Showing posts with label Kalika Mata Kalighat kali peeth tarapeeth kolkata calcutta. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kalika Mata Kalighat kali peeth tarapeeth kolkata calcutta. Show all posts

3.18.2008

Kalika Mata at Kalighat, a sacred Shakti Peetha


When power is felt up close,
When the female energy in all its fury hits the eye,
When the sound of the conch shell deafens the ear,
Where innocent lambs are slaughtered without a doubt,
Where the floor is a mixture of blood and sacred sindhoor,
The power of being woman comes alive
We are at Kalika Mata temple Kalighat

To read about tantricism is one thing, to actually witness it is quite another. Kali mandir might look normal to anyone, but the effect it left behind was one of mixed feeling within me. All I could see was a helpless lamb being bathed and waiting to be slaughtered, traumatized by the impending reality gaping at it right there on a bright Saturday morning.

As the silvery streaks of water celebrated the lamb with its body shining gold as a sacred offering, and red smeared its face proclaiming it a sacred meal, and the animal is ceremoniously brought to the stake. The head is led through two vertical poles and a third locks it from above, a few sacred words are spelt out to appease the Mother's ever hungry appetite for blood.

The flames rise, the fire lights up her deep red eyes, setting ablaze her fury, and her face looks on awakening the abstraction of her presence - the power of the mother is here. The bells ring and the blade cuts through without question, splattering blood to the floor. Divine food is collected in the cup and offered to the mother, a drop after another rolls down her golden tongue in the twilight.

A half bust black stone is all that one can visualize this power in, crowned by three enrapturing eyes that grab your attention. The Goddess tilts slightly to one side. Her two prominent arms have a deadly sickle in one and wears bangles in the other. This whole form, has the formidable appearance of a Goddess in anger, her fury so vividly captured that the heart pounds when we stare at her face to face.
Nakulish kalipithe dakshapadangulishu cha|
Sarbadhikari devi kalika tatra devta||

This was once a deserted small temple with fewer lights. What stands now as the mother with arms on the silver body of Lord Shiva was once just an abstraction that represented the fury of Sati that lives on well after her right toe fell here, cut through by Vishnu's discus, proclaiming it a Shakti Peetha. There was a time when the flames set ablaze this fury of the goddess that was appeased by the taste of human blood.

What surrounds this shakti peetha is a wondrous experience of intense faith coupled with brutality of sacrifice, where the skinning of innocent lambs is a common delight, an offering so sacred that I dare not oppose it in the name of sympathy for innocent life. The only thing I can do is cut three crosses at the balipeeth myself, wash away any dosh in my life and symbolically place my neck there, with my head in offering to calm the wrath of this divine form of the Goddess.

O Mother
Whose eyes can burn this universe
Whose presence can reduce this world to ash
Who is invoked by only those who dare
Who lives in the cremation ground
Who burns with the dead corpse
Who blesses them by pressing their heart
Who guides their ambition by stepping on their thighs
Who brings alive the fiery form of death
Who stares with her three eyes open through the flames
Who raises us from the dead
Who takes us into her lap of love
Who renders us fearless
O Mother, why an innocent lamb, why?