The Storytellers Goddess Part 7

"You made them, honey. They can't forget."

"I can't explain it," said Danu.

"But it was as if the people I think there were thousands of them as if they thought I were dead, but I was really alive. It was horrible."

Danu turned Her head away.

Dagdu curled four of Her fingers around one of His own.

"Danu, they can't forget either of Us," He said. His voice was teasing.

"They certainly can't forget Me, anyway. I'm much too hot and warm, and I feel too good."

Danu s.n.a.t.c.hed Her hand away. Now Dagdu had meant, I'm sure, to nuzzle Her with His teasing and relax Her with His caresses. However, Dagdu had the handicap of not having dreamed Danu's dream, and Danu's averted head prevented Her from seeing the playful sympathy on Dagdu's face.

She heard only the lightness of His mood in contrast to Her own despair, and She was furious.

A black wind came up and the G.o.ddess stayed alone for a long time. She wept and She slept. She screamed and She dreamed. She felt the curve and the flatness of Herself. She watched Her blood river come and go.

She spoke aloud and unraveled the meaning and horror of that nightmare about a kind of aloneness not healing and full of truth like this one, but dangerous and a lie.

Slowly there grew in Danu a plan, details blurred at first. But came the day when it was clear and simple as if She'd known it all along.

First She reached inside the cave of Herself and drew out the globe that Dagdu had told Her waxed and waned with a cycle He said seemed to match Her desire to lie in His arms.

She gazed at it creamy and gray in Her palm and remembered the uninterrupted mists of Her beginnings. Then She hung it in the sky and called it Moon.

Next Danu called to Her all the people that had b.r.e.a.s.t.s and valleys like Her own. Like Herself, She told them, they would bleed, in rhythm with Her Moon, rivers between their legs so that they and those who love them might ever remember Her. Like Herself, they would find refuge and joy in both the light and the dark.

The people were thrilled with Danu's plan. In their village, they made a temple like Danu's cave with long narrow windows to welcome Dagdu's light. They drew on the walls there the story of the ebb and flow of the blood river by counting its days with careful marks. They pecked its clock with circular spirals on giant stones. They painted red the door of Her sacred triangle to mark the place from which all had come and to which they would return.

Danu, too, was filled with peace. Maybe you can imagine that speechless shyness with which She reopened Her friends.h.i.+p with Dagdu.

How the words tumbled when the shyness melted. And how much They had to tell about what each had learned in the time of solitude and introspection. Time pa.s.sed and They repeated the cycle again and again. It was true, They agreed. Never did They feel so verdant, so radiant, as when They came together again after the renewal of separation.

And so it was with Danu's humans. Never did the world throb so rightly as when the people remembered to sing in the cave of their G.o.ddess and to dance in the light of their G.o.d. Ever through time has circled this remembering, even in the days when the people, as Danu once dreamed, are so close to forgetting Her. But Her wonderful plan, born in the contemplation of Her terror, prevents forgetting. For in the bodies of Danu's women flows Her river, and in Her sky moves Her Moon. And so for women, and all those who love them, the G.o.ddess lives. Tiny as a fairy in the mists, perhaps, or gigantic as the world. She lives.

Kali (KAH-lee) Dancer on Gravestones (India) Introduction

Although most commonly understood in Her Destroyer aspect, the G.o.ddess Kali is the full Triple G.o.ddess of the Hindu religion. She is the Ocean of Menstrual Blood at the Beginning of Time, out of whose nourishment comes all life. She is the Mother Fountain of Endless Love, and, in the same way that the monthly blood shedding of a human woman destroys the possibility of life for a cycle, She is the Ender of All. She is the hungry Earth, who devours Her own children.

Like Maya, Devi, and Shakti (see stories), Kali is the Primordial Feminine, out of Whom all comes and to Whom all returns. It is in Her Destroyer aspect, however, that She most upsets the colloquial image of the G.o.ddess in the West. Her squatting, many-armed form, with Her bared teeth and necklace of skulls, with the corpse of Her consort s.h.i.+va beneath Her, defies once and for all our stereotype of the G.o.ddess as a combination of a nymph, Cleopatra, and Florence Nightingale.

In relations.h.i.+p to the Corpse G.o.d s.h.i.+va, Kali is the aspect of the G.o.ddess Shakti that precedes and follows another revival of s.h.i.+va as Lord of the Dance: She is the G.o.ddess alone in the majesty of Her totality. For the G.o.d s.h.i.+va, along with His masculine counterparts, Brahma and Vishnu, is like the water contained in the hollow made by a cow's hoof compared with the vast sea of Their G.o.ddess.

To write the story of Kali, I took my notebook and pen on a walk in Oakland's Redwood Park. I had spent the evening before calling Her name and asking for help. I wanted to portray death and the human relations.h.i.+p to death in a way that captured neo paganism diametric opposition to the Christian concept of death as punishment for sin. I left the trail to sit cross-legged under deep shade in piles of evergreen needles. I chewed the pen and whispered Her name. The draft story came, and, with a sense of peace and accomplishment, I arose in a couple of hours to return home. I found my clothes covered with tiny white maggots. The moment was perfect: Kali was there.

Kali's colors are red, black, and white. She can be invoked with a knife, skull, or cauldron.

The Story of Death There is not enough room!" the people were crying.

"There is not enough room!"

It was true. Plants were so thick on the forest floors that the strongest knives could not cut paths through them. Corn and rice grew so high in the fields that they towered like trees over the people.

People had not enough to eat in those times, because no one died.

Babies came and grew bigger and bigger, but people did not get old and they never left the Earth.

That was when the G.o.ddess Kali turned over in Her sleep. The peoples'

cry, "There's not enough room!" became part of Her dream. But She must have been ready to awake because the next cry, "There's not enough room!" woke Her and She sat up.

"You disturb My sleep!" She bellowed, rubbing Her eyes with Her fists.

"There's not enough room!" the people cried.

Kali drew on Her robes. She walked to Her window and threw it open to look out on the world. She put Her dark hands on the sill and leaned out. Her black hair ruffled in the wind. What She saw made Her draw back into Her room.

She saw crowds of people piled on each other, none of them old, all of them elbowing each other to get at vats of food in buildings crammed together so tightly it was hard to see the sky. Animals swarmed through the throngs. The air was hot with sweat and perfume and soil.

Kali, inside, licked Her lips. Her hands went to Her hips.

"Time!" She yelled.

Her servant, Time, came running.

"Bring Me My red said," She ordered. Time brought the garment, dark as the color of blood.

Kali threw off the gray robes of sleep and fastened the red about Her.

"Clothe yourself," She said to Her servant.

"We are going out. And bring Me My jewels."

Time did as bidden. He took up Her gray robes for himself and put on shoes the shape of fish. Then he brought Kali Her necklace, glinting with skulls.

"Take these," Kali said, and She thrust gifts wrapped in golden paper into Time's hands.

"Now call My chariot!"

The chariot came, pulled by eight white stallions and eight black mares. Fire leapt from its wheels when Kali and Time climbed to its platform. W'ith a loud cry, Kali raised Her hand and let loose the rein.

The horses smoked across the distance to Earth. Before each village, Kali drew in the rein. Her servant Time stepped from the chariot and handed the gold-wrapped gifts to people who crowded at each stop.

In each package the people found Kali's gifts. Spider webs. Dust.

Decay. Mold. Worms. Rust. Mushrooms. Crumbling. Rot. Mildew. The smell of rich earth. Aging.

It was on that day that crops knew more than just blooming and growing.

They knew also the withering that returned them to the soil. It was on that day that the plants of the forest floor began to add to the blackness of the soil so the trees could grow.

Animals had babies, but now the babies grew old. Humans too began to age. They also began to die, so there would be room for their children.

Kali and Her servant Time returned to Her palace. Exhausted She fell, still crimson-clothed, across Her bed. Time undressed Her gently and tucked Her under the covers.