Diwali - Kali's Day
Colors: Black and red
Element: Earth
Altar: Set out a black cloth. Decorate gaudily with red flowers, bowls of vegetable-dyed rice and couscous, strings of red beads, sterile needles, and the figure of Kali.
Offerings: A drop of blood, wiped onto the base of Kali's statue.
Daily Meal: Indian food.
Invocation to Kali
Black Mother of Death
Who drives us around and around
The wheel of birth and endings,
From whose dark womb we are born
And who eats us again at the end,
Lady who tramples the proud Shiva
Under her ruthless feet
Mounts him for her own pleasure
And tears out his guts.
Lady, let us learn the message
Of death in life, of birth in death;
Let us praise the eternal return,
The blade and the blood, the life
That you demand from us,
And that we have no choice
But to return to you at the end.
Chant:
Kali Kali Kali
Our flesh is yours
Our soul is yours
Unto your hands
Unto your womb
May we be reborn again
Kali Kali Kali
(All approach the altar and kneel. One who has been chosen to do the work of the ritual takes a sterilized needle and pricks the finger of each member present. If they request, a small cut can be made with a sterilized razor, but the worker must be skilled. The blood is wiped onto the statue of Kali and the upper altar cloth, which is never washed. All file out unspeaking; bandaging will be done in another room.)