Maa Kali's fierce appearance symbolizes many things. Her dark complexion symbolizes her all-embracing and transcendental nature. Says the Mahanirvana Tantra: "Just as all colors disappear in black, so all names and forms disappear in her". Her nudity is primeval, fundamental, and transparent like Nature — the earth, sea, and sky. Kali is free from the illusory covering, for she is beyond the all maya or "false consciousness."
Her three eyes represent past, present, and future, the three modes of time an attribute that lies in the very name Kali....(kal means the Time). Kali's garland of human heads stands for the fifty letters in the Sanskrit alphabet, symbolizes infinite knowledge.
Her girdle of severed human hands signifies work and liberation from the cycle of karma. Her white teeth show her inner purity, and her red lolling tongue indicates her omnivorous nature — "her indiscriminate enjoyment of all the world's 'flavors'." Her sword is the destroyer of false consciousness and the eight bonds that bind us.
Kali's guises and names are diverse. Shyama, Adya Ma, Tara Ma and Dakshina Kalika, Chamundi are popular forms. Then there is Bhadra Kali, who is gentle, Shyamashana Kali, who lives only in the cremation ground, and so on.
