University of Ottawa | Université d'Ottawa

Graduate Student, Classics & Religious Studies

Thesis Title: Western Imaginings of the Fierce Goddess – Describing contemporary Kali worship in North America: a study in syncretism, sacred relationships, and the gendered divine.

About

I find of continuing fascination the fact that in contemporary Western society new or newly interpreted forms of religious expression are constantly gaining in popularity, through a combination of borrowing from other cultures, faiths, or history, as well as a total reconstruction of sacred spaces and religious identities. Many of these allow their adherents to create entirely new spaces for self-positing, and sometimes to use them as a platform for social and political action.

Although there are numerous forms this evolving socio-cultural phenomenon takes in the Western world, currently I am focusing on its neopagan, or more specifically, goddess-oriented expressions. I am curious that this milieu in particular represents an intersection of various streams of thought, and a platform for working out a new mythopoetic reality, a new sacred landscape. Within it are interrelated such contemporary fields of thought as gender issues and identity construction, gendered imaginings of the divine, syncretism, postmodernism, mysticism, ecoconsciousness and the arts of the self.

Kali, a fierce Indian goddess, often seen as a central manifestation of the all encompassing Mother Goddess (Mahadevi, Devi, Shakti, etc) is a particularly engaging example of contemporary Western appropriation of religious and cultural symbols/ narratives. Currently, my research is aimed at understanding Kali in her native context on the one hand, and, on the other, in her new North American domain, and analysing the parallels and distinctions between the two.