Kàli Sara is NOT a Christian Saint! / I Kàli Sara Boleski Devlikeni NAI!
(May 2017)
Kàli Sara is the patron saint of the Roma people, and the subject of a great many pilgrimages, prayers, dedications and so on. But all is not quite as it seems...
Most of us know that the Roma have not always been Christian, and some of us still aren't, the present author included. Our traditional belief system or phuro pachipen, which came with us from India and changed and developed along the way, is basically a blend of a somewhat simplified version of archaic (Rigvedic / early Puranic) Hinduism, simplified because our ancestors were illiterate and therefore had no scriptures, mixed with even older animistic/Pagan and magical traditions – which of course are the basis for Romani traditional magic.
When our ancestors entered Europe and came into contact with the gàdje, they often found it convenient or necessary to pay lip-service to gàdjikano religion, while in truth retaining the phuro pachipen, and such “dual allegiance” continued for a very long time (and indeed, even now, many Roma who quite sincerely profess a Christian faith still practice some of the old magical traditions); however, we came under increasing pressure to convert – in western Europe at least, this pressure was extreme, with thousands of Romnia being put to death on “witchcraft” charges and intense persecution of Roma of both sexes. Even so, in parts of the diaspora from England to Romania there were still many “hold-outs” who had not converted as late as the 19th century. Of course, some Roma were more willing to embrace the religion of the gàdje than others; my maternal family had a very strong tradition of magic and the womenfolk had always earned their living by doing healing, dukeripen (prognostics – fortune-telling, card-reading and so on) and other forms of magic, and they fled to a remote corner of Ireland for 400 years to escape the persecution, so retaining the language, the phuro pachipen, and all of the magical traditions – all of which I have inherited. And the phuro pachipen still survives, quietly, in little pockets right across the Romani diaspora, though quite often its followers do not speak out about it and pretend on the surface to be Christian in order to avoid prejudice and rejection by Roma who have had imposed on them an unreasonably narrow view of religious faith; it has always, traditionally, been one of our values that we respect any belief system that teaches love, compassion and decency – this comes from the ancient Indian idea that “there are many paths to know Spirit”. But sadly, in more recent times a kind of intolerant Christianity has gained currency among our people, and I myself have received a good deal of abuse from its followers simply because I still hold to the phuro pachipen. This makes me sad, since I get on perfectly well with a great many friends from all sorts of different religions and am active in the local Inter-Faith movement (even if they can’t quite decide whether to label me as Hindu or Pagan!).
Anyway...
Kàli Sara pre-dates the conversion of any Roma to Christianity by a very long time, and She exists in the phuro pachipen. Furthermore, even though she is made out to be a Catholic saint, She does not exist in any Catholic hagiography, yet the Catholic Church is known for documenting all of its saints to an obsessive degree, right back to the earliest origins of Christianity. So what's going on?
The answer is that, just as the early Christians appropriated Pagan sites and customs in their zeal to convert the “unbelievers”, so too was Kàli Sara “converted” into a Christian saint from entirely non-Christian origins.
Those of us who still retain the phuro pachipen know Her as Kàli Sara Devi, and in Romani, Devi means Goddess, just as it does in Hindi and Sanskrit (देवी). And Kàli means black or dark – again as it does in other north Indian languages. In the stories of the phuro pachipen, She is described as having either 4 or 10 arms (depending on the version), and She holds in one a trushul (trident) and in another a sàp (serpent), She is the dark-skinned mother-protector Deity of our people, who can also rise to anger and create the destroyer avatar Kālī (we still have that name, though in some clans it has become scrambled to Lākī, curiously) from her forehead. She is, of course, the Romani version of Durga in the Hindu pantheon; some old-faith Roma clans even use the name Durga, but most use Kàli Sara Devi; the name Sara is a slight corruption of the alternative name for Durga, Shārika, by which She is still known even today in Kashmir.
So, Kàli Sara Devi isn't a Christian saint at all – She is a Hindu Goddess, a key part of our Indian heritage, even if a great many Roma have forgotten this. And furthermore, She is my own patron Goddess, to whom I was dedicated in childhood when I was selected to be trained as a Chovahàni/Dravengri. I find it rather irritating and patronising to hear Her being reduced to a mere Catholic saint!