There -

1 in the ocean of nectar,
2 on the isle of jewels edged by groves of sura trees,
3 within the pleasure garden of nipa trees,
4 inside the mansion built of wish-fulfilling gems,
5 on the couch of Siva’s own form,
6 on the cushion that is highest Siva
7 there the fortunate worship You,
8 O wave of consciousness and bliss.

(transl. Francis X. Clooney)

First then, some general comments on this verse. This kind of scene is a common feature of tantric meditation – for example, this verse from the fourth chapter of the Todala Tantra:

“A wise person should meditate on the nectar whilst retaining the breath, O Paramesani. He should recite Am Hrim Krom Hrim eleven times in the heart region,and then meditate on Om as bringing forth a red lotus. On that he should meditate on Hum, resembling a blue lotus. Then he should turn that into an eye of knowledge, in the midst of the jewelled island, surrounded by golden sand. A mantrin should meditate on this alluring circle of knowledge. In the centre is the wish-fulfilling tree. Under this, he should meditate on himself as being one with Tarini, as bright as the rising sun, the utmost sphere of light, in a place surrounded by beautiful maidens with fans and bells, wafted by a gentle breeze bearing the odour of scent and incense. In the centre he should meditate on a four square dias, adorned with different kinds of jewels. Above that hangs a parasol, made of golden cloth. A mantrin should visualise the jewelled lion throne below this, dearest one. There he should imagine Devi, according to the previously spoken of meditation form mentioned in the Yogasara. Doing pranayama, he should then do rsi nyasa and so forth, including matrka nyasa and hand and limb nyasa. He should clap the hands thrice and, snapping his fingers, should bind the directions.”(transl. Mike Magee)

As I noted in this post, the verse details a royal scene, emphasising the beauty, grace, and power of the goddess. Just as she is adorned by poetic ornamentation, so too the splendour and wealth denoted by her surroundings can be understood as a form of ornamentation. In Rajashekhara’s 10th Century drama Karpuramanjari there is a debate over the necessity of “excessive” ornamentation, during which the dialogue between the king’s jester explains the power of adornment:

“Adornments make the comeliness even of a person who is naturally handsome to unfold itself (to still greater beauty). A certain splendour results from adorning even genuine precious stones with diamonds.”

India has a long tradition of pleasure-groves and gardens, both as areas within royal palaces and common urban spaces. See for example Gardening in Ancient India and The Buddhist “monastery” and the Indian garden: aesthetics, assimilations, and the siting of monastic establishments. Pleasure groves are often described in such a way as to intensify the pleasures and delights to be found therein – which in turn serves to ornament the power of the deity at their centre. The dwelling places of sages and deities tend to be described as idyllic, hyper-intensive spaces of unsurpassed natural beauty; populated by pleasing flowers, animals, trees, birds, rocks, gems, and minerals.

in the ocean of nectar,
The “ocean of nectar” is a common theme in Indian mythology (appearing in Buddhist, Hindu & Tibetan contexts) and relates to the samudra-manthana – the “churning of the ocean”

There are many variations of this myth – in the Mahabharata, Ramayana, and the Puranas. Here’s a quick summary based on the Vishnu Purana. The devas, wearing of their interminable warring with the asuras, approached the great god Vishnu and requested the boon of immortality. Vishnu advised the other devas to enter into an alliance with the asuras to work together in churning the great ocean, which would bring forth the magic gems, herbs, and the nectar (amrita) of immortality. With the help of Brahma and the great serpent Vasuki, the devas and asuras uprooted the great mountain Mandara to use as a churning rod. Vishnu, taking the form of the great tortoise, rose from the depths of the ocean and carried the mountain on his back. The serpent Vasuki wound himself around the mountain as a churning rope, and the devas and asuras pulled him back and forth, churning the great ocean. Many things emerged from the churning – the Moon, which was taken by Siva; parijata – the wish-fulfilling tree; the goddess Lakshmi (Shri); the wine-goddess Sura, of whom the gods were able to drink, but the asuras could not “hold their liquor” as it were, and so one interpretation of asura is “those unable to drink wine”. Also there arose from the ocean the terrible embodiment of poison – Halahala (sometimes kalakuta “the poison of time”) In some versions, Halahala is subdued by Brahma, who causes his body to shatter into myriad fragments. From the scattered fragments of Halahala’s body arise all manner of poisonous animals and plants, and poisons which are claimed by the Nagas. In other versions, Siva subdues Halahala by swallowing him whole, although the poison causes Siva’s throat to turn blue – giving rise to the epithet Nilakantha – “the one who has a blue throat”. Next from the ocean arises Surabhi – the wish-fulfilling cow with her five abundancies (milk, butter, curd, urine and dung); and Dhanvantari – the divine physician of the gods (revealer of the secrets of Ayurveda), bearing the vase of amrita – the nectar of immortality.

Oceans of nectar, milk, wine, etc., turn up frequently in tantric dhyanaslokas. The ocean can signify the all-pervasiveness of the goddess (also unity-in–multiplicity) – that literally, there is no end to her sweetness. The ocean produces resonances with immersion, with plunging into, bathing, drinking in. Ksemaraja declares, in his Sivasutra vimarsini:

“He who by means of this teaching perceives on all sides the universe like a mass of foam in the midst of the ambrosial ocean of consciousness, he is declared to be the one Siva Himself.”

The ocean is also the heart, into the depths of which the practitioner must plunge. The “churning” of the ocean can be thought of as a metaphor for sadhana.

on the isle of jewels edged by groves of sura trees,
Manidvipa – “the isle of jewels” is a celestial place, the home of the goddess, and is superior to all other worlds, and again, is a common theme for sadhana. The Gheranda Samhita instructs practitioners to:

“Let him find in his heart a broad ocean of nectar,
Within it a beautiful island of gems,
Where the sands are bright golden and sprinkled with jewels.

sura can be translated as “divine” or “god” so I am taking “sura trees” as indicating a grove divine or celestial trees. This is vivid imagery, and it is easy to visualise this island, glittering and sparkling. In the Sri Devi Bhagavata the goddess, after the great battle with the demons, bears Brahma, Vishnu and Siva to Manidvipa in her chariot. Here, the gods behold a woman, dressed in red, bearing noose and goad in two of her hands, and giving the twin gestures of dispelling fears and granting boons with the others. She is surrounded by Devis and Sakhis (intimate female companions). Vishnu recognises the woman as Devi Bhagavati and remembers that she is the mother of the gods. As the gods approach the goddess, they are transformed into Sakhis and remain so for a hundred years. They are granted the vision of seeing the whole of the universe contained within the toenail of the goddess. (NB: see Tracy Pintchman’s Women’s lives, women’s rituals in the Hindu tradition for a discussion of women’s companiate sahki rituals).

within the pleasure garden of nipa trees,
Nipa trees (“water coconuts”) are a type of palm tree, bearing clustered fruits, from which can be extracted sugar. Its sap ferments very quickly. There is a doubled effect, I feel, with the references to trees in this verse. Tree-groves can be thought of as boundaries, demarcations between spaces; yet at the same time, tree-groves can be thought of as signalling the multitude of cognitions, rooted in the shared recognition of Devi’s eternal presence. Possibly the “fruits” of these trees signal the fruits (outcomes) of sadhana and their relationship to sugar and sweetness recalling the mind/sugarcane bow.

inside the mansion built of wish-fulfilling gems,
The wish-fulfilling gem – cintamani is another of the magical objects brought forth from the churning of the ocean of milk. It is able to grant all the things that the possessee desires – and hence, is something which is rare and to be treasured when encountered. There are numerous references to the cintamani in Buddhist texts, where it represents the Buddha-nature and the state of awakened mind. It is frequently used as a metaphor for sadhana as both the origin and goal of practice, with mantras, deities, gurus etc., likened to the wish-fulfilling jewel. Thus the Spandapradipika says:

“Other teachings are slow to impart (such perfect) bliss. (Herein is taught the) knowledge of the liberated Self, which is the sole (true) draught of immortality. (Superior to all other doctrines, it is) like ambrosia among medicines or like the wish-fulfilling Gem which has no rival (even) among jewels of great quality, or like the sun that by itself, banishing all darkness, (is the greatest of all) luminaries.”
(Dyczkowski, 1992, p139)

on the couch of Siva’s own form,
on the cushion that is highest Siva
The goddess reclines reclines on a couch made up of Brahman (south-east), Hari (south-west), Rudra (north-west) and Isvara (north-east) and uses “highest Siva” as a mattress or cushion (sava-vahana). These four gods support the goddess and adore her. The Devi Gita presents a very similar scene to this verse, and has the goddess seated on a throne said to be made of five pretas – Brahma, Vishnu, Rudra and Ishana – and the cushion being the corpse of Sadasiva. According to Brown (1998) these five corpse-deities represent the goddess’s latent powers, inert until they are aroused by her desire. This motif can also be found in other Lalita-oriented texts such as the Lalitopakhyana, Tripura-Rahasya and the Lalita Sahasranama. Brown comments:

“The sofa or seat of of the five corpses situated in the Jeweled Island, unlike the throne of abstract qualities, is associated with the Goddess alone. It dramatically illustrates her utter supremacy over all other gods. The five gods of the sofa represent the chief male deities who oversee the functioning of the cosmos. These five, reduced to “sofahood,” not only symbolize her various functions and subservient powers, but also are mere ghosts (pretas) or corpses until empowered by her sakti.”
(Brown, 1998, p296-297)

According to Thomas E. Donaldson (2001) one of the earliest representations of the supreme goddess as seated upon Sadasiva as a corpse, or “altered” forms of gods can be found in the Kalika Purana and later became a motif in descriptions of the Mahavidyas, and in particular, Kali.

In Lakshmidhara’s commentary (see Tripura Tattvas for some brief notes) these deities represent four Tattvas – maya, suddhavidya, mahesvara and sadasiva.

there the fortunate worship You,
O wave of consciousness and bliss.

The final two lines of this verse make it clear that this place is where the goddess is worshipped by her devotees (“the fortunate”) – that is, in the heart-space and/or the Sri Yantra. She is saluted as a “wave of consciousness and bliss” – a reminder of Anandalahari “Wave of Joy” – and also, the waves of the infinite ocean of milk, which is the infinitude of Devi – the surging forth and drawing back of the waves recalling the emission and reabsorbtion of the universe (see Wot, no circle? for some related discussion).

The esoteric interpretation of this verse is that it is detailing, in various ways, the Sri Yantra. Laksmidhara equates the “ocean of nectar” with the central bindu of the yantra and with the Sahasrara chakra (for Laksmidhara, the Sahasrara chakra exists “beyond” the body) and says that the groves of sura trees represent the five downward-facing triangles of the yantra. By taking the term nipa as “protecting”, Kamesvara relates the “pleasure grove of nipa trees” to the five primary and five secondary pranas and to the gods presiding over the senses – all of which carry and nuture the body.
Another commentator, Narasimhasvamin, compares the srichakra in its entirety with the ocean of nectar; the fourteen-triangled saubhagya-dayaka chakra with the “pleasure garden”, and the two sets of ten triangles with the island of jewels and the garden of nipa trees.The eight-triangled chakra of the Sri Yantra is identified with the mansion of wish-fulfilling gems; the central triangle with the couch, and the bindu becomes Sadasiva.

Summary

O great pride of the vanquisher of cities,
with jingling girdle
You stoop under breasts like the frontal globes of a young elephant,
You are slim of waist,
Your face like the autumnal full moon,
in Your hands are bow, arrows, noose, and goad;
may You stand before us! (7)

There -
in the ocean of nectar,
on the isle of jewels edged by groves of sura trees,
within the pleasure garden of nipa trees,
inside the mansion built of wish-fulfilling gems,
on the couch of Siva’s own form,
on the cushion that is highest Siva
there the fortunate worship You,
O wave of consciousness and bliss.(8)
(Transl. Clooney, p50)

Just as verse 7 presents a vision of the goddess in her most alluring, desire-drawing form, so verse eight extends this vision into a scene – situating the Devi within her divine residence – Manidvipa. But Manidvipa. is not merely the dwelling-place of the goddess, it may be thought of as an extension or emission of her maya, generating intensities of affect; sensory engagements with the all-pervading presence of the goddess. Although it appears as an ordered space (pleasure garden/Sri Yantra) the goddess’ abundance – her all-encompassing excess threatens to overwhelm this careful arrangement, drawing the devotee towards the boundary-dissolving collapsing of distinction between self and Devi.

Sources
Daud Ali, Courtly Culture and Political Life in Early Medieval India (Cambridge University Press, 2004)
Arthur Avalon Anandalahari (Ganesh & Co., 1953)
Douglas Renfrew Brooks Auspicious Wisdom: The Texts and Traditions of Srividya Sakta Tantrism in South India (SUNY, 1992)
C. Mackenzie Brown, The Devi Gita: the song of the Goddess ; A Translation, Annotation, and Commentary (SUNY, 1998)
Francis X. Clooney, Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary (Oxford University Press, 2005)
Thomas E. Donaldson Iconography of the Buddhist Sculpture of Orrisa, Volume 1 (Abhinav Publications, 2001)
Meera Kachroo, The Goddess and Her Powers: The Tantric Identities of the Saundarya Lahari (MA Thesis, McGill University, June 2005)
Tracy Pintchman (Ed.) Seeking Mahadevi: Constructing the Indentities of the Hindu Great Goddess (SUNY, 2001)
Pandit S. Subrahmanya Sastri and T.R. Srinivasa Ayyangar, Saundarya Lahari (Theosophical Publishing House, 1948)
Vasugupta, Mark S. G. Dyczkowski, The Stanzas on Vibration (SUNY, 1992)

“Meaning is not in things, but in between; in the iridescence, the interplay; in the interconnections; at the intersections, at the crossroads. Meaning is transitional as it is transitory; in the puns or bridges, the correspondence.”
Norman O Brown, Love’s Body

Whenever I exit London Bridge station, I make a brief nod in the direction of Cross Bones graveyard – its part of my recognition of London’s network of sacred spaces. I’ve been to some of the monthly vigils held at this place, but more often than not, just strolling past it – and knowing that it’s there amid the bustle of London is enough for me. A couple of mornings ago, I wandered down to the gate and spent a few minutes gazing at it, occasionally reaching out to briefly touch the ribbons – some incribed with names and dates from the eighteenth century – festooning the bars. A van passes, a train slowly clunks aross the bridge over Redcross Way. Reflecting on what this materialisation of death and loss means for me, whilst stroking a faded ribbon, brought to mind Carolyn Dinshaw’s evocative phrase from her book Getting Medieval of the need for making “a touch across time”.

Cross Bones graveyard was “discovered” in the 1990s by the Museum of London Archeology Service during the construction of the Jubilee Underground line. In 1992, 148 skeletons were removed, and the archeologists estimated that the site could contain up to 15,000 bodies. Cross Bones has been identified as an unconsecrated graveyard primarily used to interr prostitutes who were excluded from Christian burial.

Cross Bones is part of the “Southwark Stews”. In the fourteenth century Southwark came under the juristiction of the City of London, but certain areas – called “liberties” remained under the control of powerful church officials. It was in the so-called Liberty of Winchester, (controlled by the Bishop Winchester) that the “stews” – licensed brothels – were established (the name “stews” comes from the vapour baths by which brothel-goers tried to steam themselves free of venereal disease). It’s likely that Southwark had a thriving brothel culture before the enterprising bishop decided to profit from legalising and regulating them. The area was renown for a variety of “noisome” trades, such as brewing, tanning, and lime-burning, as well as small traders who wanted to escape the craft and guild regulations of the City. Southwark was also home to a large proportion of foreigners described using the term Doche (which encompassed Dutch, Flemish and Germans).

The ordinances drawn up to regulate the brothels included the strictures that prostitutes were barred from living or boarding at the stewhouses, and during religious holidays the prostitutes had to leave not only the stewhouses but the entire area of the liberty (both these regulations were routinely violated) and the stewhouses were ordered closed during nights when Parliament sat. Women who took lovers and maintained them financially were punished with prison (the bishop had his own prison, the Clink), fines, and banishment from the area. Once a woman became “public property” she had no right to a private life. It is from these regulations that the euphemism – “single women” (used to describe Cross Bones) emerges with the attendant idea that women who were not attached to a husband were in effect, common property. Southwark was also home to Whilst the City of London had no legal jurisdiction over Southwark, its councillors attempted to keep prostitutes from the Stews out of the city – for example, in 1351 prostitutes were barred from adopting the dress of “good and noble dames” (vestments trimmed with fur or lined with silk) and told to wear only simple clothes and a striped hood; and an order in 1391 banned boatmen from ferrying men and women across the river to the stews.

In the eighteenth century, Cross Bones had become a general graveyard for paupers, and by 1853 the site was apparently so full of bodies that it was closed as a health hazard and for the most part, forgotten, until its rediscovery in the 1990s.

Why then, choose Cross Bones for reflections on queering sacred space?

As Adrian Harris says in his paper – Honouring the Outcast Dead – Cross Bones is a unique “sacred site”. It’s “discovery” is fairly recent, for a start, and like many fragments of London’s history, it almost seamlessly blends into the maze of architectural styles – were it not for the iron be-ribboned gate, it would be just another walled-off area, easy to miss, easy to walk past.

Considered as a Pagan site for finding connection with the sacred, Cross Bones is somewhat atypical – unlike more familiar sacred sites such as Stonehenge or Avebury, it’s located within an urban setting. I think this itself makes Cross Bones worthy of more attention. Despite occasional forays into “urban shamanism” Pagan discourses on sacred sites tend to focus on sacred place-making outside of metropolitan centres. Nor can Cross Bones be easily accomodated in the “pagan ownership” narratives that sometimes underwrite contestations of sacred space – that prior to the onset of Christianity (or even the Romans) such sites were “pagan” and that on that basis, contemporary Pagans are “reclaiming” the space as their own. Nor is it immediately obvious how a graveyard for sex workers and infants intersects with the broader theme of “honouring/connecting with ancestors” via the perspective that sites such as Avebury or Stonehenge represent ancient forms of spirituality. Again, Cross Bones is different – it’s sacredness is new – a product of its rediscovery and the subsequent events held there. Adrian, in his paper, draws a parallel between the tokens on the gate at Cross Bones and the “shrines” that mark “the site of road accident deaths” but they also recall for me, the “rag tree” offerings at West Kennet, Avebury and Augustine’s Well at Cerne Abbas.

At the same time, Cross Bones is a fragile site – dependent for its survival, ultimately, on the willingness of Transport for London (TfL), for whom the site represents a prime development area, to work with “local community concerns” such as The Friends of Cross Bones’ proposal that part of the site be put aside for a memorial garden (see Goose Garden for developments). It’s also “fragile” in the sense that its not segregated from other spaces – it’s not, for the most part a “quiet” space where one can easily gain that sense of hushed reverence that we tend to associate with the experience of “sacred space” (from standing stones to Christian churches).

Cross Bones is I’d suggest, a site where pluralistic affiliations coexist and collide. You don’t have to make an affiliation with John Constable’s elaborate The Southwark Mysteries to appreciate Cross Bones, or to feel a connection with the “outcast dead” interred there. That is a matter of self-identification, and the public Cross Bones events have a firm commitment to inclusiveness – no one would be turned away for not being sufficiently “outcast”, and the events attract a wide variety of attendees – people who live in the area, visiting Pagans, Christians, local politicians and the London Mayor (see this Indymedia article for some debate about linking Cross Bones to St. George’s day). As Cross Bones events are not only celebratory, but also work to raise the profile of the site in order that it is not built over, the events have to be inclusive to the widest possible spectrum of potential allies.

Although its well-recognised that the site is Christian (albeit “outcast Christians”) and as Adrian points out, the only icon inside the graveyard is a statue of the Madonna, London Pagans make up a good proportion of those who attend both the monthly vigils and the Halloween festivals which have been held yearly there since 1998. More recently, Cross Bones has become incorporated into walking events organised by Cooltan Arts – marking International Women’s Day and International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia – which in 2011 included a blessing by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (May Day Largactyl Shuffle) at Cross Bones. Not only is Cross Bones a site for remembering its interred “Whores and Paupers of Southwark” but in 2007, messages were pinned to the gate memorialising five women sex-workers who were murdered that year in Ipswich. It has also been recognised as an important site by the International Union of Sex Workers who would like to see the site preserved as a memorial for sex workers. There are other possible claimants too – an 1833 report, expressing concerns over public health and grave-robbing speaks of Cross Bones having an “Irish Corner”.

Here lay your hearts, your flowers,
Your Book of Hours,
Your fingers, your thumbs,
Your Miss You, Mums.
Here hang your hopes, your dreams,
Your Might-Have-Beens,
Your locks, your keys,
Your Mysteries.
The Southwark Mysteries

Cross Bones would not have become a sacred space without John Constable, whose visionary contact with a genuis loci – “the goose” moved him to begin the monthly vigils, the celebrations, and the campaign to preserve the site in some form. His play, The Southwark Mysteries has been performed at both the Globe Theatre and Southwark Cathedral, and caused a minor controversy when it was first performed, due to its depictions of a “swearing Jesus” and a female Satan wearing a strapon phallus. Although John Constable’s own magical perspective (see The Goose, The Crow and The Cross Bones Portal) is often the first point of contact for people wanting to find out more about Cross Bones – I think what is interesting here is that Constable works hard to stress that what is happening at Cross Bones is an “unfolding vision” rather than an attempt to create a particular doctrine.

From the crossbones website’s Halloween event page:

The form of the ritual embodies these contraries: combining a sense of awe and reverence with a bawdy humour befitting The Goose. It presents a syncretic vision of healing and transformation, rooted in native pagan animism and Crow’s idiosyncratic Goddess worship, and encompassing elements of ‘left-hand’ Magdalene Gnosticism, Buddhism, Tantra, spiritualism and the Western Magical Tradition. However, Crow has always asserted that The Goose’s teachings are not a doctrine, creed or belief-system. They can best be understood as a spiritual practice in which conflicting ideas can co-exist within a spiritual or astral state of ‘Liberty’ or ongoing process of liberation. The Southwark Mysteries and other teachings of the Goose-Crow source are revealed in poetry and song, as allusions and emblems of that which cannot be spoken, rather than as literal, ‘gospel’ truth.

Yet at the same time that Constable/Crow makes this appeal to openness – to an “ongoing process of liberation” I think its obvious that the events he has staged there have played an instrumental role in shaping the emerging “mysteries” of Cross Bones. I wonder if, in time, other enactments will accrue around similar burial sites in London such as Cripplegate in Warwick Place or the Bethlem graveyard (again recently rediscovered due to excavations around Liverpool Street Station)? Possibly only if someone comes forwards who is passionate about the sites to devote care and attention to them.

Carolyn Dinshaw, in Getting Medieval describes what she terms the “queer historical impulse” – a desire to make that “touch across time” that is based not in continuity but a “shared positionality” – an “impulse toward making connections across time between, on the one hand, lives, texts, and other cultural phenomena left out of sexual categories back then and, on the other, those left out of current sexual categories now.”
She proposes a politics based not on identity – that is, the continuist model of history which emphasises an easy, essential sameness between past and present – but using the past, and a sense of partial connection to work for connectivity and coalition, crossing boundaries not only across time, but more conventional divides (such as academic-nonacademic, or queer-normative). Dinshaw’s work seeks to interrupt the temporal seperation between past and present.

Cross Bones, I think, fits well with both of these strands, in terms of its coalition, inclusive politics, and its presence as a tangible reminder that the past is never truly gone, that it continues to be felt and that its meanings are always contested, revised, and reconfigured.

“Infinite and endless creations are threaded on me as pearls on a string. I myself am the lord that resides in the causal and subtle bodies of the jivas. I am Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. I am the sun, moon, and stars. I am the beasts and birds, the Brahmin and the untouchable. I am the noble soul as well as the hunter and the thief. I am male, female, and hermaphrodite. Whenever there is anything to be seen or heard, I am found there, within and without. There is nothing moving or unmoving that can exist without me.” Devi Gita

Pretty much all of the Pagan public rituals I have participated in over the last decade or so have shared a common feature – some kind of circle – which does not feature in my own practice of tantra puja. Whenever I facilitate open pujas, some of the commonest questions that arise are related to the differences between contemporary Pagan ritual processes and tantra puja as I practice it, so this post is an attempt to reflect on these very basic distinctions and how they are underwritten by very different ritual ontologies.

A very common rationale for casting a circle is that it “creates sacred space” – that is, it redefines a chosen ritual space as “sacred” against its “mundane” use (such as a bedroom, living room, a public park) – this is a very common explanation for why it is necessary to cast a circle, and can be found in numerous books on Pagan ritual practice.

However, within the particular shakta-oriented tantric streams from which I draw my practice, this basic distinction between “sacred” and “mundane” space isn’t really present. In Shakta theology, the goddess (or god) to whom a puja is directed – Lalita, or Kali for example – is held to be both all-pervasive and ever-present – and all things (objects, persons, etc) and activities share in her substance – so one might say that she is diffused through everything, you, me, the grass, the air we share, that styrofoam cup over there, this smartphone, etc. So this is one reason why I don’t tend to make a distinction between “sacred” and “mundane” space (see also Pondering Daily Practice for some related observations).

In order to try and explain why this is, for me, an important distinction, I’m going to dip into some aspects of Sri Vidya theology – the knowledge that underwrites, as it were, the logic of tantric ritual/living. In tantra, knowledge and action are interdependent – and knowledge is itself a form of practice.

In Sri Vidya theology, the goddess is the source and totality of all existence – hence she is sometimes addressed with the epithet Visvarupa Devi – “the Goddess whose form is the universe”. She is simultaneously transcendent and undivided, and many-formed and multiple. She is simultaneously unknowable, ungraspable and is present in all phenomenality. In Sri Vidya accounts of creation, the goddess Lalita Tripuraundari progressively contracts herself, emitting from herself the various stages or categories (Tattvas) emitting or producing the world of multiplicities out of the infinite plenitude of her being.

This is the goddess’ lila (“play”). Hence the epithet Lalita – “she who plays”. As part of this playful emission, the goddess veils or conceals herself, producing maya. Maya produces the sense of seperation and limitations between multiplicities – which (I’m simplifying hugely here) gives rise eventually to the human sense that we are seperate beings, cut off from the apprehension of divine consciousness. This is the state sometimes referred to as avidya – “ignorance.” Now maya is frequently understood as “illusion”, but within Sri Vidya, maya is the wondrous, creative, magical power of the goddess which gives rise to the world of forms and objects.

The Devi Gita expresses this principle:

I imagine into being the whole world, moving and unmoving, through the power of my Maya,
Yet that same Maya is not seperate from me; this is the highest truth.
… I, as Maya, create the whole world and then enter within it,
Accompanied by ignorance, actions and the like, and preceded by the vital breath, O Mountain
How else could souls be reborn into future lives?
They take on various births in accord with modifications of Maya.

So our forgetfulness – or if you like, our sense of disconnection from the goddess/world is not the result of a fall from grace (as it is often understood in Western theology) or a delusion (as it is sometimes given to be in other Indian philosophies) but a result of the goddess’ play, as is her power to generate accessible and limited forms of herself through which we can be liberated from the illusion of seperation from her. Our sense of being limited, seperate entities arises out of the goddess playing hide-and-seek with herself – and the same powers (saktis) which produce this sense of being seperate, ego-bound entities can also produce the liberated, expanded consciousness which is the goal of tantra.

Again, there is no “hard” distinction between the mundane vs. the spiritual, or the everyday vs. the sacred. As all phenomena share in the play of the goddess, so anything can, potentially, help us recognise that we are embedded within that divine play. So whilst ritual-meditation on the various forms of the goddess is one form of practice, so is momentary awareness on any activity – any cognition – sitting, walking around, being attentive to sounds, smells, sounds, tastes, touches – any activity, any moment can serve to momentarily intensify our awareness of the goddess’ play.

This process of movement from unity to differentiation is referred to as srsti – “emission”. Its converse is samhara – “reabsorption” – which reinstates the unity lost through differentiation. The universe is constantly cycling or oscillating between moments of expansion and contraction, emission and reabsorption, unfolding outwards and refolding inwards. This does not only occur at the level of cosmic creation/destruction though – it encompasses all other cyclical patterns, such as day and night, birth and death, down to each instant of consciousness or perception; and each inhaled and exhaled breath. Emission is often represented as a movement from a central point outwards, whilst reabsorption as moving inwards towards a central point – from multiplicities towards unity. Similarly, movements up the body’s central axis are reabsorptive, whilst movements down the body’s central axis are emissional.

These two principles also form the basis of what we might think of as tantric ritual logic.Tantra sadhana (“practice” – not only ritual but any life-activity) is ultimately oriented towards the reinstatement of unity with the divine. The goal can be thought of as the experiental collapsing of any distinction between one’s own consciousness and the cosmic pulse of the goddess.This can be thought of as the long-term goal, of which all activities ideally move the practitioner towards. Thus sadhana recapitulates that process in miniature – to engage in the practice is to recapitulate – from the perspective of one’s own consciousness the continuous pulsation of cosmic creation and dissolution.

A very simple ritual which recapitulates the pulsation of emission/reabsorption begins with the practitioner visualising a particular form of the goddess taking up residence in her or his heart. The heart-space is one of the dwelling-places of deity. After a period of meditating on that image, its qualities, etc., with the awareness that one is that goddess – the form is emitted (via an out-breath) into an image (a picture or a statue) and worshipped as a seperate entity with various offerings (water, food, song, music, incense, etc) after which the form is reabsorbed into the heart and meditated upon as an enternally-present flame, to which all experiences can be offered. So the meditation on the goddess dwelling in the heart and then being placed in an exterior form for worship recapitulates the emission -from creation towards multiplicity and the reabsorption of the goddess’ form back into the heart recapitulates the reinstatement of unity.

“Among the women I saw some men dressed like women, with whom they go about regularly, never joining the men. The commander called them amaricados, perhaps because the Yumas call effeminate men maricas. I asked who these men were, and they replied that they were not men like the rest, and for this reason they went around covered in this way. From this I inferred that they must be hermaphrodites but from what I learned later I understood that they were sodomites, dedicated to nefarious practices. …I conclude that in this matter of incontinence there will be much to do when the Holy Faith and the Christian religion are established among them.”Fray Pedro Font, Font’s Complete Diary of the Second Anza Expedition 1775-1776

For this post, I’m going to briefly summarise some themes in contemporary scholarship relating to eighteenth century attitudes to sex and gender, which underwent great changes throughout the century. This is useful for understanding eighteenth century accounts of shamanism, as many of these accounts throughout the century increasingly focused on what we would now call “gender-variance” as a marker for shamanic behaviour. Several scholars have argued that due to changes in the way sexuality and gender were understood in eighteenth-century European culture, contact accounts of primitive cultures shifted from a general representation of whole cultures being inclined towards same-sex relations towards an increased focus upon same-sex desires as a special case – that of the “effeminate sodomite”. According to Rudi Bleys (1996):

The actual or presumed coincidence of cross-gender roles with same-sex praxis made the former instrumental to new sexual theory in Europe that locked sodomy inexorably into the corset of femininity. Passivity, more particularly, as located in the receptive use of the anus, became quintessential to the ‘sodomite’ identity – a different idea, altogether, from previous notions of sodomy, which included the active partner as well as the passive one, men as well as women.(p81)

Mark Johnson (2009) argues that European encounters with males who dressed as women and engaged in women’s occupations were both fascinating and a source of consternation for European travellers, and that encounters with these “primitive” others were both shaped by, and themselves influenced changing discourses about the nature of sex and gender – in particular, informing what was to become the dominant image of homosexuality. I will look at some of these accounts in more detail in future posts, but for now I’m going to briefly examine the ideas of two influential theorists – Thomas Laqueur and Randolph Trumbach.

From one sex to two sexes?
The central argument of Thomas Laqueur’s Making sex: body and gender from the Greeks to Freud (1992) is that the understanding of the relationship between men and women underwent a major transformation over the course of the eighteenth century. Prior to this transformation, a ‘one-sex model’ was the dominant scheme, based on the idea that the body was composed of four humours – cold, hot, moist and dry – and that men were dominantly composed of hot and dry humours, and women by cold and moist humours – and that differences of sex were differences of degree. Semen, for example, was produced by bodily heat, and it was thought that women with too much bodily heat could produce semen and even, if they became too hot through excessive exercise, suddenly develop a penis. Menstruation was similarly understood not as something unique to women, but as an example of the body’s propensity to bleed in order to expell excess materials. Only one body existed, and it was represented as essentially male, and whilst females were thought of as “lesser males” with outside-in bodies; men and women were not considered to be radically different in terms of bodily constitution. Medical literature conceptualised the female body as an “inferior” version of the male body, with equivalences between testicles and ovaries; scrotum and uterus; foreskin and labia. Some physicians believed that men’s genitalia were externalised due to the heat of male bodies, which “drove” their organs outwards. Metaphysical understandings of the hierarchy of nature made men and women part of the same order, with men placed above women. However, whilst women becoming men due to excess heat was accepted, the notion that men could become women was not, due to the belief that nature tended towards perfection – and for a man to become a woman would be unnatural – the perfect becoming imperfect.

Laqueur argues that during the eighteenth century, this ‘one-sex model’ was replaced by a ‘two-sex model’ in which men and women became anatomically, opposites, radically different from each other:

“Thus the old [Galenic] model, in which men and women were arrayed according to their degree of metaphysical perfection, their vital heat, along an axis whose telos was male, gave way by the eighteenth century to a new model of radical dimorphism, of biological divergence. An anatomy and physiology of incommensurability replaced a metaphysics of hierarchy in the representation of woman in relation to man.”

Laqueur proposes that the “two-sex” model emerged primarily due to political changes and the decline of religious authority and not to medical discoveries. Laqueur proposes that in order to reinforce the political notion of natural rights, bodies were redefined in terms of opposite sexes. Power could only be formally granted to one group (men) and withheld from another group (women) if the two were distinct and incommensurable – and Political theorists turned to biology and medical treatises in order to justify this view in terms of emerging scientific discourse, rather than Adam’s dominance over Eve. So for example, The demotion of the pre-Englightenment metaphysical order took place at the same time as the fragmentation of social order:

“The rise of evangelical religion, Enlightenment political theory, the deveopment of new sorts of public spaces in the eighteenth century, Lockean ideas of marriage as a contract, the cataclysmic possibilities for social change wrought by the French revolution, postrevolutionary conservatism, postrevolutionary feminism. the factory system with its restructuring of the division of labour, the rise of a free market economy in services or commodities, the birth of classes, singly or in combination – none of these things caused the making of a new sexed body. Instead, the remaking of the body is itself intrinsic to each of these developments.” (1992, p11)

There is some debate amongst scholars over the timing of this shift to the “two-sex model” with some historians locating the shift beginning to occurr in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, whilst others have pointed out that this process was also historically uneven, with the single-sex and two-sex frameworks continuing to exist side-by-side for some time. Despite critiques however, Laqueuer’s work has had a considerable impact on contemporary studies of sexuality & gender.

Mollies: a third gender?
Randolph Trumbach, in his book Sex and the Gender Revolution proposes that:

“Around 1700 in northwestern Europe, in England, France and the Dutch Republic, there appeared a minority of adult men whose sexual desires were directed exclusively toward adult and adolescent males. These men could be identified by what seemed to their contemporaries to be effeminate behaviour in speech, movement and dress. They had not, however, entirely transformed themselves into women but instead combined into a third gender selected aspects of the behavior of the majority of men and women. Since a comparable minority of masculinised women who exclusively desired other women did not appear until the 1770s, it is therefore the case that for most of the eighteenth century there existed in northern Europe what might be described as a system of three genders composed of men, women, and sodomites”
(p3)

According to Trumbach, prior to the eighteenth century in European societies, same-sex desire between males was organised around differences in age, between active, adult men and passive boys – a pattern which he points out, was present in ancient Greece and Rome, and in early Christian Europe and in the later Middle Ages. Trumbach cites the work of Michael Rocke (see Forbidden Friendships) in demonstrating that in Renaissance Florence, sodomy was nigh on universal between men, but always structured by age. Trumbach points out that although sodomy was illegal, and the church spoke out against it as immoral “the actual sexual behaviour of men had changed very little from what it had been in the ancient pagan Mediterrranean world” (p5).

From the 1690s onwards, opinion changed from the old system, which was characterised by all males passing through a period of sexual passivity in adolescence, to a new system, wherein sexual passivity and homosexual desire was presumed to be indicative of an effeminate minority. These “new” adult sodomites were known colloquially as mollies – a term which, Trumbach says, was first applied to female prostitutes, and were charactised he argues, by playing two roles – one in the public world and another in the so-called “molly-house” inside which they took women’s names and adopted the speech and body movements of women. Historians have uncovered a well-established network of molly-house and open-air meeting places distributed throughout London in the early eighteenth-century. In addition to Mother Clap’s molly-house in Holborn, there were also houses near the Old Bailey and Newgate Prison, in Soho, Charing Cross, Drury Lane and St. James’s Square. A pamphlet attacking Charles Hitchins, a prominent thief-taker in London in the 1710s describes the behaviour inside a molly-house:

…they had no sooner entered but the Marshal was complemented by the company with the titles of Madam and Ladyship. The man asking the occasion of these uncommon devoirs, the Marshal said it was a familiar language common to the house. The man was not long there before he was more surprised than at first. The men calling one another ‘my dear’ and hugging, kissing and tickling each other as if they were a mixture of wanton males and females, and assuming effeminate voices and airs; some telling others that they ought to be whipped for not coming to school more frequently … Some were completely rigged in gowns, petticoats, headcloths, fine laced shoes, furbelowed scarves, and masks; some had riding hoods; some were dressed like milkmaids, others like shepherdesses with green hats, waistcoats and petticoats; and others had their faces patched and painted and wore very extensive hoop petticoats, which had been very lately introduced.”
(quoted in Hitchcock, p68)

Mollies became the focus of increased public scrutiny and condemnation, and some historians have argued that the Societies for the Reformation of Manners, which attacked effeminate sodomites in print, helped forge a link between the flouting of codes of masculine behaviour with the idea that such men were exclusively interested in sex with other men. These societies were concerned with social reform, particularly the elimination of blasphemy, idleness, and lewd and disorderly behaviour. They frequently relied on informers and agents to gather evidence, and although their most frequent targets were prostitutes, it is their attacks on molly houses (1699, 1707 and 1726) which has provided much of the historical evidence for the existence of molly culture. The Societies published trial reports, public sermons and accounts of their own activities, and from the late 1690s onwards there were frequent references to both molly-houses and sodomites in printed pamphlets and newspapers. Hitchcock points out that whilst the Reformation Societies closed down molly-houses, those men who were publicly exposed on the pillory were sometimes savagely treated by the London crowd – many were severely injured and some men died. (see secret sexualities for further discussion).

Men displaying effeminate mannerisms were increasingly subject to blackmail, persecution and punishment and it is argued that the increased emphasis on legal regulation also contributed to the idea that the sodomite was a distinct social and sexual type. Prior to the eighteenth century, the term “sodomite” encompassed a wide range of acts, but by the early eighteenth-century, it came to denote almost exclusively sexual acts between men. Trumbach discusses how many boys and men charged with sodomy were represented, at their trials as ‘mollies’ (regardless of whether or not they exhibited signs of effeminacy) and suffered the stigma and the harsh punishments associated with such an attribution. Such developments, he contends, obliged men to present their masculine status exclusively through their interest in women – and sex ceased to be represented as that which took place between an active and passive partner (regardless of gender) but as an act between men and women.

As the eighteenth century progressed, sodomy and effeminacy came under increasing scientific scrutiny. Some social theorists interpreted same-sex desire as being produced by luxury, excess and idleness – an explanation which pointed not only to modern European cultures, but also “primitive” societies (see previous post for some related discussion). The sailor John Marra for example, in his Journal of the Resolution’s Voyage in 1772, 1773, 1774 and 1775 on Discovery in the Southern Hemisphere (published in London in 1775) described the polynesians as “an effeminate race, intoxicated with pleasure, and enfeebled by indulgence” (Wilson, 2004, p351). Effeminacy could also be a product of cultures where men spent too much time around women, or as John Millar theorised, societies where women had too much political or social status.

Sources
Rudi Bleys, The Geography of Perversion: Male-to-male Sexual Behaviour outside the West and the Ethnographic Imagination 1750-1918 (Cassell, 1996)
Martin B. Duberman (ed) A queer world: the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies reader (New York University Press, 1997)
Karen Harvey, Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century: Bodies and Gender in English Erotic Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2004)
Tim Hitchcock English Sexualities, 1700-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan, 1997)
Thomas Laqueur Making sex: body and gender from the Greeks to Freud (Harvard University Press, 1992)
Mark Johnson Transgression and the Making of ‘Western’ Sexual Sciences in Donnan, Magowan (eds) Transgressive sex: subversion and control in erotic encounters (Berghahn Books, 2009)
Bradford Mudge (ed) When Flesh Becomes Word: An Anthology of Early Eighteenth-Century Libertine Literature (Oxford University Press, 2004)
Kim M. Phillips & Barry Reay Sex before Sexuality: A Premodern History (Polity Press, 2011)
Michael Rocke Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence (Oxford University Press 1996)
Will Roscoe Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America (St. Martin’s Press, 2000)
Rousseau, Porter (eds) Sexual Underworlds of the Enlightenment (Manchester University Press, 1987)
Randolph Trumbach Sex and the Gender Revolution: Heterosexuality and the third gender in Enlightenment London v. 1 (University of Chicago Press, 1998)
Kathleen Wilson (ed) A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660–1840 (State University of New York, 2004)

Note: I originally intended to cover both verses 7 & 8 in this post, but the examination of verse 7 turned out to be much longer than I expected it to be, so I have decided to cover verse 8 in the next post, which I’ll try and finish as soon as possible.

In the first post in this series I made the point that Saundaryalahari is not only open to multiple interpretations – for example, from an aesthetic perspective, from the viewpoint of a devotee; and as a ritual manual or “encoding” of esoteric instructions – and that these pluralistic readings of the text do not necessarily exclude each other. A practitioner can occupy them and read across them simultaneously.

Having said that, I do feel that there is a tendency for some of Saundaryalahari’s commentators to prioritise the “esoteric” interpretations of verses over the poetic ornamentation. A common interpretive schema amongst tantric schools (including Sri Vidya) is that of the sthula “physical”; suksma “subtle” and para “supreme” which is frequently hierarchicalised so that the sthula is considered to be the lowest level for understanding the goddess – a kind of worship of the goddess for beginners or the uninitiated. My own approach (see this post) is to take these three modalities as mutually interdependent and productive of each other. Some of the commentaries on Saundaryalahari tend to ignore “poetic whimsy” in favour of (sometimes lengthy) esoteric interpretations of single lines within a verse in order to demonstrate how the text supports a particular interpretive schema – such as the chakra system familiar from texts such as the Satcakranirupana (and I’ll have more to say about that when I look at the relevant verses in Anandalahari). Personally, I find these “esoteric” interpretations to be often less interesting precisely because they ignore the poetic ornamentation of the text and the (erotic) physicality of the goddess’ immediate presence in favour of more abstracted interpretation & discussion – stressing the ascetic/yogic interpretations of the text, rather than the householder/bhakta orientation. (NB: there is another matter here, pertaining to two major divisions in SriVidya – the Samayacara and the Kaulacara – but I will go into that in a future post).

The Poetic Vision
Meera Kachroo (2005) highlights the importance of poetic ornamentation by pointing out how poetic ornamentation and embellishment is not only for the delight of an audience but may be considered a form of worship in its own right, and that flourishes of language can be thought of as signifiers of both the power of the goddess and how that power is expressed through the goddess’ relationship with devotees. She also points to the usefulness of Abhinavagupta’s aesthetic vision, in respect to understanding the power of language use in respect to the Saundaryalahari. Whereas poetic discourse had previously focused on the literal meaning of words (abhidha) and the secondary meaning of laksana such as metaphor and metonymy, Abhinavagupta and his commentator Anandavardhana argue that the “essence” of poetic language resides in dhvani – the “suggestive power” of language, and that this suggested meaning cannot be reduced to any particular word or metaphor within a poem, but arises out of the totality of the work. Abhinavagupta also linked the suggestive power of dhvani to the feeling of rasa (see Rasa theory for a brief discussion) or dramatic “relishing” of an aesthetic object. For Abhinavagupta, rasa becomes a form of bliss (ananda) which arises in the heart of the spectator due to suggestion. Moreover, this feeling of rasa allows the cultivated reader/spectator to move beyond his or her own finite experience of an emotion towards a more encompassing compassion for a mood displayed by an actor on stage or within a text. This experience becomes, for Abhinavagupta, a form of liberation, in which all worldly attachments cease, and the viewer/reader’s subjectivity is dissolved. Unlike moksa – “liberation” however, this aesthetic enjoyment is temporary in nature, and cannot lead to the permanent change in selfhood as occasioned by the moksa produced by sadhana. It can however, be considered a glimpse, or a foretaste of liberation:

“This aesthetic fullness finds its expression only in the realm of duality and dualistic imagings. As we see in the Saundarya Lahari’s imaging of the Goddess in a vast multitude of material ornaments, in a flood of metaphors that encircle her body with all the beauty contained in the cosmos. With Abhinavagupta’s idea of the poetic vision of the world as a fundamentally creative and religious event, envisioning the Goddess through metaphorical embellishment becomes a way of recreating and participating in Her ultimacy.” (Kachroo, 2005, p39)

The poetic language of the Saundaryalahari itself demonstrates the all-pervasive immanence of the goddess; she is present everywhere there is beauty, attraction, desire. Homologising the elements of the natural world (seasons, animals, plants etc.) and related mythological narratives to her body reflects the homology of her body with the entirety of the cosmos. This, Kachroo argues, creates a space and a text for tantrically-oriented devotional practice.

Now onwards to the verses themselves.

O great pride of the vanquisher of cities,
with jingling girdle
You stoop under breasts like the frontal globes of a young elephant,
You are slim of waist,
Your face like the autumnal full moon,
in Your hands are bow, arrows, noose, and goad;
may You stand before us! (7)

There -
in the ocean of nectar,
on the isle of jewels edged by groves of sura trees,
within the pleasure garden of nipa trees,
inside the mansion built of wish-fulfilling gems,
on the couch of Siva’s own form,
on the cushion that is highest Siva
there the fortunate worship You,
O wave of consciousness and bliss.(8)
(Transl. Clooney, p50)

Even though I’m not examining verse 8 for the present, I’ve left them together here in order to illustrate how they interrelate to produce the dhyanan of the goddess.

So to verse 7. I’ll go through it line by line:

1 O great pride of the vanquisher of cities,
2 with jingling girdle
3 You stoop under breasts like the frontal globes of a young elephant,
4 You are slim of waist,
5 Your face like the autumnal full moon,
6 in Your hands are bow, arrows, noose, and goad;
7 may You stand before us!

O great pride of the vanquisher of cities
This first line indicates Siva – “the vanquisher of cities” – an epithet which recalls the well-known story of how Siva destroyed the three cities built by the sons of the Asura Taraka. Here’s a quick summary. The three sons of Taraka, through the practice of austerities, gained from Brahma several boons, the greatest of which was to create three flying cities of gold, silver and iron. They also asked for immortality, but Brahma refused them. He also prophesied that after a thousand years, the three cities would become as one, and Siva would destroy them with a single arrow. The demons then created a magical lake which revived any demon thrown into. Immortal and undefeatable in battle, the demons terrorised the worlds, plundering cities and defeating the gods. Eventually, Siva is persuaded to act against them, and when the three cities come together, destroys them with a single arrow from his great bow.
There are many versions of this tale, one of the earliest versions of which can be found in the Karna Parva of the Mahabharata. In some versions of this story, the demons dwelling in the three cities are “deluded” from the worship of Siva by Visnu, who takes the form of Buddha.

According to Woodroffe, the Sanskrit aho-purusika, whilst popularly interpreted to denote “pride” is used here in the sense of consciousness of one’s self and that this first line indicates that Siva becomes conscious of himself by seeing himself reflected in the goddess’ body.

with jingling girdle
The goddess wears the Kanchi – a belt-like garment worn around the waist, formed from single or multiple strings of beads or bells which jingle when she walks. In Sanskrit poetry, the jingling of waist & ankle-beads arouses romantic feelings in lovers. The charming quality of the bells worn by the goddess is similarly stressed in this verse from the Lalitopakhyana:

“Anklets and other ornaments on her feet produce a charming tinkling sound. The sound of her bangles is likewise charming. Her lower legs have subdued the pride of the Love’s arrow quiver. Her thighs bear a complexion like that of an elephant’s trunk and forelobes or a plantain tree.

What is important in this line, according to Sastri and Ayyangar, is that the “jingling” sound is one of the “internal sounds” – nadas heard by yogis, as detailed in texts such as the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, Siva Samhita or the Gerhanda Samhita (see Beck, Sonic Theology for a fuller discussion of this topic).

You stoop under breasts like the frontal globes of a young elephant
Here, the poet is calling attention to the goddess’ breasts – and the fact that they are large – but why are they likened to the “frontal globes of a young elephant”? Comparing a woman’s breasts to an elephant’s cranial lobes is a conventional simile (upama) found in Sanskrit poetry. For example, this poem by Bharuga (date unknown, from Ingalls, 1965, p170):

“Your breasts, oh slender maid,
resemble an elephant’s cranial lobes
You are as it were, a pool
shaken by the elephant, Youth, who plunges therein.”

Other popular elephant similes include the likening of a woman’s gait to the slow walk of elephants, and the comparison of a woman’s thighs to an elephant’s trunk. Sanskrit poetic conventions generate a highly idealised image of women, whereby every feature was perfect, and compared to a feature of the natural world, which the female form tended to surpass. Vidya Dehejia (2009, p29) comments: “Poetry read aloud in courts, dramas performed for select audiences, and art admired by an elite audience all transported one into an idealised world where women and men, queens and kings, goddesses and gods were all beautiful, young and nubile. Youth, beauty, and the ability to attract others translated into power and authority, whether in the earthly or the divine sphere.” Lee Seigel (1987) points out that this particular simile is sometimes used with comic effect to link two incongruous realms of experience, citing an occurrence within the Gitagovinda in which Krishna, during a battle with the war elephant of Kamsa, looks at the elephant’s forehead and “was reminded of Radha’s swollen breasts. He broke out in a sweat and closed his eyes.”

A humorous use of this simile is employed later in the Saundaryalahari in verse 72, where the infant Ganesa, about to drink milk from the goddess’ breasts, becomes confused and, thinking that the globes on his head have become transposed onto the body of the goddess, touches “his own frontal globes with his trunk – thwack!”

Similarly, classical Sanskrit verses describing the breasts of a goddess or beautiful women frequently stress their weight, which causes her to bend forward. In the context of the Anandalahari this line signals not only the physical perfection of the goddess (according to Indian classical standards of beauty) but also her power to attract, provoke desire, and capture the attention of the devotee.

You are slim of waist,
Your face like the autumnal full moon,

Again, narrowness of waist in women is a common poetic and sculptural convention in India, as is the comparison of a woman’s face to the moon – and in particular, the autumnal full moon – a comparison also frequently made in the context of describing gods & goddesses (Krishna’s face is sometimes said to surpass the brilliance of the autumn moon). India’s autumnal period (aproximately mid-October to December) is relatively free of clouds, allowing the moon to shine brightly and clearly; it is also the time of ripening for rice and sugarcane, the blooming of lotuses in ponds, and the time when birds prepare to depart.

This line hence stresses the radiance of the goddess’ face to the devotee.

in Your hands are bow, arrows, noose, and goad;
These are the four weapons held by the goddess. She carries in her lower left hand the Sugarcane Bow – in her lower right hand, the five flower-arrows (Kamala, Raktakairava, Kahlara, Indivara, and Sahakara); in her upper left hand the noose (Pasa) and in her upper right hand the elephant-goad (Ankusa). These four weapons are expressed across the three modalities – that is to say, they have a gross (Sthula) form – their outward appearance; in the Subtle mode (Suksma) they are seed or root-mantras; and in the Para “Supreme” form the bow is manas – “mind”; the five arrows are the five tanmatras; the noose is the principle of attachment, and the goad – the principle of aversion. The bow & arrows depend on the activating-power of Kriyashakti, the noose, Icchashakti and the goad, Jnanashakti.

This table summarises these relationships.

The Sthula modality is the image of the goddess and her weapons as given in the verse, the Suksma modality is the goddess in the form of sound (obviously this is a difficult concept, which I’m not going to go into in depth for the present) and the Para modality interprets the weapons in terms of the Tattva schema. For some brief notes on mind and tanmatras within the Tattva schema see tantric tattvas. The noose (Pasa) is identified with raga – attachment, and the goad (ankusa) with dvesa – aversion. Together, mind, tanmatras, attachment and aversion generate and maintain all phenomenal transactions.

These expressions of Para can be interpreted in a wide variety of ways. For example, Lalita’s bow is sometimes described as rigid – indicating that mind must remain steady, despite the continual flow of sense impressions. The five arrows are sometimes said to be soft at the feather-end and sharp at the point – indicating that sense-experiences can be both pleasurable and painful. Attachments (the noose) have a binding quality, whilst the goad represents the withdrawal of mind from being bound up (by the noose) in sense-experiences or the development of discrimination. Such interpretations stress the yogic orientation – or at least, the idea that sadhana necessitates a withdrawal from the bonds of samsara.

However avesa can also indicate a state of possession, or the power to enter another’s body (Smith, 2006). The Kulanarva Tantra (v88) says:

By means of concentration, this great joy causes god possession (“devavesa”). This stage is called the vision of brahman (brahmadhyana), and it is visible through horripilation (and other such symptoms).

Hence my own summary of the power of Lalita’s four weapons would be that the bow (mind) and five modalities of experiences (the five sense-arrows) allow us to realise that the world is full of joys and delights, and it is through these delights we can unite with the all-pervading presence of the goddess; that with the noose, the goddess draws us towards her, into that ecstatic body-blurring union, and the goad propels us towards Vidya (wisdom-knowledge).

may You stand before us!
This is simple enough – the devotee desires to see the vision of the goddess in the form of the preceding lines of the verse. Sastri and Ayyangar however, interpret this line as an instruction to meditate upon this representation of devi in the heart (hridaya-kamala). Meditating upon forms of the goddess as residing in one’s own heart is very common in tantra practice.

So, to summarise then, this verse invokes a vision of the goddess, emphasising her most alluring, desire-drawing qualities; a vision which draws the devotee towards delight and the ecstatic recognition of union with the goddess through all that is beautiful and charming in the world.

Sources
Arthur Avalon Anandalahari (Ganesh & Co., 1953)
Guy L. Beck Sonic Theology: Hinduism and Sacred Sound (Motilal, 1995)
Douglas Renfrew Brooks Auspicious Wisdom: The Texts and Traditions of Srividya Sakta Tantrism in South India (SUNY, 1992)
W. Norman Brown The Saundaryalahari or Flood of Beauty (Harvard University Press, 1958)
Francis X. Clooney, Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary (Oxford University Press, 2005)
Vidya Dehejia The Body Adorned: Sacred and Profane in Indian Art (Columbia University Press, 2009)
Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty The origins of evil in Hindu mythology (University of California Press, 1976)
Daniel H Ingalls An anthology of Sanskrit Court Poetry (Harvard University Press, 1965)
Meera Kachroo, The Goddess and Her Powers: The Tantric Identities of the Saundarya Lahari (MA Thesis, McGill University, June 2005)
Les Morgan Croaking Frogs: A Guide to Sanskrit Metrics and Figures of Speech (2011)
Paul Muller-Ortega, The Triadic Heart of Siva: Kaula Tantricism of Abhinavagupta in the Non-Dual Shaivism of Kashmir (SUNY, 1989)
Lee Siegel Laughing Matters: Comic Tradition in India (University of Chicago Press, 1987)
Frederick M. Smith The Self Possessed: Deity and Spirit Possession in South Asian Literature and Civilisation (Columbia University Press, 2006)
Pandit S. Subrahmanya Sastri and T.R. Srinivasa Ayyangar, Saundarya Lahari (Theosophical Publishing House, 1948)

“She who comes into being through the breath of life,
from whom the Gods all took their birth,
the Boundless Goddess of Infinity,
who enters the cave [of the heart] and dwells there -
This, I now declare, is that!”
Kath Upanishad, IV, 7-9

This is a follow-up to my previous post back in October reflecting on some facets of transcendent experience. Towards the end of that post, I mentioned the concept of lateral transcendence – an idea that I’ve encountered from a number of different sources, some of which I’m going to briefly examine here. The term “transcendence” is derived from the Latin – trans “crossing over” and scandere – “to climb over” or “rise above” (also scando is indicative of ascending). But etymology can only get us so far. What’s left unsaid, in etymological explanations of transcendence, is the thing to be crossed or climbed over – we might think, for example, in terms of crossing or climbing over the boundaries or fences we have become used to locating ourselves inside – between nature and culture, personal (“inner”) and social (“outer”), sacred and profane, male and female, even. Whilst traditional theologies associate transcendence with with other-worldliness; escape, or a refusal of the body. I think it may be useful, to make a distinction (taking a cue from Huston Smith) between “other-worldly” and “this-worldly” transcendence as modes of orientation towards the world. Take for instance the late Vaclav Havel’s view of transcendence as:

“…a hand reached out to those close to us, to foreigners, to the human community, to all living creatures, to nature, to the universe. Transcendence as a deeply and joyously experienced need to be in harmony even with what we ourselves are not, what we do not understand, what seems distant from us in time and space, but with which we are nevertheless mysteriously linked because, together with us, all this constitutes a single world.”

Biologist Ursula Goodenough makes a useful distinction between “vertical” and “horizontal” modes of transcendence, drawing on the work of Michael Kalton. Here’s an apposite quote from Kalton:

“Horizontal transcendence finds its anchor in life rather than mind, thus displacing human consciousness from its privileged place. There is no cosmos posited apart from the historically ongoing one within which we find ourselves, nor is there life apart from ongoing living at whatever level it is considered. Instead of the typical vertical transcendence of the Greek inspired tradition, the movement of this kind of spiritual cultivation is horizontal, perfecting our relationship with the world of life about us, celebrating our status as members of the biosystem as a sort of homecoming, and sustaining us with a sense of awe and reverence for the mystery that encompasses us.”

Goodenough herself says:

“…locating the sacred in some other realm leaves me ethically bankrupt. My ethical aspirations are animated by my apprehension of the immediate, by my sense of belonging and relatedness. In the horizontal mode, spiritual cultivation is a shared experience; in the vertical mode it is solitary and unrooted.”

What’s interesting here is that both Havel and Goodenough present transcendent experience not as a big, life-changing event (as in Thorn’s idea of “transcendent thinking”, which I discussed in the previous post ) as it is often taken to be, but more of a relational activity – a “reaching out” towards the world and a commitment to widening one’s perspective. Further, both stress the necessity of aesthetic and ethical orientations towards the world.

I became intrigued with the idea of lateral transcendence after my first brush with the work of the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty. (For a useful overview of Merleau-Ponty’s ideas see this article by David Abrams.) One of Merleau-Ponty’s central concerns is overcoming the Cartesian divide between subject and object – the “unbridgeable” dualistic seperation between us and the world which we are so familiar with. Hence his idea of the “lived body” or what he later called the chiasm or “flesh of the world”. He sought to describe not so much Self and World – but the between out of which both emerge. In Merleau-Ponty’s later writings, the usual dualistic poles: subject-object, body-mind, self-world, inner-outer – are never reducible to each other, but each pole both requires and limits the other, so that neither unity or seperation can ever be attained in any pure or totalising way: “what enables us to center our existence is also what prevents us from centering it completely…”.

Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology does not view immanence and transcendence as mutually exclusive – but rather of “the paradox of transcendence in immanence in perception”. For Merleau-Ponty, “the perceived object cannot be foreign to him who perceives”. What is perceived is set within a context or horizon, assimilated in relation to the terms of reference of a perceiver. Transcendence, in these terms, is not some unknowable absence, but a feature of phenomena as they announce themselves within a horizon. Transcendence means that what is perceived “always contains more than what is actually given” – that any phenomenon has the capacity to surprise us, to broaden or even explode our horizons.

Lateral transcendence can be thought of as a reaching-beyond the boundaries of isolated selfhood towards the web of relationships, and perhaps, an openness to novelty, surprise, the unexpected. In Linda Holler’s view it is “a mode of transcendence based on being-in-relation-to, which, by rendering the knower incarnate, lessens the temptation to abstract ‘things’ from concrete space and time.”

Up-down, Inner-Outer?
I’ve found Goodenough’s distinction between vertical and horizontal modes of transcendence helpful in thinking through some other – related – issues. Despite the increasing orientation towards immanence in Pagan thought, it strikes me that many of the familiar organising schemas we draw on – such as the Tree of Life, or the (westernised) Chakras schema are vertically-oriented. In a similar vein, we tend to conceptualise the act of reconnecting with what has been lost (relationality, divinity, etc.) in terms of ascension (going upwards or drawing downwards) or in terms of a movement-within (“inner”) often at the expense of the “outer” – the communal, or social. There’s a subtle tendency, through the use of these hierarchical models, I think, to reinforce the mind vs body, inner vs outer, divine/(“higher”) vs body/(“lower”) distinctions – none of which sit well with emerging theologies of immanence. Even the ever-popular “As above, so below” statement seems to me to work to keep “spirit vs. mundane” spheres seperate. I’ve never heard anyone declaiming “as below, so above” for instance.

(I’ve been exploring some related issues in the ordering-machine and experience series of postings.)

Around the time that I was mulling over this, I was trying to get to grips with Deleuze & Guattari’s critique of “aborescent thinking” and their counter-idea of the rhizome. For Deleuze & Guattari, aborescent (“tree-like”) structures typically have at their top, some immutable concept made prominent via transcendental theorising or unreflexive presumption, the related concepts or particulars of which are organised vertically beneath in a tree/trunk/root arrangement and ordered hierarchically (for example, from transcendent to particular). The subordinate elements of the arrangement are static, according to an organising principle implied or set up by the overall concept – which dictates the position or meaning of everything else within the closed system. Furthermore, arboreal models tend to dissipate the difference between particular elements in favour of the similarity which defines them in terms of superior concepts in general and the top-level concept in particular. For Deleuze & Guattari, thinking in such a way leaves favours universals and abstractions over lived experience, and shields dominant concepts from critique. In contrast, Deleuze & Guattari assert that lived experience comprises uniqueness and particularity in each moment, the differences of which always ought to be acknowledged.

“…trees are not a metaphor at all, but an image of thought, a functioning, a whole apparatus that is planted in thought in order to make it go in a straight line and produce the famous correct ideas. There are all kinds of characteristics in the tree: there is a point of origin, seed or centre; it is a binary machine or principle of dichotomy, with its perpetually divided and reproduced branchings, its points of arborescence; it is an axis of rotation which organises things in a circle, and the circles round the centre; it is a structure; a system of points and positions which fix all of the possible within a grid, a hierarchical system or transmission of orders, with a central instance and recapitulative memory; it has a future and a past, roots and a peak … there is no doubt that trees are planted in our heads: the tree of life, the tree of knowledge, etc. The whole world demands roots. Power is always aborescent.”
Dialogues II, p25

In this post in 2010, I thought through some criticisms of the occult tendency to treat our favourite representational schema (Tree of Life, Chakras etc) as “total knowledge systems”, having found a quote from Israel Regardie: “The whole mélange thus serves as a further means of classifying all knowledge. It serves to organise the contents of the mind and to provide a mechanism for unifying all systems of any and every kind. Thus, ultimately, it enables one to reduce all types and kinds of knowledge to unity.” – this is I think, one of the problems that Deleuze & Guattari are attempting to highlight – that attempting to jam everything into one overarching model of classification erases difference (and distance) and fixes them into a static, universal schema, proceeding from a singular point of origin.

It seems to me that these schemas tend to reflect the traditional western idea of uni-directional transcendence.

As a point of contrast, I think it is worth examining some Indian approaches. Raimon Pannikar in The Vedic Experience uses the term “theanthropocosmic” to denote the cosmological perspective in which the sacred, human beings, and nature are interdependent participants – where the vertical orientation towards transcendent wholeness does not entail seperation from the the horizontal orientation towards others – the immediate and immanent. That “the epistemic plurality does not contract the ontological unity.”

“We must therefore content ourselves by noting the stupendous crescendo of the texts and their theandropocosmic connections. All is related and interdependent. Brahman is not like a ladder whose earlier steps we may forget once we have reached a higher one. Brahman is not confined to the top but is in immediate contact with everything.” (p227)

Unlike the Judeo-Christian tradition wherein God creates the world ex nihilo, the Vedic Purusa Sukta has the Cosmic Person creating/emitting the world through an act of self-dismemberment – so that all of creation shares the same substance. As Pannikar points out (p73):

“It is neither a merely divine affair, nor a purely human endeavour, nor a blind cosmic process; it is human, divine, and cosmic all in one. That is, it is cosmotheandric. God, Man, and the universe are correlates. … The three are constitutively connected. … Nothing seperates Man from God. There is neither intermediary nor barrier between them.”

In Pannikar’s vision of transcendence, the vertical and horizontal orientations are mutual, interdependent – the remote can become -from instant to instant – proximate, and vice versa. We might begin therefore, to think of transcendent experience not in terms of a horizontal of lateral orientation, but as a circle, or better yet, a sphere. I’ll leave that point hanging, for now, and continue this wittering another time.

Sources
Gilles Deleuze, Clair Parnet Dialogues II (Columbia University Press, revised edn 2007)
Raimon Panikkar The Vedic Experience: Mantramañjari: An Anthology Of The Vedas For Modern Man (University of California Press, 1977)
Vijaya Subramani A Taste of the Divine: Rasa and Transcendence in Dialogue (MA Thesis, University of Calgary, May 2006)

Online Resources
immanence.net
Ursula Goodenough: Evolution is Not About Survival of the Fittest But About Fitting In
Michael Kalton: Green Spirituality: Horizontal Transcendence
Walter H. Capp: Interpreting Václav Havel

What does can it mean to “queer” something? Queering can be thought of a process of disrupting, disturbing and questioning the normal – that which is “taken-for-granted.” Queer sidles up to identities, ideologies; any category that have been taken to be timeless, solid and foundational and exposes gaps, fissures, resistances, instabilities, different possibilities and surprises. As Jeffrey J. Cohen says in Medieval Identity Machines – “Queering is at its heart a process of wonder.” (p38). I want that on a T-shirt.

Part of this commitment to challenge, to uncover the hidden, to look backstage and discover how productions are produced is the commitment to keep “queer” fuzzy and indeterminant. A recognition of the importance of not slipping back into an “us-them” binary which privileges a heroic “transgressive” queer subject against those still bound up in normative relations.

Someone asked me recently if Queer Paganism could be thought of as a “tradition”. It’s an interesting question, which for me highlights how Pagans tend to conceptualise different categories of praxis into “traditions”. It also begs a questioning of how the very concept of “Traditions” is used in Pagan discourse. “Tradition” is sometimes used to denote a commonality of praxis – which is to say that it often implies common practices, ideologies, political alliances – and often, there is an implication that this praxis is historically located – a kind of sense that what we do now was done by our ancestors, sort of thing. Tradition can be thought of (simplifying hugely) as an appeal to unity to varying degrees – and can act as a boundary in making distinctions between one approach to praxis and another. But for Queer Pagan(ism) such appeals to unity can only be, I think, of a temporary nature. One thing i see as central to Queer Paganism is a commitment to diversity and difference – which involves allowing a place for dissent – and the understanding that dissent is itself productive, rather than a failure. Equally, making a case for a historical Queer Paganism is also tricky – although we can talk (at length!) about celebrating queer ancestors, reading queerness into and out of histories, of uncovering the politics of dissent hidden behind monolithic accounts of the past – I don’t think that’s quite the same as rooting a Queer Pagan praxis in the deep, undifferentiated past, if only because I think of Queer Paganism as something new – queer theory and queer activism both emerged out of the 1990s.

If one can speak of “Queer Pagan Tradition” at all – then it is as something that is relational to particular alliances and networks. produced within and temporary to heterotopic spaces such as Queer Pagan Camp. Perhaps a sense of shared tradition emerges when Queer Pagans come together to laugh, celebrate, dance and argue, but outside of such spaces it recedes, dissolving like morning dew. I’d suggest that, rather than looking at tradition as a boundary which encloses particular practices (such as theologies, rituals etc.,) what seems to me to be of more concern within a Queer Pagan space is a commitment to an ethic of mutual care and reciprocity; to an invitation to play with boundaries and categories; to celebrate difference. Its this ethical openness – primarily towards sexual and gendered – but also other forms of difference which I see as central to understanding Queer Pagan approaches – that queer need not be a either/or choice made in opposition to other identities, but (depending on context/situation) possibly a “both/and” choice, or even a “neither/nor” choice. Opening to the possibilities of fluidity entails an acceptancy of multiple orientations and positions that shift according to particular contexts and situations.

If this is a tradition (in a loose sense), it’s one that is being passed around, rather than handed down. It’s focused towards what might be thought of as a politics of doing rather than being.

This, for me, is related to queer theory’s attention to the exposure – and challenging – of how subjects are produced through binary identity categories – heteronormative ideologies, practices, values and assumptions. At the same time, queer theories have contributed to the perspective that identities (including, but not limited to sexual identities) can be thought of as fluid and changing – where selfhood (the “I” position) is not generation in opposition to an other – but discursively negotiated through others. Similarly, activist groups such as Queeruption have stressed the importance of a non-seperationist politics – for example, fuzzying the boundary between serious political work and frivolous personal play and attempting to break down the boundaries between “leaders” and “the led”. At QPC for instance, anyone can turn up and offer a workshop, a discussion, a public ritual, but this is done on the basis of sharing – workshop facilitators are not paid, nor are they accorded the status which at other events, tends to reinforce a distinction between leaders and consumers.

So, back to Queering-Paganism, something which may take the form of Wicca with added glitter, or ceremonial magic in high heels, but also examining/critiquing various strands of Pagan discourse from different queer perspectives. Thus far, such examinations have tended to focus on the ways in which Pagan discourses of sexuality & gender uphold the logic of the heteronormative gender binary in both practices and metaphysics. In America, there are signs that the constroversy sparked by the exclusion of transgendered Pagans at Pantheacon this year and in 2011 is also provoking a closer critique of Pagan discourses around sexuality, gender – and despite the surface rhetoric of being “inclusive” – how Pagan praxis actually works against this, producing seperations and boundaries. I see these projects as the beginnings of conversations that I hope will spiral outwards into wider areas (for example, last month I made a brief foray into queering Pagan representations of deities), asking provocative questions and opening up new possibilities for exploration.

With thanks to Gavin Brown for some provocative writing and conversation.

More Loltheorist fun at loltheorists.livejournal.com

Sondra L. Hausner’s Wandering with Sadhus: Ascetics in the Hindu Himalayas (Indiana University Press, 2007, 250pp) is an intimate ethnographic account of the lives of Hindu renouncers in northern India and Nepal. Throughout Wandering, Hausner highlights seemingly opposed tensions and how these are reconciled in the daily lives of her informants; for example between the ideal of renouncers as solitary individuals versus sadhu life as a parallel form of community; between the emphasis on the illusory nature of space, time versus the importance of sacred time, space and place, and the issues of religious practice; between the body as illusion and hindrance and the body as the ground of experience.

Wandering with Sadhus opens with the perspective that there is a fundamental split in renouncer lives which is at once both practical (splitting away from householder society) and metaphorical (the split of the soul away from the body). Hausner relates how this split is mirrored across all aspects of a renouncer’s life and that this reflects a wider Hindu concern with transcendence from the material world. She points out that all of her informants strongly emphasised how their religious practices or lifestyles were different to householder society, and goes on to discuss how much renouncer society offers a “place of refuge” from mainstream Indian society – particularly for women. She also points out that for householders “the sadhu community symbolizes the fearsome power of a world outside structural norms, from which there is no return. I heard a number of lay families, even as they outwardly expressed respect for renouncers, tease their children with the threat of giving them away to a wandering sadhu if they misbehaved” (p45). She presents a useful review of Hindu ideas of the body, and argues that the “split” between renouncers and householders does reflect, to a degree, the work of Louis Dumont – particularly his work on renouncers as forming an “other-worldly challenge” to the social web of householder life (some related discussion of Dumont here). She refutes the contemporary idea that the mind-body split is not present in Indian religious or medical body traditions, and argues that the interpretation of Cartesian dualism is not actually a seperation of mind from body, but between body-mind and soul – pointing to the similarities between Descartes and the Indian Samkhya philosophy. She suggests (pace Jonathan Parry) that “the collective refusal to think of South Asian embodiment as a dualistic enterprise might be Orientalism at work” (p56). This discussion is carried on in the book’s appendix, which provides a useful review of anthropological work on Hindu renunciation and embodiment. Pretty much all of the heavy “theory” in this book is done in chapter one and the appendix, which certainly makes the book more accessible.

Hausner shows how, despite textual ideals and popular representations of sadhus as isolated individual practitioners, renouncer life is highly social – mantained through family lineages, administrative orders (akharas), and the guru-disciple relationship – allowing the widely geographically dispersed sadhu communities to remain vital, ensuring the transmission of religious values and the maintenance of communal identities, and also how the akharas both support and discipline their initiates. She also examines how the act of wandering is related to the representation of sadhus as having broken free of the constraints of householder life – and how renouncers’ spatial experience of community is related to networks of pilgrimage circuits (see this post for a brief discussion of pilgrimage sites). Wandering, she points out “teaches detachment and observation, but also gathers the blessings from dispersed holy places into the body of the wanderer.” She describes pilgrimage sites as “spatial nodes” where members of the dispersed sadhu community may periodically meet each other and examines how visiting pilgrimage sites can act as social and economic supports for itinerant renouncers Hausner also highlights the tensions – and material problems – of wandering versus the benefits settling down in a particular place in terms of the dictates of practice. Hausner also makes some interesting contrasts between “places of solitude” such as caves, jungle, and forests, and the social demands of ashrams.

In her conclusion, Hausner discusses how social and bodily practices are understood by sadhus within terms of their religious worldview: “Renouncers insist on the split between soul and body because it is a powerful metaphor for the split they enact from householder society” (p183). She ably articulates how for renouncers, religious transcendence translates into social power – that because sadhus are not tied to one particular place – they inhabit a circuit of holy places, and function on divine, rather than everyday time, they are considered able to manipulate the world at will. Their peripheral and mobile status contributes to their reputation for being religiously powerful. As one of Hausner’s informants put it: “The individual thinks the individual body is his body; the knower of brahman knows the whole universe is his body. Others see his body as his body, but from his point of view his body is the whole universe” (p185). She also presents some useful observations on the nature – from a renouncer’s perspective – of bodily experience, and in particular, how renouncer’s religious discipline serve to enable them to distinguish between “experience that clarifies and experience that obscures.”

Ron Barrett’s Aghor Medicine: Pollution, Death and Healing in North India (University of California Press, 2008, h/bk, p/bk & Adobe Digital Edition) is an engaging examination of contemporary Aghori adepts and how, in shifting their practices towards the healing of socially stigmatised diseases (in particular, leprosy) the Aghoris have become socially legitimate and acquired political power. This is particularly interesting as popular representations of Aghoris are bound up with cremation ground worship, cannibalism and coprophagy (although admittedly the latter does not loom large in popular western representations of antinomian tantric practices). In This book, based on extensive fieldwork with members of the Kina Rami Aghori lineage in Banares, Barrett examines the cultural dynamics of pollution, death and healing in relation to what he terms “Aghor Medicine” – which includes a wide range of eclectic practices such as religious purificatory rites, Ayurvedic and biomedical treatments conducted with the guidance of Aghoris, and the Aghori philosophy of nondiscrimination which challenges practitioners and clients alike to confront and overcome fears and aversions – particularly those around death and disease. Although, as Barrett shows, much of the older cremation-ground practice smashan-sadhana has been supplanted by more socially acceptable practices, the underlying philosophy of cremation-ground practice and its symbolism is still central to Aghori medical practices. He also examines how patients & devotees of the Aghoris draw upon the cultural capital surrounding their reputation for possessing power (shakti) and magical abilities (siddhis).

Along the way, Barrett examines and dispells many of the popular misconceptions that have grown up around the Aghoris. For example, he is cautious about automatically assuming that Aghoris are “tantrics” – discussing contemporary Aghoris’ own ambivalence towards the term, and the general difficulties of defining just what constitutes “tantra” anyway. Instead, he opts for a polythetic approach – “in which Aghor may share enough features with certain tantric traditions to claim some family resemblance but in in which no single feature defines all of them as necessarily tantric” (p12). There is also an interesting discussion of the notion of the right-hand path (dakshinamarg) and left-hand path (vamamarg) which are often portrayed as oppositional and antagonistic. One of Barrett’s sources, an Aghora guru named Hari Baba however, takes a nondualist view that the two paths are complementary to each other:

“they are like two banks of a river that work together to channel the water in a certain direction. The disciple might use one or the other path or a certain combination of both, at different stages of his or her development. Moreover, the disciple need not be an Aghori to combine left-hand approaches with right-hand ones. … Left-hand practices are meant to be temporary exercises, not permanent ways of living. They are supposed to be practiced in moderation, no more than is needed to overcome a particular obstacle to nondiscrimination.”(p152)

Aghor Medicine is a highly readable and fascinating book which sheds much light on the interrelationships between sacred geography, healing and pollution, as well as showing how the Aghori tradition is changing and developing.

David Gordon White’s Sinister Yogis, (University of Chicago Press 2009, h/back, 336pp – also available in paperback and for Kindle) is third part of a “triptych” (the previous two books were Alchemical Bodies and Kiss of the Yogini (see review). Of the three, I would say that Sinister Yogis is the most accessible, although like the other two, it is not exactly a page-turner either.

According to White, the majority of scholarly approaches to Yoga have oriented themselves around the “philosophical yoga” tradition (commonly known as “Raja Yoga” or “classical yoga”) of which Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is a foundational text. White says that: “it has been the equation of yoga with meditation or contemplation that has been most responsible for the skewed interpretations that have dominated the historiography of yoga for much of the past one hundred years.” (p42) White says that this focus has had the effect of marginalising earlier (and later) developments and so, as a counter, Sinister Yogis focuses on the Yogi – the practitioners, and examines accounts of practitioners within a wide variety of literary genres spanning a period of over a thousand years; ranging through the Vedas, Epics and Puranas, to early traveller accounts of Yogis, colonial reports; narratives from Hindi, Sanskrit and Persian sources, which depict yogis behaving in extraordinary and yes, sometimes “sinister” fashion, but largely not depicted in terms of the practices familiar from “classical yoga” – assuming postures, restraining breath and senses, meditating or realising transcendent states of consciousness. White asserts that, in contradiction to the majoritarian view of Yoga practice, the yogis in these narratives are not introspective or inward-turning.

In countering the familiar image of the yogi as “holy man” – detached from the concerns of the everyday world and spurning the acquisition (and use) of siddhis – magical powers such as the ability to enter another person’s body, raising the dead and so forth, White makes the radical claim that this image of the yogi is not historically correct, and he gives a lengthy examination of “the science of entering another body” (which can be likened to a form of possession) and how this relates to Indian models of perception and modes of personhood: “Before it was closed off from the world to ensure the splendid isolation of spirit from matter, or the vacuum necessary for the “hydraulic” practices of hatha yoga, the yogic body was conceived as an open system, capable of transacting with every other body – inanimate, animate, human, divine, and celestial – in the universe” (p166). Moreover, White examines how scholarly representations of the yogic body in terms of it being a microcosmic “miniature” of the wider cosmos is a mis-step (see some related discussion here); rather, he says, it would be more accurate to understand the yogic body as “a self-magnifying self that has become fully realized by the magni-ficent universe” (p175).

In addition, Sinister Yogis examines portrayals of yogis as power-brokers, ascetic warrior-mercenaries and traders; and the British criminalisation of yogis in the nineteenth century. He presents a critique of the popular, unreflexive assumption that the figure in Sir John Marshall’s so-called “Pasupati Seal” is seated in a yogic posture, and argues that the “lotus position” was originally associated with royal sovereignty – and later became extended to yogis due to the relationship between yoga and sovereign power.

Sinister Yogis is without doubt a ground-breaking approach to the historical representation and understanding of yoga traditions and aims. It overturns much of what is considered canonical in terms of how we think about yoga and yogis.

When someone says “I’m really low on energy today” or “I feel drained of energy” we can easily recognise this as a metaphorical statement about their sense of wellbeing. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they literally mean that their they believe their body works like an AA battery. Or does it? I have no problem with “energy” as a handy metaphor. What I do find difficult sometimes is that “energy” as a concept becomes treated as a transparently natural category – as an essence which is a property of people, places, objects – and, importantly – that same “energy” is shared by all other people, objects, places of the same class. A few years ago, I started irritating various pagan friends by asking them – whenever they used “energy” in conversation – what they “meant” by it. This was prompted by hearing people saying things like “Oh, you live in London. I could never live there. I don’t like it’s energy. Or, “Oh you’re friend of so-and-so. So-and-so’s really nice, but she has a weird energy that makes it difficult to be around her.” It struck me, fairly early on, that what is common to all these kinds of statements is the implication that energy is a kind of essential quality that people or places possess – and if we don’t get on with that person, place, or object – it’s because of this “energy” that they possess – and nothing to do with the wider context of that particular encounter, or for that matter, one’s own beliefs, prejudices, assumptions, etc.

Pagan & Occult explanations of energy often begin with the all-encompassing statement that energy is everywhere and all energy is the same. For example, I’ve been recently reading Kirk White’s chapter “Magical Manifestations of Energy Work” in Exploring the Pagan Path, Wisdom from the Elders which starts out pretty much in this fashion, and then segues into the familiar argument that “energy can appear with a variety of different qualities determined by the origin, source, and intention of the energy itself.” He then divides energy into two broad categories:

“In general, energy can be divided into two broad categories: Active/Positive/Yang and Receptive/Negative/Yin. The terms “positive” and “negative” are being used here to describe the opposite locations and directions of the energy, very much like the positive and negative poles of an electrical battery. The positive pole sends out the electrical signal, and the negative receives. So any energy that moves or changes things, that enlivens something, or adds heat to a system is active. Any energy that calms or slows things, that grounds and cools things is receptive.”

As the chapter expands, energy gets particularised because it acquires particular characteristics and qualities from a particular source, so that there is “Mars energy,” “Fire energy,” “Water Energy” etc., and energy also acquires characteristics from the Intent of the spellworker – hence “healing energy” etc.

One thing Kirk mentions is that for ritual tools, its generally thought to be a good idea to ritually cleanse them, which removes “any energetic charge left on them by all the people who handled them before you got them, including the manufacturer, distributor, store owner, and people who picked them up thinking about buying them”. This is rather strange – it seems to me that there’s a subtext about contamination by others here. I have a wand at home that one of my teachers made for me over thirty years ago. I’ve never thought it necessary to clean off any “energetic charge” from its maker. It seems disrespectful (particularly as he’s dead now). Just looking at it reminds me of him. It’s strange that this “cleansing” is applied to magical tools, but not “everyday” objects. Why do we need to “charge” a wand, but not a phone? I wrote a parody on Barbelith a few years ago:

(satire tag)Some interesting work has been done in this respect by Alan Sokal & associates at the European Institute of Energy Dynamics. Their research suggests that any item can retain energic-emotional ‘particles’ which can have a subtle effect on individuals, particularly those who are specially sensitive. Not only do cds, comics & records accrue energic-emotional condensations, but also clothes, money, and foodstuffs. However, the situation is rendered even more complex if one accepts Sokal’s argument that not only do items become imprinted with one’s own emotional energy discharges, but also the discharges of other people who come into close promixity with items, and those involved with the intial conceptualisation and production of said items. For example, a pair of three-years old secondhand Nike trainers brought by one subject bought from a thrift store on 5th Avenue were shown, through psychometric testing, to have retained not only strong impressions of despondency from people who had picked them up then decided not to buy them, but also retained powerful impressions of despair from the Korean sweatshop workers who had put them together, shot through with deeply troubling impressions of corporate cynicism from the egregore of Nike themselves. The subject in this case found the trainers had contributed significantly to her feelings of alienation and depression, due to the accumulated negativity which was most resistant to any kind of cleansing technique.

Sokal & co make the following observations & recommendations. As clothes can easily accumulate other peoples’ emotional energy over time (just by promixity), they recommend avoiding public transport (particularly air travel) and, just to be on the safe side, burning your entire wardrobe every two years. All coinage should be periodically immersed in magnetically-charged water in order to remove the negative energy and karmic resonances that accumulate as they are passed around. Paper money should be ironed. Where possible, logos should be removed from items, as it is well-known that whenever one emits strong emotions, or just stares at a logo for any period of time, one will tap into the energy of the company egregore and unwittingly ‘feed’ it. Avoid heavily logo-intensive environments like television and the internet (or use a text-only browser). Some energy researchers advocate wearing dark glasses when out on the street in order to reduce the effect of advertising. Somewhat contraversially, the Institue also recommends that people with items associated with mass production practices involving cheap labour in third-world countries should dispose of them immediately, as the accumulated negative residue may lead to ill-health. Similarly, in cases where an artist or producer has committed suicide or been murdered, the wave of negatitivity resulting from such incidents can be transmitted to all items associated with those producers. Sokal & co. demonstrate this trend with a survey of how many owners of Versace garments have committed suicide or themselves been murdered, in the years following Versace’s own murder in 1997. Finally, the institute recommends wearing hand-made clothes, home-growing as much food as you can, and where possible, ensuring that purchased goods have been handled by as few people as possible.(/satire tag)

Being contaminated by other people’s energies, vibrations, or thoughts seems to be a pervasive theme within occult energy talk. The idea that people who are “psychically sensitive” shouldn’t live in cities can be found in occult writings from the nineteenth century onwards. But why is it that personal “magical” objects have to guarded from contamination but that this does not apply to other belongings? Clothes are particularly interesting in this respect – private, personal, and subject to a complex & subtle set of mores about who can and can’t touch them and when it is and isn’t appropriate. Take underpants for example. I happily hand mine over to strangers to be washed – but if a friend popped round and casually asked to browse through my underpants drawer (in the same manner as they might ask to look at my bookshelves or audio cds) I think I’d be faintly surprised. Do underpants have energy? Mine do tend to acquire a ‘personality’ over time…

Energy Politics?
It seems to me that there is a “politics of energy” which is often left unexamined and treated as self-evident according to our own beliefs and assumptions, which are often assumed to be universal (i.e. “occult laws”) rather than products of a historical process. In my series of posts entitled “Occult Gender Regimes” I have been examining the development of what Erik Davis terms “the western electromagnetic imaginary” – the conception of the human body in terms of an energy economy from the eighteenth century onwards, paying particular attention to how the idea of the human being as an energetic system was related to ideas about gender essentialism and their wider cultural implications. For example, in this post there is some discussion of the nineteenth century argument that “since the human body had a finite supply of energy which had to be carefully regulated, educating women would place them under undue “mental strain” which would be injurious to their health.”

There was also a widespread notion that different races had different energies – and there was frequently asserted that “advanced races” (i.e. Europeans) had more energy than “lower races”. Here’s Francis Galton, founder of eugenics: “Energy is the capacity for labour. It is consistent with all the robust virtues, and makes a large practice of them possible. It is the measure of fulness of life; the more energy the more abundance of it; no energy at all is death; idiots are feeble and listless. … Energy is an attribute of higher races, being favoured beyond all other qualities by natural selection.” This idea also seeped into the occultism of the period. Here’s Charles Leadbeater, from The Mystic Chord (italics mine).

Man’s various forces and qualities, manifesting in his bodies as vibrations, send out for each vehicle what may be called a keynote. Take his astral body as an example. From the number of different vibrations which are habitual to that astral body there emerges a sort of average tone, which we may call the keynote of this man on the astral plane. It is obviously conceivable that there may be a considerable number of ordinary men whose astral keynote is practically the same, so that this alone would not suffice to distinguish them with certainty. But there is a similar average tone for each man’s mental body, for his causal body, and even for the etheric part of his physical body; and there have never yet been found two persons whose keynotes were identical at all these levels, so as to make exactly the same chord when struck simultaneously. Therefore the chord of each man is unique, and furnishes a means by which he can always be distinguished from the rest of the world. Among millions of primitive savages there may possibly be cases where development is as yet so slight that the chords are scarcely clear enough for the differences between them to be observed, but with any of the higher races there is never the least difficulty, nor is there any risk of confusion.”

Nowadays, of course the idea that there are “Higher and Lower races” and they can be distinguished (in evolutionary terms) by their “vibrations” has for the most part, fallen by the wayside (or has it?). A few years ago, i did overhear someone at a pagan moot say something along the lines of “Oh I couldn’t live in that borough. There’s too many ………. (racial slur denoting an entire ethnic group) – I just don’t like the energy they give off” I was somewhat taken aback, as were others present, and the speaker was quickly challenged and chastened. Clearly, this is not acceptable, yet making the same kind of assumptions about the “energy relationship” between sexuality and gender is acceptable, at least for some people:

take 1
So there I was, chatting to this dude at a pagan party and he says to me “I work with energy”. So I says “what, so you work for Powergen?” “Ah, no” says he “I sense people’s energies.” And then he dropped the big one – “I can tell, for example, from your energy that you’ve got a strong attachment to being the alpha male in any social situation.”
“That’s one hell of an assumption to make” says I (thinking ‘oh is that ‘cos I cracked a funny about energy work and Powergen’?) “Well,” says he, “straight men have a very distinctive energy signature – it’s very aggressive and forceful.”
“What?” says me “ALL of them?”
“Oh yes. It’s very distinctive. Women have a distinctive energy that’s different from men. And gay men’s energy is totally different from straight men’s too. I can tell just by the feel of a man’s energy whether he’s straight or gay.”
“Okay” says me “what about men who are bi?”
“Erm….”
“I mean, I’ve had relationships with men in the past. I’m surprised you didn’t pick up on that.”
“Well with bisexual people its a bit more tricky….”
“Okay, well I identified as being gay for about seven years or so. If you’d met me during that period, would you have said I had “gay energy”?
“I really can’t say”
(thinks: bet you would have)
“Okay, what about guys who don’t identify as gay or bi but have sex with men anyway?”
“Erm, I’ve never met anyone like that.”
“What, never?” (Gosh, you must live a very sheltered existence)
“Okay what about people who are transgendered then?”
“Ooh yes, transfolk have a really distinctive energy pattern – their auras are really wonderful.”
“So can you tell whether someone’s trans before they know they’re trans then?”
“Erm, I’m not sure what you mean…”
“Well you seem to be saying that – by “sensing” someone’s energy you can tell what their gender identification or sexual preference is, right?” So surely if you met someone who wasn’t aware that they were “trans” you’d be able to tell – even if that person wasn’t consciously aware of it. Like you seem to be saying that you can tell if someone’s gay from their “energy” but if they haven’t realised that themselves, you’d be able to help them out. Yes?”
“Erm, I think it’s a bit more complicated…”
“Okay, how about someone who’s undergoing gender-transition when you meet them but later decide that they don’t want to go through the transition and revert back to their “original” gender-identity? What happens there with their energy? I mean, does it stop being trans-energy at some point?”
“Erm …. I’ve never heard of that happening. You’re making that up, aren’t you?”
“Actually no. I can introduce you to a friend who made that journey if you like.”
(pause) “Sorry, I must go and find the loo.”

take 2
(In a bar, somewhere in London, after a magical conference at Conway Hall….)

“You know Phil, the Solar current and the Lunar current are very different”
“Yeah?” (thinks: what is he on about?)
“Up until now I’ve only worked with the lunar current….”
“Mmm?” (thinks: “Aha! lunar current = women, solar current = men)
(Some time later, following many vague but obviously meaningful allusions to currents, chakras, and so forth).
“But you know, I’ve always been intrigued by the magical potential of the (pause) Double Solar Current….”
“Huh?” (thinks: I think I’m being chatted up here, why doesn’t he just say what’s on his mind…)
“Oh yes, it must generate a lot of magical energy, it must be really powerful … I mean it was Crowley’s thing wasn’t it?”
“Well yes, Crowley liked it up the arse now and then.”
(He pulls a face like I’ve farted loudly in the middle of the Gnostic Mass) “Oh no, it’s not “sex” – “I’d only do it in the context of a ritual. It would have to be magical. There’d have to be an Intent..
“Okay, well good luck with that. I’m outta here.”

These two conversations (admittedly embellished) highlight some of the problems I have with “energy talk”. My main issue with the first guy was that I felt, at the time, that he was clearly making assumptions about me (and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that – we make assumptions about each other based on social behaviour all the time) and quickly slotted me into a schema into which I could be fitted into and explained away. He slotted me into his conceptual schema and it was only when I started probing and asking tricky questions that things started getting difficult. The second guy was clearly interested in a bit of mansex, but could only frame this within a conversation about “magical energies” (“currents”) which made the whole thing impersonal and “magical” – to the level where he started sounding to me like a Thelemic version of Monty Python’s “nudge nudge” sketch. As though mansex in a magical ritual isn’t actually mansex.

It does seem to me that there’s something quite paradoxical going on at times with “energy talk” – that despite the surface rhetoric of energy “connecting” us with the universe, it actually can serve work against that ideal – particularly if the conceptual framework within which energies are ordered is restrictive (as in the binary categorisation in the quote above – although to be fair, Kirk does say that not all energy sources can be neatly fitted into the categories he provides, and if you feel that “water is active” then of course that’s fine too).

I don’t see this discussion in terms of “what should be done about this?” I don’t after all, have a problem with people talking about “energies” per se. Admittedly some friends do give me sidelong glances when they catch themselves using the e-word in my company, but that’s only because I used to ask them – at length – what they meant by it.

But I will say that I no longer place much credence in the concept of “energies” (apart from the easy metaphorical “everyday” usage) or conceptualise my interactions with people or places or objects in terms of energies or vibrations. This means though, is that I have to work harder at explaining (to others and myself) my experiences and reflections on same, with varying degrees of success. So I no longer think in terms of male and female energies, nor would I say “I don’t like so-and-so – I don’t like their energy” as I’d prefer to try and explain why I don’t get on with said being in terms of my relationship with them and acknowledge at the same time that other people might well have a different experience.

First though, a slight digression. Someone recently asked me when Saundaryalahari was first translated into English – and to what extent it may have influenced western occultists prior to the modern era. It’s a difficult question. I did a google search in order to try and find out if there was much in the way of discussion of Saundaryalahari on occult/pagan forums – and there was plenty on Indian forums, as you might expect, but nothing as far as I could find, on western occult/pagan forums. The earliest reference to Saundarya Lahari in western esoteric texts I have seen is in Subba Row’s Notes on the Bhagavad Gita published in The Theosophist (1887). Although there was a French translation available by 1841, as far as I know, the first english translation & discussion of this text was Arthur Avalon’s Anandalahari in 1917. And whilst Avalon’s book The Serpent Power has been hugely influential on, for example, western representations of the chakras, his Anandalahari appears to be less well-known, at least in occult circles. What I did however, turn up though, was evidence that Crowley, towards the end of his life, had “encountered” the Anandalahari.

Henrik Bogdan, whilst discussing Crowley’s influence on modern witchcraft (Brill 2009) – and to what extent Crowley’s magical ideas were influenced by tantra, quotes some correspondence between Crowley and Gerald York about a translation of the Anandalahari which Crowley received from David Curwen in 1945. Crowley appears to have found the MS difficult, and his comments on his experience of Indian esoteric traditions are interesting:

“Naturally I got in contact with this subject quite a lot while I was in India, and on the whole I was repelled, though I had no moral scruples on the subject. I came to the conclusion that the whole thing was not worth while. They do a sort of Cat and Mouse game with you; they give you the great secret, and then you find there is something left out, and you dig up this and go for a long while in a rather annoyed condition, and then you find there is yet another snag. And so on apparently for ever.”
(Bodgen, 2005, p95)

That’s pretty much all I’ve been able to find though. So unless anyone can provide more information, my short answer to this question is that Saundaryalahari hasn’t been much of an influence in the development of western (i.e. European/American) occult thought. If anyone knows differently of course, I’d be very interested to hear about it.

Some things to bear in mind
Firstly, I think its worth mentioning that texts such as Saundaryalahari were primarily written to be spoken/sung and heard. Whenever I begin a meditation using these stanzas, or as I write this post, I like to speak the verses aloud. It makes a difference. Secondly, one of the features of Indian theology which I think Saundaryalahari reveals very well is the fluidity between gods and goddess; how their identities flow into each other (and I wrote a little bit in the previous post about the fuzzy boundaries between Kama and the Goddess). Constantina Rhodes, in her book Invoking Lakshmi makes the salient point that the Devanagari script does not distinguish between lowercase and upper case ligatures, which has the effect of making personal names and common nouns interchangeable. Moreover, she points out that Sanskrit Grammar does not employ definite and indefinite articles:

“whereas in English we may delineate an entire theology hinging on the difference between “God” and “a god” or “the Goddess” and “a goddess,” for example, no such linguistic distinction exists in Sanskrit. …In fact the English language imposes categories of relationship that do not necessarily exist in the Indic consciousness. The Sanskrit word for goddess,” as noted earlier, is devi. When speaking of her in an Indic language, one does not have to identify “the goddess” or “a goddess” in relation to others of her kind. She is simply goddess.” (p19-20)

On then, to the verses of Anandalahari, beginning with 1-3.

“Only joined with Power has the God the power to rule,
otherwise He cannot even quiver – and so
You are worthy of adoration by Hari, Hara, Virinci, and all the rest, and so
how dare I
who’ve done nothing meritorious
reverence and praise You? (1)

Brahma gathered the tiniest speck of dust from Your lotus feet
and fashioned a world lacking nothing;
with much effort Indra carries the same on his thousand heads;
Siva pulverizes it and rubs it on like ash.(2)

For the ignorant, You are the island-city of light illuminating their inner darkness;
for the dull-witted, honey streaming from the flower bouquet of consciousness;
for the destitute, a double for the wish-fulfilling jewel;
for those drowning in the ocean of births, the tusk of Mura’s enemy, the boar lifting them up:
that’s how You are.(3)
(Transl. Clooney, 2005, p49)

The first verse states unequivocally that the Goddess is the Supreme Power – the ground of being, that it is she who grants power to Siva, and that she is worshipped by all other deities. Here, Hari is Vishnu, Hara, is a form of Siva, and Virinci is Brahma. Hence the triad of greater gods (and all other deities) serve and support the Goddess – she is their foundation and Her presence pervades them – a point reinforced later in verse 25:

Benevolent one,
may the worship rendered
to the three gods born of Your three qualities
be as worship rendered to Your feet, for
near the jeweled seat on which Your feet rest,
they ever stand,
folded hands adorning their crowns.(25)
(Transl. Clooney, 2005, p159)

Although the goddess is, in some ways, related to Siva, it is clear from the text that she is not subordinate to him – not merely a consort; that she is the all-encompassing reality in which the familiar Siva-Goddess dyad are perhaps only limited expressions encompassed within the body of the Goddess. There’s some lovely imagery here – particularly the idea that Siva “cannot even quiver” without the Goddess. This first stanza is sometimes said to contain the “essence” of Sri Vidya. Kamesvarasuri’s commentary on Saundaryalahari includes fourteen different interpretations of this stanza alone, according to different perspectives and traditions. One could, for example, interpret this stanza as referring to the Sri Yantra – where the upward-pointing triangles are Siva, and the downward-pointing triangles Sakti, the whole inhabited by multitudes of Devis and Devas – all adoring the central bindu which is the essence of the Goddess. Remember that the Sanskrit words that get translated as “goddess” or “god” – devi or deva – derive from the root div which means to play, to shine, to sparkle.

Verse 2 states that the Universe – vast and all-encompassing as it is, was brought into being (by Brahma) from the smallest possible speck of dust from the feet of the Goddess. This same dust-speck/universe is supported by Indra and dissolved by Siva. The triple powers of creation-maintenance-dissolution are insignificant compared to the power of the Goddess. I really like the way this verse plays with scale – the vast universe simultaneously being a tiny speck of dust; a dust-speck out of which all creation flows, which is upheld “with much effort” and becoming, at the end of time, the ash with which Siva decorates his body.

Verse 3 gives the four fruits of devotion to the Goddess. Firstly, she dispells ignorance (avidya) being likened to a “city of light” – possibly the sun, throwing off myriad reflections – arising in an ocean of darkness. I find that image an island-city of light” very easy to visualise; the shimmer and flicker of many dancing lights dispelling darkness brings to mind, for me, the idea that the Goddess shimmers and flickers (Lalita is referred to in some modern texts as the Zig-Zag Goddess). Secondly, she is likened to a stream of honey-nectar which streams from the “flower-bouquet” of consciousness (i.e. sense-experiences). Honey is a familiar metaphor in Indian poetics; honey is sweet; honey-liquor can be intoxicating; it is gathered by bees from many different flowers and so may imply a unitive consciousness arising from diverse experiences. See for example the “honey-doctrine” (Madhu Vidya) in the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad:

“This earth is (like) honey for all creatures and all creatures are (like) honey for this earth. This shining, immortal person who is in this earth, and with reference to one self, this shining, immortal person who is in the body, he indeed is just this self. This is immortal, this is Brahman, this is all.” (II.5.1)

Honey is also often likened to the nectar of immortality. That this honey streams indicates its continual flowing and that the Goddess acts to unify consciousness. Thirdly, the Goddess is likened to Cintamani – the wish-fulfilling jewel which grants the desires of devotees, and fourthly, the Goddess lifts up (i.e. “liberates”) those immersed in the ocean of births – for those drowning in the ocean of births, the tusk of Mura’s enemy, the boar lifting them up refers to the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of a boar, who, after defeating the Asura Hiranyaksha who had submerged the earth in the depths of the cosmic ocean, lifted the earth up on his tusks and restored it to its rightful place. This emphasises that the power of the Goddess to liberate is sudden and forceful, rather than slow and gradual.

Now to verses 4-6.

“The league of gods, other than You,
dispels fear and bestows boons with two hands,
and only You have no need
to make boon-bestowing and fear-dispelling gestures –
by themselves Your feet are able
to protect from fear and bestow boons beyond desire,
as You afford shelter to every world.(4)

You bestow prosperity on those who make obeisance before You,
and thus once, after adoring You
Hari assumed the form of a damsel and fascinated even the
destroyer of cities;
Memory too worshipped You and became powerful enough to
infatuate even great sages,
his frame fit for licking by Pleasure’s eyes; (5)

he has no limbs
but carries a bow made of flowers, a bow-string of bees, five arrows,
his servant is spring, the mountain breeze his chariot:
thus armed,
O daughter of the snow-capped mountain,
still he obtains grace only from Your glance, and
by that conquers the whole world single-handedly. (6)
(Transl. Clooney, 2005, p49-50)

Verse 4 states that the acts of granting boons and dispelling fears – which all other gods grant with their hands, spring effortlessly and spontaneously from the feet of the Goddess for the devotee. There is an implication that the Goddess “affords shelter” everywhere and at all times – one does not have to renew obeisiance to Her through ritual to receive her protection and her boons, and that all worlds have their origin – and meet – at the feet of the Goddess.

Verse five is a little more complex. Beginning with the assertion that Devi grants prosperity (which here signifies beauty of form in addition to prosperity etc.) it is said that it is from the Goddess that Vishnu (Hari) through devotion to the Goddess (meditation, mantra, etc.) acquired the power to assume the enchanting form of Mohini in order to beguile Siva (“the destroyer of cities”). In one Puranic episode, the union of Mohini and Siva produces the god Appaya. This can be read as an instance of the Goddess’ power to beguile and cause desire – even in a great ascetic such as Siva. (Some brief notes on Mohini)
The next line reinforces this: Memory too worshipped You and became powerful enough to infatuate even great sages. “Memory” – Smara (also the act of remembering) is one of the oldest epithets of Kama – desire, and can be found in the Atharva Veda. The relationship between memory and desire is a common theme throughout Indian literary and philosophical works. Again, this line stresses the power of Kama to distract and infatuate “even great sages” who are supposedly immune to such temptations – and there is the inference that Kama’s power too, ultimately springs from the Goddess. In the last line of the verse his frame fit for licking by Pleasure’s eyes; Pleasure is Rati, the consort of Kama. “Formed by droplets of desire literally sweated out of the pores of Daksa’s body, Rati embodies carnal desire and sexuality, a perfect marriage partner for Kama” (Benton, 2006, p29). The action of Kama’s body being licked by Rati’s eyes indicates, I think, the intensity of Rati’s erotic passion for Kama. It brings to mind, for me, the fiery tongues of Agni consuming the sacrifice.

Verses five and six both recall the great story of the burning of Kama by Siva.

Verse six continues to focus attention on Kama – carrying the Sugar-cane bow Spring (again, madhu) is sometimes referred to as “the king of seasons” and as a divine power is often described as the friend or accomplice of Kama. In Kalidasa’s Kumarasambhava Spring is Kama’s accomplice in disturbing the tapas of the forest sages:

In that forest, troubling holy men who were trying
to control their passions through intense tapas,
then, as a source of pride for the God
of Love, The Spring showed himself and unfolded.(24)

When the hot rays of the sun began advancing
north, leaping out of the fixed order of seasons,
the south sent a sweet-smelling wind
out of its mouth like a lover’s sigh of pain. (25)

At once the asoka tree put out flowers
and leaves budding straight from the trunk,
not waiting to bloom when a lovely woman’s
foot with her tinkling anklets touches it.(26)

At the instant The Spring prepared the arrow
of young mango blossoms feathered beautifully
with new leaves, he decorated the arrow with bees
as if they were letters of the love god’s name.(27)
(transl. Heifetz, 1990, p48)

All of the plants and animals of the forest respond to the call of Spring and Kama, and the forest sages themselves are stirred:

As the ascetics who live in Siva’s forest
saw that coming of the spring out of season,
forcing down the urges they felt beginning to stir,
they somehow took control again over their minds.(34)
(transl. Heifetz, 1990, p49)

Impelled by the grace obtained from the glance of the Goddess, Kama needs nothing more than his “soft” weapons – flower-bow, Spring, the gentle, sweet-smelling breeze which announces his coming – to “conquer the world”.

Coda
Even in this brief look at these six stanzas there is quite a lot of material for consideration and reflection – without even delving into the “formal” esoteric interpretations of commentators such as Kamesvarasuri or Laksmidhara. As I wrote earlier, the verses of Saundaryalahari clearly point to the fluid boundaries between one deity and another – for example, in verse 5 there is Visnu taking on the form of Mohini – “the enchantress” who is in a sense, identical to the Goddess to whom the verses are addressed. There is more than the obvious gender-shifting going on though. The clue, I think, can be found in the notion of Kama. It would be easy to think of Kama in terms of being “a god of desire”. Yet I think it is more accurate to say that wherever desire is present, Kama is present. So if you feel desire for something, then you experiencing the presence of Kama. Kama is simultaneously a deva, a philosophical category, a feeling. In the same way he is also memory. If one worships Kama then one in a sense, becomes Kama. So too it is with the goddess to whom these verses are addressed. One of her essential qualities is beauty. So wherever there is beauty, she is present. So whenever we experience beauty, desire beauty, recognise beauty in ourselves or others; the goddess is present in us – we share her substance, her essence.

The themes in these stanzas – the calling forth of moods, of shifting patterns of relationships – between devotee and devi, between devi and devas – resound throughout the remainder of Saundaryalahari, building patterns, suggesting tensions, meetings, divergences. In speaking the verses, in listening to another person speak them; memory and desire (Smara) become pivotal, bringing forth meaning and associations; producing the world of the Goddess’ shimmering presence, where she is the knower, the known, and the means of knowing. Words, sounds, and the images they bring forth, together express and embody the immanent presence of she whose nature is threefold.

Sources
Arthur Avalon Anandalahari (Ganesh & Co., 1953)
Catherine Benton God of desire: tales of Kāmadeva in Sanskrit story literature (State University of New York, 2006)
W. Norman Brown The Saundaryalahari or Flood of Beauty (Harvard University Press, 1958)
Douglas Renfrew Brooks, Auspicious Wisdom: The Texts and Traditions of Srividya Sakta Tantrism in South India (State University of New York, 1992)
Francis X. Clooney, Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary (Oxford University Press, 2005)
Edwin Gerow A glossary of Indian figures of speech (Mouton & Co;, Netherlands, 1971)
Hank Heifetz, The Origins of the Young God: Kalidasa’s Kumarasambhava (University of Chicago Press, 1990)
Meera Kachroo, The Goddess and Her Powers: The Tantric Identities of the Saundarya Lahari (MA Thesis, McGill University, June 2005)
Saskia Kersenboom, Songs of Love, Images of Memory in: Angela Hobart, Bruce Kapferer (eds) Aesthetics in Performance: Formations of Symbolic Construction and Experience (Berghahn Books, 2006)
Murphy Pizza, James R. Lewis (eds) Handbook of Contemporary Paganism (Brill, 2009)
Constantina Rhodes Invoking Lakshmi: The Goddess of Wealth in Song and Ceremony (State University of New York, 2010)