The nature and significance of the Hindu Divine Mother in embodied thealogical perspective

Mikel Burley

doi:10.1017/s0034412521000263

Abstract

AbstractThe Hindu Divine Mother is revered by millions of religious practitioners in India and elsewhere, yet this goddess rarely receives attention in Western philosophy of religion. Focusing especially (though not exclusively) on her form as Kālī, this article utilizes sources from Hindu goddess traditions to explicate her contrasting characteristics, which include benign maternality and martial aggression. By adapting an embodied theological (or thealogical) approach derived from feminist discourse, the intelligibility of worshipping such a goddess is expounded; connections are delineated between the conceptualizing of divinity as radically ambivalent or multivalent and the lived experience of inhabiting an often hostile world.

Highlights

For my purposes, the term ‘embodied thealogy’ is apposite, given that it is a distinctly feminine conception of divinity that I am discussing
I shall, use ‘embodied theology’ more often when explicating the work of Christ and Plaskow. The latter explication comes in the first section after this introduction; for it will suffice to say that embodied theology is an approach to the study of the divine that emphasizes the connection – and the complexity of the connection – between one’s embodied experience of life and the world, on the one hand, and how one conceptualizes the divine, on the other
In contrast to the all-loving or omnibenevolent god who has been the cynosure of much Western philosophy of religion, the Hindu Divine Mother is a fusion of contrasting qualities, including beneficence and ferocity, maternity and truculence

Summary

Introduction

The term ‘embodied thealogy’ is apposite, given that it is a distinctly feminine conception of divinity that I am discussing. To explore the nature and significance of the Hindu Divine Mother, I draw upon the approach termed embodied theology by the feminist scholars Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow.

Results

Conclusion