“The dance of death is the dance of opening. This is Kali’s experience of courage – to slice into herself. To be able to dance the dance of her own death. That is her finest hour.”
– Vivekananda.
“As change, the river of time, the fluidity of life, the goddess at once creates, preserves, and destroys. Her name is Kali, the Black One; her title: The Ferry across the Ocean of Existence.
One quiet afternoon Ramarishna (the great hindu mystic of the nineteenth century) beheld a beautiful woman ascend from the Ganges and approach the grove in which he was meditating. He percieved that she was about to give birth to a child. In a moment the babe was born, and she gently nursed it. Presently, however, she assumed a horrible aspect, took the infant in her now ugly jaws and crushed it, chewed it. Swallowing it, she returned again to the Ganges, where she dissapeared.
Only geniuses capable of the highest realization can support the full revelation of the sublimity of this goddess. For lesser men she reduces her effulgence and permits herself to appear in forms concordant with their undeveloped powers. Fully to behold her would be a terrible accident for any person not spiritually prepared.”
– ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ by Joseph Campbell.
The Seduction Of the Divine 