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Awakening to Kali: The Goddess of Radical Transformation
The sages of Tantra taught that when we follow the path of Shakti, the sacred feminine principle personified by the goddesses of yoga, we awaken the full potential of our own inner energies. Kali, teaches Sally Kempton, may be both the most powerful—and misunderstood—goddess of all.
Kali—her name means “Black One”—is the original Dark Goddess, whose hidden gift is ecstasy. She brings both fierceness and love, destruction and rebirth—and untamed courage and freedom for those willing to fully comprehend and embrace her many gifts. In this e-book, readers are invited to explore teachings, stories, meditations, prayers, poems, mantras, invocations, and rituals to align with this cosmic force of radical transformation.
Program Highlights
Kali as the Mirror of Our Own Inner State Kali the Blood Drinker The Two Faces of the Dark Goddess Kali and the Ego Kali’s Fierce Forms Kali’s Role in Spiritual Liberation Contemplation: The Felt Sense of Kali in Your Life The Tantric Kali: Deity of Heroes The Kali Woman: Archetype of Feminine Power, Sexuality, and Force A Kali Asana Practice A Contemplation on Kali’s Audacity The Shadow Kali Kali as the Inner Voice of Destructive Rage Dialoguing with Kali (a guided practice) Kali as the Human Teacher A Visualization Practice for Offering Your Negative Tendencies to Kali’s Fire Unlocking the Hidden Kali Meditation: Kali as the Great Void
91 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 1, 2014
336 people are currently reading
545 people want to read
About the author
Sally Kempton
21 books103 followersSally Kempton is a widely respected teacher of meditation and spiritual wisdom, known for her capacity to kindle meditative states in others, and to help students work with meditative experience as a framework for practical life-change. A former journalist who wrote for Esquire, New York, and the Village Voice, she has spent over four decades practicing, teaching, and writing on meditation and spiritual philosophy. Sally spent 20 years as a swami in a traditional Vedic order of monks. She was deeply trained in the teachings of Kashmir Shaivism and Vedanta under the guidance of her enlightened teacher, Swami Muktananda.
Sally is the author of the best-selling books "Awakening Shakti: The Transformative Power of the Goddesses of Yoga" and of "Meditation for the Love of It,” which Spirituality and Health magazine called “the meditation book your heart wants you to read”. Her audio program, Doorways to the Infinite: The Art and Practice of Tantric Meditation, was released by Sounds True in 2014. She is on the faculty at Esalen and Kripalu, teaches meditation on the websites Glo.com, Gaia.com, and Yogajournal.com, and is a contributing editor at Yoga Journal. Sally teaches online courses and seminars on meditation and spiritual philosophy, and leads retreats and workshops in the U.S., Canada and Europe.
Sally is the author of the best-selling books "Awakening Shakti: The Transformative Power of the Goddesses of Yoga" and of "Meditation for the Love of It,” which Spirituality and Health magazine called “the meditation book your heart wants you to read”. Her audio program, Doorways to the Infinite: The Art and Practice of Tantric Meditation, was released by Sounds True in 2014. She is on the faculty at Esalen and Kripalu, teaches meditation on the websites Glo.com, Gaia.com, and Yogajournal.com, and is a contributing editor at Yoga Journal. Sally teaches online courses and seminars on meditation and spiritual philosophy, and leads retreats and workshops in the U.S., Canada and Europe.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
June 13, 2018
After I moved from India to the United States, there was a period in my life when I looked back and thought about how little I knew about my own culture. It was also a time when I was really feeling gaps in my own relationship with God/Goddess/the divine and feeling very lost.
I read this book during this time. As someone who grew up in North India, although, of course, I knew of Kali ma (Mother Kali), for me, femininity has been associated with more submissive Goddesses like Sita. Learning more about other Goddesses in the past few years has felt like an opening up to a larger feeling of feminine rage. Kali is an archetypal figure, and as Radical Anger personified, learning about her will give you permission to feel and channel (appropriately) your own healthy anger. Goddesses like Kali show that the feminine is not just nurturing but can also have fiercer aspects.
As a recovering "nice" woman, this was a wonderful, little book for me on many levels. Whether or not you are Hindu or even religious doesn't matter, if the archetypal figure of Kali calls to you, then learning about her might be really helpful for you.
I read this book during this time. As someone who grew up in North India, although, of course, I knew of Kali ma (Mother Kali), for me, femininity has been associated with more submissive Goddesses like Sita. Learning more about other Goddesses in the past few years has felt like an opening up to a larger feeling of feminine rage. Kali is an archetypal figure, and as Radical Anger personified, learning about her will give you permission to feel and channel (appropriately) your own healthy anger. Goddesses like Kali show that the feminine is not just nurturing but can also have fiercer aspects.
As a recovering "nice" woman, this was a wonderful, little book for me on many levels. Whether or not you are Hindu or even religious doesn't matter, if the archetypal figure of Kali calls to you, then learning about her might be really helpful for you.
April 19, 2019
Same as chapter on Kali in Awakening Shakti
Chapter two of this book is the same as the chapter on Kali in Awakening Shakti. Spend your money on that book, and forego this one
Chapter two of this book is the same as the chapter on Kali in Awakening Shakti. Spend your money on that book, and forego this one
February 6, 2023
Book: Awakening to Kali: The Goddess of Radical Transformation
Author: Sally Kempton
Publisher: Sounds True (1 December 2014)
Language: English
File size: 4381 KB
Print length: 91 pages
Price: 71/-
What an outstanding book!!
Mother Kali appears in a different way depending on the echelon of awareness with which you approach her. Anthropologists note that there are two basic versions of Kali in popular Indian religion:
1) There is the village or forest Kali, where she and her alter-ego forms—such as Bhadrakali, Chamunda, and Bhairavi—are often seen as goddesses of the margins: scary, half-demonic forest deities. They are invoked for defense and magical purposes by mostly amateurish rustic people, often in nighttime rituals and seasonal dances in which goddess-possessed worshippers enact the myths with lots of shouting and roaring, fueled by home-distilled local liquor.
Black magicians worship this same aspect of Kali with mantras, for the sake of acquiring magical powers and killing enemies. In Nepal, as in numerous parts of Bengal, Kali worship is accompanied by animal sacrifice, and her temples often smell of the blood of goats.
2) In more modern, urban Hindu religious practice, Kali is Kali Ma—Mother Kali—a benevolent and affectionate source of every kind of boon and blessing. At this plane, her roughness is interpreted emblematically. The skulls around her neck are not dead victims, but the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, through which she manifests both liberating mantras and deluding ideas.
The hands on her apron represent the karmic tendencies she removes from her devotees, as well as her own assorted capabilities.
The skull in her hands, which her sword has just lopped off, is the ego that separates us from her.
The divine mother’s nakedness shows that she has cast away the illusion, the chimera; in her, the inclusive truth about life and death is revealed.
Even her tint is esoteric; Kali’s dark shades stand for the eventual void state, where all differences dissolve into the ‘unconditional’, beyond all form.
Her sword is the force that slices through illusion, unawareness, false hope, and lies.
Her position on top of Shiva reveals that she is the self-motivated force in the universe, the power that churns the motionlessness of the void, so worlds can be created inside that magnificent nothingness.
In fact, Kali holds both these energies—the spiritually liberating and the fearsome—which is why she always remains wildly, dynamically paradoxical. She is multifaceted and multilayered, both as an inner force—a spiritual and psychological power—and as a force in the universe.
The 19th century Bengali poet Ram Prasad, in his songs to Kali, caught her paradox. He sang of a goddess who embodies love and destruction, who is both the Shakti at the heart of this confusing world and the power who dissolves our pain:
O Mother! Thou art present in every form.
Thou art in the entire universe and in its tiniest and most trifling things,
Wherever I go, and wherever I look
I see Thee, Mother, present in thy cosmic form.
The whole world—earth, water, fire, and air—
All are thy forms, O Mother, the whole world of birth and death.
Often puerile tales are invented to explain a tradition that could have had its origin at a sublime plane.
Let us consider a popular ceremonial image --- that of Kali standing on the breast of Shiva, her one leg raised and her body in a mode of motion.
Couldn't that be the vision of a sage who meditated on the relation between Time and Eternity?
The present is Vartaman in Sanskrit. It means "revolving". Kali (Time is Kala in Sanskrit) is shown in a mode of movement, the leg raised, signifying the moment past as well as the moment to come and the leg planted on Shiva standing for the present.
She is dark; for we know not what is there in store for us or for the world the next moment. She wears a garland of skulls, the relics of the acons past.
The white Shiva is static, the white contains all the shades of time and Shiva is auspicious Eternity. The image could be an attempt at embodying the mystic experience of Eternity supporting the moving time.
But once the vision had been expressed through a visual, it looks gross and intriguing and urgently demands an interpretation. No wonder that a tale must be incorporated in a lesser work belonging to the plethora of books several of which pass on as the subsidiary Puranas.
Three chapters make up this tome:
1) A Crown of Feminine Design
2) Kali: Goddess of Radical Transformation
3) Which Goddesses Are You?
As mystics state, Goddess Kali has not one definable personality. Depending on the worshipper's discipline, faith and motive, she could be anything from a ruthless deity to the most sublime manifestation of the Divine Mother, her colour varying from dark to luminous golden, with a thousand forms between the two poles.
As ages passed, the Vedic gods also underwent changes in human perception of their divinity. Indra is a premier god in the Vedas, along with Agni and Surya.
Later we find Indra to mean more a royal position in the community of gods (A mortal, Nahusha, became Indra for a while) than one of the Supreme functionaries.
But what is most important to remember is-the significance of these premier gods in the Vedic context remains undiminished.
The shift in their functions is at another plane, we can call it the wider popular plane that emerged, where the Trinity-Brahma Vishnu and Shiva became the repositories of all the fundamental powers.
What did this book teach me? The following:
**Kali offers us the freedom that lies beyond death. You can enter her freedom through many doorways—looking into her force in nature, examining the hidden forces behind your shadow rage, or invoking her fire to help you dissolve emotional patterns and negative tendencies.
**Ultimately—and this is the secret that Kali reveals only to those who seek it—Kali’s essence is the vast, empty, ultimately fertile void itself. Kali’s blackness is the darkness of the ultimate mystery, the transcendent womb of black light out of which reality is always arising and into which it constantly subsides.
**She’s the cloud of unknowing described by the mystics; the presence behind all things.
**When you tune deeply into Kali’s energy, letting the calm presence behind her eyes open you to the presence in your own, you discover that her death-dealing implements, her take-no-prisoners attitude toward ego, her revolutionary forcefulness and her vast love are simply aspects of her eventual power to draw the mind within.
**Kali does indeed dissolve our structures, but it’s always in service of the heart. She reverses the process that brings form out of the formless and takes us back to the absolute.
**The yogi’s Kali is that power that can turn the mind inward in profound meditation, dissolving our body sense, dissolving our thoughts, liberating emotions into energy, and drawing all our energies into their source in the inner heart.
**Her great dissolve carries us into the recognition that all things are one in the Self.
Finally, in the heart of hearts, Kali lives as the compelling draw of eventual oneness, the call of the Self to let go of everything that would disconnect us from what we always already are.
Give it a try. You’ll love it.
Author: Sally Kempton
Publisher: Sounds True (1 December 2014)
Language: English
File size: 4381 KB
Print length: 91 pages
Price: 71/-
What an outstanding book!!
Mother Kali appears in a different way depending on the echelon of awareness with which you approach her. Anthropologists note that there are two basic versions of Kali in popular Indian religion:
1) There is the village or forest Kali, where she and her alter-ego forms—such as Bhadrakali, Chamunda, and Bhairavi—are often seen as goddesses of the margins: scary, half-demonic forest deities. They are invoked for defense and magical purposes by mostly amateurish rustic people, often in nighttime rituals and seasonal dances in which goddess-possessed worshippers enact the myths with lots of shouting and roaring, fueled by home-distilled local liquor.
Black magicians worship this same aspect of Kali with mantras, for the sake of acquiring magical powers and killing enemies. In Nepal, as in numerous parts of Bengal, Kali worship is accompanied by animal sacrifice, and her temples often smell of the blood of goats.
2) In more modern, urban Hindu religious practice, Kali is Kali Ma—Mother Kali—a benevolent and affectionate source of every kind of boon and blessing. At this plane, her roughness is interpreted emblematically. The skulls around her neck are not dead victims, but the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, through which she manifests both liberating mantras and deluding ideas.
The hands on her apron represent the karmic tendencies she removes from her devotees, as well as her own assorted capabilities.
The skull in her hands, which her sword has just lopped off, is the ego that separates us from her.
The divine mother’s nakedness shows that she has cast away the illusion, the chimera; in her, the inclusive truth about life and death is revealed.
Even her tint is esoteric; Kali’s dark shades stand for the eventual void state, where all differences dissolve into the ‘unconditional’, beyond all form.
Her sword is the force that slices through illusion, unawareness, false hope, and lies.
Her position on top of Shiva reveals that she is the self-motivated force in the universe, the power that churns the motionlessness of the void, so worlds can be created inside that magnificent nothingness.
In fact, Kali holds both these energies—the spiritually liberating and the fearsome—which is why she always remains wildly, dynamically paradoxical. She is multifaceted and multilayered, both as an inner force—a spiritual and psychological power—and as a force in the universe.
The 19th century Bengali poet Ram Prasad, in his songs to Kali, caught her paradox. He sang of a goddess who embodies love and destruction, who is both the Shakti at the heart of this confusing world and the power who dissolves our pain:
O Mother! Thou art present in every form.
Thou art in the entire universe and in its tiniest and most trifling things,
Wherever I go, and wherever I look
I see Thee, Mother, present in thy cosmic form.
The whole world—earth, water, fire, and air—
All are thy forms, O Mother, the whole world of birth and death.
Often puerile tales are invented to explain a tradition that could have had its origin at a sublime plane.
Let us consider a popular ceremonial image --- that of Kali standing on the breast of Shiva, her one leg raised and her body in a mode of motion.
Couldn't that be the vision of a sage who meditated on the relation between Time and Eternity?
The present is Vartaman in Sanskrit. It means "revolving". Kali (Time is Kala in Sanskrit) is shown in a mode of movement, the leg raised, signifying the moment past as well as the moment to come and the leg planted on Shiva standing for the present.
She is dark; for we know not what is there in store for us or for the world the next moment. She wears a garland of skulls, the relics of the acons past.
The white Shiva is static, the white contains all the shades of time and Shiva is auspicious Eternity. The image could be an attempt at embodying the mystic experience of Eternity supporting the moving time.
But once the vision had been expressed through a visual, it looks gross and intriguing and urgently demands an interpretation. No wonder that a tale must be incorporated in a lesser work belonging to the plethora of books several of which pass on as the subsidiary Puranas.
Three chapters make up this tome:
1) A Crown of Feminine Design
2) Kali: Goddess of Radical Transformation
3) Which Goddesses Are You?
As mystics state, Goddess Kali has not one definable personality. Depending on the worshipper's discipline, faith and motive, she could be anything from a ruthless deity to the most sublime manifestation of the Divine Mother, her colour varying from dark to luminous golden, with a thousand forms between the two poles.
As ages passed, the Vedic gods also underwent changes in human perception of their divinity. Indra is a premier god in the Vedas, along with Agni and Surya.
Later we find Indra to mean more a royal position in the community of gods (A mortal, Nahusha, became Indra for a while) than one of the Supreme functionaries.
But what is most important to remember is-the significance of these premier gods in the Vedic context remains undiminished.
The shift in their functions is at another plane, we can call it the wider popular plane that emerged, where the Trinity-Brahma Vishnu and Shiva became the repositories of all the fundamental powers.
What did this book teach me? The following:
**Kali offers us the freedom that lies beyond death. You can enter her freedom through many doorways—looking into her force in nature, examining the hidden forces behind your shadow rage, or invoking her fire to help you dissolve emotional patterns and negative tendencies.
**Ultimately—and this is the secret that Kali reveals only to those who seek it—Kali’s essence is the vast, empty, ultimately fertile void itself. Kali’s blackness is the darkness of the ultimate mystery, the transcendent womb of black light out of which reality is always arising and into which it constantly subsides.
**She’s the cloud of unknowing described by the mystics; the presence behind all things.
**When you tune deeply into Kali’s energy, letting the calm presence behind her eyes open you to the presence in your own, you discover that her death-dealing implements, her take-no-prisoners attitude toward ego, her revolutionary forcefulness and her vast love are simply aspects of her eventual power to draw the mind within.
**Kali does indeed dissolve our structures, but it’s always in service of the heart. She reverses the process that brings form out of the formless and takes us back to the absolute.
**The yogi’s Kali is that power that can turn the mind inward in profound meditation, dissolving our body sense, dissolving our thoughts, liberating emotions into energy, and drawing all our energies into their source in the inner heart.
**Her great dissolve carries us into the recognition that all things are one in the Self.
Finally, in the heart of hearts, Kali lives as the compelling draw of eventual oneness, the call of the Self to let go of everything that would disconnect us from what we always already are.
Give it a try. You’ll love it.
March 12, 2019
I am in love with Sally's writing. She has an easy style to read yet knows how to really absorb you in the stories and practices she writes about. I have been amazed by Kali for ages and finally started giving attention to the most powerful female deity there is. Any woman who is just going through the stage of life in which they are in need of rewriting their old patterns should grab this book. I love also how Sally describes all her forms and finally it is not only a visualization of a demonic woman who has an angry face, but you will learn how valuable Kali really is to have at least a bit of her presence in your life. Kali is a total badass and remains my number one goddess.
November 19, 2022
Excellent
I love how this book portrayed Has Kali is a very loving mother who helps us to reach our true potential in life. Jai Maa Kali!!!
I love how this book portrayed Has Kali is a very loving mother who helps us to reach our true potential in life. Jai Maa Kali!!!
July 18, 2022
The divine feminine
Being unfamiliar with Kali I tend to keep her at a distance since her aspect is rather frightening. This book is a good introduction to understanding her more. The first part talks about the divine feminine in general and the second part focuses more on Kali. The book is short but concise. The author helped me see Kali from another perspective. However don’t expect a book about Kali’s mythology. Its more a book of personal experience.
Being unfamiliar with Kali I tend to keep her at a distance since her aspect is rather frightening. This book is a good introduction to understanding her more. The first part talks about the divine feminine in general and the second part focuses more on Kali. The book is short but concise. The author helped me see Kali from another perspective. However don’t expect a book about Kali’s mythology. Its more a book of personal experience.
March 9, 2021
It’s impossible ever to convey a personal and spiritual experience though Sally Kempton gets as close as possible.
November 12, 2024
Here’s a simple, easy to understand, introductory explanation to the Goddess Kali. It’s written to appeal to the Western hemisphere, so you will not have the depth that is usually found in books written on Kali by practitioners of tantra, or teachers from the goddess lineages.
Things I found helpful:
- visualization and meditations to connect to this form of the Goddess
- practiced and meditations on how to work with Kali’s energy
It’s a nice book to get started with Goddess Kali. It is however important to know that worshipping Kali is not for the faint-hearted. This form of the goddess demands incredible devotion and willingness to be “destroyed”, so that our true forms may come forth in the end.
Things I found helpful:
- visualization and meditations to connect to this form of the Goddess
- practiced and meditations on how to work with Kali’s energy
It’s a nice book to get started with Goddess Kali. It is however important to know that worshipping Kali is not for the faint-hearted. This form of the goddess demands incredible devotion and willingness to be “destroyed”, so that our true forms may come forth in the end.
September 5, 2019
Exactly what I was looking for today. Plus, the writing is phenomenal, descriptive, illuminating and deep. I
Look forward to reading the entire Awakening Shakti book - especially now that I have learned that I am a sacred feminist!! But today (this month), my greatest need is to learn to invoke Kali’s transformational power through knowledge and experiential practice, and this comprehensive excerpt gave me both.
Look forward to reading the entire Awakening Shakti book - especially now that I have learned that I am a sacred feminist!! But today (this month), my greatest need is to learn to invoke Kali’s transformational power through knowledge and experiential practice, and this comprehensive excerpt gave me both.
June 2, 2020
As my first book on kali I thought this provided a good introduction, and a fairly quick read. I know folks say it is the same to her other book awakening shakti, which she does reference and recommend you read for a fuller picture. So if you are buying the books, maybe go with that one. However I was just interested in Kali so this was good enough for me.
Read
August 9, 2020Really enlightening and useful to understanding Kali, the concept and story behind her. The end of the book also goes into the other Goddesses, most interestingly Chinnamasta and Saraswati; the former being the Goddess of the Avant Garde and the Experimental and the latter being a Goddess of Art, Knowledge, Creativity, Music, Wisdom and Counselling. Highly recommend for anyone interested in Kali.
September 17, 2019
Great info on Kali
I feel drawn to her and enjoyed reading it. I will read it again. It is true Kali does not play games but she does it from a Mother's loving point of view but she will still knock you on your a$$ if that's what you need. Great book.
I feel drawn to her and enjoyed reading it. I will read it again. It is true Kali does not play games but she does it from a Mother's loving point of view but she will still knock you on your a$$ if that's what you need. Great book.
December 28, 2019
Loved it
Was guided to it at a time in my spiritual evolution where I needed Kali's divine loving energy and she didn't disappoint. Beautiful book, lots of insights and tools. Definitely recommend if you're called to it 😊
Was guided to it at a time in my spiritual evolution where I needed Kali's divine loving energy and she didn't disappoint. Beautiful book, lots of insights and tools. Definitely recommend if you're called to it 😊
April 27, 2020
Relatable
I was so enlightened by the information provided in book. I have a deep connection with Kali Ma through more then just my anger issues. I hope to feel her power as I continue my shadow work.
I was so enlightened by the information provided in book. I have a deep connection with Kali Ma through more then just my anger issues. I hope to feel her power as I continue my shadow work.
April 18, 2023
An amazing insight into Ma Kali
As a male devotee of Kali for 5 years, I am always learning and growing. I loved the different perspectives on Kali and the deities associated with her energy/essence. This book is a great help to all seekers!
As a male devotee of Kali for 5 years, I am always learning and growing. I loved the different perspectives on Kali and the deities associated with her energy/essence. This book is a great help to all seekers!
March 24, 2025
It was a cool read. I do think it is catered more to the western world, but it still did well in explaining the story of Kali in a simple and digestible way. I particularly appreciated the meditations and different exercises included through the book.
June 12, 2018
Good stuff on a first read through. Lots of things to return to and further explore.
November 5, 2018
Very informative! I will revisit this book time and time again to practice the exercises!
March 1, 2019
Not what I expected
It was good but not what I expected when I bought it. I enjoyed the myths but there was something about the book that didn't resonate with me.
It was good but not what I expected when I bought it. I enjoyed the myths but there was something about the book that didn't resonate with me.
March 28, 2022
Brilliant
An excellent opportunity to bring Maa Kali into our hearts and lives by the various ways mentioned in the book.
An excellent opportunity to bring Maa Kali into our hearts and lives by the various ways mentioned in the book.
April 7, 2025
I really enjoyed learning more about Kali. Her light and shadow sides and how they show up for me as well as how to call in her energy.
December 10, 2020
Informative 🙏
This was brief but full of interesting information and gave me a much better insight into the amazing Kali and how to work with her energy
This was brief but full of interesting information and gave me a much better insight into the amazing Kali and how to work with her energy
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews