Download or read book The Book of Kali written by Seema Mohanty and published by Penguin Books India. This book was released on 2009-07 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most unconventional yet immensely popular deities in the Hindu pantheon, goddess Kali essentially represents the dark and contrary aspects of the cosmos. Her naked form and association with violence, blood and gore challenge the very concept of divinity. Yet, over the centuries, she has come to represent a whole gamut of conflicting images-from bloodthirsty ogress to benign goddess. So today while she is venerated as Chamunda, a deity who verges on the macabre and grotesque, she is also adored in household shrines in one of her milder forms, Dakshina-Kali. It is this evolution of Kali-from her origin as a tantric goddess to her metamorphosis into a divinity in mainstream religion-that Seema Mohanty captures brilliantly in this book. Drawing upon a variety of sources-rituals associated with the worship of Kali, tales from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Puranas, the Tantras and Agamas, folklore and films-she has succeeded in portraying in engrossing detail the myriad manifestations of the enigmatic deity that is Kali.
Download or read book The Little Book of Hindu Deities written by Sanjay Patel and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-10-31 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pixar animator and Academy Award–nominated director Sanjay Patel (Sanjay’s Super Team) brings to life Hinduism’s most important gods and goddesses—and one sacred stone—in fun, full-color illustrations, each accompanied by a short, lively profile. The Little Book of Hindu Deities is chock-full of monsters, demons, noble warriors, and divine divas. Find out why Ganesha has an elephant’s head (his father cut his off!); why Kali, the goddess of time, is known as the “Black One” (she’s a bit goth); and what “Hare Krishna” really means. “Throw another ingredient in the American spirituality blender. Pop culture is veering into Hinduism.”—USA Today
Download or read book Kali written by Elizabeth U. Harding and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publ.. This book was released on 1998 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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".
Download or read book The Sword and the Flute written by David R. Kinsley and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1977 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based in part on the author's thesis. Bibliography: p. 161-[168].
Download or read book Yogic Secrets of the Dark Goddess written by Shambhavi L. Chopra and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2010-04-28 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yogic Secrets of the Dark Goddess unfolds the mystic beauty of Kali, the most powerful but misunderstood of the great goddesses of India. Probably the most comprehensive and innovative examination of Ma Kali in recent decades, the book reveals all dimensions of life and consciousness in Kali’s tranformative dance.
Download or read book Inventing and Reinventing the Goddess written by Sree Padma and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-07-03 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Popular religion in village India is overwhelmingly dominated by goddess worship. Goddesses can be nationally well-known like Durga or Kali, or they can be an obscure deity who is only known in a particular rural locale. The origins of a goddess can be both ancient—with many transitions or amalgamations with other cults having occurred along the way—and very recent. While some have tribal origins, others sprout up overnight due to a vivid dream. Inventing and Reinventing the Goddess: Contemporary Iterations of Hindu Divinities on the Move looks at the nature of how and why goddesses are invented and reinvented historically in India and how social hierarchy, gender differences, and modernity play roles in these emerging religious phenomena.
Download or read book Meditation for the Love of It written by Sally Kempton and published by Sounds True. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meditation is like a love affair with your innermost self. At times it can be ecstatic and entrancing, other times simple and still—and sometimes you might not even feel its profound effects until later. Now with Meditation for the Love of It, Sally Kempton shares practical secrets to help us turn meditation into an unconditional embrace of the fullness of our experience—on and off the meditation cushion. With the gentle wisdom and compassion of one who understands the nuances of practice, she opens us to the joy of exploring the deep and mysterious inner landscape of the heart, mind, and body. Drawing on her 40 years as a teacher and a fellow meditator, Sally teaches us how we can connect to our inner longings and creative shakti energy to allow the transformative gifts and blessings of meditation to unfold. With playfulness and devotion—two key attitudes in sustaining a daily practice—she shares indispensable guidance for this voyage of self-discovery, including: How to tune in to your own “meditation channel,” a bandwidth of tranquillity, energy, and joy Why you don’t need a quiet mind to meditate How the force known as Kundalini can fuel your practice Connecting to your ever-present Inner Beloved to let go of conditioned ideas about yourself and make space for the True Self to come forth Ripening your practice beyond technique into the “sweet mysterious expanse of spontaneous meditation” More than 20 practices for bringing the peace and insight of meditation into your daily life “Remember: what you seek in meditation is your own Beloved, your own inner intelligence, your own Awareness, and your own Truth,” teaches Sally. Meditation for the Love of It points us back to our own intimate heart of hearts, our own deepest experience, and the bliss of existence itself.
Download or read book Awakening to Kali written by Sally Kempton and published by Sounds True. This book was released on 2014-10-01 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sages of Tantra taught that when we follow the path of Shakti, the sacred feminine principle personified by the goddesses of yoga, we awaken the full potential of our own inner energies. Kali, teaches Sally Kempton, may be both the most powerful—and misunderstood—goddess of all. Kali—her name means “Black One”—is the original Dark Goddess, whose hidden gift is ecstasy. She brings both fierceness and love, destruction and rebirth—and untamed courage and freedom for those willing to fully comprehend and embrace her many gifts. In this e-book, readers are invited to explore teachings, stories, meditations, prayers, poems, mantras, invocations, and rituals to align with this cosmic force of radical transformation. Kali as the Mirror of Our Own Inner State Kali the Blood Drinker The Two Faces of the Dark Goddess Kali and the Ego Kali’s Fierce Forms Kali’s Role in Spiritual Liberation Contemplation: The Felt Sense of Kali in Your Life The Tantric Kali: Deity of Heroes The Kali Woman: Archetype of Feminine Power, Sexuality, and Force A Kali Asana Practice A Contemplation on Kali’s Audacity The Shadow Kali Kali as the Inner Voice of Destructive Rage Dialoguing with Kali (a guided practice) Kali as the Human Teacher A Visualization Practice for Offering Your Negative Tendencies to Kali’s Fire Unlocking the Hidden Kali Meditation: Kali as the Great Void
Download or read book The Great Mother written by Erich Neumann and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 630 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neumann examines how the Feminine has been experienced and expressed in many cultures from prehistory to our own time. Appearing as goddess and demon, gate and pillar, garden and tree, hovering sky and containing vessel, the Feminine is seen as an essential factor in the dialectical relation of individual consciousness, symbolized by the child, to the ungraspable matrix, symbolized by the Great Mother. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
Download or read book National Geographic Essential Visual History of World Mythology written by and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conveniently sized yet large in scope, National Geographic Essential Visual History of World Mythology an irresistible treasure to own and to give."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book India written by Diana L Eck and published by Harmony. This book was released on 2012-03-27 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In India: A Sacred Geography, renowned Harvard scholar Diana Eck offers an extraordinary spiritual journey through the pilgrimage places of the world's most religiously vibrant culture and reveals that it is, in fact, through these sacred pilgrimages that India’s very sense of nation has emerged. No matter where one goes in India, one will find a landscape in which mountains, rivers, forests, and villages are elaborately linked to the stories of the gods and heroes of Indian culture. Every place in this vast landscape has its story, and conversely, every story of Hindu myth and legend has its place. Likewise, these places are inextricably tied to one another—not simply in the past, but in the present—through the local, regional, and transregional practices of pilgrimage. India: A Sacred Geography tells the story of the pilgrim’s India. In these pages, Diana Eck takes the reader on an extraordinary spiritual journey through the living landscape of this fascinating country –its mountains, rivers, and seacoasts, its ancient and powerful temples and shrines. Seeking to fully understand the sacred places of pilgrimage from the ground up, with their stories, connections and layers of meaning, she acutely examines Hindu religious ideas and narratives and shows how they have been deeply inscribed in the land itself. Ultimately, Eck shows us that from these networks of pilgrimage places, India’s very sense of region and nation has emerged. This is the astonishing and fascinating picture of a land linked for centuries not by the power of kings and governments, but by the footsteps of pilgrims. India: A Sacred Geography offers a unique perspective on India, both as a complex religious culture and as a nation. Based on her extensive knowledge and her many decades of wide-ranging travel and research, Eck's piercing insights and a sweeping grasp of history ensure that this work will be in demand for many years to come.
Download or read book Hindu Goddesses written by David Kinsley and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publ.. This book was released on 1998 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hindu Goddesses is a valuable sourcebook and reference work for students and scholars of Hindu goddesses and of Hinduism in general. Each goddess is dealt with as an independent deity with a coherent mythology, theology and, in some cases, cult of her own. Within the complex, diverse, and rich goddess traditions of Hinduism, one can find suggestions of nearly every important theme in the Hindu religion. In many ways, this book is as much a study of the Hindu tradition itself as it is a study of one aspect of that tradition. No other living religious tradition has displayed such an ancient, continuous, and diverse history of goddess worship.
Download or read book Encountering Kali written by Rachel Fell McDermott and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publishe. This book was released on 2005 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Kali Puja written by and published by Sunstar Publishing. This book was released on 2004-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Twenty Four Aspects of Mother Kali written by Babaji Bob Kindler and published by SRV Associations. This book was released on 1996-07-04 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eternal salutations to Sri Durga, to Sri Kali, the boundless ocean of spiritual Wisdom who is the Divine Mother of the Universe. This ever-present Goddess epitomizes both the bliss of unlimited Awareness and the enthralling play of universal projection. She manifests countless beings abiding in an infinite set of worlds, seen and unseen, gross and subtle, hidden and exposed. Her existence is confirmed by the holy scriptures, for She is perceived intellectually by means of the Six Darshanas, Her perpetually flowing streams of eternal spiritual knowledge. She is approached and contacted by the devotees through intense sadhana, spiritual disciplines prescribed by the guru, and She is accessible through contemplation and meditation. Ultimately, She is realized as the essence of limitless Consciousness, infinite, indivisible, all-pervading and absolute... The Twenty-Four Aspects of Mother Kali, then, represent in book form an attempt to remind humanity of their divine parentage, of their divine nature, of their source of origin. It is hoped that those who are still asleep to this supreme verity called the Divine Mother of the Universe will have their inherent spirituality awakened; that those who have fallen into complacency or despondency will have their commitment to this non-dual Truth of existence rekindled; that those who are already abiding in this Truth will further exult in this sublime Essence of pure Being and continue to spread the pure light of Timeless Awareness to all inhabitants sporting consciously or unconsciously in the boundless ocean of the Universal Mother’s ineffable Grace.
Download or read book Goddesses in Older Women written by Jean Shinoda Bolen and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At some point after fifty, every woman crosses a threshold into the third phase of her life. As she enters this uncharted territory -- one that is generally uncelebrated in popular culture -- she can choose to mourn what has gone before, or she can embrace the juicy-crone years. In this celebration of Act Three, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Jungian analyst and bestselling author of Goddesses in Everywoman, names the powerful new energies and potentials -- or archetypes -- that come into the psyche at this momentous time, suggesting that women getting older have profound and exciting reasons for welcoming the other side of fifty.
Download or read book Awakening Shakti written by Sally Kempton and published by Sounds True. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do you live a life of spiritual awakening as well as outer abundance, inner freedom as well as deep intimacy? How do you serve the world selflessly, yet passionately celebrate your life? The sages of Tantra have known for centuries that when you follow the path of Shakti—the sacred feminine principle personified by the goddesses of yoga—these gifts can manifest spontaneously. Yet most of us, women as well as men, have yet to experience the full potential of our inner feminine energies. When you know these powers for what they are, they heighten your capacity to open spiritually, love more deeply and fearlessly, create with greater mastery, and move through the world with skill and delight. In Awakening Shakti, you will learn how to recognize and invite: Kali, bringer of strength, fierce love, and untamed freedomLakshmi, who confers prosperity and beautySaraswati, for clarity of communication and intuitionRadha, who carries the divine energy of spiritual longingBhuvaneshvari, who creates the space for sacred transformationParvati, to awaken creativity and the capacity to love With a wealth of meditations, visualizations, mantras, teachings, and beautifully told stories, Awakening Shakti provides a practical guide for activating the currents of the divine feminine in every aspect of your life. “Sally Kempton's new book is a treasure that brings myth, meditation, and everyday revelation together in a way that will allow every woman to embody the divine feminine in her life. Sally enlivens the full spectrum of the goddess—from independent protector, to lover, to dynamic and powerful creatrix. I highly recommend this soon-to-be classic!” —Shiva Rea, yogini “Sally Kempton has given us a mythic manual for a new kind of feminism—a feminism of the soul. And this is a good thing, because humanity needs feminine power now as both a healing tonic and a source of reinvention.” —Elizabeth Lesser, cofounder of the Omega Institute, author of Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow
