tantra, history, gender, occulture & other queer assemblies « enfolding.org - page 2

Srividya: the twists and turns of a tantric tradition – I

In the last two issues of my Unfoldings newsletter, I have been engaging in an in-depth analysis of Kenneth Grant’s representation of Tantric mysteries in his books – using his 1999 book, Beyond the Mauve Zone as the main reference point. In support of this series of essays, I thought it would be helpful for those reading the essays to attempt a general overview of the historical development of the Tripurāsundarī traditions, known nowadays as Śrīvidyā. In this first post, I’m going to focus on the roots of this tradition – the Nityā.
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August 20th 2023

Posted by Phil Hine in tantra

Tags: Lalita, Sri Vidya

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New Books for 2023

Announcing two new books for 2023 – Queering Occultures and Acts of Magical Resistance.

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July 31st 2023

Posted by Phil Hine in Announcements, Gender, History, Occult, Pagan, Queer, tantra

Tags: New Books

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Tantric ritual procedures – I

For this occasional series, I’m going to provide some short notes on various tantric ritual procedures. Tantric rituals tend to follow a fixed sequence of actions (pūjā-vidhi) as set forth in the ritual manuals (paddhati) – often distillations of much longer tantric scriptures, giving step-by-step guides for practitioners.
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July 8th 2023

Posted by Phil Hine in tantra

Tags: Practice, ritual

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Tantra’s Primordial Past: The Aryan Invasion Theory – I

As a follow-up to the series of essays on Theosophy and Race, and the Red Flags posts, I will now turn to a more complex and contentious subject, generally known as the ‘Aryan Invasion Theory’ (AIT). How does this relate to the tantras? The origins of the tantras, according to some authors, can be traced to an ancient people, peaceful, agrarian, and goddess-worshipping, who were invaded and suppressed by patriarchal, warlike Aryans. Their cities were destroyed, and their tantric practices were driven underground or preserved, in secret by occult adepts. This narrative draws on the Aryan Invasion Theory.
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June 30th 2023

Posted by Phil Hine in History, tantra

Tags: Aryans, Race, Red Flags

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Stoking the heart-fire

During a recent interview in which I spoke briefly about my tantra practice, I was asked to give an example of a simple exercise. Here it is.
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June 20th 2023

Posted by Phil Hine in tantra

Tags: Heart Practice, Practice

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On the “third-nature” – IV

Thus far in this series, I have been examining early Indian textual sources for glimpses of how persons of non-normative sexualities or gender presentations were represented. For this post – as I promised at the end of the previous installment – dealing with ‘changes of sex’ – I will examine a text from a much later period, a 16^th-century Tamil version of the Brahmottara-Khaṇḍa, featuring the famous Queen Sīmantinī. The Brahmottara-Khaṇḍa is a section of the Skanda Purāṇa, that has been dated to between 700 -1150 C.E.
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June 9th 2023

Posted by Phil Hine in Gender, Queer, tantra

Tags: sexuality, Siva, third-nature

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Some reflections on Kleshas – III

In the previous post in this series, I outlined the representation of kleśās within the Pātañjalayogaśāstra – a.k.a the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali (YS). For this post I want to discuss a more complex issue – are kleśās “tantric”? This is something I have pondered, on and off, for some years. As I explained in the first post, I was introduced to kleśā practice through initiation into AMOOKOS, and the kleśās were presented to me by my mentor – with the support of the AMOOKOS grade papers (published, in part, in the book Tantra Magick) – as a core component of daily practice. As I said, I spent a decade or so using the kleśā schema as a means of self-observation and analysis. This was very fruitful. Perhaps it should have been enough. Gradually though, it began to dawn on me that the perspective underlying the kleśā practice was very different from that of the tantras.
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May 31st 2023

Posted by Phil Hine in tantra

Tags: kleshas, Practice, reflections

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Jottings: Some “Red Flags” in the representation of Tantra – II

In the first post in this very occasional series, I discussed the assertion, often found in many popular books on tantra, that it is “many thousands of years old” and linked it to the notion of the authentic archaic. More recently, I have examined the Pasupati Seal, which is often drawn upon to support these assertions. For this post, I’m going examine another “Red Flag” – the widely-held view that tantra is not religious in character. I first addressed this contentious issue back in 2010 (see this post) but I want to return to it and say more about how this assertion is constructed and reinforced.
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May 11th 2023

Posted by Phil Hine in Occult, tantra

Tags: jottings, Red Flags

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Some reflections on Kleshas – II

In the previous post in this series, I outlined how I began my practice with the five kleśas as presented in the AMOOKOS practice manual, Tantra Magick. Now I want to turn to an examination of how the kleśas are dealt with in Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras (YS). Before doing so, however, I want to give a brief introduction to the philosophy that underpins the Yoga Sūtras.
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May 9th 2023

Posted by Phil Hine in Occult, tantra

Tags: kleshas, Practice, reflections, yoga

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Some reflections on Kleshas – I

“The five kleshas must not be regarded as petty foibles, weaknesses or minor failings or amusing defects which can be considered for a short moment and then dismissed and forgotten. They form the foundational obstruction in Twilight Yoga as in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.”
Dadaji The Exegetikos
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May 8th 2023

Posted by Phil Hine in Occult, tantra

Tags: kleshas, Practice, reflections

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