"Once you label me, you negate me." -- Søren Kierkegaard

About the Writer

K. A. Laity is the award-winning author of Pelzmantel: A Medieval Tale as well as other stories, plays and essays. Clive Barker has called her work "full of fluent style and poetic dialogue" and Matrifocus Magazine says "Laity's storytelling is magic in itself. The language is beautiful and weaves vivid pictures for the reader's imagination."

Currently she is completing work on Unikirja, a collection of short stories based on the Kalevala, Kanteletar, and other Finnish myths and legends, for which she recently won the Eureka Short Story Fellowship as well as a Finlandia Foundation grant. Dr. Laity teaches medieval literature, creative writing, film and popular culture at the College of Saint Rose.

About the Goddess

Kali first appears in the Devi-Mahatmya, where she is said to have emanated from the brow of Goddess Durga (slayer of demons) during one of the battles between the divine and anti-divine forces. Etymologically Durga's name means "Beyond Reach"; she is thus an echo of the woman warrior's fierce virginal autonomy. In this context Kali is considered the 'forceful' form of the great goddess Durga. Kali's four arms represent the complete circle of creation and destruction, which is contained within her. She represents the inherent creative and destructive rhythms of the cosmos. Her right hands, making the mudras of "fear not" and conferring boons, represent the creative aspect of Kali, while the left hands, holding a bloodied sword and a severed head represent her destructive aspect. The bloodied sword and severed head symbolize the destruction of ignorance and the dawning of knowledge. The sword is the sword of knowledge, that cuts the knots of ignorance and destroys false consciousness (the severed head). Kali opens the gates of freedom with this sword, having cut the eight bonds that bind human beings. Finally her three eyes represent the sun, moon, and fire, with which she is able to observe the three modes of time: past, present and future. This attribute is also the origin of the name Kali, which is the feminine form of 'Kala', the Sanskrit term for Time.