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Re: Kali and Hammer of the Gods

missingmile15:

crowleyshouseplant:

from Dingoatemybabycrazy:

Ok, the more I learn about Hinduism (which is happening a lot know that I’m taking a Hindu goddesses class), the more I really don’t like what they did with her.

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Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. I love Kali as a character on the show, how she’s stylish, a hbic, does not give a fuck, and tells our protagonists off about their western-centrism.

But the show’s treatment of her is awful, especially because as the OP said, she’s defeated by an angel. Kali is a goddess. One of destruction who gets drunk off the blood of her enemies and dances on their corpses. Her mythological stand point as such a well known and worshiped goddess should be enough to at least match Lucifer, if not defeat him completely.

The show’s research of any mythology is usually sad at best, but it’s particularly upsetting with the pagan gods in this episode and all other featuring other gods. Paganism gets blanketed as something that only has awful or malicious gods in it, that stupid, power-hungry, or ill-informed people worship. Kali is 100% right when she says she should be the one to end the world. Hinduism is the oldest religion still widely practiced. Having the angels talk about their father creating the universe is both fascinating and headache inducing because their religion wouldn’t be invented for thousands of years after other ones would have already established. And the show clearly works on the theory that things become true if enough people believe in it (1x17 “Hell House”), and that gods are fueled by the prayer and worship. So unless there’s a huge time paradox every time a religion becomes the most populous (which, okay, that’d actually be pretty cool), the show’s talking out of its ass, because there’s literally no way that any Abrahamic religion could have had first claim.

In conclusion: I wanted Kali as a recurring character for the longest time because I wanted the writers to fix what they had implied about paganism and her specifically, and instead have her be the destructive, incomprehensible, power house of a fierce goddess she was meant to be. I don’t trust the show to do that anymore, but I still cling to hope every once in a while.