O human mind, throughout your thinking process invoke the subtle sound of Kali, Kali, Kali. Why not ground your entire being in Her Holy Name, which dissolves all dangers arising from without and from within?
How can you forget, even for an instant, Her supremely precious Name? The mind that remembers the Mother experiences no fear when facing the terrible expanse of universal suffering.
Overcome with fervent love, this poet pleads: “O mind, how can you possibly forget the Mother? At the very center of your being sing ceaselessly the Name of Kali, for your life in the current of time is coming to an end.”
Ramprasad poem No. 21, translated by Lex Hixon, featured on the Shakti Bhajans album by Jai Ma Music.
I am writing this on my phone, stood under a bus shelter, because I wanted to get this out but will be busy tonight and will need to go straight to bed as soon as I get home.
Jordan Peterson is having some sort of mental breakdown in which he thinks worshipers of Gaia, Pan, and now the Hindu goddess Kali are on some rampage to destroy the West. Most recently he made some downright genuinely offensive comments about the goddess Kali, for which he not only refused to apologise and admit his mistake, but doubled down upon when challenged on it by Hindus, the overwhelming majority of whom were very polite about it.
I genuinely think this man is suffering from a form of spiritual psychosis and he’s seemed more… Troubled than usual since his coma and benzo addiction.
I’ve said a lot about my dislike for this man’s views and politics (especially around the feminine and the environment) but I also think there’s something to be said for how his earlier work has genuinely benefited a lot of young men’s lives. I don’t like to demonise people I disagree with and with some notable exceptions I can see the good in many different psychologists, theologians and philosophers whose work I personally don’t like. To be honest, while I’ve not read his books other than a flick through my ex’s copy, some of his earlier interviews and lectures have genuinely helped me adopt a stronger mindset and ‘get my act together’ so to speak. I think he spoke to a dadless generation and as someone with little to no masculine influence in my life, I get it. He is certainly a better role model for young men than some so-called ‘masculinity gurus’ that have risen (and fell) in recent years.
But this is ridiculous. Pagan gods and Hindu gods are not malevolent archetypes of chaos that want to attack Western values. On the contrary, Indo-European polytheism is the basis of Western civilization. Who are the last mainstream, far-practiced IE religion left on earth? Hindus. Whom I have so much respect for.
Even his most ardent defenders, if they have a shred of intellectual honesty, should admit that this is a bad look. No one is forcing college students to worship a Hindu goddess (and environmentalists aren’t forcing Christians to worship a Pan or Gaia).
He has also taken a very Christian-centric approach in which masculinity = order and femininity = chaos. Inasmuch as we can appreciate Chaos as a force of change, intuition, flow, power that cannot be dominated by any human, beauty, love, I have no problem with that, but you can’t apply it to religions where it does not fit. Kali Maa is not a force of chaos. Her name means ‘time’. She is a fierce defender of the divine order, slaying those demons who threaten her children. She is much more akin to Jesus or Our Lady Mary in Christianity than Lilith or Tiamat. And it is pretty clear to me that Peterson has a deep fear of what he perceives as ‘feminine chaos’, instead of an understanding that it is an equally necessary, equally-capable-of-good force as order is. You need a balance of order and chaos. Peterson is very influenced by the likes of Jung- and somewhat by Joseph Campbell, who spoke fondly of the Goddess, the Earth Mother, and so forth. Campbell never disparaged Her as a dangerous, chaotic, idolatrous force. There are those who have told me Peterson is not a Christian supremacist and is okay with pagan religions but at least now, that no longer seems to be the case. From what he has been saying lately, perhaps since his full conversion to Christianity (rather than dancing around the subject when asked about his religion like he did for years) it seems he is genuinely anti-pagan and anti-any religion that isn’t Abrahamic, or worships a single, transcendent, masculine-coded God. Many such people look at Kali’s frightening appearance and perceive her as a demon, or at least something she very much isn’t.
This is also why, as somewhat of a Jungian and comparative mythologist myself, we must be careful that we are not applying our own culturally Christian biases to deities whom they do not apply. Many goddesses from not just Hinduism but also IE paganism generally who appear to represent ‘chaos’ on the surface are actually acting in favour of the divine order. Let’s think about this metaphysically for a minute. Many goddess worshipers, Jungians etc agree that the feminine represents nature, matter, the changing seasons, the changing earth. Okay. Do the seasons just come whenever they want? Do you wake up one morning in January and find suddenly it is late summer and the apples are beginning to fall? Of course not. Nature is deeply ordered. I do not disparage those who, in an attempt to understand our complicated universe and the relationship between the divine feminine and the divine masculine, have came to the conclusion that chaos is feminine. I have friends who take this view. But even in Yin and Yang, which influences this Jungian chaos/order dichotomy, a seed of Yang lives in Yin and vice versa. Therefore, can we not concede that even if the Goddess represents chaos, she employs order to weave the patterns of the seasons?
Kali does not come from the underworld. I assume he is conflating her with figures such as Hekate and Ereshkigal. All broadly fit under the banner of ‘dark goddess’ but there’s a lot of nuance that gets missed in these modern conversations about polytheism. Archetypes can be useful to understand how the gods influence our lives but they are not the be-all-and-end-all. The ‘Devouring Mother’ Peterson speaks of is a Jungian archetype that influences mothers who are overprotective of their children. It seeks to prevent children from reaching their fullest potential at its most benign by stifling their development (picture the mother who won’t let her son skateboard with the other boys in case he hurts himself) and at its most damaging it is abusive and narcissistic. I’ve certainly seen this archetype influence mothers I know (including one significant one who does not like her adult sons having serious girlfriends or making decisions without her approval). It can be understood in terms of figures like Mother Gothel from Rapunzel.
But Kali Maa is not an example of this archetype. As for ‘the Goddess’ in the sense that many modern Westerners use it, She is all, and can be said to contain this archetype within Her, but Christian, and culturally Christian patriarchal men like Peterson hyperfixate on archetypes such as this as if that’s all the Goddess is, implying She is a threat to Western values (when actually Her civilization arguably influenced much of ours). I’m also not sure how he came to the conclusion that the Devouring Mother is influencing academia but I’d genuinely be interested to know why he thinks this. Perhaps he’s saying she prevents professors from allowing students to reach their own conclusions on topics and instead wants them close to her ideas? I’ve heard that about academia before, but to be honest, while the series of tweets seems like mostly incoherent psychobabble to me (as do most of his tweets of late), it seems to be more that he’s associating her with leftist ideologies such as feminism. Which brings me to my final point.
While Paganism and especially goddess worship have became very politicized due to their association with environmentalism, equality and feminism, you don’t have to identify as a feminist or any political ideology to come to Her. Her worship transcends human bi-partisan issues. While I’m basically a leftist (and some spicy flavour of feminist, depending on who you ask) myself, I think it would be great if the Goddess could be separated from these issues and depoliticised. I know that’s not going to be a popular take and I understand the argument that the Goddess calls us to embrace ideas of equity, balance, empowerment of the oppressed, protection of the planet and so on. I very much agree, but people have different ideas on how to do that, so rather than saying, for example, ‘you have to identify as a feminist to worship the Goddess’ I’d prefer if we could say ‘the Goddess teaches us that women are of equal value to men and deserving of protection, dignity and respect’. Associating the Goddess (and paganism generally) too heavily with leftist politics also lends credence to the idea our religious views are not sincere and instead we’re just using them as political tools.
I would ask you all to go listen to what Hindus have to say on the topic of Kali rather than doing what many tend to do in the Western, Jungian-influenced Goddess movement and paying more attention to non-Hindu, culturally Christian sources on Her. I saw many well-worded, intelligent, beautiful responses in response to Peterson’s tweets from Hindus across the political spectrum.
Jai Maa.
~ Rhianwen
Idylls of the Queen 