The Destroyer
Though the destroyer is a terrifying force, she brings renewal and new growth after the destruction.
These goddesses were metaphor who expressed their culture’s awareness of the universal Powers of Chaos. They represented the original churning womb or Crone-stirred cauldron or birth, death, and transmutation—the gaping Hole or spiraling Eye associated with the primordial female Powers in which all of us originate and to which all of us will return, to change once more.
--Jane Caputi, Gossips, Gorgons, and Crones (Santa Fe: Bear and Co., 1993), 281.
She is Pele, Hawaiian volcano goddess. Tlazolteotl, filth eater and queen of witches. The dragon-goddess Tiamat. The Norse Angerboda, or Hel, The Hag of the Iron Wood. The Morrigan. Caillech, the Veiled One, with a black face, red teeth and white hair. Nephthys, wife to Egyptian Set.
Some say Kali sprang from kindly Parvati as an embodiment of her rage. Parvati was consort to Shiva, mother of his son, the benevolent Ganesha. She won Shiva to her through her holy asceticism. but one day she decided to quest for skin as golden as her husband's. She traveled to the mountains for many days devoting herself to more asceticism in search of her desire. In answer to her prayers, Kali sprang from her body and the two goddesses, one sweet and one wrathful, coexisted thereafter.
Read Henry Potty and the Pet Rock: The Unauthorized Harry Potter Parody
Read From Girl to Goddess: The Heroine's Journey in Myth and Legend
