Kali Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ====In modern times==== An academic study of modern-day western Kali enthusiasts noted that, "as shown in the histories of all cross-cultural religious transplants, Kali devotionalism in the West must take on its own indigenous forms if it is to adapt to its new environment."<ref name="McDermott1998p281-305">{{cite book | last =McDermott | first = Rachel Fell | chapter = The Western Kali | editor-last = Hawley | editor-first = John Stratton | title = Devi: Goddesses of India | publisher = Motilal Banarsidass | date = 1998 |pages=281–305}}</ref> Rachel Fell McDermott, Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at [[Columbia University]] and author of several books on Kali, has noted the evolving views in the West regarding Kali and her worship. In 1998 McDermott wrote that: {{blockquote|A variety of writers and thinkers have found Kali an exciting figure for reflection and exploration, notably, [[Feminism|feminists]] and participants in [[New Age]] spirituality who are attracted to goddess worship. [For them], Kali is a symbol of wholeness and healing, associated especially with repressed female power and sexuality. [However, such interpretations often exhibit] confusion and misrepresentation, stemming from a lack of knowledge of Hindu history among these authors, [who only rarely] draw upon materials written by scholars of the Hindu religious tradition ... It is hard to import the worship of a goddess from another culture: religious associations and connotations have to be learned, imagined or intuited when the deep symbolic meanings embedded in the native culture are not available.<ref name="McDermott1998p281-305" />}} By 2003, she amended her previous view. {{blockquote|... crosscultural borrowing ''is'' appropriate and a natural by-product of religious globalization—although such borrowing ought to be done responsibly and self-consciously. If some Kali enthusiasts, therefore, careen ahead, reveling in a goddess of power and sex, many others, particularly since the early 1990s, have decided to reconsider their theological trajectories. These [followers], whether of South Asian descent or not, are endeavoring to rein in what they perceive as excesses of feminist and New Age interpretations of the Goddess by choosing to be informed by, moved by, an Indian view of her character.<ref>{{cite book |last1=McDermott |first1=Rachel Fell |title=Encountering Kali: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bMUJyU_C-LkC |year=2003 |publisher=University of California Press |page=285 |isbn=978-0-520-92817-6}}</ref> }} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page