Hine_P-Aspects_of_Tantra.pdf

Aspects of Tantra

Five essays exploring modern Tantra

Phil Hine

A Coecton of Sacred Magck | The Esoterc Lbrary | www.sacred-magck.com

for Vishvanath

Contents

One: Setting the scene....................................................................3

Two: Devotions & demonesses........................................................7

Three: The science of extremes......................................................12

Four: The guru: fakir or faker?......................................................17

Five: The joy of sects....................................................................23

Sources/Links...............................................................................29

Aspects of Tantra

Only the other day I was chatting over the phone to a friend in America,

and happened to mention that I was currently involved with a Tantric magic

study group. My friend became very animated, and in tones of some envy said that

he’d always wanted to ind a group where people were willing to do Tantric magic

with each other. It was at this point that an alarm bell began to ring in my head.

“Look,” I said, “I mean Tantric magic, not group sex.” “Oh,” my friend replied, “I

wasn’t aware that there was anything more to Tantra than group sex.” Now this kind

of reaction isn’t untypical, even among otherwise experienced occultists. Over the

last few years, whenever I’ve mentioned my interest in Tantra, I’ve often watched

people’s mental gears grinding away as they visualise contorted sexual postures and

perhaps, unusual combinations. To think of Tantra only in terms of sexual rites is

a gross oversimpliication. In fact, Tantrism is a complete magical system in itself,

incorporating a wide variety of magical methods and metaphysics.

Many elements of Tantric magic have become absorbed into the general magical lore

of the West. Such elements include concepts such as Kundalini, the Chakras, Karma,

Yoga, etc. Concepts such as the Chakras have been widely taken up by new agers and

spiritualists, many of whom would be horriied if told of the roots of these concepts

in tantrism.

So why does Tantra have such a ‘dodgy’ reputation? In part, this is due to the

efforts of the European chroniclers of Indian religious life. The Abbé Dubois for

example, author of the seminal work on Hindu life, “Hindu Manners, Customs and

Ceremonies” (1807), wrote in much detail of the “abominable debaucheries” of ‘sakti

worship’. The Abbé’s work contained the irst detailed account of the orgiastic ritual

that came to be known as ‘cakrapuja’ (circle-worship), and his book did much to ix

the European notion that Hindus were depraved. The Abbé’s descriptions of sakti

worship was passed down from author to author, and still colours some modern

notions of Tantra. Similarly, the Rev. William Ward, writing of famous tantric texts

such as the Yoni Tantra, reverted to asterisks occasionally whilst describing “...things

too abominable to enter the ears of man, and impossible to be revealed to a Christian

public...” By the mid-Nineteenth Century, Tantra has acquired the glamour which

surrounds it even today - of ‘forbidden rites’, ‘orgiastic ceremonies’, ‘ritual murder’

and ‘oriental mysteries’.

Of particular relevance to occultists is the inluence of organisations such as the

Theosophical Society and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The former,

in particular, were instrumental in importing many Indian esoteric concepts into

Western occultism, although these concepts were invariably mutilated in the process.

A good example of this ‘twisting’ of ideas, (which began with the Theosophists and

A Coecton of Sacred Magck | The Esoterc Lbrary | www.sacred-magck.com

One: Setting the scene

M ention Tantra to most people, and they will invariably think of sex-magic.

Aspects of Tantra

continues even now) is that of the Chakras. Now most people who have done some

reading of magical texts will have come across the Chakras, as they have become a

fairly basic element of what is known as the Western Esoteric Tradition. So much so

in fact, that it is more or less taken for granted that the Chakras have some factual

basis for existence. The original tantric texts which describe the varying systems of

Chakras (some describe six, others, seven, nine, or even eleven) use a great deal of

symbolic language and metaphor, much of which western authors have mistakenly

taken literally. Sir John Woodroffe, in his book The Serpent Power, gives an exam-

ple of this when he presents a critique of C.W Leadbeater’s book The Inner Life.

Leadbeater claims to have counted the number of petals of the Sahasrara Chakra and

says that the number is not 1,000, as is often given in tantric texts, but exactly 960.

Woodroffe points out that the Indian use of “thousand” is a metaphor for a great

magnitude, and not a literal count. Leadbeater has mistaken a metaphorical state-

ment for a literal one, which makes nonsense of his assertion. Unfortunately, many

Theosophical notions such as this are passed from book to book, without, as Pete

Carroll once quipped “any intervening thought.”

It was largely the Theosophical Society who spread the notion that the so-called

‘Left-Hand Path’ of Tantrism was tantamount to ‘Black Magic’, due to the prevalence

of sexual gnosis. For Theosophists, as much as their Christian brethren, there was no

way that sensual enjoyment could be seen as ‘spiritual’ in any sense.

A third source of obsfucation has been the somewhat biased work of scholars, both

European and Indian. According to some scholars, particularly those inluenced by

orthodox Hindu or Western ideas, Tantra was a degeneration from the rareied atmos-

phere of Yoga, into witchcraft, alchemy, and astrology. This is erroneous. There is an

increasing body of evidence pointing to the emergence of Tantra from the rituals and

concerns of the tribal peoples. A very early Tantric manuscript, the Kubjika Tantra,

written in the sixth century, is concerned with the rituals of potters. From the prehis-

toric period, the pot has been the symbol of the Great Mother goddess. Some scholars

believe that Tantra emerged from the blending of alchemy and agricultural magic.

Finally, the image of Tantrism has been coloured by the antagonism of modern India.

Indian attitudes towards the sensual have shifted considerably, due to the inlu-

ence of irst Islamic, then Anglo-Saxon prejudice. Professor Bharati, in his classic

work The Tantric Tradition, remarks that ‘oficial Indian culture’, as formulated by

Vivekananda, Gandhi and Radakrishnan, very much considered Tantrism to be very

much beyond the pale. Alain Daniélou, in the introduction to his translation of the

Kama Sutra, notes that:

“Mahatma Gandhi, educated in England, sent squads of his disciples to smash the

erotic representations on the temples. ...Pandit Nehru was irritated by my having pho-

tographed and published the photographs of sculptures showing homosexual relations,

dating from the eleventh century, when he claimed that such vices in India were due to

Western inluence.”

The Complete Kama Sutra, p10

Whilst researching for this article, I was lent a book called “Kali’s Child”, by Jeffrey

J. Kripal - a biography of Ramakrishna, the 19 th century mystic who was a major

inluence in the reformulation of ‘modern Hinduism’. Vivekananda, his most famous

pupil was decidedly anti-tantric, describing it as the “ilthy vamachara that is

Aspects of Tantra

destroying this country”. Kripal reveals however, that Ramakrishna himself went

through a period of tantric training, which his followers chose to ignore. Moreover,

according to this author, Ramakrishna’s ecstatic visions and teachings sprung from an

erotic source, which has also been conveniently glossed over:

“Sakti - in her image, gender, music and scriptures - has been made submissive and

obedient. Bengalis are encouraged to be ashamed of her and her Tantras. Sakti is no

longer on top of Siva.”

Kali’s Child, p27

To understand the beginnings of Tantra, it is necessary to understand something

of Indian history. Orthodox Hinduism, the so-called Great or Brahmanic Tradition,

has its roots in the Vedas, which encapsulate the religious ideas of the Aryans, who

invaded India around 1200 BC, subduing the indigenous peoples (the Dravidians)

with their Iron weapons. In the following centuries of pressure, much of that indig-

enous culture retreated - there was a retreat away from the cities and migration routes

into the forests, mountains and villages. The vast hinterlands of India allowed the

survival of isolated centres of cultural life which retained elements of great antiquity.

Gradually, a landscape emerged along the northern river valleys of cities, supported

by a vast countryside divided into isolated village societies. Whilst the orthodox

culture was dominated by the Vedic rituals of the Brahmins, there also existed a

parallel vision, the Vrata tradition, operating through song, dance, art and magical

incantations - a storehouse of both archaic wisdom and contemporary patterns.

Similar migrations occurred in the ninth & tenth centuries, when entire Buddhist

communities took refuge from persecution in the remote countryside, and in the

eleventh to thirteenth centuries, when pressure from the Muslim Invasions forced

vast numbers of scholars into southern India. It is in southern India that surviving

Dravidian languages can be found.

It is widely believed that, although Tantra as we know it is largely a medieval phe-

nomena, that this ‘revival’ is a direct descendent of Palaeolithic Goddess worship,

and that its magical and psycho-sexual practices evolved from a wide variety of cults

and mystery schools. Dr. John Mumford, in “Ecstasy Through Tantra” (1988) goes

so far as to assert that Tantrism was the “religion” of the Dravidians and, whilst this

may be overstating the case somewhat, there are many scholars who look for the roots

of Tantrism within the mists of Dravidian civilisation; it has been estimated that the

cities of Harrapa and Mohenjo-Daro (these are modern names) had existed for at least

a 1000 years before the arrival of the Aryan invaders, and that the aboriginal Indus

Valley civilisation dates back as far as 2500 BC

One of the main problems I feel, that modern Europeans face when encountering

Tantra is our own predisposition for expecting things to be clear-cut and easily

broken down into bite-size pieces. For example, I have recently been doing some

magical work with Siva, and during this, became interested in Siva’s primordial form

Rudra (Howler). I struggled for a while to ind a point where Rudra became Siva, but

it’s almost impossible to draw such a clear distinction between the two. Fortunately,

(at least to my mind), Tantra resists this ‘diluting’ process due to it’s very nature.

Being used to (and often, greatly attracted by) a multiplicity of ‘traditions’ all jostling

for attention, occultists all too often make the mistake of seeing Tantra as a coherent

tradition. It isn’t. What is generally regarded as Tantra is an intricate interweaving

of philosophy, magic, yoga’s, astrology, alchemy, medicine, folklore, etc. Tantric

A Coecton of Sacred Magck | The Esoterc Lbrary | www.sacred-magck.com

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: