Sex and Death! Sex and Death! 

That's the running joke whenever anyone in my circle pulls Kali Ma from one of my Goddess Oracle decks. Kali evokes a sense of simultaneous awe and revulsion, devotion and recoiling, from many people. The Hindu Dark Mother embodies so much that seems paradoxical -- endings and beginnings, creation and destruction, nurturing and punishment, love and hate, and -- yes -- Sex and Death. Her fearsome visage, her girdle of severed arms, her necklace of skulls all draw on our darkest fears. And yet the ultimate lesson of Kali Ma, it so often seems, is for us to be willing to find beauty in the horrific, to find the love in the dark nights of the soul, to find the new beginning in the fiery ending. 

Kali Ma invites us, this week and every week, to allow what has served its purpose to pass away. By loosing our grasp on what has burned out or exhausted itself, we open our hands and lives to the new. Only when we let go of what was can we begin to experience what can be. This is such a harsh lesson, and one that many of us (including) have had to learn over and over. And to approach that letting go without fear and with a degree of trust in the Dark Mother is perhaps the hardest part. 

Some questions I will be pondering as I walk with Kali Ma this week:

What has reached its natural end in my life?

What am I ready to let go of, or to let pass away?

What support will I need as I do this letting go?

How can I give that support to myself, or ask for it from others?

What do I want to welcome into my life?

What must I let go of to make room for those new things I want to welcome?