காலமெலாம் தேசமெல முணவாக் கொண்டு
காலத்தை யுண்டுமிழ்வாள் கால காலி
காலனுக்கும் காலனடா கண்ணுச் சாமிக்
காதலனைப் பெற்றெடுத்தாள் தங்கை யானாள்
காலனைக்கொல் காலனுக்கே மகளாய் வந்தாள்
கைவசமாய்க் கணவனெனக் கலந்து கொண்டாள்
காலமிலாக் காலமெலாம் தானாய் நிற்பாள்
ககனமெலாம் பெற்றெடுத்தும் கன்னி யாவாள்
Kaalamelaam dhesamela muNavāk koNDu
kaalaththai yuNDumizhvaaL kaala kaali
kaalanukkum kaalanadaa kaNNuch chaamik
kaadhalanaip peRReduththaaL thangai yaanaaL
kaalanaikkol kaalanukkE magaLaay vandhaaL
kaivasamaayk kaNavanenak kalandhu koNDaaL
kaalamilaak kaalamelaam thaanaay niRpaaL
kaganamelaam peRReduththum kanni yaavaaL
Taking all time and all regions as her food,
she eats time and spits it out—Time-Kālī.
Even for Kālan (Yama), she is Kālan, O Kaṇṇu-sāmi;
she gave birth to her beloved and became his younger sister.
She killed Kālan; yet she arrived as a daughter to Kālan himself.
Holding him under her hand, she united with him as (her) husband.
Timeless, yet as all time she herself stands.
Having brought forth the whole sky, she remains a virgin.
She is the principle that consumes and expels time—Kālī who overmasters death. She is paradoxically mother, sister, daughter, and wife to the same “beloved,” indicating that all relations arise within her play. She produces space itself, yet remains untouched by what she produces: timeless while appearing as time, beyond death while generating the conditions for death.
The verse is built from deliberate contradictions (mother/sister/daughter/wife; producing all yet remaining “virgin”) to point to a Siddhar-style non-literal truth: the ultimate power (often read as Śakti/Kālī, or the inner kuṇḍalinī) is the ground in which time (kālam), death (Kālan/Yama), and space (gaganam/ākāśa) arise.
1) “Eating and vomiting time”: This can signify dissolution and re-emergence of temporal experience—time is swallowed in yogic absorption and re-issued in ordinary perception. It also evokes Kālī as the force that devours the world-process and then releases it again.
2) “For Yama too she is Yama”: Death is not ultimate; it is mastered by a deeper principle. In yogic reading, when kuṇḍalinī rises and mind-time collapses, the practitioner enters a state where the fear/compulsion of death is “killed.”
3) The relational paradoxes (bearing the beloved, becoming his sister, coming as Yama’s daughter, then taking him as husband): Siddhar texts often use family/sexual grammar to describe non-dual generation: the same One appears as cause and effect, as the sought and the seeker, as power and its ‘lord.’ In iconographic resonance, Kālī “subdues” Śiva (standing over him) yet is inseparable from him—‘holding him under her hand’ conveys both dominance and unity.
4) “Gave birth to the whole sky, yet remains a virgin”: the source produces the subtlest element (space/ākāśa, or the field of awareness) while remaining unmodified and unstained. “Virgin” here can mean unspent, unconditioned, or not bound by the products of manifestation.
Across these images, the verse gestures toward an immortalizing insight central to Siddhar yoga and rasāyana thought: if time and death are secondary products within a greater reality, then by uniting with that reality one stands ‘timeless within time.’