Kali the Bloodthirsty Goddess Fleece Blanket

The fleece blanket features a lightweight, pill-free microfiber fleece that is not only supremely soft, but warm & cozy.

• Full Print Top With White Underside

• Machine Wash, Tumble Dry Low

From the "Cult of Kali" by Karl NE:

The Appearance of Kali is described as a hideous four-armed emaciated with fang-like teeth, who devours all beings (sometimes the image differs and increase its number of arms). The lower left arm holds a bloody severed head from that of a demon or giant (muda), the upper left arm wields a sword (khadga). With her right upper arm, she makes a gesture of fearlessness and with the lower hand she confers benefits. These two arms are raised to bless the worshiper. Her hands end in claws. The meaning of the severed head is that there is no escape from time, and that individual lives and deaths are merely minute episodes in the time continuum. This is also the significance of her association with crematoria and burial grounds. Taken from the Tantra is the image of Virya-Kali. Visualized in the center of an aura of blinding light and contemplated as the innermost vibrancy (spande) of consciousness. She has six faces and her hair is wreathed with flames. She adorned with the severed heads and dismembered limbs of the lower deities; she rides on the shoulders of Kalagnirudra. In this form she has twelve hands which carries a noose, a goad, a severed head, a sword, a shield, a trident-khatvanga (skull-topped staff), a thunderbolt (vajra), a ringing bell, a damaru-drum, a skull-cup, a knife, a bleeding heart and a elephant-hide. The weapons denote her powers of destruction.

Kali is often seen naked, with only ‘ornaments’ in form of earrings made from little children, a necklace of snakes, one of skulls and another made from the heads of her sons, and a belt from which hang demons’ hands. Her nakedness indicates that she has stripped off all the veils of existence and the illusion (maya) arising from them. Her only garment is space. Thus, she also described as black, the color in which all distinctions are dissolved; or she is eternal night, in which she stands upon ‘non-existence’, the static but potentially dynamic state that precedes manifestation. The unmanifest is represented by the corpse (sava) of her husband Siva on which she stands. In some pictures she is seen dancing on Siva which has the name Kala (time) who lies down, with one eye open, this is a symbolic scene, which leads to speculation. The mother or the ‘little time’ dances upon the ‘big time’ or the ‘eternity’ (another name for Siva). She had conquered and subdued her own husband. Siva is also recognized in a double figure (Shiva-shava) under Kali. Her body is smeared with blood, an interest developed after killing the demon Raktavira whom Brahma (the supreme god, the creating force) had granted a boon whereby every drop of blood which fell from his body was able to produce thousand more like him. The only way in which Kali could kill him therefore was to hold him up, pierce him with a spear and drink all his blood as it gushed out. She is often portrayed with a tongue hanging out and her mouth dripping of blood.

Kali is the goddess of all plagues, earthquakes, flooding and storms and in temple paintings seen with a pair of scissors, which she uses to cut the thread of life, and thereby becoming death. But she is also a destroyer of ignorance and act as the maintainer of world order and blesses those who strive for knowledge, a symbol for her own knowledge is her third eye (saiva), which is often identified with the pineal gland, the third eye is an organ used to observe the astral world. it is placed on her forehead together with the moon-sickle of Siva (jata) which represents fertility and creative principle.

The insatiable appetite for blood, her cruel and wild character, the snakes entwined round her neck. the skulls and her fearless sexuality are for the modern western society an unbelievable way for a goddess to behave. Kali probably the last of the ‘vampire-gods’, still worshiped openly through blood sacrifices, today by animals, not to long ago by humans. Hindus’ believe it to be folly not to accept the dark and destructive parts of nature as well as the good sides. Everything is divine and should be worshiped."-Karl NE