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Kali Ma & Kundalini: Serpent Goddess Rising
Tanya Lynne Brittain
Abstract: Kundalini yoga is a relatively new practice to appear on the Western yoga scene. In this essay, I examine the place of Kali – or more accurately Her absence – in the transmission to the West from India. Accredited with its appropriation to the West is Yogi Bajhan, a Sikh man from India who is said to have brought the traditional practice of kundalini to the United States in the 1960s. The historical roots of kundalini yoga as posited by scholars in the field of Hinduism and Tantra however, tell us that Kundalini is a serpent goddess coiled around the base cakra and this form of Sakti is the Great Goddess Kali Ma. Through various techniques the Goddess is woken from her dormant state and carried up through the various cakras to be united with her divine consort Siva, leading the practitioner into excelled and ecstatic supreme states of consciousness and heightened states of awareness. Popular kundalini yoga as taught by Yogi Bajhan – the form taught here in Saskatoon – is missing a very important piece of the practice; the Goddess. In what follows I will explore the missing Kundalini in kundalini yoga.
Keywords: Kundalini, Yoga, Tantra, Kali, Goddess Worship
Awake, Mother! Awake! How long Thou hast been asleep
In the lotus of the Muladhara!
Fulfill Thy secret function, Mother:
Rise to the thousand-petalled lotus within the head,
Where mighty Siva has His dwelling;
Swiftly pierce the six lotuses
And take away my grief, O Essence of Consciousness![1]
…
[1] The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 182 in Elizabeth Harding, Kali The Black Goddess of Dakshineswar (Maine: Nicolas-Hays, 1998), 87.
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S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies Volume 1 Number 1 (2022)