Compare And Contrast The Character Of Shiva And Kali

Shiva and Kali, husband and wife, but also the two pieces of the same puzzle, which when connected transform into the divine ability to recognize truth and awaken the inner consciousness through transcendence. When Kali performs reality is moving, and when Shiva performs reality is held in utter silence. Shiva and Kali are able to create perfect harmony through synchronized performance of the opposites. Kali represents the dynamic aspect of transcendental truth, while Shiva represents the silent aspect of transcendental truth. This husband and wife duo are needed in order for a worshipper to gain this coveted notion of transcendental truth.
Shiva is a god commonly known as a destroyer and restorer. He is often depicted in his dancing form, …show more content…
She plays many roles including her symbolism as “death, rebirth and cosmic cyclicity, mother of the universe, whose womb is both the fertile source of all creation and a devouring maw that takes back what it has birthed. She is a goddess of transformation who, with her sword, cuts the ties of ignorance and attachments to ego” (Petersen 12). Kali is able to bestow understanding to followers who are able to release their selfish ways and embrace all of Kali’s binaries. The binaries that Kali holds are good and evil, pure and impure, motherly and unmotherly, fierce and caring. Kali’s most common image is of her dancing on top of her husband Shiva. In this image Kali is drunk off of demon blood, and Shiva throws himself under Kali in the hopes that she will recognize her husband and discontinue her actions to destroy the world. Kali becomes so overwhelmed by the excess of the world she has consumed, that only her husband is able to snap her out of the …show more content…
Their union is does not hold typical marriage characteristics, such as the providing husband and dutiful wife, but is rather based on the need to complete one another to fulfill the needs of the universe. Kali and Shiva are one in the same, and fulfill each other. In the image of Kali dancing over Shiva, Shiva is able to stop Kali from destroying the world, and this in turn represents their need of one another. In Shiva’s actions of stopping Kali’s dance he is also not able to perform his own role of silent reality, but Kali’s dance at this point was too destructive to let run it’s course. One without the other would lead to an imbalance of the universe, therefore Shiva had to put a stop to Kali, because both must perform their dance in relation to reality in order to keep the universe in