Although the Kaula literature of the Newars did not give rise to a systematic philosophical school like that of their Kashmiri counterparts, I will argue in this article that philosophical thinking can be detected in Newar ritual texts. I do this by translating and analysing the unpublished _Kālīsūtra_, an important hymn found in Newar Uttarāmnāya liturgies whose transmission and composition will also be touched upon. This hymn indicates that the cult of Kālī in Nepal had a distinct ontological stance tending (...) towards a non-dualism which was world-affirming while also seeing consciousness as the ultimate reality. Several key conceptual strands of the _Sūtra_ such as the relationship between transcendence and immanence, reality and cognition and the divine and the body will be elaborated upon. In the process, I will show that the _Kālīsūtra_’s philosophy brings into sharper focus doctrines already present in the canonical Krama and thus displays many affinities with the Pratyabhijñā, a school which shares its cultic backdrop. (shrink)