Kali

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The all engulfing black .. black that swallows light, time, death ... the exceedingly powerful consort of Kaal (Shiv) is revered as the icon of eternal energy and one who absolves from the eternal cycle of birth and death.
Kali, like her name itself, is steeped in symbolism ...
her complexions is black ... but the depiction is more than just skin-deep. Black is an all engulfing entity, like a black-hole ... it is a color that absorbs and supercedes all other colors that find their way into it. It is a personification of death, which is the ultimate truth of the cycle of life.
Her flaming-red tongue is symbolic of Agni or fire as well as the indiscriminate pleasures of the world
Her white teeth stand for the purity of the being
The gory garland of the 51 severed heads on Kali's neck are indicative of the alphabets in Sanskrit and symbolize knowledge in its totality
The girdle of human hands around her waist depict work/deeds (karm) and liberation from the cycle of life
The sword in her hand symbolizes the destruction of conceit and worldly bonds  (maya)
Her three eyes are representative of the past, present and future (that links her to kaal)
and the starkness of her nude form stands for the primeval, fundamental and evident like the elements of Nature

She is as popular as popularity can ever be...

The point I was pondering on is quite far from what you might have been imagining.
No ... I am not presently engulfed by the consciousness of good and evil ... worldly bonds ... or even symbolism ... While looking up the place (St Maries de la Mer) which we shall be visiting this Easter weekend I came across some strangely intriguing and interesting facts ... well, I don't know a better word for that ... I cannot really call them "facts" but nevertheless ... theories probably would fare better. Frankly it is upon you to decide the word.


So, for introductions, St Maries de la Mer is a quaint little village off the Mediterranean in the south of France, quite close to the cities of Nimes, Marseille, Montpellier and the Roman city of Arles.

The three Maries - Mary Magdalene (whose name was recently hyped by Holy Blood, Holy Grail and Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code ... Raynaldus, a church chronicler, mentions that the Cathars of the Languedoc regarded Mary Magdalene as Jesus' concubine. More recent sources suggest that Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene were married and had children, or at least one child ), Mary Salome (mother of James and John) and Mary Jacobe, were the people who accompanied Mother Mary (mother of Jesus) to the sepulchre of Christ and thus were the first witnesses to the empty tomb. Legend has it that around 42 AD, during persecution of the early Christians by the Roman authority, Lazarus and hi sisters (Mary Magdalene and Martha), Mary Salome and Mary Jacobe and some others were thrust into the Mediterranean in a boat without a sail. After traveling eastward for a long time ... they were washed ashore at the place that is now St Maries de la Mer (literally, Saints Maries of the sea) close to the mouth of the Petit Rhône in the Camargue region of France.
It is said that the Mary Salome and Jacobe being old stayed back in the small fishing village to spread Christianity in the local populace.... while Mary Magdalene went into the mainland to spread the word of the Lord. Holy Blood, Holy Grail claims that not only did Jesus and Mary Magdalene had descendants who would have lived in now what is France, but that their blood merged with the Merovingian dynasty. Some writers also indicate that Sarah was actually their daughter.
Well, there are also equally popular stories of Sarah being a local (or an Egyptian maid or a lady of noble birth and leader of her tribe living close to the sea) who helped the hapless Maries to the coast and took good care of them.

This place has been a site of veneration by cultures as diverse as the Celts, Romans, Christians, and most interestingly the Roma Gypsies. Being greatly interested in gypsy stories and life-style I quickly followed up the search and got quite a dig ...
The Roma an European ethnic group, I came to know, previously thought to be of Egyptian origin (that is where the word gypsy comes from ... a misnomer) were migrants from medieval India (I came to know that Charlie Chaplin was a Romani !!). They were Hindus, who traveled as nomads from north India (~900 AD) to to Persia then Egypt and then to France, carrying the essence of their culture with them. St Maries de la Mer is the holy pilgrimage for the Roma (whose patron saint is Sarah-e-Kali) who gather every year around the last weekend of May to celebrate family re-unions etc and venerate their Saint Sarah who has striking resemblances with the Hindu goddess Kali. Kali is represented as a dark goddess that feeds the confusion of identifying Sarah as a Black Madonna – which, to a large extent, Kali is indeed. In a lot of senses the two Kalis appear comparable ...
In origin Kali was a figure of annihilation (like the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet). Over time Kali evolved into a benign Mother Goddess. Like the Virgin Mary, she is also revered as Bhavatarini, literally “redeemer of the universe”. What struck me was ..... in France their are many black statues of the Virgin Mary which fairly are obviously adaptations of Isis, but the intriguingly here Mary Magdalene and not the Virgin Mary is being represented as the Black Madonna.
The rituals too are striking in their similarity of Hindu rituals ... clothing Saint Sarah statue in real clothes, carrying the Saint's statue in to the water ... Kali Sarah is the Protector for the Roma who cures sickness, brings good luck and fertility and grants success in business ventures. Does that ring a bell ...
Well... wherever the Romanis have spread they have taken Kali along with them ... In Mexico,
only location where Gypsies have converted Kali into a Christian saint. In Mexico, Virgin of Guadeloupe is another substitute for Kali for Mexican gypsies. All over the world the Roma continue to worship female deities / saints in shrines near water bodies, honoring them with ceremonies derived, not from Christianity but Hinduism.

So you see how popular is the concept that is Kali !!!

So the conclusion I derived was that this place had been a site of veneration since a long time by many a culture which in due course of time, as time would have it, came under Christian dominance and the essence of the pagan culture was not totally erased and still remains in the embedded in the fabric of the ethnic cultural groups. Well, it would quite something to discover or see something related to what I have read when I go there ...
the rest should remain unsaid.

It is Good Friday today

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