1.  Dictionaries/Encyclopedias

For example,  the American Heritage Dictionary describes her as, “One of the manifestations and cult titles of the wife of Shiva and mother goddess Devi, especially in her malevolent role as a goddess of death and destruction, depicted as black, red-eyed, blood-stained, and wearing a necklace of skulls.

Similarly, the Encyclopedia Britannica concise (on-line) gives the following primary definition for Kali:  “Destructive and devouring Hindu goddess,” following that misrepresentation up with the following description:  She is a terrifying aspect of Devi who in other forms appears as peaceful and benevolent. Kali is commonly associated with death, violence, sexuality, and, paradoxically, with motherly love. Noted for killing the demon Raktavija, she is usually depicted as a hideous, black-faced hag smeared with blood. In her four hands she holds, variously, a sword, a shield, the severed head of a giant, or a noose for strangling. Nearly naked, she wears a garland of skulls and a girdle of severed hands. She is often shown standing or dancing on her husband, Shiva.  Until the 19th century the thugs of India worshiped Kali and offered their victims to her. In the late 20th century she became a symbol of feminine empowerment in some circles.”

While they have some of the iconographic facts correct, they fail to explain the iconology, or the meaning of her emblems, leading Western viewers to misunderstand her nature completely.

It is partly correct to say Kali is a goddess of destruction—but it is almost always destruction of demons threatening the Gods.  Symbolically, then, she destroys the forces of ignorance, evil, illusion.  She is associated with blood, death, and those “untamable, unpredictable forces that threaten order,” but she is also a graphic reminder that in the temporal world, new life feeds on death.  She may be a goddess of death, but symbolically she brings about the death of the illusory, ego-centered view of reality, and so in fact acts as a boon to those who truly understand their encounter with her.