Kali is the Dark Goddess of India. Her name means both Black and Time. She is thus the keeper of all that lives in the "shadow," and also all that lives in the realm of Time. She is both the womb and the tomb - holding us with fierce compassion as we journey from life to death to what is beyond both. One of her names is Maharatri - the Eternal Night, while another is Adyashakti - the Primordial Power. Modern Western Culture, after the disappearance of the ancient Goddess cultures of Europe around 6000 years ago, has grown increasingly afraid of this Dark Goddess. She has become the "other." Eminent (mostly male) psychologists in the past hundred years have called her "the Negative Mother," or the "Devouring Mother." But her absence in the public psyche has left us bereft. Among the many consequences of her absence from public worship and discourse is our abominable treatment of Mother Earth. We are just now waking up to the impossibility of this arrangement where this maternal energy is used solely as a resource, with no sense of reciprocity. The myth and the cult of Kali, which has been preserved in the East in a relatively uncontaminated form, can offer us a mythos to explore a renewed relationship with the feminine energy in all her manifestations, including those that have been denigrated as dark, primitive, and savage!

In this workshop, we will explore this Dark Mother mythology through storytelling, active imagination, writing and conversation.