A myth to live by in the times of COVID-19
A battle is raging. Good against evil? Civilization against savagery? Maybe… maybe not!
It is a battle between the gods (devas) and the demons (asuras). Durga is the goddess of battle, created specifically for this purpose, utilizing the combined energy of all the reigning gods.
She has been fighting the asuras for days. After days and weeks of uncertainty, it finally looks like she may be winning. The enemy is falling – one after the other. The gods in heaven are “cautiously optimistic.”
~~~
But, wait… who is this new asura just entering the battlefield?
Okay. So, there’s a new demon. No worries. After all, Durga has not two, but ten, arms. Each arm wields a special weapon, given to her by one of the gods, for this very purpose. For defeating the asuras who are setting up to invade devalok (heaven) – the dwelling place of the devas.
She’s got it!
But has she?
Turns out that this new entrant into the field is called Raktabija (rakta meaning blood, and bija meaning seed). So, here we have a new demon whom the gods – the ruling powers – had never encountered until this day.
Durga is not particularly worried. She can defeat this demon, “blood-seed,” surely. After all, she has defeated so many other demons. And she has the blessings of the patriarchy. And their weapons.
~~~
But Raktabija, “blood-seed,” turns out to be much more than she had bargained for.
He has a special trick up his sleeve that the ruling power structure had not anticipated.
It turns out that it is not hard for the fierce battle goddess, Durga, to hurt Raktabija. To slash him open with one of her ten powerful weapons.
But therein lies the problem!
Every time a drop of Raktabija’s blood falls on the ground, a thousand new Raktabijas arise. The more she hurts him, the more he multiplies. The battlefield is now inundated with Raktabijas, and Durga’s superior firepower is only compounding the problem!
~~~
The cautious optimism of moments ago in devalok is now transformed into dread. Into doomsday talk. Maybe it is truly the endgame for the gods. Maybe heaven is going to be overrun by demons, after all.
All the gods – the ruling patriarchy – have given up hope.
~~~
But not Durga. She was created for this purpose. To vanquish the demons.
She knows that her current strategy is no longer useful. This battle cannot be won by superior weapons, after all.
So, even as the battle rages all around her, Durga stops. She stands still in the middle of the battlefield. She is deep in meditation. She knows that she needs to find a solution that is as unanticipated as the problem she is facing.
She concentrates all her life-force, all her energy, into her third eye – to visualize a solution. As her meditation deepens and all the blessings of all the gods concentrate at her third eye – at the place where one sees beyond seeing – a miracle happens.
~~~
From the concentrated life force of Durga emerges a new being – who emanates from her forehead. While Durga is beautiful, elegant and regal – glowing like a thousand suns, this new being looks ugly, haggard, disheveled. Clothed in human bones, her hair matted with congealed human blood, she runs into the battlefield. Her ugly, uncouth laughter resonates through the heavens. All things beautiful wilt and die. Birds take flight. Flowers shrivel. Trees turn into burnt out stumps.
As she runs through the battlefield ringing with her mad laughter – the patriarchy are stunned! Of course they should have known better. This is what happens when you give the executive function to a woman. Even if you have groomed her yourselves!
The gods are looking at each other. Shaking their crowned heads and long beards in disapproval.
This new being birthed from Durga’s forehead is called Kali. Her name means both darkness (or blackness) and Time.
She is The Terrible.
But her worst attribute is her lolling tongue. It is long and bloody. With strands of congealed saliva, mixed with blood, hanging from it.
She is so ugly that the gods of propriety turn their heads away. They know they are defeated. But they could have done without the humiliation on top of it!
~~~
But wait… what is this sound?
The conch has been sounded. The battle has begun anew.
The gods turn around reluctantly.
~~~
There is Durga, back in battle. Fiercely slashing at Raktabija. But something is different now! Before a drop of his blood can reach the earth, Kali, with her long tongue, sucks it up. More slashes land on Raktabija. He is losing limb after limb. But not a drop of his blood can fall to the ground. Kali drinks it up.
She bellows in her drunken ecstasy as Durga’s final blow lops off his head. Kali stands right below him, drinking down the geyser of blood that erupts from the severed neck.
~~~
Thus, the battle for heaven is won. The gods are back in power for another eon.
But now, they are in charge of a fundamentally transformed heaven.
A heaven where a ten-armed battle goddess and her dark, ugly sister, have the place of highest power and respect.
~~~
SARS-CoV-2 as Raktabija
Colorized scanning electron micrograph of an apoptotic (dying) cell (green) heavily infected with SARS-COV-2 virus particles (purple), isolated from a patient sample. Image captured and color-enhanced at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Credit: NIAID
Indeed, it is not difficult to draw parallels between the current COVID-19 pandemic and the battle between gods and demons for the possession of heaven. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is very much like Raktabija. Each viral particle, once it gets access into a cell in the respiratory tract, can hijack its protein and nucleic acid synthetic machinery to create thousands, maybe tens of thousands of copies of itself – finally bursting the cell open to release new copies of itself, which in turn attack other cells. Just like Raktabija.
At this point, it may be a good idea for us to digress a bit, and ask, “what exactly is a demon?” We live in a culture which has a black and white sense of morality. Good guys and bad guys. Us versus them. “You are either with us, or against us.”
But SARS-CoV-2 is in fact amoral. It means no harm to us humans. It has no political or social agenda. It infects and kills people because that’s what it does. It spreads from person to person through aerosols or contaminated surfaces, because that’s what it is programed for.
So, how might the above myth help us today?
It is my contention that in the myth of the battle for dominion over devalok, the invocation of Raktabija was a necessary antecedent for Kali. This corrective, redeeming force, could not have arisen as long as the battle was business as usual. As long as the battle could be fought with known weapons, with the “plan of the gods,” there would be no real challenge to status quo. From time to time, the ruling ethos would be challenged. In response, the ruling forces would “collaborate” and concentrate their firepower, and defeat the upstarts. Status quo would be restored.
It is only by the invocation of Raktabija that a whole new solution has to be conjured. It is the unpredictable. The one we are deeply uncomfortable with. It is the “other” who would otherwise never be invited to the table of the gods.
And how does Kali win the battle? By drinking up the blood. By ingesting and metabolizing what is toxic.
So, who is the coming Kali in our story of COVID-19?
I do not think it will surprise many readers if I claim that we have known for quite a while that there is trouble in paradise. Global warming is real. The ice caps are melting. Sea levels rising. Oil slicks abound on land and water. Coral reefs are dying. Polar bears are losing their habitat. One can go on and on.
What if we said that Mother Earth, Gaia, is finally ready for battle? Her goal: to re-vision paradise. To recalibrate the terms under which we humans will be allowed to cohabit her with all her other children. She has already sent us other demons. Fires. Floods. Wars. Even more contained epidemics. SARS. MERS. Ebola.
Kali Juggling Coronavirus. [Collage of a chromolithograph of Kali by Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906); and various models of coronavirus showing the spike proteins. Coronavirus models created by Centers for Disease Control (red and white), and Johns Hopkins Medicine (green)].
Each time, we have ignored those demons. We have slayed them easily with our current weaponry.
So, now, she has sent in Raktabija.
Remember that the only response to Raktabija is Kali – the one who presides over both death and rebirth. The one who metabolizes and transmutes the poison.
What will this Kali of our time look like? What will she be called? Will she indeed arise in time? Do we have a visionary Durga in our midst who will be willing to balk status quo and conjure up Kali?
We do not know the answers to these questions.
We only know that the Goddess of myth is called by ashtottarashatanaam (one hundred and eight names).
It may be premature for us to name her just yet. It may be premature to predict who she is, and thereby fix her into a smaller, a more limited, identity than her real form.
But what we can be sure of – is that if we are to retake devalok – if we are to restore heaven on earth – she must come.
And that if she doesn’t come this time around, and if by hook or crook we manage to defeat this Raktabija, the next one will be just around the corner.
Indeed, thinkers like Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell have diagnosed the problem of our times as a lack of a shared mythos to live by.
It may be in our own interest to really pay attention to the arising myth – a new divinity who is being born – rising like a fledgling phoenix from the ashes of a world ravaged with COVID-19. May we have the humility and the intelligence to welcome this recalibration – where we finally learn to live on this earth as one among its millions of species – in harmony with all other life, and indeed, with all elements of nature.
Indeed, this may be the only way for us to restore the paradise that is now almost lost – due to the hubris of our species!