Maa Kali: The Master Trickster

Maa Kaali: The Master Trickster

“Though smeared with funeral ash, though poison is his food, though clothed only by the directions, though matted-haired, though wearing the king of serpents as an ornament around his neck, though the Lord of beings bears a skull and is the Lord of spirits, he attains the unique status of Lord of the universe. O Bhavānī, this is the fruit of his taking your hand in marriage.”

This wonderful rendering which gives us a glimpse of Maa’s magnanimity is attributed to Adi Shankaracharya who is remembered by the world as the great Advaitin. A being of such force that even now people speak his name as though certainty itself had taken human form. When a man has gone that far, the ordinary mind begins to assume that his movement is now only forward and imagines that once such a being has seen enough, read enough, renounced enough, argued enough, there can no longer be any real interruption. That is where this leela becomes important to me and its not because it makes him small, but rather because it shows that even in a giant, Maa alone decides where the next step will happen.

This leela is remembered not from the beginning of Shankaracharya’s path, but from the late phase of his digvijaya, after the bhashyas had been written, after the great debates had been won, after disciples and peethas had already been established, when the one the world already knew as Acharya reached Kashmir carrying the full force of all he had accomplished and then was brought to a point where he could not proceed as he intended. In one current he was too weak to move, in another, even a basic act like producing fire does not happen.

So Shankara goes to Kashmir intending to debate or refute the Shakta position, However, before the debate, he is struck by severe illness and becomes too weak even to move or speak properly. Maa Then appears in the form of a young girl and confronts him. When he says he has no strength, she points out the contradiction: if he himself cannot function without shakti, how can he deny Shakti? One version puts it almost exactly in that form: “Without Shakti, I cannot do anything,” and the girl answers that if he cannot move even an inch without his own shakti, how can he refute the cult of Shakti.

There is also a Kashmiri traditional retelling, Shankaracharya reaches Kashmir carrying the force of mission, yet before any formal victory or refutation can happen, the movement is arrested at a very ordinary point. His camp cannot even draw the fire needed to cook, and the one who had come to speak from clarity is first made to sit before a simple absence of power. Then Maa appears, in different retellings sometimes as a young girl, a housewife, or an old woman, takes the samidhas, utters mantra, and kindles the fire that his own side could not bring forth, after which the same Kashmir tradition speaks of a long shastrarth, often remembered as lasting seventeen days with a learned Kashmiri woman, and from that current comes the local association of this turning with the composition of Saundarya Lahari on Gopadri Hill, later called Shankaracharya Hill.

A man may know the upanisads by heart, carry the force of renunciation, command debate, logic, grammar, metaphysics, and Advaita with terrifying beauty. He may be so accomplished that generations bow before his words, but, the moment he forgets, even subtly, that the capacity to think, move, argue, speak, will, and confront arises only by sakti, Maa has already decided the lesson.

Imagine the confidence Shankaracharya must have carried. The terrifying confidence that comes from actually knowing, actually realizing, actually winning, actually moving with force in the world, Imagine the intensity of that. That is why the lesson cuts so deep. It is not merely that sakti is to be respected as one deity among others but that without sakti, there is no functioning whatsoever for even the urge to challenge Her depends on Her first consenting to animate the challenger.

Incidents like this shows why Maa’s leelas cannot be known in advance because She does not respond to our scale. She responds to the knot that remains. If the knot is gross, the blow may be gross. If the knot is subtle, the blow may come through simplicity. Through illness, silence, a girl standing where the mind expected no danger or through one sentence that empties an entire movement of certainty. She does not have to argue with the intellect when She can simply reveal the source from which the intellect was borrowing power all along.

She does not always come to break ignorance in the weak, Sometimes, She comes to break subtle certainty in the great. People tend to think the Divine will only reveal Herself through grand, predictable, scripturally convenient spectacles. They imagine that once a being has reached a certain height, has mastered enough darsana, defeated enough scholars, established enough authority, then the path ahead must unfold in a straight line. Maa however is not a concept that can be placed inside someone’s progression as She is the very Power by which progression happens. She is not standing outside the game waiting to be analysed but is the one by whose force the game, the player, the thought, the challenge, the victory, and the collapse…

Jai GuruDeva

Jai Khyapa Parampara

Jai Kaala Bhairava

Jai Maa Adya