Tara, who is the female Bodhisattva of Compassion in Tibetan Buddhism

To share with fellow devotees a sacred invocation, a ritual dance, the creation of sacred and devotional art, can be transformative, a great blessing.

Tara is celebrated with a long prayer called "The 21 Praises to Tara". The Goddess has 21 manifestations - peaceful and wrathful - all different expressions of divine mercy and wisdom. In the painting below, Tara is surrounded by smaller figures, each representing a different aspect of the Goddess (such as "White Tara", "Red Tara", etc.)



Black Tara is a wrathful manifestation, identical in form and, no doubt, source, to Hindu Kali. Like Kali, she has a headdress of grinning skulls, like Kali, she is black, like Kali she has three eyes. Like many Tibetan deities in the wrathful aspect, she has the fangs of a tiger, symbolizing ferocity, a ferocious appetite to devour the demons of the mind. Her aura or halo is fiery, energetic, full of smoke symbolizing the transformation of fire.

Kali is the great Dark Mother of India. In Hindu mythology, when the world was being devoured by demons, there came a time when even the great Gods couldn't battle them. And so Kali the terrible manifested, the "last ditch savioress". Kali is the One who brings the forest fire, levelling the ground so new growth can occur, the surgeon who cuts cleanly away morbid tissue so flesh can heal.

The icon of Kali, dancing on the prostrate body of Shiva, is a strange and horrific image to the western sensibility. Christian theology is dualistic, but Hinduism and Buddhism are not. In Bali, the curbs of Ubud are all painted like a checker board, black and white, as are the altar clothes. This is to remind those who walk down the street continuously of Sekala and Neskala, the continuing balance of Dark and Light, the yin/yang of life. Kali appears in Bali as the dreadful, fanged, bloodthirsty Rangda. Battles with her are always fought by the benign dragon, the Barong, in dreadful graveyards. But no one ultimately wins. Because, perhaps, the battle must continually be fought. And Rangda, work done, often then returns to the heaven realms, to become beautiful, peaceful Uma, wife of their version of Lord Shiva. Kali, whose name means "Time" (Kala) lives beyond form, beyond the pairs of opposites, the truth beyond the skeins of karma and time...............