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Kali is probably one of the few deities for whom the methodology of worship
varies between two extremes. One the one hand you have vaidika (adhering to
vedas and it's derivatives) worship and on the other hand you have some very
non-vaidika practices. I have no clue about the non-vaidika worship. Here's a
very brief idea of the Vedic worship.
Generally the goddess is portrayed as wearing a garland of skulls, with a
severed head of a man in her hand and on a dancing pose on top of shiva, who is
as still as a corpse. She has many hands and in each she has various things.
Needless to say all these have symbolic interpretations.
The severed head represents the ego, which only by her grace, can be quelled.
The skulls are supposed to be those of various brahmas (the creator) during
various yugas (a time frame of many, many years), and by wearing the skulls she
shows that she is beyond time. The corpse like shiva is the supreme brahman
whose creative or dynamic aspect she is. Frankly, I have forgotten much of the
other symbolisms :-).
The Devi Mahatmyam (the greatness of the Goddess) describes the appearance of
the Goddess and her various manifestations. There is a scholarly work by Thomas
Colburn (sp?) and it is called "The crystallization of the Goddess tradition"
or something like that. I haven't read the book myself, so I don't know how
good it is. But he dates this work ~500AD in his book. I had a review of the
book somewhere. If you need details, I can look it up. It's a Motilal
Banarsidas publication. `The Tantric tradition', by Aghehananda Bharati is also
another scholarly work. You may get further references from these two books.
Ramakrishnan.
--
http://yake.ecn.purdue.edu/~rbalasub/
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