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Posts tagged ‘Embodied’

1. Multiplicious Becomings: tantric theologies of the grotesque – IV

   “Dismantling the organism has never meant killing yourself, but rather opening the body to connections that presuppose an entire assemblage, circuits, conjunctions, levels and thresholds, passages and distributions of intensity, and territories and deterritorializations measured with the craft of a surveyor.”
   Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

   “The Supreme Lord fashions the body and the senses, corresponding (to the sphere of) duality by the power of Maya, while through His power of knowledge He generates Mantras. Their body is the self-awareness which is the expanse (akasa) (of consciousness), and they denote the wonderful diversity of things.”
   Ksemaraja, commentary on the Spandakarika (Dyczkowski, 1992)

   For the final part of this extended essay I will focus on Sitala and her relationship with disease and possession. Continue reading »

   July 13th 2011

   Posted by Phil Hine in Deleuze, Queer, tantra

   Tags: bodies, Embodied, Sitala

   3 comments »

2. Metaphor, Metonymy & tantric interpretations – II

   It seems likely, for example, that advanced practitioners of yoga and other psychophysical practices would develop rather distinctive image schemata appropriate to their experiences and sadhana, transmitted by specific gurus and teaching lineages.
   Quoted from Glen A. Hayes in Whicher, Carpenter, p164 (2003)

   Continue reading »

   May 13th 2011

   Posted by Phil Hine in tantra

   Tags: bodies, Embodied, metaphor, Vaisnava

   2 comments »

3. Metaphor, Metonymy & tantric interpretations – I

   “metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.” George Lakoff & Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By

   In a post last year I made a brief mention of Lakoff & Johnson’s groundbreaking work on embodiment & metaphors in relation to understanding tantric terms. This is a theme I want to expand on in 2011, so for the first post in this series, I’m going to discuss some thoughts I had after reading A.K Ramanujan’s famous essay “Is there an Indian way of thinking”. Continue reading »

   April 11th 2011

   Posted by Phil Hine in tantra

   Tags: Embodied, metaphor, tantra

   1 comment »

4. Tantra keywords: Embodied

   “I praise the circle of deities innate within the body, an elevated assembly continually present, the end of everything, vibrant and the essence of experience.”dehasthadevatacakrastotra

   For this post, I want to discuss some “Tantric” themes which relate to embodiment – in particular, whilst stressing that Tantra constitutes an embodied practice, I also want to point towards a key difference between South Asian and “western” esoteric epistemologies – that underwriting Tantra’s embodied practice is what might be called an embodied theology. Continue reading »

   May 14th 2010

   Posted by Phil Hine in tantra

   Tags: Abhinavagupta, bodies, Embodied, Practice, reflections

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5. Theorising Practice II: Habitus/Hexis

   One of the consequences of the mind (theory)-body(practice) divide in contemporary approaches to magic (and more widely, spiritual development in general) is the notion that the spiritual/magical is set apart from the material/everyday world. There is a pervasive belief that materiality (and the concerns that relate to it) is a burden to be overcome; that development requires that the concerns of the body be transcended. This kind of discourse tends to privilege abstracted knowledge over bodied experience. Yet all practices (including those understood as inwardly turning, such as meditation or visualisation) involve our bodies. Continue reading »

   March 23rd 2010

   Posted by Phil Hine in Occult

   Tags: bodies, Bourdieu, Embodied, Practice

   2 comments »

6. Scented bodies

   This morning, descending the pristine stairwells of the office, I’m hit by a blast of smells from the restaurant on the ground floor. Continue reading »

   February 15th 2010

   Posted by Phil Hine in tantra

   Tags: bodies, Embodied, Practice, reflections

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7. Embodied knowledge – an opening shot

   Last Saturday, wandering into Treadwells whilst on one of my pre-xmas rounds I had an enlivening conversation with Ellie and Suzanne – mainly about what Suzanne’s recent (9th December) “Interview with a witch” evening was like. One theme that we batted around was that it’s fairly common for occult books to present information such as theories, correspondences, rituals, etc;, but still people appear to find it difficult to practice this information – to make it meaningful within their day-to-day lives. Continue reading »

   December 15th 2009

   Posted by Phil Hine in Occult

   Tags: Embodied, Occult, Practice

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