Reconciling Kali and Gauri:
Goddess Thealogy and the Art of Peace

A love of nature is one of the signatures of many pagan traditions, and Goddess worshippers are no different. In this article, I’d like to consider what this means to those of us who try to live our beliefs in this time of turbulence and war. What is "Nature" and what does it mean to respect and love it? What relation does a love of nature have to our spirituality, doctrine, and practice? And how is natural destruction different from violence, if indeed it is?

There are myriad responses to the question “What is nature?" They run from the dualistic ("Nature is all that is not human-made”) to the all encompassing (“Nature is all that there is”). When I think of the natural world, I veer towards more inclusiveness and less duality. I like to think of nature as a bowl that holds many fruits: all the natural world, rocks, plants, humans, animals, and amoeba. I don’t know where nature ends; it is a mystery which I have not been able to comprehend completely. Therefore I focus on the positive side of the question and try to remain in connection to all that is natural. To love nature is to understand patterns, to dance the divine dance, and to live within the cycle of birth-life-death-rebirth. Above all, to love nature is to respect her as a part of the Goddess and to love, cherish, and nurture all that she makes: life itself. I’m sure that those of you who hold nature in a central place in your thealogy will recognize what I’m saying even if it is not exactly how you would describe it.

But nature is not only about life; it is also about death and destruction. Hurricane Isabel passed over my house on September 18 and reminded me that we are part of nature and that we are at her mercy. There was a divine grace to this mammoth storm, an internal consistency, and a pattern. While Isabel devastated both plant and animal realms, she acted utterly within her nature. She has been characterized as a violent storm. I would suggest to you that there was nothing violent about her. Ferocious, wild, untamed, yes, but violent, no. She was as violent as a cheetah chasing down its prey. Violence is, by my definition, a human construct. It is out of the natural order. A human killing with guns and bombs is a violent act. A virus killing humans is not violent; it is the nature of the virus. Nature (the noun) can have a deadly nature (the characteristic) but not a violent one. To me, violence has a malevolent intent and therefore I cannot subscribe to a doctrine that puts violence within the “natural” order.

Having said all that, I am puzzled at how a Goddess thealogy can be made to support doctrines of violence. I know many pagans who supposedly worship nature but cannot give up the belief that at some point violence is necessary, that war is necessary. To me this is utterly contradictory to a true Goddess thealogy and spirituality. If you love life, you cannot hold to any doctrine that allows for life to be taken in any act of violence outside the cycle of birth-life-death-rebirth.[1] I am talking about war, warmongering, war making, and aggression in all its forms. I’m talking to those who can’t seem to believe that a nonviolent response can be successful, to those who argue that because we’ve always been warriors[2]/soldiers (like we’ve been rapists and pillagers, liars and thieves), we should honor our past and continue the traditions of “just” war and righteous killing.

But then we have a dilemma. If war and violence is contrary to Goddess thealogy today (as opposed to in the past when we know that there were women warriors), how do we reconcile Athena to Aphrodite and Kali to Gauri? How can we understand what the war Goddesses have to teach us? And why are there war Goddesses at all? First, we must understand the nature of violence as an extra-natural occurrence, which humans create and undertake as opposed to death-bringing activities that occur in the natural world. The latter cannot really be called “harmful” because they are part of nature; they are part of the cycle, while the former are harmful because they disrupt the cycle. Kali is a goddess who understands cycles, and even though her stories are quite violent, they are allegories of a deeper wisdom. Kali is the ego-destroyer (all those skulls are egos she’s taken as prizes), the killer of impurities in those who worship her without wisdom. Thus, there are many out there who worship her because she’s a mean bitch who can kick ass. Unfortunately, those folks who think it's cool don’t realize that when you call her, the first ass she kicks is your own. In other words, Kali is not by nature violent; she is devastating and life changing in the same way as a force of nature, like Isabel. Kali is the force that will do battle with the aggression that we are socialized to feel and exhibit. She is also Gauri, who through love and peace will soften those edges.

Part of the dilemma of living in nature as well as out of it[3] is that we are sometimes forced to confront violence with something like violence or aggression. Mahatma Gandhi, a great prophet of non-violence, said that when we have no options except violence and cowardice, we should take the violent option.[4] But in the event that we have or can create a third nonviolent, courageous option, then true strength and freedom lies in taking that road. Athena, Kali, the Morrigan are perhaps the Goddesses that guide us when we have no options, but they can also guide us in using nonviolent force. Living within nature and with a respect for life makes this our spiritual duty regardless of what our forebears have done.[5]

What I suggest to you as you think about war and humanity is that in order to be consistent with a nature respecting Goddess spirituality, the path of nonviolence is the best and most natural option. This does not mean that we are enjoined from using force to defend ourselves, or from the use of violence when we have no choice. Rather it means that we must be vigilant and truthful about whether there really is no choice, and whether we really are powerless to create a third way, another choice. My personal suspicion is that there is always a third way that we can follow, a way short of killing our neighbors, our environment, and ourselves. The real cowardice is seeking the easy way out by going straight for the gun, the bomb, or the tank.

In our communities, we can encourage our modern-day warriors to be wise women, life loving and creatively courageous. In our personal lives, we can practice nonviolence by refusing to act outside the bounds of nature through applying our wisdom and our compassion, by choosing our words carefully with each other, and by choosing not to judge our sisters in ways that the Goddess herself would not.

Notes
[1] And I’m not talking here of vegetarianism because those who would prescribe a vegetarian diet to all humanity on the basis of nonviolence to animals would jeopardize the lives of the countless who live in desert and arctic regions or other nomadic peoples. Nor am I interested in the idea of euthanasia as violence because whether it is in fact violent is wholly dependent on the circumstances.
[2] I make a distinction between those who are warriors of the spirit, like those who have undertaken martial training as a spiritual discipline, and those who are warriors because they seek to prevail over the bodies of others.
[3] This is a paradox that I toy with quite often, we are indeed in that area of the Venn Diagram where the natural and the unnatural overlap.
[4] Mohandas Gandhi, see http://www.mkgandhi.org/nonviolence/phil8.htm.
[5] For those who are tempted to make the overly-romanticized argument that there have always been warriors and wars and that we should create a space for such people in our society, I say this: War has changed, violence has changed. We no longer fight face to face; we no longer use our fists or swords. Now we use automatic pistols, those we kill remain faceless. We are no longer warriors; we are soldiers dealing out death in mechanized violence. The only warriors left in our societies are those who truly understand nonviolence.

Graphic Credits
+ Kali, courtesy of The Hindu Gallery.
+ hurricane, courtesy of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce.
+ Gandhi, courtesy of The Official Mahatma Gandhi eArchive & Reference Library.