The similarities in appearance between Kali and Tara are striking and unmistakable, especially in the two common images of each goddess, Dakshina Kali and Ugra Tara. They both stand upon a supine male figure, often Shiva but sometimes said to be an anonymous corpse. Sometime the figure they stand up is being consumed in a cremation fire. Both goddesses are black, dark blue, or black-blue. Both are naked or wear minimal clothing, sometimes a tigerskin. Both wear a necklace of severedheads or skulls and a girdle of severed arms. Both are usually shown in a smashan. Both have a lolling tongue,and blood oozes from their mouths.

Their appearances are so strikingly similair that it is easy to mistake one from another. Indeed, they are often said to be manifestation of eachother;for example, in their 1000 name hymns they share many epithets as well as having each other's names. Tara is also called Kalika, Ugra-kali, Mahakali and Bhadra-kali.

Most of the symbolic meanings associated with Kali apply to Tara. She appears to be a variant expression of Kali, only in a slightly different form. Both dominate the male figure associated with them, they stand upon it, or they mother the infant Shiva.

Both Kali and Tara suggest the preeminence or dominance of Shakti in a vision of the cosmos that is constituted or pervaded by Shiva and Shakti.