As we do our religious Work one of the things we constantly find ourselves battling are misconceptions that have, over the ages, crept into religious teachings around the world. One of the strangest of these is the tendency of man to combine good and evil, to take seperate individuals and combine them into one diety, or, worshipping them seperately as aspects of the same diety. A very interesting case in point is the Hindu worship of Kali as an aspect of Durga, which is incredibly odd.
Kali was a demon, a creature of Darkness who taught men hate, greed, and lust; who turned them into butchering animals, and led them to Eternal Death to feed her inesatiable need for life energy to keep her foulness in existence.
Durga was a Lord Of Light. She taught honor, justice, not to fight in hate, but to fight to destroy evil, to nurture the survivors and lead them back to The Light.
Kali ceased to exist ages ago as the life expectancy of a demon is only about 1,000 years...IF they're lucky! After she surrendered to Eternal Death one of her demonseed took her place and continued to lure the unweary to Eternal Death. After it expired another took her place, and the evil continued.
Durga, however, continues to exist. She has taken on human form many times and led those who have gone astray back to The Light, and given them Eternal Life; and in one form or another she will continue to exist forever.
During my journey through the ages I have, many times, fought Kali, or, what she created, and many of those times Durga was at my side.
We must make people understand that you cannot placate evil, that you cannot worship it in the hopes that in some way, you will gain its favor and keep it away. By worshipping Kali people are feeding the Darkness that she created, giving strength to her demonseed and allowing them to lead others to Eternal Death.
We must make people understand that good is good, and evil is evil. We must worship only the good, and not the evil. It must be our goal every day, to bring more Light into the world, and to extinguish The Darkness. Of course we understand the basic Truth that The Darkness can never be completely expelled. The battle we fight is eternal. But we must not feed The Darkness, we must not strengthen it. We must always feed The Light.