some things you might want to
know about our publication...
What is Ferment?
What is distinctive about it?
Why the name?
What's the symbol about?
Who can contribute?
What do people say about it?
How to contact?
What is Ferment?
Ferment is a hard copy journal of study and vision, whose topic and inspiration is Kali, the dark and radiant Goddess. The journal was founded in June 1990. Ferment came out monthly until June 2000, when it became bimonthly. Currently it is published less often, because we are putting more energy into work on the net.It’s published in Sydney, Australia, by Colin Robinson, on behalf of the organization Mystics of Kali.
What is distinctive about Ferment's
approach to the vision of Kali?
Ferment is a serious exploration of the historical experience of Goddess Kali, as expressed in writings such as Puranas, Tantras, stotras, bhakti songs. Ferment is also an expression of living experience of the paradoxical Goddess.Ferment sees more than cultural specificity in the vision of Kali. We suggest that the vision of Kali has something to tell the world today about the world today.
Why the name?
Ferment means the universal decay-that-creates.Ferment means the spiritual maturing through which each of us becomes aware of the decay-that-creates.
Ferment means cultural change: the breakdown of old doctrines and disciplines and the rise of new ones.
Sir John Woodroffe, the great English exponent of Tantra, wrote of eastern and western cultures “providing a ferment” for each other.
As the paradoxical Goddess of decay and creativity, Kali herself is the universal ferment.
What's the symbol about?
© C.Robinson 1994
Ferment's symbol is a contemporary drawing based on a traditional Indian motif. The tortoise represents protection, the skull dissolution, and the flower creativity. All are aspects of the ferment which is Kali.
The drawing also suggests the western fable about the surprising victory of the tortoise in its race against the hare.
Who can contribute?
Articles, stories, poems, drawings and letters which relate to the topics covered by Ferment are always welcome, no matter who they come from.You don’t have to be a member of Mystics of Kali to be part of the ferment.
What people say about our journal
I always enjoy your newsletter... and commend you for your scholarly and creative writing.1
Rachel Fell McDermott
Editor of Encountering Kali
Author of Mother of My Heart, Daughter of My Dreams:
Kali and Uma in the Devotional Poetry of Bengal
and Singing to the Goddess: Poems to Kali and Uma from Bengal
...extremely well written review of the book "Kali's Child."...I like your review because it comes from a mind that aims to understand rather than condemn.2
Elizabeth Usha Harding
President of Kali Mandir California
Author of Kali: The Black Goddess of Dakshineswar
I particularly appreciated your deeply thoughtful August [2004] article on ‘The Paradoxical Kali’ and completeness.3
Janice Daw
Jungian analyst
Ferment has been listed among "Recommended Pagan Publications" by Green Egg, the official journal of the Church of All Worlds. (November-December 1997)
1Letter to Ferment, dated March 17, 2003, published April 2003
2Letter to Ferment, November 1997.
3Letter to Ferment, December 2004.
How to contact?
Send an email
to Colin Robinson<colin@weareferment.net>
