Mahakali become mad after a big strugle with a demon. Killed everyone who comes in her path. Lord Shiv knows she will require a severe shock to snap her out of this madness. He throws himself on the ground in her path and she inadvertently steps on him. Even in her berserker state she realizes something unusual has happened. Recognizing whom she had stepped on, she is mortified and bites her tongue in embarrassment. The dance stops immediately.

This story casts Kali as an extremely simple soul who respects her great husband but that is only the obvious take on it. The symbolic element in it is very clear also. Even Kali the terrible can only deal with so much death and destruction before one goes mad. Wrath that has run out of control has long been recognized as a form of illness, if not downright madness, in India. Wrath is the absence of consciousness and the only person who can give you back that vital component of your Psyche is Shiva - who is Pure Consciousness himself.

In a real sense, every time you lose it because of rage, you are stomping all over Shiva. The shock of recognition implies that consciousness is again functioning and the passions recede to their proper position as servants not as masters. The tongue is the prime symbol of passions as it is the center for taste, which is regarded as the core passion. Once you can control your craving, not for food as such but for rasa, flavor in all its connotations, you have won over your passions. Kali's biting of the tongue is the acknowledgement of such control over the passions, but it was possible only when an outburst of rage revealed how fragile and easily lost the Conscious Awareness of Life is.