Simple Kali Puja

This booklet presents a ceremony in the tradition of Sri Ramakrishna, who worshiped the Divine Mother with selfless devotion and a longing heart. With practice it can be completed within a short time. It can be used for daily worship or for special days sacred to Her, such as the new moon.

Kali is the Goddess who takes away darkness. She cuts down all impurities, consumes all iniquities, purifies, Her devotees with the sincerity of Her Love. Now we can worship Her according to the ancient tradition. Kali Puja is a treasure house of Her Wisdom. It contains abundance Kali's tools for living: Her sattvic worship, Her Hundred Names, Her Thousand Names, Her Armor, the mantras for offering bhanga, alcohol, animal sacrifice and how to give birth to spiritual children. These offerings have great spiritual significance when performed with the mantras which explain the meanings and appropriate circumstances for such worship.

This book is compiled with the goal of explaining the hidden history, significance, and meaning of the mantras used in common Hindu puja rituals performed by the Bengalis to the Bengali immigrants.

"Kal" is Time, "KALI" is She Who is Beyond Time. She leads our awareness into timelessness. Kali is also is the Goddess who takes away darkness. She cuts down all impurities, consumes all iniquities, and purifies the hearts of Her devotees. Now we can worship Her according to the ancient tradition. The complete worship of the Divine Mother who Takes away Darkness includes Her advanced puja, Her thousand names, the mantras and mudras for traditional offerings, as well as the systems of worship for conceiving spiritual children, offering bhang and alcohol. Also available to accompany the text is a beautiful CD or cassette of Shree Maa's recitation of the thousand names. It includes the original Sanskrit mantras, Roman transliteration and English translation.

"Never before in print have I seen Her brought to life with such passion and truth. Harding brings Mother Kali to everyone who sees her path".

In Praise of Adya Kali details the goddess Kali, and her culture of devotion in West Bengal and South Asia. Different from most contemporary books about this Dark Goddess, this book offers a liturgy of worship—a spiritual practice, the Song of the Hundred Names of Adya Kali, that readers can use to cultivate a direct devotional relationship to Kali. In Praise of Adya Kali is also a context-setting guide, establishing this practice as a general orientation to life. Most compelling, the text of this liturgy and Commentaries contain an intimate revelation of how the goddess establishes herself in her devotees’ bodies and thus intervenes, by unconditional love and acceptance, in their lives. A lengthy Introduction, both scholarly and personal, describes the goddess and the possibilities that these prayers will offer. Aditi Devi guides us in how to build a shrine to Kali, various types of offerings to make to her, and suggests a schedule for how to use this liturgy with a long-term commitment over the course of 108 nights. “This Song of the Hundred Names is a powerful teaching that all forms are her forms,” the author notes. Male, female, or other gendered, readers are presented with the possibility to experience the depths of their own internal feminine energies, and thereby come into greater healing and wholeness, more readily able to express this often neglected part of ourselves.

Encountering Kali explores one of the most ramarkable divinities the world has seen. The Hindu goddess Kali is simultaneously understood as a blood thirsty warrior a deity of ritual possession a tantric sexual partner and an all loving compassionate mothe. Popular and scholarly interest in her has been on the rise in the west in recent years. Responding to this phenomenon McDermott and Kripal`s volume focuses on the complexities involved in interpreting Kali in both her indigenous south Asian settings and her more recent Western incarnation. Through the shifting lenses of scriptural history temple architecture political reflection and the goddess`s recent guises on the Internet the contributors pose questions that illuminate our understanding of Kali while addressing the problems and promises inherent in every act of cross cultural interpretation.