samples taken from circles and formations that had appeared overnight on four continents (including several made on the same night dozens to thousands of kilometres apart were found to have been bent but not broken and the nodes of the plants had been radically altered by what appeared to be very high heat that caused the nodes to swell.  Although researchers have attempted to duplicate the effect by super heating the nodes of experimental crops, thus far none has been successful. The cereal crop burns at temperatures too low to swell the nodes first.

In addition, in the crops with enlarged nodes there was no evidence of human infringement on the surrounding crops or within the tractor lines around the formations, no bent or broken stems outside the actual formations.  Worse yet for the debunkers, soil samples from the formations that had obviously not been made with boards and ropes showed evidence of the same exposure to high heat for a very short period lasting no more than seconds, something akin to what a microwave burst might do.

The Experimental Technology Theory: Lasers and Micro-waves

"Aha!"  said the debunkers," that's how the designs are being made." "Somebody" with laser and micro-wave technology must be creating the formations."  Hmmm. Again, that sounds plausible except it fails to answer the first question regarding no one claiming responsibility for the formations. Surely a company with the time, money,  technology, and manpower to launch such an elaborate operation would want to take credit for it and, of course, copyright all images of the designs to profit from them. But that has not happened. The vast majority of images of the crop circles and formations have been taken by amateur or self-employed photographers, film companies (National Geographic amongst them), and hobbyists. Furthermore, the best images have been taken from the air because most of the formations are not "readable" at ground level.  And most important of all, each individual who photographs or videos or films the formations retains the copyright to their individual production and none has ever been challenged for violating a commercial copyright.  As if that were not enough, many of the photographs made by individuals have been released by them into the public domain through Creative Commons as in the images in this article, thereby removing the money-making motive.

Technology Lag

The other fact that argues against commercial sources for the creation of crop formation is the absence of portable laser and micro-wave technologies prior to the 1980s when in fact crop formations had been photographed going back to the 1960s and had been described in historical documents going back many centuries.  And finally, when a challenge was issued inviting anyone with the requisite laser and micro-wave techniques to come forward and be filmed in the process of creating a formation, there were no takers.

Should We Be Saluting The Crop Formations?

The theory of last resort is the one that posits military involvement in the creation of  the formations. The military has a vested interest in developing new laser and microwave technologies for all sorts of applications. True. However, the historic record shows that advances in electronic technologies originate in the private sector as was true of the Allies in WW2 who had to use civilians inventors and scientists to design, test and refine new weapons systems. The notion that the military are testing 'weapons' by making popcorn in farmers' fields of corn is, frankly, worthy of Dr. Strangelove…

For books on Crop Circles visit Delia's Paranormal Phenomena Shop HERE.

© Delia O' Riordan 2012

www.psychic-delia.com

Who's Afraid Of Friday The 13th?

Are you superstitious about Friday the 13th? You'll probably say no but think about it for a minute. Are you at all hesitant to do the things you wouldn't give a second thought to on other days? Are you more alert and careful when driving on Friday the 13th? More cautious about consuming fast food - or eating Sushi for lunch? More wary of strangers you encounter than you would be on any other day? More likely to avoid ladders and walk around them no matter how inconvenient it might be rather than take the direct route by walking under them? Is your financial life affected on Friday the 13th, making you more conservative about buying or trading shares? If so, you fit the profile of the average investor and that of the biggest investors in being wary of the market today. You are not alone even in the world of hard-headed stock exchange traders. Despite what our rational minds tell us, there is an almost subliminal reaction to the knowledge that today is 'different' from other Fridays. And in 2012 we have the maximum number of Fridays falling on the 13th day of the month: 3, to be precise:  January, April and July. And they fall exactly 13 weeks apart!  Still insist you are not the least, tiny bit superstitious?  University of Delaware Mathematics Professor Tom Fernsler - nicknamed  "Dr. 13" for his extensive research on cultural anomalies involving the number 13  - maintains that "...95% of people in the world  are superstitious about something - and the other 5% are liars."

Who's Afraid Of Friday The 13th?

Friggtriskaidekaphobia is fear of  Friday the 13th.The moniker comes from  the Norse goddess Frigg and the term for fear of the number 13 (triskaidekaphobia) wherever it appears. The origins of the concept of  'unlucky 13' are murky at best. Some think it originated with the story of The Last Supper  where 12 apostles were supposedly gathered for a Seder with their Teacher. According to the Christian legend, the Teacher foretold that one of the apostles would betray him. The one who was singled out for this supposed act of betrayal was one Judas Iscariot, allegedly paid 30 silver coins for delivering the tell-tale kiss that identified the Teacher as the one the Romans sought. The superstition has it, therefore, that having 13 guests at a dinner table will lead to the death of one of them within one year. Would you like to be the 13th at table? Would you accept an invitation to dinner tonight knowing that there would be 12 other guests? If the idea makes you even vaguely uneasy, you are not alone.

Another source for the superstition is the outlawing and massacre of members of the Knights Templar, a lay order of knights formed during the Crusades. The Templars served a dual function; they were charged with guarding the cross-Europe route to Jerusalem but also to protect of the Holy City itself.  As a lay order the Templars were answerable only to the Pope. By Papal decree the Templars were exempt from taxes and the local laws of the countries in which they lived but the centre of Templar power was Montsegur, a mountain fortress in the Languedoc region of France. As the Templars grew in influence they were given various land grants by the sovereigns of the territories in which they lived. As they prospered, the Templars were able to lend money to the various crowned heads of Europe and even to the Pope himself. This was possible because the Templars had a Papal dispensation to charge interest on these loans. Prior to the dispensation, Christians were forbidden from charging interest, otherwise known as usury. Consequently, the monely lenders from Palestine to England were usually Jews to whom the prohibition against usury did not apply.

The Templar Demise

After two centuries of crusading wars, the strain of re-paying loans to the Templars began to pinch the royal coffers of Europe and the Vatican. Clearly, a way had to be found to reduce the influence of the order at all levels. Eventually, trumped up charges of satanism, blasphemy, and heresy were brought against them and,  in a pre-dawn raid on Montsegur on the 13th of October 1307, Templars who had not managed to escape were arrested, jailed and tortured until they died or were burned at the stake by the Inquisition.  Certainly, Friday the 13th of October 1307 was not a lucky date for anyone associated with the Templars - except perhaps those who owed them huge sums of money and were now freed from their debts!

The Legacy of Friday The 13th

Over time the number 13 acquired the reputation of being unlucky in any context. At various times in history, hostesses were known to retain 'spare' dinner guests to make up a party of 14 in order to avoid the embarrassment of having 13 at the table.  Even in the 21st century, some airports have no Gate 13, and most office buildings and nearly all hotels have no floor 13 or rooms or offices with the number 13! Think about it. You've earned yourself a raise and a promotion but you discover that your new office number is to be 1313.  Are you absolutely certain you don't harbour even a smidgeon of the 13 superstition?

© Delia O'Riordan 2012

www.psychic-delia.com

The books cited above are all available in Delia's "A List" Friday The 13th Shop HERE.

Image credit: Goddess Frigg courtesy of Wikimedia Creative Commons.

Psychic Readings And Belief In Angels

Do you believe in Angels? I can honestly say that I do but  not those saccharine confections that one sees hovering over two impossibly virtuous-looking children as they cross over a turbulent stream, as in the sentimental image at left.

No, the Angels I find beleivable are creatures of pure consciousness and, as such, they are invisible to the physical sight of humans.  But, given that they're invisible, how can one claim that Angels exist at all?

Well, considering that most of the 'stuff' from which the universe is made is also invisible to the human eye we don't have much of an argument that Angels can't exist because we can't see them. We can't see bacteria either without the aid of a microscope but we have experienced their existence any time we have had an infection. Yet, the question remains: If they do exist, what are Angels?

Psychic Readings And Belief In Angels

I could take the easy way out here and aver that Angels are archetypes that arise from the human psyche as by-products of our evolution in consciousness. Most of the familiar archetypes that we carry around in our psyches are more like human prototypes: king, queen, father, mother, magician, judge, pardoner, etc. When you hear or read the word King or Queen, for example, a generic mental image of some kind comes to mind such as the crown image at right.  The generic image derives from fairytales, legends, and folktales, from cinema, fantasy fiction, and the like. The image seems to be almost universal in human cultures which is what makes it an archetype, a concept we all can understand. But what about Angels?  Are they also archetypes, or, are they something more? And where did our notion of winged guardians come from?

Origin of Winged Guardians

Representations of winged creatures go back a long way in human culture. Some of the earliest carvings we have are of "bird goddesses" found in archaeological sites, with some of the earliest having been found on the Balkan Peninsula. These images are from the Paleolithic Era roughly from 140,000 to 35,000 years ago. Birds, in particular, were an object of fascination. The females laid eggs and then incubated them with the warmth of their feathered bodies creating new life where there was none before. The female winged creature came to represent the prospect of survival and freedom, protection and nurturance.

Early Totems of Winged Creatures

No one knows exactly why humans were such industrious recorders of the other species and, in particular birds, around them but cave and rock paintings and incised figures are amongst the oldest artifacts produced by our ancient ancestors. Gradually, our species seemed to integrate several concepts: the idea of a winged protector or benefactor in the form of a bird goddess, the concept of flight as magical because it was beyond human capability, and a respect for creatures that didn't not rely on us for their survival as we relied on them. We have here the earliest impulse toward a spiritual connection between early humans and other creatures.  But it was the obsession with winged guardians that eventually dominated the human imagination in terms of a concept of the divine, the source of all of nature's power and hence our source, as well. From this early impulse the concept of the winged nature spirit evolved into the messengers between the unseen and our three dimensional world.

If Angels Exist, What Are They?

The points of consciousness that we think of as Angels seem to be sentient energy forms whose existence we can only intuit from the accumulation of human experience with them which seems to point to other realities beyond our three dimensional, apparently 'solid' world. Unless you've spent the past 20 years living under a rock, you'll be familiar with the upsurge of interest in the existence of Angels amongst the general reading public. A great deal of what has made it into the popular imagination is pure bunk, a cross between faddism (wanting to be 'in' with 'what's hot now'), wishful thinking, and indulgent gullibility. However, there are a number of books that I have found worthwhile reading, largely because the authors approached the subject in a neutral yet informed manner having done the required research on the history of Angels as a phenomenon in various human cultures and their place in archetypal psychology. In these instances the writers stand back and let the stories tell themselves and leave conclusions to the reader.

A Book of Angels

The book that put the case for the existence of Angels on the mainstream agenda is Sophy Burnham's 1992  A Book of Angels.  In her Foreword, Burnham tells us "...the fact is...I did not grow up believing in the paranormal..."  The book had originally been conceived only as a personal memoir for friends but "...it occurred to me around the age of 43 that many curious and mysterious things had happened that could not be passed off anymore or explained away as logical."  Burnham had reached a place a in her life when her own experience was at odds with "consensus reality". She had brushed aside such anomalies for years but now the "cognitive dissonance" between personal and consensus reality had to be addressed.  Burnham began researching the subject of Angels and the apparently related phenomenon of miracles of various kinds and what she found amazed her. Her experience was not so much anomalous as it was a kind of cultural taboo. Experiences of what the people involved described as the timely intervention of 'some sort of Angel' had happened to thousands and they were from all walks of life, medical doctors as well as patients, scientists as well as artists, skeptics as well as 'believers'. It didn't seem to matter what people believed prior to the life-changing experience; non-believers were as likely to have such experiences as believers. If these experiences were not dependent upon pre-conceived ideas of what was or wasn't possible, how could we account for them? Burnham's search led to examine the literary, artistic and historic record for independent accounts of encounters with Angels, grounding her contemporary cases in historical perspective.  I would recommend A Book of Angels as a useful introduction to the subject of Angels and their place in the human experience.

A Book of Angels is available for purchase HERE.
Image credits: Wikimedia Creative Commons.

© Delia O' Riordan 2012

Happy Birthday, Dalai Lama!

For Tibetan Buddhists in particular July 6 is a very special day. It is the 77th birthday of Tensin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama.  Well wishers from all over the world are showering Dharamsala with birthday greetings and gifts. The Dalai Lama has become so well-known and recognised in the world outside ofTibet and China that nary a week goes by without a news story about him. This was certainly not the case when he was young and being educated to assume the role of Dalai Lama for Buddhists all over the world who recognise him as the re-incarnation of the Buddha of Compassion, Avalokiteshwara. As such the Dalai Lama fulfills the most important role anyone can play: he has achieved enlightenment and has undertaken to reincarnate until all sentient beings attain enlightenment as well.  That is an exalted calling, than which there is nothing more vital to humanity. We dwell in a world that is in itself a place of suffering. Despite all its beauty and grandeur, the presence of humans disturbs the natural balance of the planet. The addition of self-conscious beings with freedom to choose how they will live introduced a form of chaos into the natural order of the bio-world. And we have certainly perpetuated that chaos in every imaginable form from individual acts of cruelty to the organised murder of war and the wilfull destruction of the only environment in which we can continue to exist. Why do we do this? Buddhists believe that our purpose is to use physical incarnation to learn how to balance all aspects of existence from the most basic biological reality to the most sublime state of compassionate detachment from the wheel of karma, the state of enlightenment or pure consciousness. As the incarnation of the spirit of the preceding Dalai Lama and so on all the way back to Siddartha, the Buddha, the Dalai Lama is both a living symbol and an example of how to achieve ultimate Freedom, the state of pure consciousness.

Happy Birthday, Dalai Lama!

What is unique about this Dalai Lama is that he is out in the world and not living a reclusive existence in an ancient monastery. Tensin Gyatso engages with the world and in doing so opens our eyes to another way of being,  the way of true happiness, a state that we all have access to through the practice of mindfulness and the gradual detachment from material reality to open the way for our evolution into pure consciousness, a kind of reunion with All That Is in which we participate in creating new forms of life, new universes, extending consciousness to infinity.

The Great Liberation

For some years now it has been the Dalai Lama's wish to retire from public life, not to live a more leisurely existence but to do what only he can do: to enter ever deeper levels of meditation over a period of time until he reaches the point at which he can leave his body behind when he feels it is his time to go. That time is one that all who love this man dread. I certainly do. His absence will be felt keenly and that rarest of all jewels, the genuinely happy spirit, will go out of the world. Those who have absorbed some of his capacity for pure joy, his capacity for contentment even in adversity, and his devotion to ending human suffering, will continue his work for ultimately we must all liberate ourselves. That process can be accelerated by living in a state of mindfulness and those of us who alive right now are indescribably fortunate to be able to observe and learn from him.  Though it is painful to contemplate, my deepest wish for His Holiness is that he is granted the opportunity to prepare for his great liberation now.  Our love for him must become unselfish so that he is free to follow his destiny without our trying to hang on to him. His freedom is ultimately our freedom, too, so when we release him to his rightful path we release ourselves as well.

© Delia O' Riordan 2012

Photo credits: courtesy of Wikimedia Creative Commons.

Psychic Tipping Point Kali's Wrath

I am definitely feeling more like Kali than Quan Yin today. Kali is a fearsome deity in Hinduism. She embodies the 'dark side' of the Divine Feminine, the taker as well as the giver of life. She is portrayed as holding the severed head of Mara, the male prince of demons, and the sword she used to sever his head from his body. In her most formidable aspect Kali brings death to the male enemies of the Devas, the benign earth spirits whose energy makes plants grow. Kali's Hindu devotees ascribe many - often contradictory - characteristics to her from a loving Mother Goddess in more recent times to the merciless protector of the Devas of Hindu mythology depicted at left in one of her temples in Kolkatta. As with the other principle Hindu Gods, Kali's image varies with her particular functions changing from blue to black in colour and from blood-thirsty warrior to serene mate of Shiva. For a non-Hindu, it is all very confusing and a good example of the old adage that one cannot "become" a Hindu, one must be born Hindu. But even non-Hindus can relate to her significance for the modern world: Kali is the personification of the power of Nature to destroy her enemies, those who abuse the gift of life by killing its very source, this planet. In this aspect of Kali there is a warning for us all not to ignore the potentially destructive energy of the natural world.

Psychic Tipping Point Kali's Wrath

I must admit I've never been comfortable with her death-wielding side. I've always felt that the world into which I was born had too much destructive energy already, most of it testosterone fuelled like that of the Hindu asura or demon, Raktabija, a being who stole power from the gods of the heavens for himself and uses that power to try to destroy the Devas or nature spirits, the creative principle of the Universe.  Like the self-cloning evil beings in the Matrix, every drop of blood lost by Raktabija in battle instantly becomes a full- grown clone, making it impossible for the Goddess of the Devas, Durga, to defeat him. In desperation, Durga calls upon Kali to extend her tongue and lick up every drop of blood as it falls from Raktabija thereby defeating him and gaining a victory for the Devas and their protectors, the Matrikas. Dense with symbolism, the tales of Kali offer a great variety of versions of her and her exploits but her role as defender of Nature is her archetypal manifestation of the power of Nature without limits. When roused to fury by the negligence or belligerence of the destructive principle, Kali reminds us attempts to destroy the female creative principle of the Universe may result in a retaliation without restraint.  In this sense, Kali is here to teach us the necessity of restraint in dealing with the powers of the natural world so that we will not be destroyed by it.

Kali As Consciousness

Hinduism recognises that the Universe is cyclical, rather like our understanding of the deaths of galaxies pulled into black holes but also the reconstitution of all things from that same black hole into a new reality. But behind the drama of the births and deaths of worlds, the Hindus also see the unchanging still-point, the Bindu from which all energies arise. Western science recognizes this as the "zero point field" which is a state of pure potential and indeterminacy, a sort of background to the Universe of time and matter, the potential from which all matter arises. Kali at her most potent is what Hindus call Brahman, the ultimate unmanifest state of pure consciousness, she is the Bindu.  No matter what we call it, the Stillpoint is the Source of all that is. From a mythographic perspective, our world is on the tipping point of destruction - facing a very angry Goddess whose patience has been pushed to its outer limits by the radically unbalanced male energy of unbridled materialism that has expressed itself with equal brutality in the mindless pursuit of infinite growth whether on the stock exchange or totalitarian "collectives". The marginalizing of women from political and economic power over the past nearly 5000 years is only being superficially re-dressed in the present age. Just because more women are employed outside the home, does not mean women as a group have acquired the power necessary to overthrow the patriarchy.  As the events in Egypt this past week attest, women and men need to work together to reverse the destructive forces of patriarchy.  As long as men are afraid to align with the strength of women, the rage of Kali/Durga will grow until the tipping point is reached resulting in environmental collapse. Perhaps that is the only way for the patriarchy to learn - not by listening to wisdom but by being destroyed.  That would be a shame when they can save themselves and the planet by an act of global courage in embracing the Shakti/Devi energy of creation and preservation instead of the Mara/Raktabija energy of illusion and mass death.

© Delia O' Riordan 2012

Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.