Who is Goddess Kali?

The following description by Nita Rubio, is the perfect articulation of my felt sense of this Goddess and my many experiences of her protection and guidance. I read this in August 2025 and I felt seen in a way that is hard to find with the many misrepresentions and therefore misunderstandings of Her all over the world. Moreover even though I am a writer, I have a hard time articulating this energy and its power and love.

From https://www.kulayogini.com/kali-sadhana:

Kālī is one of the most powerful and revered goddesses within the Śākta path, which honors the Divine Feminine as the intrinsic, pervasive power and wisdom of Supreme Reality. For beginners, she might first appear fearsome: wild, adorned with a garland of skulls and a skirt of severed arms, holding weapons and a freshly severed head. Yet beneath this fierce imagery lies a profound symbolism. Kālī represents the dissolution power of transformation. She is time itself—cutting through illusion, ego, and everything impermanent. Her appearance is not meant to frighten but to awaken. To disturb the habitual comforts of our deepest clinging to the small self. 

Kālī also takes us beyond time. To that which is a unified field of Love. She stops all the action that propels us constantly into a feeling of separate-ness and isolation. She supports and fosters the recognition of interdependence.

At a deep level, Kālī is a compassionate Mother. She devours the obstructions and negativities in our lives and helps us shed layers of fear, attachment, and identity that limit our growth. Unlike deities who preserve or create, Kālī’s energy is that of dissolution—but always in service of liberation. She is often worshipped in the cremation grounds, where the boundaries between life and death blur, symbolizing her capacity to carry the devotee beyond dualities and into direct experience of the Divine. Beginners are encouraged to approach her with humility and openness, knowing that her love, though intense, is fiercely protective and radically liberating.