cogitoergosum
2011-01-17 20:23:05 UTC
Killing for 'Mother' Kali
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,322673,00.html
By Alex Perry atapur Monday, Jul. 22, 2002
Click here to find out more!
For the magic to work, the killing had to be done just right. If the
goddess were to grant Khudu Karmakar the awesome powers he expected
from a virgin's death, the victim had to be willing, had to know what
was happening, watch the knife, and not stop it. But even
tranquilizers couldn't lull 15-year-old Manju Kumari to her fate. In
his police confession, Karmakar says his wife, daughter and three
accomplices had to gag Manju and pin her down on the earthen floor
before the shrine. In ritual order, Karmakar wafted incense over her,
tore off her blue skirt and pink T shirt, shaved her, sprinkled her
with holy water from the Ganges and rubbed her with cooking fat. Then
chanting mantras to the "mother" goddess Kali, he sawed off Manju's
hands, breasts and left foot, placing the body parts in front of a
photograph of a blood-soaked Kali idol. Police say the arcs of blood
on the walls suggest Manju bled to death in minutes.
Human sacrifice has always been an anomaly in India. Even 200 years
ago, when a boy was killed every day at a Kali temple in Calcutta,
blood cults were at odds with a benign Hindu spiritualism that
celebrates abstinence and vegetarianism. But Kali is different. A
ferocious slayer of evil in Hindu mythology, the goddess is said to
have an insatiable appetite for blood. With the law on killing people
more strictly enforced today, ersatz substitutes now stand in for
humans when sacrifice is required. Most Kali temples have settled on
large pumpkins to represent a human body; other followers slit the
throats of two-meter-tall human effigies made of flour, or of animals
such as goats.
In secret ceremonies, however, the grizzly practice lives on. Quite
simply, say the faithful�known as tantrics�Kali looks after those who
look after her, bringing riches to the poor, revenge to the oppressed
and newborn joy to the childless. So far this year, police have
recorded at least one case of ritual killing a month. In January, in
the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, a 24-year-old woman hacked her
three-year-old son to death after a tantric sorcerer supposedly
promised unlimited earthly riches. In February, two men in the eastern
state of Tripura beheaded a woman on the instructions of a deity they
said appeared in their dreams promising hidden treasures. Karmakar
killed Manju in Atapur village in Jharkhand state in April. The
following month, police dug up the remains of two sisters, aged 18 and
13, in Bihar, dismembered with a ceremonial sword and offered to Kali
by their father. Last week on the outskirts of Bombay, maize seller
Anil Lakshmikant Singh, 33, beheaded his neighbor's nine-year-old son
to save his marriage on the advice of a tantric. Said Singh: "He
promised that a human sacrifice would end all my miseries."
Far from ancient barbarisms that refuse to die, sacrifice and sorcery
are making a comeback. Sociologists explain the millions who now
throng the two main Kali centers in eastern India, at Kamakhya and
Tarapith, as what happens when the rat race that is India's future
meets the superstitions of its past. Sociologist Ashis Nandy says:
"You see your neighbor doing well, above his caste and position, and
someone tells you to get a child and do a secret ritual and you can
catch up." Adds mysticism expert Ipsita Roy Chakaraverti: "It's got
nothing to do with real mysticism or with spiritualism. It comes down
to pure and simple greed." Tarapith in particular is a giant building
site of new hotels, restaurants and stalls selling plastic swords and
postcards of Kali's severed feet. Judging by the visitors here, Kali
appeals to both rich and poor: the rows of SUVs parked outside four-
star hotels belong to the ranks of businessmen and politicians lining
up with their goats behind penniless pilgrims. ("The blood never dries
at Tarapith," whispers one villager.)
There are no human sacrifices at the temple these days. But the
mystique of ritual killing is so powerful that even those who actually
don't perform it claim to do so. In their camp in the cremation
grounds beside the temple, a throng of tantrics tout for business by
competing to be as spooky as possible, lining their mud-walled temples
with human skulls and telling tall tales of human sacrifice. "I cut
off her head," says 64-year-old Baba Swami Vivekanand of a girl he
says he raised from birth. "We buried the body and brought the head
back, cooked it and ate it." He pauses to demand a $2 donation. "Good
story, no?" While most of this is innocent, some followers, like
Karmakar, are inevitably emboldened to take their quest for power to
the extreme. Karmakar, like many others, was caught. But in the dust-
bowl villages of India, where superstition reigns and blood has a dark
authority, the question is how many other "holy men" have found that
ultimate power still rests in the murderous magic of a virgin
sacrifice.
Indian cult kills children for goddess
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/mar/05/india.theobserver
'Holy men' blamed for inciting dozens of deaths
* The Observer, Sunday 5 March 2006
A painted image of the Hindu goddess Kali is propped up against a
stone in the dirt, her long red tongue goading terrified worshippers
into submission. From one of her eight flailing arms a severed head
dangles, her neck is adorned by a necklace of bleached human skulls.
There are bloodstains on the cracked wall behind the terrible postcard-
size image and, around the dark room, splattered gore on the heavy
wooden furniture. These dark marks bear witness to a child sacrificed
in the name of the abominable goddess.
Through the doorway, in the distance, colourfully dressed women are
bent double, toiling in the fields, their faces worn and wrinkled from
the sun, their hands cracked from digging at the dry earth from dawn
until dusk.
It's an intolerable life in the remote village of Barha, a squalid
collection of mud-bricked farmers' dwellings in the heart of the
impoverished province of Khurja, Uttar Pradesh. This corner of rural
India is a lawless place of superstitions and deep prejudice. The
region, known for its sugarcane, is a tortuous eight-hour drive from
Delhi and a lifetime away from the 21st century.
In Bulandshahr, the nearest town of any description, locals whispered
darkly of happenings in Barha. Their advice was unanimous: 'Don't go.
It is an evil place. The people there are cursed.'
Sumitra Bushan, 43, who lived in Barha for most of her life, certainly
thought she was cursed. Her husband had long abandoned her, leaving
her with debts and a life of servitude in the sugarcane fields. Her
sons, Satbir, 27, and Sanjay, 23, were regarded as layabouts. Life was
bad but then the nightmares and terrifying visions of Kali allegedly
began, not just for Sumitra but her entire family.
She consulted a tantrik, a travelling 'holy man' who came to the
village occasionally, dispensing advice and putrid medicines from the
rusty amulets around his neck.
His guidance to Sumitra was to slaughter a chicken at the entrance to
her home and offer the blood and remains to the goddess. She did so
but the nightmares continued and she began waking up screaming in the
heat of the night and returned to the priest. 'For the sake of your
family,' he told her, 'you must sacrifice another, a boy from your
village.'
Ten days ago Sumitra and her two sons crept to their neighbour's home
and abducted three-year-old Aakash Singh as he slept. They dragged him
into their home and the eldest son performed a puja ceremony, reciting
a mantra and waving incense. Sumitra smeared sandalwood paste and
globules of ghee over the terrified child's body. The two men then
used a knife to slice off the child's nose, ears and hands before
laying him, bleeding, in front of Kali's image.
In the morning Sumitra told villagers she had found Aakash's body
outside her house. But they attacked and beat her sons who allegedly
confessed. 'I killed the boy so my mother could be safe,' Sanjay
screamed. All three are now in prison, having escaped lynch mob
justice. The tantrik has yet to be found.
Police in Khurja say dozens of sacrifices have been made over the past
six months. Last month, in a village near Barha, a woman hacked her
neighbour's three-year-old to death after a tantrik promised unlimited
riches. In another case, a couple desperate for a son had a six-year-
old kidnapped and then, as the tantrik chanted mantras, mutilated the
child. The woman completed the ritual by washing in the child's blood.
'It's because of blind superstitions and rampant illiteracy that this
woman sacrificed this boy,' said Khurja police officer AK Singh. 'It's
happened before and will happen again but there is little we can do to
stop it. In most situations it's an open and shut case. It isn't
difficult to elicit confessions - normally the villagers or the
families of the victims do that for us. This has been going on for
centuries; these people are living in the dark ages.'
According to an unofficial tally by the local newspaper, there have
been 28 human sacrifices in western Uttar Pradesh in the last four
months. Four tantrik priests have been jailed and scores of others
forced to flee.
The killings have focused attention on Tantrism, an amalgam of
mystical practices that grew out of Hinduism. Tantrism also has
adherents among Buddhists and Muslims and, increasingly, in the West,
where it is associated with yoga or sexual techniques. It has millions
of followers across India, where it originated between the fifth and
ninth centuries. Tantrik priests are consulted on everything from
marital to bowel problems.
Many blame the turn to the occult on the increasing economic gap
between rural and urban India, in particular the spiralling debts of
cotton and tobacco farmers, linked with high costs of hybrid seed and
pesticides, that has led to record numbers of farmers committing
suicide.
According to Sanal Edamaruku, president of the Indian Rationalist
Association, human sacrifice affects most of northern India. 'Modern
India is home to hundreds of millions who can't read or write, but who
often seek refuge from life's realities through astrology or the
magical arts of shamans. Unfortunately these people focus their
horrific attention on society's weaker members, mainly women and
children who are easier to handle and kidnap.'
Tantriks caught up in the crackdown in Uttar Pradesh say their
reputation is being destroyed by an insane minority. 'Human sacrifices
have been made in this region since time immemorial,' says Prashant, a
tantrik who runs a small 'practice' from his concrete shell of a home
on the outskirts of Bulandshahr. 'People come to me with all sorts of
ailments. I recommend simply pujas and very rarely animal sacrifices.'
In her squalid home Ritu Singh rocks back and forth, beating her chest
in grief. She has been mourning since the day her son Aakash's body
was discovered in a sewer outside Sumitra Bushan's home. Her husband,
Rajbir, said: 'We expect them to be jailed or fined but they won't
spend longer than a few years in prison for what they have done. They
were my neighbours, they ate in our house. The Tantrik who made them
do this has disappeared, they will never find him.'
Kali in Hollywood's Temple of Misogyny
http://homepage.mac.com/kia/magick/kali_essay.htm
by Fran Nowve
published in The Beltane Papers Beltane '93
The return of the Goddess in modern western culture is being
experienced by different segments of the population on vastly
different levels. To many people, the Goddess is a pleasant
alternative to the authoritarian Father God of Judeo-Christianity. The
Goddess is seen by these people as a loving Mother who is
unconditionally giving and accepting. (Actually, that is a very
radical step for our consciousness to take. Unconditional love is
deeply subversive of the values upheld by the Patriarchy.) As powerful
as this first step is, however, it is but the beginning of an
exploration into the long-denied heart of the Goddess (and our own
suppressed female psyches).
Those who have proceeded further along the path of Goddess worship
speak of the "Dark Mother," who represents aspects of the Goddess
which are sometimes frightening, painful and confusing. The Dark
Mother is nothing less than the totality of our long denied self. If
the Male principle is rational and "moral" and orderly and white, the
Female principle is irrational, immoral/amoral, chaotic, and black.
She is our very shadow, the much-feared "evil" which we spend enormous
amounts of energy pretending not to know even exists. Books like
Shakti Woman by Vicki Noble are now proliferating which deal with the
process whereby we may come to terms with that long buried reality.
Among the various examples of the Dark Mother, Kali is possibly
the most misunderstood. Thus, it should not come as a complete
surprise that even a film-maker like Steven Spielberg, who has been in
many ways a spokesman for the New Age (e.g. ET), should deal with Kali
in a highly reactionary manner. In making Indiana Jones and the Temple
of Doom, Spielberg erected a temple to Misogyny. The film presents two
images of Woman: Woman as Clown and Woman as Demon. The former is
exemplified by Willie Scott, who is vain, acquisitive, childish, and
lets a little boy put her in her place ("You call him 'Mr. Jones,'
Doll!" says Short Round, a little boy who takes his masculinity
seriously). Willie's pain and terror are not taken seriously by
anybody. The viewer is encouraged to experience them as "comedy" and
the other characters either don't notice or treat her cries of
distress as "noise" (for example, the scene where she tries to mount
the elephant and winds up facing backwards and the scene where
unaccustomed to jungle sights and sounds, she panics).
The latter image of Woman is presented by the Goddess, Kali-Ma,
who is depicted more as demon than as Goddess. Spielberg takes some
strange liberties with Hindu theology here; he can't or won't go
beyond Christian polarities. Kali is made into a Hindu counterpart to
Satan while the God, Shiva, is treated as a counterpart to Christ or
(the good) God. All the "good" characters are on the side of Shiva and
Indy even tells one of the villains that he will have to answer to
Shiva in the next life. Kali provides the evil-doers with Satanic
power (the dark light). They rob poor villagers of a sacred stone,
causing poverty and desolation to descend upon them while kidnapping
their children, whom they make into slaves. Such Christianization of
the Hindu deities is particularly laughable in light of the fact that
Shiva is Kali's consort. Tradition depicts him lying prostrate at
Kali's feet, swooning in ecstasy (or dead).
These evil Kali-worshippers are none other than members of the
notorious "Thuggee" cult. The Thuggee are a real historic phenomenon.
They were worshippers of Kali who actually practiced human sacrifice
to the Goddess. As such, they are pointed to as examples of everything
"evil" about Goddess worship. For example, William Schoebelen in
"Wicca, Satan's Little White Lie,"1 makes much of the Thuggee and even
refers to "Indiana Jones." He uses the propaganda of that movie as
"proof" that Wicca (and all Goddess worship) is evil.
As strange as Spielberg's version of Hindu theology is, he takes
some even stranger liberties with history by locating the Thuggee in a
palace in Bangkok. The real Thugs were highwaymen, outlaws, who
depended upon he predominance of food travel for their success in
finding "victims." The advent of the railways in the 1800s seriously
cramped their style, all but eliminating their power. Furthermore
their method of execution was strangling, not fire in a fancy
contraption, as Indiana Jones would have it.2
But more needs to be said about this strange phenomenon. India is
a predominantly Hindu nation. The Hinduism of today has a long and
colorful history. For one thing, it is really the result of combining
various other religious traditions and paths. Just as the England of
today is the result of the intermingling of two peoples, the Norman
aristocrats and the Celtic peasants, modern India is the result of two
different populations coming together, the Aryans and the Dravidians.
The Dravidians were the Goddess worshippers. The indigenous
population, they were darker and shorter than the fair skinned Aryans
who invaded. The Aryans brought with them their patriarchal culture,
and imposed the caste system and their sense of racial superiority on
the Dravidians. Dravidians had a religious history going back many
centuries. Jainism, Buddhism, and Yoga are some major traditions
practiced by Dravidians. Both Buddhism and Hinduism are the sort of
religions which have the capacity to absorb other traditions.
Tantrism, which is usually regarded as part of Hinduism, is really a
separate religion, according to Isaac Bonewits. "Tantrism survived (in
India) by masquerading as a sect of Hinduism."3 It is "the system of
yoni-worship, or female-centered sex worship, allegedly founded
thousands of years ago in India by women of a secret sect called
Vratyas. The primary object of its adoration was the lingam-yoni-Shiva
and the Goddess Kali."4 "It's entirely possible that in this
reinstatement of the Goddess, both in the popular cults and in the
deep philosophy of the Tantra, we have another sign of the resurgence
of the religiosity of the non-Aryan matriarchal tradition of Dravidian
times."5
A Triple Godhead was set up as a counterpart to the triple
goddess: Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Of these three, Shiva, who is
credited with the invention of Yoga, had originally been part of the
Dravidian religion. There was a feeling on the part of those loyal to
the "old religion" which worshipped Kali and Shiva that Brahma and
Vishnu were "punks," not worthy to be put on a par with Shiva. The
present pantheon of Hinduism was clearly a compromise, somewhat of a
patching together of diverse theologies.
"Tantric yogis insisted that their supreme Shiva was the only god,
and all the other gods were only inferior imitations of him. He was
certainly older than the vedic heaven-gods... Shiva's worshippers may
have been literally correct in viewing other gods as recent upstarts.
Some of the scriptures claimed that Brahma and Vishnu were so puny
that they couldn't even realize the limits of Shiva's cosmic lingam."6
The Thuggee considered Brahams, the top caste, to be enemies of
Kali. Sacrifices were taken exclusively from this group. Women were
never sacrificed. Clearly, there is more to this "human sacrifice"
business than actually meets the eye. It would seem that the Thuggee
were actually engaged in a class war- or even an anti-imperialist war
on class and national enemies. The Brahams represented the Aryans who
invaded and imposed their religion on the Dravidians. The Dravidians
were the underdogs. Their side of the fighting took the form of
guerrilla warfare, highwaymen waiting to take the enemy by surprise.
It is amazing that this political aspect to the subject of Kali
worship and the Thuggee cult hasn't been more widely discussed and
documented.
But who is this Goddess who could inspire such dreadful acts (even
if they were done to fight imperialism)? As stated above, she is a
Dark Goddess. The name, Kali, is th Hindu word for Black. She is
usually depicted dancing on top of the lifeless form of Shiva. There's
no getting away from it: Kali is not "nice." As ex-Wiccan Christian
fundamentalist William Schnoebelen put it, she is "not the sort of
girl you'd wish to bring home to mother."7 (Incredible that even an ex-
Wiccan Goddess worshipper would think of the Goddess in such terms,
isn't it?) No, Kali isn't a "girl" at all. Although she is a triple
Goddess, she is far too powerful to imagine as anything less than a
full-blooded woman embodying danger and mystery.
Myth has it that Kali sprang from the brown of the Goddess Durga
in the middle of a full-scale battle wherein Durga was fighting the
demons, Mahisasura, Sumbha and Nishumba at the behest of the gods who
had begged her to save them. Kali appeared black, naked (or draped in
tiger skin), and "emaciated, wide-mouthed, lolling-tongued, with deep
sunken red eyes."8 She severed the heads of Canda and Munda, servants
of the demons. Then she took on the demon, Raktabija:
From the blood shed from his wounds sprang thousands of fresh
combatants, representing the destructive masculine principle. To
annihilate this archtypical power, Kali again and again drank the
rakta-bija (the seed blood). This symbolic devouring represents the
"taking possession of" or rendering harmless of an overpowering
destructive element, a phallic power.9
From the stories can be seen the basically beneficent nature of
Kali (and Durga) despite her terrifying image and her actual role as
"destroyer." Not being dualistic, Wiccan and Paganism accept
destruction as a natural and beneficial part of the whole.
Kali is nothing less than a long denied, long forgotten aspect of
our female self- our power to be "ugly;" to impose limitations just as
Nature imposes mortality on everything which has a temporal existence
on earth.
We are no longer accustomed to associating the feminine with that
kind of power. The Goddess has returned with a message of feminine
power and Kali is the greatest expression of it. As such, we can
expect her to continue to draw flack from the Spielbergs and the
Schnoebelens. And we can consider it a tribute to the depth and
breadth of her and our power.
Human sacrifice? Beheaded body found near Kali temple in Birbhum
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/human-sacrifice-beheaded-body-found-near-kali-temple-in-birbhum/607102/
Express News Service Tags : religion, Kali temple, crime Posted: Fri
Apr 16 2010, 00:56 hrs Kolkata:
In a case of suspected “human sacrifice”, the blood-splattered
beheaded torso of a 25-year-old man was found outside a temple of
Goddess Kali this morning at a village about 15 km away from Bolpur
town in Birbhum district.
Police sources said in rural Bengal, such acts of superstition and
primitive religious rituals are not uncommon, especially on sankranti,
which fell last night.
A senior police officer said the torso was of a male body and was
found near the altar placed in front of the temple in a village called
Paruldanga. It was first spotted by the temple’s priest around 5 am
when he went there for prayers.
“The slain torso had new clothes on the body. His hands were not tied.
There was no indication of any resistance on the victim’s part. It
seems he was drugged and was completely unconscious when he was
slaughtered,” said the officer, who visited the spot and saw the
torso.
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“Several articles of worship like burnt incense sticks were found near
the body. There was blood stain on the altar. Tantrik (occult) rituals
are generally performed on amavasya and sankranti,” added the officer.
A police team sent to the area with sniffer dogs around 9 am was led
to the house of a villager named Lalmohan Hansda.
Birbhum SP Rabindranath Mukherjee said, “It seems to be a case of a
human sacrifice. But it can also be a as we have found injury marks on
the face. We have picked up a person from the village.”
Chandan Mukherjee, the priest of the Kajjala Kali temple, reportedly
told the police he had performed puja at the temple till 9 pm last
night. When he returned this morning, he saw a body lying just outside
the temple.
...and I am Sid Harth
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,322673,00.html
By Alex Perry atapur Monday, Jul. 22, 2002
Click here to find out more!
For the magic to work, the killing had to be done just right. If the
goddess were to grant Khudu Karmakar the awesome powers he expected
from a virgin's death, the victim had to be willing, had to know what
was happening, watch the knife, and not stop it. But even
tranquilizers couldn't lull 15-year-old Manju Kumari to her fate. In
his police confession, Karmakar says his wife, daughter and three
accomplices had to gag Manju and pin her down on the earthen floor
before the shrine. In ritual order, Karmakar wafted incense over her,
tore off her blue skirt and pink T shirt, shaved her, sprinkled her
with holy water from the Ganges and rubbed her with cooking fat. Then
chanting mantras to the "mother" goddess Kali, he sawed off Manju's
hands, breasts and left foot, placing the body parts in front of a
photograph of a blood-soaked Kali idol. Police say the arcs of blood
on the walls suggest Manju bled to death in minutes.
Human sacrifice has always been an anomaly in India. Even 200 years
ago, when a boy was killed every day at a Kali temple in Calcutta,
blood cults were at odds with a benign Hindu spiritualism that
celebrates abstinence and vegetarianism. But Kali is different. A
ferocious slayer of evil in Hindu mythology, the goddess is said to
have an insatiable appetite for blood. With the law on killing people
more strictly enforced today, ersatz substitutes now stand in for
humans when sacrifice is required. Most Kali temples have settled on
large pumpkins to represent a human body; other followers slit the
throats of two-meter-tall human effigies made of flour, or of animals
such as goats.
In secret ceremonies, however, the grizzly practice lives on. Quite
simply, say the faithful�known as tantrics�Kali looks after those who
look after her, bringing riches to the poor, revenge to the oppressed
and newborn joy to the childless. So far this year, police have
recorded at least one case of ritual killing a month. In January, in
the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, a 24-year-old woman hacked her
three-year-old son to death after a tantric sorcerer supposedly
promised unlimited earthly riches. In February, two men in the eastern
state of Tripura beheaded a woman on the instructions of a deity they
said appeared in their dreams promising hidden treasures. Karmakar
killed Manju in Atapur village in Jharkhand state in April. The
following month, police dug up the remains of two sisters, aged 18 and
13, in Bihar, dismembered with a ceremonial sword and offered to Kali
by their father. Last week on the outskirts of Bombay, maize seller
Anil Lakshmikant Singh, 33, beheaded his neighbor's nine-year-old son
to save his marriage on the advice of a tantric. Said Singh: "He
promised that a human sacrifice would end all my miseries."
Far from ancient barbarisms that refuse to die, sacrifice and sorcery
are making a comeback. Sociologists explain the millions who now
throng the two main Kali centers in eastern India, at Kamakhya and
Tarapith, as what happens when the rat race that is India's future
meets the superstitions of its past. Sociologist Ashis Nandy says:
"You see your neighbor doing well, above his caste and position, and
someone tells you to get a child and do a secret ritual and you can
catch up." Adds mysticism expert Ipsita Roy Chakaraverti: "It's got
nothing to do with real mysticism or with spiritualism. It comes down
to pure and simple greed." Tarapith in particular is a giant building
site of new hotels, restaurants and stalls selling plastic swords and
postcards of Kali's severed feet. Judging by the visitors here, Kali
appeals to both rich and poor: the rows of SUVs parked outside four-
star hotels belong to the ranks of businessmen and politicians lining
up with their goats behind penniless pilgrims. ("The blood never dries
at Tarapith," whispers one villager.)
There are no human sacrifices at the temple these days. But the
mystique of ritual killing is so powerful that even those who actually
don't perform it claim to do so. In their camp in the cremation
grounds beside the temple, a throng of tantrics tout for business by
competing to be as spooky as possible, lining their mud-walled temples
with human skulls and telling tall tales of human sacrifice. "I cut
off her head," says 64-year-old Baba Swami Vivekanand of a girl he
says he raised from birth. "We buried the body and brought the head
back, cooked it and ate it." He pauses to demand a $2 donation. "Good
story, no?" While most of this is innocent, some followers, like
Karmakar, are inevitably emboldened to take their quest for power to
the extreme. Karmakar, like many others, was caught. But in the dust-
bowl villages of India, where superstition reigns and blood has a dark
authority, the question is how many other "holy men" have found that
ultimate power still rests in the murderous magic of a virgin
sacrifice.
Indian cult kills children for goddess
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/mar/05/india.theobserver
'Holy men' blamed for inciting dozens of deaths
* The Observer, Sunday 5 March 2006
A painted image of the Hindu goddess Kali is propped up against a
stone in the dirt, her long red tongue goading terrified worshippers
into submission. From one of her eight flailing arms a severed head
dangles, her neck is adorned by a necklace of bleached human skulls.
There are bloodstains on the cracked wall behind the terrible postcard-
size image and, around the dark room, splattered gore on the heavy
wooden furniture. These dark marks bear witness to a child sacrificed
in the name of the abominable goddess.
Through the doorway, in the distance, colourfully dressed women are
bent double, toiling in the fields, their faces worn and wrinkled from
the sun, their hands cracked from digging at the dry earth from dawn
until dusk.
It's an intolerable life in the remote village of Barha, a squalid
collection of mud-bricked farmers' dwellings in the heart of the
impoverished province of Khurja, Uttar Pradesh. This corner of rural
India is a lawless place of superstitions and deep prejudice. The
region, known for its sugarcane, is a tortuous eight-hour drive from
Delhi and a lifetime away from the 21st century.
In Bulandshahr, the nearest town of any description, locals whispered
darkly of happenings in Barha. Their advice was unanimous: 'Don't go.
It is an evil place. The people there are cursed.'
Sumitra Bushan, 43, who lived in Barha for most of her life, certainly
thought she was cursed. Her husband had long abandoned her, leaving
her with debts and a life of servitude in the sugarcane fields. Her
sons, Satbir, 27, and Sanjay, 23, were regarded as layabouts. Life was
bad but then the nightmares and terrifying visions of Kali allegedly
began, not just for Sumitra but her entire family.
She consulted a tantrik, a travelling 'holy man' who came to the
village occasionally, dispensing advice and putrid medicines from the
rusty amulets around his neck.
His guidance to Sumitra was to slaughter a chicken at the entrance to
her home and offer the blood and remains to the goddess. She did so
but the nightmares continued and she began waking up screaming in the
heat of the night and returned to the priest. 'For the sake of your
family,' he told her, 'you must sacrifice another, a boy from your
village.'
Ten days ago Sumitra and her two sons crept to their neighbour's home
and abducted three-year-old Aakash Singh as he slept. They dragged him
into their home and the eldest son performed a puja ceremony, reciting
a mantra and waving incense. Sumitra smeared sandalwood paste and
globules of ghee over the terrified child's body. The two men then
used a knife to slice off the child's nose, ears and hands before
laying him, bleeding, in front of Kali's image.
In the morning Sumitra told villagers she had found Aakash's body
outside her house. But they attacked and beat her sons who allegedly
confessed. 'I killed the boy so my mother could be safe,' Sanjay
screamed. All three are now in prison, having escaped lynch mob
justice. The tantrik has yet to be found.
Police in Khurja say dozens of sacrifices have been made over the past
six months. Last month, in a village near Barha, a woman hacked her
neighbour's three-year-old to death after a tantrik promised unlimited
riches. In another case, a couple desperate for a son had a six-year-
old kidnapped and then, as the tantrik chanted mantras, mutilated the
child. The woman completed the ritual by washing in the child's blood.
'It's because of blind superstitions and rampant illiteracy that this
woman sacrificed this boy,' said Khurja police officer AK Singh. 'It's
happened before and will happen again but there is little we can do to
stop it. In most situations it's an open and shut case. It isn't
difficult to elicit confessions - normally the villagers or the
families of the victims do that for us. This has been going on for
centuries; these people are living in the dark ages.'
According to an unofficial tally by the local newspaper, there have
been 28 human sacrifices in western Uttar Pradesh in the last four
months. Four tantrik priests have been jailed and scores of others
forced to flee.
The killings have focused attention on Tantrism, an amalgam of
mystical practices that grew out of Hinduism. Tantrism also has
adherents among Buddhists and Muslims and, increasingly, in the West,
where it is associated with yoga or sexual techniques. It has millions
of followers across India, where it originated between the fifth and
ninth centuries. Tantrik priests are consulted on everything from
marital to bowel problems.
Many blame the turn to the occult on the increasing economic gap
between rural and urban India, in particular the spiralling debts of
cotton and tobacco farmers, linked with high costs of hybrid seed and
pesticides, that has led to record numbers of farmers committing
suicide.
According to Sanal Edamaruku, president of the Indian Rationalist
Association, human sacrifice affects most of northern India. 'Modern
India is home to hundreds of millions who can't read or write, but who
often seek refuge from life's realities through astrology or the
magical arts of shamans. Unfortunately these people focus their
horrific attention on society's weaker members, mainly women and
children who are easier to handle and kidnap.'
Tantriks caught up in the crackdown in Uttar Pradesh say their
reputation is being destroyed by an insane minority. 'Human sacrifices
have been made in this region since time immemorial,' says Prashant, a
tantrik who runs a small 'practice' from his concrete shell of a home
on the outskirts of Bulandshahr. 'People come to me with all sorts of
ailments. I recommend simply pujas and very rarely animal sacrifices.'
In her squalid home Ritu Singh rocks back and forth, beating her chest
in grief. She has been mourning since the day her son Aakash's body
was discovered in a sewer outside Sumitra Bushan's home. Her husband,
Rajbir, said: 'We expect them to be jailed or fined but they won't
spend longer than a few years in prison for what they have done. They
were my neighbours, they ate in our house. The Tantrik who made them
do this has disappeared, they will never find him.'
Kali in Hollywood's Temple of Misogyny
http://homepage.mac.com/kia/magick/kali_essay.htm
by Fran Nowve
published in The Beltane Papers Beltane '93
The return of the Goddess in modern western culture is being
experienced by different segments of the population on vastly
different levels. To many people, the Goddess is a pleasant
alternative to the authoritarian Father God of Judeo-Christianity. The
Goddess is seen by these people as a loving Mother who is
unconditionally giving and accepting. (Actually, that is a very
radical step for our consciousness to take. Unconditional love is
deeply subversive of the values upheld by the Patriarchy.) As powerful
as this first step is, however, it is but the beginning of an
exploration into the long-denied heart of the Goddess (and our own
suppressed female psyches).
Those who have proceeded further along the path of Goddess worship
speak of the "Dark Mother," who represents aspects of the Goddess
which are sometimes frightening, painful and confusing. The Dark
Mother is nothing less than the totality of our long denied self. If
the Male principle is rational and "moral" and orderly and white, the
Female principle is irrational, immoral/amoral, chaotic, and black.
She is our very shadow, the much-feared "evil" which we spend enormous
amounts of energy pretending not to know even exists. Books like
Shakti Woman by Vicki Noble are now proliferating which deal with the
process whereby we may come to terms with that long buried reality.
Among the various examples of the Dark Mother, Kali is possibly
the most misunderstood. Thus, it should not come as a complete
surprise that even a film-maker like Steven Spielberg, who has been in
many ways a spokesman for the New Age (e.g. ET), should deal with Kali
in a highly reactionary manner. In making Indiana Jones and the Temple
of Doom, Spielberg erected a temple to Misogyny. The film presents two
images of Woman: Woman as Clown and Woman as Demon. The former is
exemplified by Willie Scott, who is vain, acquisitive, childish, and
lets a little boy put her in her place ("You call him 'Mr. Jones,'
Doll!" says Short Round, a little boy who takes his masculinity
seriously). Willie's pain and terror are not taken seriously by
anybody. The viewer is encouraged to experience them as "comedy" and
the other characters either don't notice or treat her cries of
distress as "noise" (for example, the scene where she tries to mount
the elephant and winds up facing backwards and the scene where
unaccustomed to jungle sights and sounds, she panics).
The latter image of Woman is presented by the Goddess, Kali-Ma,
who is depicted more as demon than as Goddess. Spielberg takes some
strange liberties with Hindu theology here; he can't or won't go
beyond Christian polarities. Kali is made into a Hindu counterpart to
Satan while the God, Shiva, is treated as a counterpart to Christ or
(the good) God. All the "good" characters are on the side of Shiva and
Indy even tells one of the villains that he will have to answer to
Shiva in the next life. Kali provides the evil-doers with Satanic
power (the dark light). They rob poor villagers of a sacred stone,
causing poverty and desolation to descend upon them while kidnapping
their children, whom they make into slaves. Such Christianization of
the Hindu deities is particularly laughable in light of the fact that
Shiva is Kali's consort. Tradition depicts him lying prostrate at
Kali's feet, swooning in ecstasy (or dead).
These evil Kali-worshippers are none other than members of the
notorious "Thuggee" cult. The Thuggee are a real historic phenomenon.
They were worshippers of Kali who actually practiced human sacrifice
to the Goddess. As such, they are pointed to as examples of everything
"evil" about Goddess worship. For example, William Schoebelen in
"Wicca, Satan's Little White Lie,"1 makes much of the Thuggee and even
refers to "Indiana Jones." He uses the propaganda of that movie as
"proof" that Wicca (and all Goddess worship) is evil.
As strange as Spielberg's version of Hindu theology is, he takes
some even stranger liberties with history by locating the Thuggee in a
palace in Bangkok. The real Thugs were highwaymen, outlaws, who
depended upon he predominance of food travel for their success in
finding "victims." The advent of the railways in the 1800s seriously
cramped their style, all but eliminating their power. Furthermore
their method of execution was strangling, not fire in a fancy
contraption, as Indiana Jones would have it.2
But more needs to be said about this strange phenomenon. India is
a predominantly Hindu nation. The Hinduism of today has a long and
colorful history. For one thing, it is really the result of combining
various other religious traditions and paths. Just as the England of
today is the result of the intermingling of two peoples, the Norman
aristocrats and the Celtic peasants, modern India is the result of two
different populations coming together, the Aryans and the Dravidians.
The Dravidians were the Goddess worshippers. The indigenous
population, they were darker and shorter than the fair skinned Aryans
who invaded. The Aryans brought with them their patriarchal culture,
and imposed the caste system and their sense of racial superiority on
the Dravidians. Dravidians had a religious history going back many
centuries. Jainism, Buddhism, and Yoga are some major traditions
practiced by Dravidians. Both Buddhism and Hinduism are the sort of
religions which have the capacity to absorb other traditions.
Tantrism, which is usually regarded as part of Hinduism, is really a
separate religion, according to Isaac Bonewits. "Tantrism survived (in
India) by masquerading as a sect of Hinduism."3 It is "the system of
yoni-worship, or female-centered sex worship, allegedly founded
thousands of years ago in India by women of a secret sect called
Vratyas. The primary object of its adoration was the lingam-yoni-Shiva
and the Goddess Kali."4 "It's entirely possible that in this
reinstatement of the Goddess, both in the popular cults and in the
deep philosophy of the Tantra, we have another sign of the resurgence
of the religiosity of the non-Aryan matriarchal tradition of Dravidian
times."5
A Triple Godhead was set up as a counterpart to the triple
goddess: Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Of these three, Shiva, who is
credited with the invention of Yoga, had originally been part of the
Dravidian religion. There was a feeling on the part of those loyal to
the "old religion" which worshipped Kali and Shiva that Brahma and
Vishnu were "punks," not worthy to be put on a par with Shiva. The
present pantheon of Hinduism was clearly a compromise, somewhat of a
patching together of diverse theologies.
"Tantric yogis insisted that their supreme Shiva was the only god,
and all the other gods were only inferior imitations of him. He was
certainly older than the vedic heaven-gods... Shiva's worshippers may
have been literally correct in viewing other gods as recent upstarts.
Some of the scriptures claimed that Brahma and Vishnu were so puny
that they couldn't even realize the limits of Shiva's cosmic lingam."6
The Thuggee considered Brahams, the top caste, to be enemies of
Kali. Sacrifices were taken exclusively from this group. Women were
never sacrificed. Clearly, there is more to this "human sacrifice"
business than actually meets the eye. It would seem that the Thuggee
were actually engaged in a class war- or even an anti-imperialist war
on class and national enemies. The Brahams represented the Aryans who
invaded and imposed their religion on the Dravidians. The Dravidians
were the underdogs. Their side of the fighting took the form of
guerrilla warfare, highwaymen waiting to take the enemy by surprise.
It is amazing that this political aspect to the subject of Kali
worship and the Thuggee cult hasn't been more widely discussed and
documented.
But who is this Goddess who could inspire such dreadful acts (even
if they were done to fight imperialism)? As stated above, she is a
Dark Goddess. The name, Kali, is th Hindu word for Black. She is
usually depicted dancing on top of the lifeless form of Shiva. There's
no getting away from it: Kali is not "nice." As ex-Wiccan Christian
fundamentalist William Schnoebelen put it, she is "not the sort of
girl you'd wish to bring home to mother."7 (Incredible that even an ex-
Wiccan Goddess worshipper would think of the Goddess in such terms,
isn't it?) No, Kali isn't a "girl" at all. Although she is a triple
Goddess, she is far too powerful to imagine as anything less than a
full-blooded woman embodying danger and mystery.
Myth has it that Kali sprang from the brown of the Goddess Durga
in the middle of a full-scale battle wherein Durga was fighting the
demons, Mahisasura, Sumbha and Nishumba at the behest of the gods who
had begged her to save them. Kali appeared black, naked (or draped in
tiger skin), and "emaciated, wide-mouthed, lolling-tongued, with deep
sunken red eyes."8 She severed the heads of Canda and Munda, servants
of the demons. Then she took on the demon, Raktabija:
From the blood shed from his wounds sprang thousands of fresh
combatants, representing the destructive masculine principle. To
annihilate this archtypical power, Kali again and again drank the
rakta-bija (the seed blood). This symbolic devouring represents the
"taking possession of" or rendering harmless of an overpowering
destructive element, a phallic power.9
From the stories can be seen the basically beneficent nature of
Kali (and Durga) despite her terrifying image and her actual role as
"destroyer." Not being dualistic, Wiccan and Paganism accept
destruction as a natural and beneficial part of the whole.
Kali is nothing less than a long denied, long forgotten aspect of
our female self- our power to be "ugly;" to impose limitations just as
Nature imposes mortality on everything which has a temporal existence
on earth.
We are no longer accustomed to associating the feminine with that
kind of power. The Goddess has returned with a message of feminine
power and Kali is the greatest expression of it. As such, we can
expect her to continue to draw flack from the Spielbergs and the
Schnoebelens. And we can consider it a tribute to the depth and
breadth of her and our power.
Human sacrifice? Beheaded body found near Kali temple in Birbhum
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/human-sacrifice-beheaded-body-found-near-kali-temple-in-birbhum/607102/
Express News Service Tags : religion, Kali temple, crime Posted: Fri
Apr 16 2010, 00:56 hrs Kolkata:
In a case of suspected “human sacrifice”, the blood-splattered
beheaded torso of a 25-year-old man was found outside a temple of
Goddess Kali this morning at a village about 15 km away from Bolpur
town in Birbhum district.
Police sources said in rural Bengal, such acts of superstition and
primitive religious rituals are not uncommon, especially on sankranti,
which fell last night.
A senior police officer said the torso was of a male body and was
found near the altar placed in front of the temple in a village called
Paruldanga. It was first spotted by the temple’s priest around 5 am
when he went there for prayers.
“The slain torso had new clothes on the body. His hands were not tied.
There was no indication of any resistance on the victim’s part. It
seems he was drugged and was completely unconscious when he was
slaughtered,” said the officer, who visited the spot and saw the
torso.
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“Several articles of worship like burnt incense sticks were found near
the body. There was blood stain on the altar. Tantrik (occult) rituals
are generally performed on amavasya and sankranti,” added the officer.
A police team sent to the area with sniffer dogs around 9 am was led
to the house of a villager named Lalmohan Hansda.
Birbhum SP Rabindranath Mukherjee said, “It seems to be a case of a
human sacrifice. But it can also be a as we have found injury marks on
the face. We have picked up a person from the village.”
Chandan Mukherjee, the priest of the Kajjala Kali temple, reportedly
told the police he had performed puja at the temple till 9 pm last
night. When he returned this morning, he saw a body lying just outside
the temple.
...and I am Sid Harth