Krodha Kali, Fierce Black One, or Wrathful Black Varahi is an alternate form of the wrathful Tibetan Buddhist goddess Vajravarahi.  Her origin is in the Hindu Varahi, an animal-headed mother goddess.  Varahi means boar, and there is an image of a boar in Krodha Kali’s crown.

She wears many of the eight attires of the charnel grounds including facial ornaments, flayed animal skins (an elephant hide as an upper garment and a tiger skin as a lower garment), dry skulls in her crown, and a garland of freshly severed heads.    

She holds a curved knife in her raised right hand, a skull bowl full of blood in her left hand at her heart, and a katvanga staff in the crook of her arm.  These three attributes are typical of the female wrathful deities.  The skull cup symbolizes method as the cultivation of bliss; the knife symbolizes wisdom as emptiness as the severing of all conceptualizations; and the staff symbolizes the union of bliss and emptiness.  She dances on a human corpse which symbolizes the defeated ego.

This image was taken from a deity card, a small card that was part of a set, which would be used during initiation ceremonies and empowerment rituals where a given card would stand for a deity that was being invoked. They could also represent ritual objects and offerings that could stand in for objects used in a ceremony.