“What you’ve done can’t be helped;
the day is almost over.
On a jeweled island
Siva sits in Siva’s house.
Contemplate Her always.
Prasad says,
Durga’s ambrosial name liberates.
Repeat it without ceasing;
drench your tongue in nectar.”
Ramprasad Sen (trans. Rachel Fell McDermott)

Reciting the “garland of names” of a deity (namastotra) has been a core part of my tantra practice for the last thirty-odd years, but until now, I’ve never tried to write about it. If I’m doing solo puja, (or sometimes, just walking around) I usually do mental or quiet recitation, but for group puja, I think doing a call-and-response works very well – where one person recites an epithet and all others present recite it back. This is fun, particularly if a verbal slip or the occasional humourous epithet elicits laughter. As one develops one’s own intimate relationship and understanding of a deva, one can of course, introduce epithets of one’s own (“salutations to the goddess who is fond of shopping”) but I admit I have a fondness (and a deep respect) for the traditional epithets from texts such as the Lalitasahasramana or the 108 Salutations to Ganesa.

If you read the 108 Salutations to Ganesa you’ll see that some of them recall various attributes associated with Ganesa (for example, “Salutations to him with ears like winnowing fans”) whilst some focus on the boons bestowed upon the devotee (“Salutations to the bestower of fulfilment”) and others relate to His mythology (“Salutations to the one with a single tusk” recalls the Puranic tales which explain why Ganapati only has a single tusk) or point towards Ganesa’s transcendent (limitless) form (“Salutations to the manifestation of the unmanifest”). Any of these epithets can be extended through contemplation on their meaning, and some namastotras have extensive commentaries interpreting and discussing them. (Sometimes, in group puja, as a prelude to the recitation of epithets, we like to relax a bit and relate some of the puranic tales which relate to the goddess or god who we are peforming puja for, which again helps bring some of the associations to the fore.)

Stotra -from the Sanskrit root stu – “to praise, extol, celebrate” is of course an ancient form of Indian literary genre, and the uttering of epithets praising a deities’ attributes, deeds and qualities, as well as requesting boons can be found in Vedic stotras, as well as in Epics such as the Mahabharata. From the period of the Vedas, it is speech which is considered to be the primary creative power – when the gods utter the names of things, they come into existence. As Jan Gonda notes: “Sacred words or words uttered in a ritual context as well as the names of the deities that represent them are not empty things; they have life and a highly characteristic power of their own, a decisive power, and the one who utters such words, or the divine name, sets power in motion.” (Pusan and Sarasvati, p34). From the Vedas onwards, there is a strong theme that reciting the name(s) of a deity will bring the devotee under that deity’s protection

The practice of namastotra is generally considered to be efficacious for anyone who desires to enter into a close relationship with a particular deity – reciting the epithets, attributes and deeds associated with that deity allows the contemplation of the diverse and multitudinous facets of that deity, and encourages inter-identification between oneself and the goddess or god – recalling the tantric idea that “to worship a deity, one must become a deity.” So in a sense, when one is reciting the epithets of a particular devata in puja, one is also addressing them to oneself. In tantric texts, the recitation of the garland of names is generally considered to be pleasing to the deity they are addressed to (and some texts give epithets that various goddesses or gods are particularly pleased by), and as a form of practice, to bring both material benefits via the favour of the deities being so addressed, the attainment of siddhi and liberation. For example, the Vaikrtika-Rahasya, (a section of the Devi-Mahatmya) after offering instructions for uttering the Saptasati-stotra of the Goddess, says that “A man should please the Goddess daily with this stotra; [such a] man wins dharma, artha, kama and moksa.” It’s hardly surprising that one of the siddhis frequently mentioned in tantric texts is that of eloquent speech! Stotras are also, to an extent, similar to mantras, insofar as they can be used to empower substances (such as ash) for use in healing or other magical acts. Generally, the greater the act, the more repititions are recommended by various texts.

A great deal has been written about speech in relation to tantra – I don’t want to go into such complexities at the moment, but a couple of good books for anyone interested are Andre Padoxu’s Vac: The Concept of the Word in Selected Hindu Tantras (SUNY, 1990) and Guy L. Beck’s Sonic Theology: Hinduism and Sacred Sound (Univeristy of South Carolina, 1993).

Elisabeth Anne Bernard, in her monograph Chinnamasta: The Aweful Buddhist and Hindu Tantric Goddess (Motilal, 2010) makes an interesting link between the recitation of names (in this instance, Chinnamasta) and Abhinavagupta’s aesthetic theory of Rasa (some introductory notes on Rasa). Drawing on Abhinavagupta’s statement that a spectator to a play, in contemplating an actor’s depiction of a particular sentiment, becomes absorbed by it, she writes:

“…a sensitive reader can be affected by the repetitions of the names by sympathetically responding to her myriad manifestations, her paradoxes, her exploits, her limitless energy to protect, to help, to be kind, etc. One can become overwhelmed, forget oneself and experience the bliss of Chinnamasta. By reciting Chinnamasta’s names one can experience the bliss of Chinnamasta and unconsciously identify with Chinnamasta or experience her essence.”(p57)

She then goes on to discuss which of the nine rasas are dominant within the namastotra of Chinnamasta’s 108 names. However, interesting though that is in itself, I feel that Bernard’s comment about the (speaker) forgetting oneself through being overwhelmed with the myriad images and associations provoked through recitation is definitely something I have experienced in the performance of puja – sometimes to the point that it is sometimes difficult to continue, through the storm of associations and emotions evoked through chanting the names of the goddess. In a recent Kali Puja, incorporating the worship of ten Mahavidyas, I became so disorientated that I apparently performed two installations of Baghlamukhi into the Yantra! It has taken me a long time to appreciate how, just the simple recitation of a deities’ epithets – their immanent presence through the myriad forms of the world can propel me towards the direct experience of their transcendental vastness – and back again.
The continual inter-identification made (in this instance through repetitive speech acts – where the very act of speaking itself involves an inter-identification with the deity) between particular aspects or instances of the deity and one’s self as well as other constituent world-elements – and by extension, the deity-world as a totality via a seemingly endless web of homologies; can be thought of as a kind of possession, albeit a different form of possession than that which occurrs when one seeks to inter-identify with a particular instantiation (“persona” perhaps) of a deity. I’ll come back to this complex issue at some later date, but I thought I’d just introduce it here. (see mantra-bodies for some related discussion on speaking mantras).

Recitation can be done anywhere, and requires nothing more than a good memory, the willingness to extemporise when required, and occasionally, the fortitude to struggle through the feeling that the top of one’s head is about to unscrew!

“Let my idle chatter be the muttering of prayer, my every manual movement the execution of ritual gesture,
my walking a ceremonial circumambulation, my eating and other acts the rite of sacrifice,
my lying down prostration in worship, my every pleasure enjoyed with dedication of myself,
let whatever activity is mine be some form of worship of you.”
Saundaryalahari

I approach Lalita through her singular form (image) which has stories attached (her history, deeds) which exists in relation to others and she unfolds, through her yantra, into her innumerable forms. Her Shaktis (powers, capacities, affects). She is simultaneously singular and multiple. Lalita-as-yantra expands Her into her multiple affects. Each point in the yantra a crossing, a capacity; each capacity potentially able to fractally expand into a yantra itself. An infinitude of capacities, waiting to be encountered. Infinite recursion and expansion. Each moment: flowers bursting forth, folding in.

“When she, the ultimate Shakti, of her own will (svecchaya) assumed the form of the universe, then the creation of the chakra revealed itself as a pulsating essence. From the void-like vowels with the visarga emerged the bindu, quivering and fully conscious. From this pulsating stream of supreme light emanated the ocean of the cosmos, the very self of the three mothers.”
Heart of the Yogini Tantra

Srividya is, at its core, monistic. There is one Goddess – Lalita. She created the Universe, she is the Universe, and she is everything that makes up the Universe. She is simultaneously utterly transcendent and utterly immanent. She is present in everything, and so everything is, inherently, divine.

Yet, as much as She is singular, Lalita is multiform – as indeed the Universe is, because in order to enjoy Herself – to play, Lalita becomes everything. She is the perceiver, the perceived, and the very act of perception – meaning that She is present and is the source of all cognitive events.

There are three main routes for reconnecting with Lalita. The iconographic, the motive, and the spatial (these are my terms). The iconographic is the use of iconic images (statues, paintings, visualisation etc.). The motive is the speaking of Lalita’s sixteen-syllable mantra – and the mantra is Lalita. The spatial is most readily understood as the Sri Yantra – Lalita as a nexus of unfolding interrelationships. Some practitioners have tended to view the mantric & yantric modalities as superior to the practice of approaching Lalita as an icon or anthropomorthic image. Hence the iconic is called sthula (“physical”) the mantra-Lalita practice suksma (“subtle”) and Yantra-Lalita practice is called para (“supreme”). Yet these modalities are not seperate, but interdependent, as Lalita is threefold – hence She is often addressed as Tripurasundari – “she who is beautiful in the three worlds”.

Lalita, in her supreme aspect (parasakti) is often described as “beautiful” (saundarya) and “benign” (saumya). Yet She encompasses all aspects of goddess in every possible form. Whilst she is benign, she is also frequently described as terrifying (ugra) – all of her qualities are complemented by their opposites.

The sthula modality of Lalita is often considered to be her exoteric or simplest form – suitable for approaching Her through devotion (bhakti). The anthropomorphic mode of Lalita can be thought of as a gateway to her mantric and yantric modalities.

My longtime relationship to Kali is not lessened if I acknowledge Kali as an aspect of Lalita – or indeed, vice versa. In some versions of the Lalitopahkyana Kali (and Ganesa) are created as byproducts of Lalita’s battle against the demon Bhandasura. In the Yantra-magic of Lalita, a Goddess arises out of each intersection between the lines. Each goddess can be approached as “seperate” to Lalita, and yet remains Lalita ultimately. Each Goddess may reveal Her own yantra, her own mystery – on and on in a potentially endless fractal-like recursiveness. The Yantra is simultaneously the Goddess, the Universe, and one’s being-in-the-world. Are Kali and Lalita seperate, are they aspects of each other – my answer is only that it is a case of yes, and no, and somewhere inbetween.

Lalita’s mystery can be apprehended in moments when we enter into the sentiment which is that of wonder-joy. It is in moments of joy, of wonder, of surprise, that we become one with Lalita (Lalita can be translated as “the playful one”). So Lalita’s sadhana (methodology) can be that of opening up to opportunities that afford us experiences of joy, wonder, surprise, and to understand that they are gifts offered in order that we may share Her joy, Her wonder of Her eternal play.

Knowing all this to be true, I strive to live according to this realisation – that everything is divine – that everything and anything may, if I allow it, afford me a glimpse of Lalita, a shared glance, a mutual recogniton.

on the whole, I was glad that “I” had “resisted” the spreading outwards on this occasion. The last time it happened, I had been able to lie down, as the stillness swept me into immensity; it had gone on, seemingly, for hours, that spreading outwards, becoming sky and grass and everything else; and taken days to “come back” from. It’s not really a “state” that’s conducive to crossing busy roads, or negotiating crowds of people. It’s not even something that lends itself to communication easily – and thus can be quite weird for anyone else to be around.

“This vision, relational being, seeks to recognize a world that is not within persons but within their relationships, and that ultimately erases the traditional boundaries of seperation. There is nothing that requires us to understand our world in terms of independent units; we are free to mint new and more promising understandings. … the traditional view of the bounded individual need not be eliminated. But once we see it as a construction of our own making – one option among many – we may also understand that the boundary around the self is also a prison.” Kenneth Gergen, Relational Being: Beyond Self and Community (p5)

For me, Tantra is above all, a relational practice – something I’ve continually circled around in most of the other tantra-related posts on enfolding. At its simplest, I think of this as an invitation to consider how we practice/think our relations – to ourselves(s), to others (persons both bodied/unbodied); to the world we move through. To do this requires, I think, both attention and caring. An incident which springs to mind, which was formative for me in this respect was a conversation around the breakfast table at a retreat in 2002 (see Thoughts on Mudras) during which the twinned mudras of dispelling fears and granting boons were demonstrated as gifts we can offer each other – and by extension, to ourselves.

“Ignorance is failure to experience directly the intimate connection between the infinite and the finite.” Mark Dyczkowski, The Doctrine of Vibration (p40)

Tantra’s relationality is baroque in the extreme – every affect or capacity can become – temporarily – a person; a god-goddess – a transactional nexus for worship, reflection, interaction, the joy of self-recognition. Think of yantras, mandalas, mantras as modal states – yantras as shimmering networks of unfixed relational points – each point a Sakti with the potentiality for exploding outwards into her own yantra, on and on with fractal-like recursiveness. Consciousness as a flower endlessly unfolding with an infinite number of petals. To dwell within this perspective is to open up to the possibility of engagement.

“Tantra is a worldview and a set of techniques for relationality all the way down. On every level, from daily practice to metaphysics to cosmogony, the desire for relation and the pleasure of relation is a prime motivating or moving force. … Generalizing from several different kinds of accounts, a spontaneous desire for manifold relationships manifests a multiplicious world.” Anne Weinstone, Avatar Bodies (p119)

Tantra’s relationality bears, it seems sometimes, a relation to the occult ordering-machine – there is an excess of ordering-schemas. Maddeningly, for students used to having anything and everything given its fixed place, these schemas do not neatly correspond with each other, there are contradictions between texts, contradictions within texts. There are multiple creations – multiplite origins – in one text Ganesa is created by Parvati; elsewhere Ganesa is born from Lalita’s laughter. Points of relation shift and slide according to where one is at any particular moment. The margin slides to the centre and the centre slithers to the periphery.

Tantra’s relationality emerges from its very historical formation – not only do many of the practices that are identified as “tantric” appear in other fields & domains, but tantra borrows from everything around it – from what went before; from high culture to the vernacular; courtly epics and popular songs. The formal categories applied by scholars and occultists, in trying to distinguish this school from that face, left or right, up or down, disappear in its sheer rhizomatic exuberance. Formal temple tantra coexists with the descendants of wild munis. At best we can speak of multiple tantras, just as there are multiple ideas of what constitutes tantra in the first place – better to think of it perhaps as one style amidst a profusion of styles. So too, faculties we tend to conceive of as singular – perception, will, knowing, action, agency – emerge out of the inter-relational dance of capacities: the three shaktis – Jnana, Ichha, Kriya forming the triangle of powers. Apparent singularities & recognitions emerge from relationality. Within all this there remains, a deep commitment to multiplicious diversity – a commitment to keeping the world complex.

All Tantric practices bear relationality to various degrees. For me, a useful starting point is the Yamas and Niyamas – the cultivation of particular attitudes in which we can strive to express the ethic of relationality throughout each moment of our day-to-day lives.

“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.

Embodiment and “bodies” have been increasingly the subject of scholarly focus from the 1970s onwards. In contrast to the majoritarian “natural” body – typically assumed to be a fixed material entity, subject to empirical science and existing apart from culture, the body has been historicised, and analysed as as much a cultural phenomenon as a biological entity – and the very boundaries of corporeality have also been brought into question. For a useful overview, see Csordas, 1994; also Adrian Harris’ Embodiment Resources

Perspectives on Embodiment are shaping the way that scholars are approaching Tantric Bodies – in terms of understanding how traditions & practices produce Tantric Bodies. A number of scholars have drawn on Foucault’s studies of “technologies of the self” in order to interpret how disciplinary practices produce bodies in accordance with ideal subjectivities and symbolic representations.

The familiar dualism of mind v. body, or body v. soul, with the attendant antagonism towards the body (“The body is tomb”, says Plato, in his Gorgias) is (more or less) completely absent in South Asian theologies. As Herbert Guenther points out: “…the body is not something that man has, but man is his body.” (Guenther, 1972, p9) Furthermore, as Ian Whicher has argued, systems such as classical Samkhya and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras – which have tended to be interpreted as “dualistic” (and thereby associated with a world-denying “spiritual liberation”) can be approached in different ways (See for example, Whicher, 2003).

“The human body, which is a consequence of the contraction of consciousness, is thought to contain the higher universe beyond it and also the absolute consciousness of Siva which which it is ultimately identical and of which it is a projected form. The human body is, therefore, homologous with the cosmical hierarchy, which we might call the ‘manifest cosmic body,’ and contains within its transcendent source, what we might call the ‘essential cosmic body.’” Gavin Flood, Body and Cosmology in Kashmir Shaivism (Mellen Research University Press, 1993)

The Tantric Body, as Flood points out (2006) is actively constructed through practice and the forms of tradition – the body is shaped/experienced according to the root metaphors of tradition & culture. Lakoff & Johnson’s (1999) presentation of the embodied basis of metaphorical thinking is a useful starting point, although they overlook the historical and cultural specificity of metaphors – that is, the way that metaphorical concepts are shaped, constrained (and contested) within the surrounding social, cultural, historical & geopolitical contexts. It’s easy, for example, to fall into the trap of assuming that when tantric texts “talk” about bodies – that the idea of body corresponds to how the body is conceptualised in contemporary western thought. It’s usually the case that Sanskrit terms often interpreted as “body” have a much broader semantic range. The term atmabhava for example, which occurs in Buddhist texts, can be understood not only in terms of the corporeal/material body, but also the entire person – including feelings, thoughts, sense-perceptions and moral qualities. Similarly, the term hridya – often translated as “heart” refers not merely to the anatomical organ, but in a much broader sense, to the ‘core’ of one’s being which is simultaneously the whole of reality. In the nondual Trika the Heart embodies the paradoxical nature of Siva – both transcendent and immanent; simultaneously still and vibrating (see Muller-Ortega, 1989 for an examination of the Heart in nondual Kashmir Shaivism).

How then, to think of Tantric bodies? The Tantric body is all – it is the lived cosmos. Bodies are in constant flux; expanding – contracting; folding-unfolding; enmeshed in complex webs of relationality – mandala bodies; yantra bodies – relating/merging with other beings, both bodied and unbodied. Tantra bodies are multiplicities, open systems in continual process. The Tantric Body is both the site for, and the means of transformation – an expansion of awareness that the lived cosmos and transcendent source are identical to the body.

In the Trika tradition, visualisation -combined with other practices such as mantra, nyasa, etc., is said to draw the deities near to the practitioner by coalescing their shape or form out of consciousness, whereupon they come to reside in the ritually-prepared body – particularly in the heart. Aspects of tantra practice are often denoted as being either Internally (antaryaga) or externally (bahiryaga) directed. Internal worship might involve for example, visualising one’s chosen deity taking up residence in one’s body. External worship might involve worshipping a deity as present within an image. However, these should not be read as opposed practices, but as practices which synergistically support each other – internal practice (what might be construed as “meditation” in the West) supports and enhances external practice (ritual).

Susan Greenwood, in her recent work on magical consciousness (see review) has proposed that analogical thinking is core feature of magical consciousness. For nondual tantra as the entirety of the lived cosmos unfolds from a single point (see my notes on tattvas for some related discussion), I’d argue that Tantra is oriented towards homological thinking (iI’ll come back to this another time). Tantric texts abound with highly complex, rhizomatic homologies – and these homologies are not merely textual/abstract – but extend into social and material culture – to geographical locations, architectural elements, buildings, etc. Similarity between elements is never absolute, nor does it reduce differences – what we find instead is homologies between multiplicities. The Sankrit kula for example, can refer an (extended) family grouping – and by extension, what which is obtained from a family (in the sense of lineage); it can refer to a group of deities; to the embodied cosmos in the widest sense – and the process of that emergence (Sakti). Muller-Ortega points out that:

“In the inconceivable enormity of Siva’s game, any self-contained unit – for example, our universe – may be termed a kula. The unit is self-sufficient precisely because it is a part that is structured out of wholeness. Since the kula’s essential reality is finally that wholeness which it has bodied forth, every unit or kula, resonates in identity with every other structure, composed of that wholeness. It is in this way that the human body, as a kula, resonates in identity with the entire universe.

This resonance might be explained as a kind of parallelism between a microcosm, the body, and a macrocosm, the universe itself. The notion of kula, however, tends to collapse the micro/macrocosm distinction. In a final sense, due to the indivisible nature of Siva, microcosm and macrocosm are simply indistinguishable. Wherever Siva is present, the whole is present. If the body is a structure composed essentially of Siva, then all that is manifested from Siva, including the entire array of universes, may be found present in the body. Their presence in the body is not, it must be emphasised, as a microcosmic replica. The infinite reality out of which the array of universes are structured is present in the body, and thus they too are present in the body.” (Muller-Ortega, 1989, p101-102).

That seems like a good note to end (for now).

Further Reading
Thomas Csordas Embodiment and experience: the existential ground of culture and self (Cambridge University Press, 1994)
Gavin Flood, Body and Cosmology in Kashmir Shaivism Mellen Research University Press, 1993
Gavin Flood, The Tantric Body: The secret tradition of Hindu religion I.B. Tauris, 2006
Herbert Guenther The Tantric view of Life Shamballa Publications, 1972,
Geroge Lakoff & Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought (Basic Books, 1999)
David Peter Lawrence, The Teachings of the Odd-Eyed One: A study and translation of the Virupaksapancasika with the Commentary of Vidycakrvartin SUNY, 2008
Paul Muller-Ortega, The Triadic Heart of Siva: Kaula Tantricism of Abhinavagupta in the Non-Dual Shaivism of Kashmir SUNY, 1989
Anne Weinstone, Avatar Bodies: A Tantra for Posthumanism University of Minnesota Press, 2004
Ian Whicher, David Carpenter (eds) Yoga: the Indian Tradition RoutledgeCurzon, 2003
David Gordon White, Sinister Yogis University of Chicago Press, 2009

“The planes of yogic realization constitute wonder, astonishment.” Siva Sutras, 1.12

I confess, I came out of the 1990s acutely bored with the cool, detached, self-distancing irony which became so popular in that decade. I decided, instead, to make wonder my basic orientation towards the world – to find wonder in the everyday, in small things, the things I often took for granted. Wonder is often related to the perception of the novel, the unexpected, the inexplicable; it’s been linked to what is being increasingly termed a “spiritual” quest for increased connection – the feeling of belonging, of engaged participation. Wonder can be found in a small moment – the sudden unfamiliarity of any artifact and how it came to be; wonder can be an exhaustive epiphany, something I feel throughout my whole body, something that stays with me. Years ago, out climbing with some friends, I became stuck on a cliff, unable to move forwards or backwards, higly conscious of the sheer drop below me. I looked down, and beneath my feet was a frozen stream of ice. I looked into the ice, and was enfolded into a seemingly endless moment of sheer beauty by the scintillating colours and infinitismal reflections, until a friend inched his way over and led me to safety. That night, I dreamt of the colours of the ice, and the echoes of that memory remain with me still, over a decade later.

“The attitude of wonder is notably and essentially other-acknowledging. It is not shut up in self-concern or quasi-solipsistic withdrawal.” Ronald Hepburn, ‘Wonder’ and other Essays, 1984

Wonder has, I sometimes feel, been sidelined in contemporary discussions of magic – as magic is increasingly thought of as a eudaemonistic enterprise. Wonder is, in many ways, antithetical to ulititarian purposiveness, to the urge to categorise, to order. Wonder propels us towards the unfamiliar, to seek new relations, to revel in dizzying complexity and richness. Wonder pulls us into the world beyond a limited horizon, beyond the certain, the familiar, the possible. Wonder is excessive – and its excessive quality is something that western philosophy, trailing in the wake of Aristotle, has fought to foreclose, to rein in. Descartes suggested that whilst wonder might prompt us to learn the nature of things, one should try afterwards to emancipate ourselves from it as much as possible.

Turning to Rasa theory we find quite a different take on wonder.

Rasa is often translated as “savour”, “Juice”, “essence”. In terms of Indian aesthetics it refers not only to artistic-production but also aesthetic-enjoyment; both aspects are fundamentally inter-related and interconnected. Rasa resists definition. The Kashmiri Saivite philospher Abhinavagupta calls it a “magic flower” out of which blooms a sense of wonder. For Ahbinavagupta however, rasa is a “universal” emotion, and in order to taste it, one must forget one’s personal perspective and attachments and be receptive to the universal experience of that sensibility – an experience which is transformative, at least for one who has cultivated sahradaya – “a shared heart”. This aesthetic mode of perception requires the ability to let go of judgement, analysis; the intervention of the grasping mind; the colourings of personal history.

In the tantric and aesthetic works of Abhinavagupta, one finds the term camatkara – an experience of wonder which is itself aesthetic relish:

“The word camatkara, indeed, properly means the action being done by a tasting subject … by the enjoying subject, he who is immersed in the vibrations (spanda) of a marvelous enjoyment (adbhutabhoga)” (see Raniero Gnoli, The Aesthetic Experience according to Abhinavagupta).

Camatkara is also the “flashing forth” experienced when one delights in any sensation. It has the qualities of being uninterrupted (acchina), immersive (avesa) and a sensation of inner fullness (trpti).

The delight we may experience in eating a good meal, listening to music, seeing a close friend after many years of absence, is the result of the cultivation of our aesthetic sensibility:

“The wonder (we feel) is limited to the degree in which this vitality does not feed (consciousness). For the complete absence of wonder is, in effect, an absence of life. Conversely, aesthetic receptivity – being endowed with a heart – is to be immersed in an intense state of wonder consisting of the arousal of vitality. Only he whose heart is fed by this infinite and nourishing vitality, only he who is dedicated to the constant practice (of taking delight in this form of) pleasure, only he and none other is pre-eminently endowed with the ability to feel wonder.” Abhinavagupta, quoted in The Aphorisms of Siva by Vasgupta, Mark S.G. Dyczowski

Abhinavagupta’s yoga is a yoga of wonder, astonishment, delight. It is a discipline of attention, of sensitivity to the world – each opening to wonder bringing us closer to the all-pulsation (spanda) of consciousness which is all-pervading.

Wonder is often associated with the other-worldly, in something that lifts us beyond the ordinary, or everyday – it’s become associated with the idea of transcendence away from the world – towards the “sacred” as distinct from the “mundane.” I find Ursula Goodenough’s insistence on finding that which is sacred in the apprehension of the immediate an appropriate sentiment:

“My ethical aspirations are animated by my apprehension of the immediate, by my sense of belonging and relatedness.”

I have come to think of occultism as a kind of “ordering-machine” – one that still makes its presence felt in the desire to, for example, fit everything and anything onto the Tree of Life – to join the dots between different representational schema and give everything its assigned place; to arrange deities in neatly-ordered pantheons cosmological maps, in other words. Cosmological maps are often decribed as “worldviews” or “magical systems” and there is often an assumption made – that the religious/magical representations of a given group (or “culture”) are consistent, patterned, and structured. Furthermore, “worldviews” are often treated as though they are “monolithic” – that there is one particular schema that is representative for all individuals/groups who exist within the boundaries of the system – so it is not uncommon to see the proposition expressed that all “Native Americans” or “Eastern Peoples” share the same worldview.

So what’s a worldview? Definitions abound, but there seems to be some consensus that “worldviews” include five interrelated elements – ontology – a theory of what exists in the universe; world order – beliefs or theories about how things relate to each other; axiology – a value theory; epistemology – beliefs relating to the extent to which it is possible to know what exists; and ethics – how should we act?

One of the ways in which I familiarised myself with Qabalah was to photocopy the “map” of the Tree of Life and gradually, assign correspondences and colours to each sphere – memorising the colour scales, correspondences, Gods, etc. In some ways it was very familiar and comforting – like filling in the blank areas in a colouring book. But occasionally, it would strike me how abstract this process was – that I was interposing this system of order/connection-making between myself and my direct experience of the world. It’s fairly common nowadays to find occultists describing the Tree of Life as a map – and a cognitive map at that.

Susan Greenwood, in her The Nature of Magic: An Anthropology of Consciousness (Berg 2005) suggests that the ability to make “cosmological maps” is a key feature of what she calls “magical consciousness” – “Human consciousness the world over tends to be concerned with cognitive mapping and creating meanings between things.” Furthermore, she suggests that magical consciousness is a pan-human faculty of mind and one that is potentially innate to humans. She seems to be arguing that the human capacity for cognitive mapping is related to the holistic worldview which she views as central to her presentation of magical consciousness – that it is via the cognitive maps that we are able to make connections, analogical relationships, etc. that enable humans to experience participation with a greater totality.

That human beings have a capacity for mapping is not particularly contentious (leaving aside the issue of innateness for the moment), however, taking a cue from Tim Ingold, (in The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill, Routledge, 2000) I want to take a look at how we tend to think of these cosmological maps.

Ingold points out that “the justification for extending the map metaphor into the domain of cognition must lie in the assumption, more often than not unstated, that what the map affords is a representation of things in space that is independent of any particular point of view.” He goes on to discuss how scientists refer to their theories as maps, and how anthropologists attribute a maplike quality to society and culture. Ingold also notes that the maps favoured by modern cartographers and cognitive map theorists are oriented towards verticality – they present an abstract conception of space as though one were looking down upon it from ‘above’ – and that these representations assume that “the structure of the world, and so also that of the map which purports to represent it, is fixed without regard to the movements of its inhabitants. Like a theatrical stage from which all the actors have myseriously disappeared, the world – as it is represented in the map – appears deserted, devoid of life.No-one is there. Nothing is going on.”

Ingold is mostly discussing maps in the sense of navigating, but I think his argument can also be extended to cosmological/magical maps because they are often treated as though they are “independent” from cultural attachments – from the people who actually produce them – and often as though they were unchanging – springing from a deep historical “tradition” (or “higher reality”) rather than being revised and changed. The top-down view grants a “god’s eye” perspective that allows us to look at cosmological maps from the “outside”, and is underwritten by the western presupposition that “real” knowledge is distant, objective, and detached. Moreover, occult discourses tend towards the view that maps are interchangeable – that one map can be superimposed on another map and that maps are non-indexical to locale or practices.

I’ll leave it there for now – but what interests me is how much of an ordered “magical map” does one actually need to get by in the world? I suspect, that for much of my own practice, its been something more akin to a rough sketch than an a fully-ordered schema.

In reflecting on the primacy of practice as bodied experience I want to highlight one of the “thinking tools” of Pierre Bourdieu – Habitus and the related idea of Hexis.

Bourdieu’s approach to practice (see Outline of a Theory of Practice) is that not all learning is explicit and gained through discourse, but is often tacit and embodied. He also stresses that actions are often “unconscious” improvisations (“jamming”) and not merely related to consciously following rules. Further, such improvisations take place during activities without being “thought-through”. This capacity to improvise is the product of the social learning process in which the “game rules” of society are internalised and practiced (through activities and active self-making). According to Bourdieu. although learning takes place via the home and in school, it is the habituation – the repeated and affirmed performance of particular repertoires (including cognitive, affective and bodily) that form the unconscious dispositions of habitus. Socially competent performances thus become a matter of routine – we can act without being able to explain exactly what we are doing.

Habitus for Bourdieu, is a set of dispositions which incline agents to act in certain ways. Dispositions generate practices, perceptions and attitudes which are ‘regular’ without being consciously coordinated or governed by any conscious “rule”. Habitus predisposes members of a society to interact in ways consistent with the social norms of their group. It is the social, cultural and physical environment that we, as social beings inhabit, through which we know ourselves and through which others identify us. These dispositions include postures, speech styles, ways of eating, moving, conceptions of private space, predispositions towards particular ways of thinking and feeling – they are habits of orienting one’s physical & psychological selfhood to the world. Bourdieu holds that these dispositions are preconscious and so not readily amenable to conscious reflection and modification – we perform them without conscious reflection because they are “obvious” and commonsensical, and as it were, we have ‘forgotten’ that we have learned them. For Bourdieu, the body itself is the “site of incorporated history”.

“Bodily hexis is political mythology realised, embodied, turned into a permanent disposition, a durable manner of standing, speaking and thereby of feeling and thinking.” Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice

Bodily hexis is the expression of all the factors which make up one’s habitus – embodied in our physical being. It is in bodily hexis that the personal combines with the social.The body is a mnemonic device upon which and in, the very basics of culture are imprinted and enacted. For Bourdieu, the way that we relate to our bodies reveals the “deepest dispositions of the habitus”. One of Bourdieu’s examples of hexis is how the politics of gender are revealed through ways of walking, sitting or even standing still:

If all societies … set such store on the seemingly most insignificant details of dress, bearing, physical and verbal manners, the reason is that, treating the body as a memory, they entrust to it in abbreviated and practical, i.e. mnemonic, form the fundamental principles of the arbitary content of culture. The principles embodied in this way are placed beyond the grasp of consciousness, and hence cannot be touched by voluntary, deliberate transformation, cannot even be made explicit; nothing seems more ineffable, more incommunicable, more intimable,. and therefore more precious, than the values given body, made body by the transsubstantiation achieved by the hidden persuasion of an implicit pedagogy, capable of instilling a whole cosmology, an ethic, a metaphysic, a political philosophy, through injunctions as insignificant as ‘stand up straight’ or ‘don’t hold your knife in your left hand’. Bourdieu, 1977

Bourdieu was attempting to produce a way of looking at action that overcame the ‘gap’ between individual agency and social structures. There are problems with his theories (which I won’t go into here) but what interests me at the moment is this emphasis on the body as that which acted upon (and used to act with) and as a repository of cultural and symbolic value. The body, for Bourdieu, is a public object (in addition to being experienced privately), formed and known through social practices and discourses.

This practice is suggested by Lalita’s quality of playfulness. She is occasionally described in Sri Vidya texts as restless – her eyes constantly moving to and fro, delighting in the play of Her creation. Our task, as transient glimmerings enfolded within this play, is to intensify – to dwell – in the wonder of the pulsation of consciousness; to drink the nectar of the flowers of experience.

There is no need to make playful mind a seperate practice – it can be done everywhere. Right now, typing this, I am aware of the touch of my fingers on the keyboard; the impact of the keys, the springiness of its response. I smell the coffee steaming in the cup to my left. I can hear a conversation somewhere ahead of me, a burst of laughter from further away. The muted rumble of a train as it passes by the window. The almost subliminal hum of the air conditioning. I feel the weight of my shirt on my arms. I can still taste the dates I ate a moment ago. Pausing for a moment and listening, I can hear the rattle of keyboards up and down the office. Glancing to my left, I let my attention fall upon the soft shadows cast by the edges of desks under the glow of strip lights.

She is the Mother Who gladdens creation, the cause of happiness in the world, causing all love in the world, creating the world, the Devi made of Mantra, great good fortune Sundari, consisting of all wealth, eternal, supremely blissful, joyful. Vamakeshvara Tantra

The basic idea of deity meditation is that by focusing/contemplating the form of a deity (either using an iconic image or a textual description), the practitioner comes to identify with that deity and eventually takes on that deity’s qualities or gains that deities’ perspective. Generally speaking, there is a progression from meditating on the anthropomorphic image of a deity to meditating on more abstract qualities. Some texts reccomend that practitioners begin by meditating on “bits” of the deity and then working towards meditating on the entire form of the deity. Here’s an example of a meditation on various aspects of Lalita’s body:

“At the rising of the sun I meditate on the face of the playful goddess
Her lips are red, Her nose is adorned with a pearl
Her eyes flash this way and that, seeking delight
Her smile is dazzling

At the rising of the sun I worship the hands of Lalita the playful
Her tender fingers are adorned with diamond rings dancing with rainbow colours
Her hands are adorned with gold bangles that tinkle melodiously
She holds the sugarcane bow, the arrows of desire, a noose of silk
She gives the gesture of granting boons

At dawn I bow to the lotus feet of the playful one
Her feet seem to dance without moving
Her toenails shine like finest ivory

At dawn I praise the supreme goddess Lalita
She who fulfills the desires of her devotees
She who is the cause of creation, existence and destruction
She who is the Universe

At dawn I utter your names O Lalita
Kamesvari, Tripurasundari, Mahesvari, Kamala, Para”

What the practitioner is doing with regard to this meditation is attempting to fix a mental image in her or his “mind’s eye” and, at the same time, recalling those qualities which are associated with Lalita. So in the first stanza, one is visualising a beautiful face – or at least, bits of a beautiful face: red lips, a nice smile, lovely eyes. These can be any images that come to mind at the time of the meditation.

Basically, the first stanza is saying, look at Lalita’s face (or bits of her face) – she’s lovely, and she’s playful. So one might find oneself thinking of images that represent playfulness.

The second stanza is about Lalita’s hands. There are rings on her fingers which send out flashing colours, and her bangles makes a tinkling sound. So one can visualise shimmering colours and imagine hearing tinkling bells. She holds the Sugarcane bow (mind) and the five arrows (five senses) in one hand – a reminder that she is the source of all sensory experience. As for “She holds a noose of silk” – well, in the original text (by Sankara) I based this on, it was just a noose. I made it a “noose of silk” because silk has more sensuous associations than just ordinary rope. The noose is the weapon used by Lalita to draw her devotees to her. The gesture of “granting boons” (i.e. fulfilling the desires of devotees) is made by holding the open palm outwards, fingers pointing downwards.

So there’s a bit more complex associations in this second stanza.

The third stanza is about meditating on the sacred feet of the goddess. Bowing to the feet being a sign of respect, of course. Again, one can visualise a nice pair of feet, but it would also be appropriate to call to mind memories of dancing.

The fourth and fifth stanzas are a bit more abstract and can be done at the same time. One might approach the 4th stanza by recalling that everything (including yourself) is part of Lalita, and by reciting the three names given:
Kamesvari – “mistress of passion”
Tripurasundari – “lovely goddess of the three cities”
Mahesvari – “Great goddess”
Kamala – “Lotus-like one”
Para – “Above all”

Obviously there’s a lot of associations around those titles, investigation of which will further deepen the practice.

So, to recap. This set of stanzas has the aim of helping the practitioner form mental images associated with Lalita and making an association between these images and some of Her qualities – that she is lovely, seductive, continually in motion (her eyes, darting this way and that, the shimmering colours on her hands, the sounds made by her bangles, her dancing feet) and above all, that She is playful – and takes delight in everything. The key quality of Lalita is playfulness – which is the quality the practitioner is trying to identify with and so enhance in one’s own experience. By identifying with Lalita’s quality of playfulness, one is basically adopting the attitude of playfulness towards everything. As part of this practice, you might want to reflect on what becoming playful means to you.