Kali and the Hibiscus: The Dark Goddess in the Pruning Shears

This article was originally published in SageWoman magazine in 1997.
Since then, it's been posted on various websites and had thousands of hits.

Black as the petal of a blue lotus at night, black as the night touched by the light of the moon,
Kali is the essence of Night.... Daughter of the Ocean, wet nurse to invincible warriors,
though they say that death lingers in the waters of Her womb, those who worship her with
full heart receive all that they desire. For... when the Yuga [life cycle] finds its natural end,
Kali shall be there to gather the seeds to create the new Creation.
–Merlin Stone, Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood

There was a time I earned my living teaching music and that was when the hibiscus, a gift from a student, came into my life. It was small and to my eyes, a rather plain-looking plant, set in a green plastic pot. I had no idea it was a hibiscus, the plant whose large red blooms are sacred to the goddess Kali, the fierce sword-wielding goddess of the Indian tradition.

I set it in a sunny spot, watered it once a week, and gave it a bit of plant food now and then. Beyond that I didn’t pay it much attention. To tell the truth, the plant bored me. It didn’t have the lacy elegance of the asparagus fern, the lush foliage of the ficus, the sexy glamour of the gardenia. It grew slowly, rather humbly, and for two years never showed a bud. Until by chance, I happened to transplant it.

I was re-potting some other plants that day and thought I’d transfer it from its little green container into one of my newly emptied large clay pots. This was an aesthetic decision. I preferred the look of red clay to green plastic. The plant looked way too small for the pot however, within a week, it doubled in size. Soon after that the buds came.

There was clearly a lesson here about room to grow, benign neglect, and not seeing what is right before one’s eyes. Nevertheless, the plant forgave my triple sin of omission. Within three weeks of the transplant, it greeted me with an incredible flower, brilliant red, five perfect petals opening to the morning. It was only then that I realized this plant was a hibiscus. And that it had something to teach me about tending living things.

We lived in rural New England and those beautiful red blooms were a treasure during the cold dark days of winter. The hibiscus accompanied us when we moved from a house by a river to a house by a field and finally, in a most unexpected change of lifestyle, to a house in a subdivision in central New Jersey.

New Jersey is something like a crowded pot. A small state crammed with people, automobiles, condominiums, corporate parks, and shopping malls, there is too much of everything man-made here. The land is so fertile it is called the “Garden State,” a cruel irony as family farms, lush wetlands, open fields and woodlands all give way to “commercial development,” a benign-sounding phrase for the mindless destruction of the earth. New Jersey is a seriously overcrowded pot with all the problems of overcrowding and it was here in New Jersey that disaster struck the hibiscus.

In the beginning it was just a couple of tiny white flies. The plant had lived through many seasons. It was strong, vital, and so good-natured I was sure it would peacefully co-exist with these little specks of insect life. This was not to be. Little by little the white flies took over and I could see it weakening. I tried everything. Natural remedies. Toxic remedies. Everyone had a suggestion. Nothing worked. The bugs multiplied. The plant diminished.
My heart broke as I watched my beautiful hibiscus slowly wither and start to die. I could barely go near it, feeling I had failed—that by allowing this plant to die I had broken a promise to it and to myself—to be a careful nurturer of life.

March, April, May. We brought all the houseplants outside for the warm season. By now, the leaves of the hibiscus were shriveled and dry, the white flies circling all around it. I knew it was dying, but since I could not bring myself to toss it into the weed pile, I set it outside with the others. That was when I heard the voice, clear, direct, without a trace of pity. Cut it back. Remove everything but the lowest stumps. Leave only one leaf. Do not wait a moment longer. Do it now.

It felt like certain murder, but I know this voice. I think of it as my Kali voice. Over the years I’ve learned to pay it serious attention. I got my pruning shears and started cutting, singing a chant from the Indian goddess tradition, the Hymn to the Great Mother, with each cleave of the blades.
Salutations to you in the form of Consciousness, cut. Salutations to you in the form of Intelligence, cut. Salutations to you in the form of Power, cut. Salutations to you in the form of Forgiveness, cut. Salutations to you in the form of Peace, cut. Salutations to you in the form of Beauty, cut. Salutations to you in the form of Good Fortune, cut. Salutations to you in the form of Compassion, cut. Salutations to you in the form of Contentment, cut. Salutations to you in the form of Mother, cut.

The deed was done. I looked at my beautiful hibiscus, shorn of her leaves and branches and remembered the old Sumerian story of Inanna’s descent to the Underworld. She must leave behind her crown, beads, breastplate, gold ring, measuring rod, and royal robe, until she is “naked and bowed low.”

The hibiscus, like Inanna, was “naked and bowed low.” With nothing left to feed on the white flies disappeared. The hibiscus sat for about a month, a few dead stumps rising from a large clay pot. Every time I looked at it, I too felt “naked and bowed low.” Then one day in mid-June, I saw a tiny spot of green pushing out of the central stem. By July the stumps were covered with small green leaves. The hibiscus lived.

By August it was rounder, fuller, lusher, than ever before. It seemed to have a new vitality, like it knew something it hadn’t known before. Or maybe it was me who knew something I hadn’t known before. Something about roots and the power of darkness. Something about how even when we think nothing is happening, something is happening. Then the buds began. Whereas before, the hibiscus might put out five or six blossoms at a time, now it was covered with flowers. It had come back, glorious, an explosion of red vermilion. That was when I gleaned the truth of Kali—come to teach me about death as a doorway to life, about the power of descent, about the wisdom of the sword when we wield it with the compassionate touch of the Mother. A gardener might say it was simply a matter of proper pruning. For me it was more than that. I’d watched the hibiscus return from the mouth of death, radiant, resplendent, alive.

The story goes that Kali comes into the world during a war between the gods, who represent what we might call our innate truth, and the demons, who represent everything that keeps us from living in that truth. The battlefield is really the psyche. The demons are winning until the Great Goddess Durga comes on the scene. At the peak of the fighting she calls on her most potent aspect, Kali, who leaps from Durga’s brow and charges onto the killing ground, destroying the demon army.

Much as I delight in this image of the fierce feminine, ridding the psyche of troubling demons, my favorite part of the story comes at the end. Kali has won the battle however, she is so immersed in her dance of destruction—she is after all on a mission—she is unaware the job is done. This is a problem because if she continues dancing, she will destroy the entire world. At this point, her consort, the god Shiva steps in and taking the form of a tiny baby, lies down on the battlefield. When Kali sees this tender infant, she stops and cradling it to her breast, begins to nurse. Death gives way to new life.

Cutting back my hibiscus was a fierce act. I had to let go of blame and self-pity, heed a powerful inner voice, take a chance on a bunch of dead stubs in a pot. I had to trust in the mysterious darkness. This is the Kali work, cutting away that which is dead, diseased, bug-ridden, finished, blocking our way—severing the ties that bind us. Ultimately of course, all is Kali, all is the Mother. The hibiscus, the white flies, the gods, the demons, the beautiful, the terrible, the eternal cycle of life, death, and transformation. She spits us out of her womb and eats us back inside it, over and over again.

When we don’t know how to see her, Kali can be quite terrifying. In Indian religious art she is often pictured wearing a garland of skulls and skirt of severed arms. Her hair is wild, her tongue sticks out, she holds a severed head in one of her many hands. She is the embodiment of the fierce feminine, protectress of the heart, come to wrest us from all that keeps us from our Truth. Some say there is none who is more compassionate. I have learned much from my journey with the hibiscus. That things are rarely what they seem. That the plain and simple is often a mask for beauty and power. That one should never underestimate the power of roots. That we animal folk are not so different from plants.

We need room to grow. We need fresh air, warm sun, good food, clean water, and most of all, we need love. Sometimes that love is fierce, rising up to safeguard our time or creativity or purpose, our loved ones or community. When the white flies start buzzing around, zapping our vitality and strength, covering us with a veil of torpor and forgetfulness, that is the time to call on Kali.

Kali is the fierce energy of the psyche, the light of discrimination, the sword of wisdom, the power to recognize what must be done and to do it. Kali’s sword shapes and refines our lives, honing and sculpting us, making order out of chaos, showing us the meaning, beauty and purpose of our lives. The sword in the hands of Kali is good and just. It is not the sword of violence and cruelty. Kali’s sword is the compassionate blade of the Mother. Kali is also the fertile darkness, the deep dark void, the ever-changing cycles of time. She teaches us through every phase, if we will only open up our ears and hearts and eyes and really listen.

I like to imagine myself and the hibiscus as one. I close my eyes and feel my roots reaching down into the earth, spreading out deeper and deeper, holding me in the embrace of rocks, dust, sand, loam, peat, mold, clay, earthworms, leeches, ants, beetles, lice, underground fertility, feeding me its life. I see my leaves and branches rising from the ground, covered in red and green profusion, each of my flowers an offering to the same life force that has pushed me up from itself and will pull back me back down into it again. I feel the warmth of the sun, sweet touch of the earth, fresh taste of water, and know that all of this, earth, water, fire, and air, is all of me. The tea I drank for breakfast, soup I ate for lunch, all the plants that made it, heat that cooked it, all of it is Her becoming me and me becoming Her. So tending my hibiscus, I tend it lovingly, as I try to tend myself and all with whom I come in contact, remembering that we are all one living presence of the Goddess, who is everywhere, in everything, the very stuff from which this universe is made.

Lady of the Plants, they say you are in everything and I know this is true because when I close my eyes and really listen, I hear your deep song singing from my heart, holding me through countless seasons, from seed to bud to bloom and back to seed again.