The search for devotees of Kali Ma has begun.

Finding places where people gather to worship the aspect of God of severed heads is not necessarily an easy task. There’s nothing particularly secretive about Kali worship, it just tends to often be the practice of either A. Amma or Bhagavan Das devotees who, while fine enough people, are not necessarily my main focus here, or B. immigrant communities that aren’t necessarily interested in proselytizing and thus do not have fancy websites calling all those outside the diaspora to the faith.

So, what I’m doing is letting you in on a little secret past-time of mine, which is to uncover spiritual spaces (TAZs?) in my locale that I may have not noticed before, but had I been aware of them, would provide me with great joy. In the past I’ve met (or otherwise “stalked”) the residential home of Kamit Publications (Ra Un Nefer Amen’s publisher), the Ausar Auset Society, a sufi master running a pizza shop, various ital roots tonic distillers, the Nuwaubian Bookstore, The Allah School (HQ of 5%er Nation of Gods and Earths), the people handing out Chick Tracts, Malcolm’s mosque, orthodox Sikhs, Christians, Muslims, and all their squirrelly nemeses.

What these spaces have in common, is that they are or were at some time all ground-floor, street-level, grass-roots spiritual endeavors, and the people who founded them genuinely creative. Perhaps its due to my learning as a teenager that anything done DIY is better than its opposite that I am always drawn to small, niche religions. There’s also this desire in me to prove to myself that the stories of old where seekers traveled around and met otherwise occulted students and teachers of the Divine is a tradition still alive and well. That if you look hard enough and with enough humility, you will see spiritual practice happening all around you. If you apply your “punk rock mind,” the mind that looks at every flier posted on every telephone poll, you will uncover a world teeming with heretics and blasphemers, the pious and the righteous, the insane and the faltering all trying to sip from the same Godly cup.

So, with that, I’m off. I’ve already found out quite a bit about Kali worshipers in my area, but have yet to really experience the practice first-hand. Will post more as it reveals itself.