Kali is the only survivor of the Matrikas, that group of Yaksha female deities who are ambivalent in the extreme, being simultaneously malevolent persecutors and kindly protectors. Specifically she is associated with Naravahini, a naked, skeletal and terrifying figure who rides a man as her vehicle.

There is quite a lot to be said for this theory as the average person when confronted with a group of Matrika figures, one of the great sculptural cliches in India, identifies only Kali (the Naravahini) within it usually. It is however, in the Devi-mahatmayam that Kali is finally brought into the ambit of the formal faith. In this version Kali is an emanation of the great Goddess Durga, or more specifically she is a personification of emergent wrath on the part of the older goddess when she goes to battle. The external appearance that gives so much offence to the squeamish is full blown here. She is red eyed from quaffing wine as well as wrath, has a garland of human heads, wears tiger-skin clothes and has a lolling tongue that she occasionally employs to emit frightful roars that fill up all the quarters. Her preferred mode of demon destruction is to either chew them up or cut off their heads as she does to Chanda and Munda.