The Muse of Kamala Devi
Without mud you cannot have lotus flowers. Without suffering, you
have no way to learn how to be understanding and compassionate…
No mud, no lotus.
—Thick Nhat Hanh
What Story Are We In?
I keep a Kamala Harris campaign button from 2020 on my bureau, among jewelry boxes and dancing goddesses from various cultures. I’ve asked myself why I hold on to this souvenir of her unsuccessful run for president in the long ago Before Times. An inner voice argues: “Because you love her name, her smile and her slogan: ‘Kamala Harris For the People.’ She’s a Muse for Truth and Justice. Hold on to her.”
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| Kamala Campaign Button 2020 |
Like so many who watched Joe Biden’s devastating debate performance on June 28th, I fell into a void of terror and despair. I’ve known this place since childhood, when a chorus of ancestors who died in the Shoah visited me frequently, filling my soul with unbearable lamentations. My father taught me to keep my eye on the political horizon, always looking for the next Hitler. He has appeared in myriad incarnations—Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Strom Thurmond, Bull Connor, George Wallace, and most recently, in 2016, that berserker with orange hair. He’s back, big time.
I saw our good President Biden looking like a ghost at the debate, his tongue frozen, unable to articulate the truth as lie after lie came out of the mouth of the wanna-be king. Seized by ancient dread, I saw myself wandering among hordes of other lost souls, tramping through the muck of our desecrated country, besmirched by hate, rage and the terrifying MAGA plot—Project 2025—to dismantle our democracy and our constitution.
And then, suddenly, in just a few hours, as though someone had waved a magic wand, everything changed. Our President made the painful decision not to run for a second term. He endorsed his vice president, Kamala Devi Harris. That our president put the good of the country before his own ambitions caused the world to fall back into order for me. An enormous weight lifted from my shoulders, and the shoulders of everyone with whom I spoke. Maybe our democracy is not on the chopping block, after all.
Kamala Devi, with her beautiful smile and compassionate eyes leapt into the fray with so much joy and verve that we find ourselves wondering, what story are we in? She glows and laughs as she speaks truth to the torrent of lies and inanities coming from the MAGA candidates.
A bright burst of hope for our country, the kind of hope I haven’t felt since Obama ran for President in 2008—hope for our poor beleaguered planet, hope for women’s rights—so devastated by the Dobbs decision—hope for the future of our children and grandchildren, hope for our agonized land, fills my heart. Maybe we’ve been transported into a redemption story, a story of love and freedom. I find myself praying to every goddess I know to protect and bless Kamala Devi. I find myself wondering what myth we are in.
What Myth Are We In?
Curious about the meaning of Kamala Devi’s names I reach for a favorite book—Hindu Goddesses, by David Kinsley, and am astounded at how deftly they spell out her destiny. Kamala means lotus flower—sacred in Hindu iconography. Kinsley writes of the lotus: “It is a symbol of fertility and life which takes its strength from the primordial waters. . . Rooted in the mud but blossoming above the water, completely uncontaminated—the lotus represents spiritual. . . authority. (p. 21)
Devi, I learn, is Sanskrit for “shining one” or Goddess. Kinsley writes of Devi that she “represents the ultimate reality in the universe. . .a powerful, creative, active transcendent female being. . . said to be the life force of all being. . . the root of the tree of the Universe. . . [whose] essential nature is Shakti. . . the active dimension of the godhead.” Devi is the Mother of all Goddesses, but especially associated with the goddesses Lakshmi and Durga. This is particularly apt because Lakshmi—the Goddess of beauty, happiness and good fortune—is often portrayed sitting on a lotus blossom—and Kinsley writes, “is often called Kamala.” (p. 21) Durga, on the other hand, is a fierce warrior Goddess whose “mythological function is to combat demons who threaten the stability of the cosmos. . .” (p. 95) “Durga,” writes Kinsley, “violates the model of the Hindu woman. She is not submissive, she is not subordinated to a male deity. . . She is an independent warrior who can hold her own against any male on the battlefield.” (p. 97) I wonder if Shyamala Gopalan Harris contemplated the mythic forces she was invoking, when she gave her first born daughter such powerful names, which embed her in Indian culture and foretell this astonishing moment we are in.
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| Goddess Devi |
Kamala Devi is filled with the energies of these three goddesses—Lakshmi, Durga and Devi—full of love and laughter, fierceness and resilience, seated on the lotus blossom of her spiritual authority, in touch with her Shakti, and with our culture’s profound need for the deep female energies she manifests. It’s no wonder that, as our Muse, she is so vital, so inspiring, so able to make us feel full of creativity and possibility. Just hours after Biden endorsed Kamala Devi, 44,000 Black Women got on a Zoom call and raised $1.6 million dollars for the campaign. Next day, 53,000 Black Men raised $1.3 million. These events inspired Shannon Watts, a white gun control activist, to organize “White Women: Answer the Call” a few days later. I got on that call, with 164,000 white women, the largest Zoom call ever, though it kept crashing, freezing, and then coming back on. We raised $10.5 million. Many women spoke of their hopes and fears. One woman said she’d been waiting for “love to arrive,” she was so sick of all the hate and the fear. And love did arrive, in the form of Kamala Devi. Another woman spoke of her subgroup—“Witches for Harris” I was thrown back in time to the late ‘60s early ‘70s Second Wave Feminism that changed my life when I was young. It was then that I learned about witches, that they were healers and priestesses of the Great Mother; it was then that I learned about the Goddess. It was in those years—1973—that Roe vs. Wade became law, and that I stopped hearing dreadful stories about back-alley abortions.
Many other fundraising events have raised unheard of amounts of money for Kamala Devi, including “White Dudes for Harris,” “Cat Ladies for Kamala”—a dig at the Republican vice presidential candidate who attacked Democratic women activists as “childless cat ladies,” and “Elders for Kamala” which focused on climate change and how supportive and knowledgeable Kamala Devi is on those essential issues.
With Kamala, we are reclaiming the Myth of the Goddess who inspired so many of us half a century ago, and whose transformative powers have been forgotten in the agony of the patriarchal backlash we have been suffering.
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| Goddess Lakshmi |
“The Spell is Broken”
So says Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, who has been chosen as Kamala’s vice-presidential running mate. I find this profound. Walz speaks to the mythical shadow world we’ve been trapped in—a scary fairy tale about a demonic sorcerer, who has had our country in his thrall since 2016. Listen to the berserker chaos man—there is something hypnotic in how he speaks, how he riffs on names, plays with nasty nicknames, conjures terrifying visions of invasion and disaster, puts his followers in a nightmarish trance, proclaims himself the only one who can save them. For the rest of us he is a bully, a boogie man under the bed, the intruder who chases you down dark corridors in frightening dreams. And now, thanks to Kamala Devi, thanks to Tim Walz, he is unveiled as an unhinged old man.
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| Goddess Durga |
Walz is also the one who said, of the berserker and his circle—“those guys are creepy and just weird.” Creepy is spot on. But usually, I’m a fan of weird. I’m drawn to the uncanny and the eerie—portals to the unconscious realms of dream and imagination. However, I get that Walz is naming the shadowy underbelly of our country which has been revealed during this frightening time. He is not hyperbolic about this. Just matter of fact. He doesn’t buy into the terror and the chaos. He says it plainly and directly: “These guys are the anti-freedoms.” “Who is asking to ban birth control?” “Who is asking to raise the price of insulin?” And then he stuns me by returning me to the political values I held as a child and a young adult. He says: “Don’t ever shy away from our progressive values. One person’s Socialism is another person’s Neighborliness.” In such plain yet profound speech he sums it all up. And then challenges us: “How often in 100 days do you get to change the trajectory of the world?” As I write it is just 90 days. By the time you read this it will be fewer.
Dear friends and fellow survivors of the shock of 2016, this is our moment. It is a great gift. We can’t waste it. Kamala is our Devi, and Tim is our favorite uncle. They have already changed our lives. Please support them in any way that suits you. Donate, Volunteer, Vote! Here are some places to start:
Volunteer: votesaveamerica.com/2024
Donate: kamalaharris.com
Find your polling place: Iwillvote.com
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| Divine Mother |
