Saundaryalahari is widely attested to be one of the most famous and beautiful Sanskrit “hymns” praising Tripurasundari Devi as the Supreme Power. It has been approximately dated to the tenth century (possibly before). It is often divided into two sections; the first, comprising of verses 1-41, is sometimes called the Anandalahari – “Wave of Joy”. The first section can be said to be the most clearly “tantric” part of the text, providing dhyanas (visualised scenes of the Devi for meditation/ritual), Her Yantra and Mantra, and locating the goddess within various schemas (i.e. cakras and rays) and extolling the fruits of sadhana directed to Her. The second section is an extensive poetic meditation on the goddess, from her head to her feet.

Rich in insights and imagery, the Saundaryalahari not only contains references to familiar tantric and puranic themes, but also addresses the Devi directly; its core message being that contemplating the Devi in her diverse forms – as a Goddess, as present in oneself and the world – is the superior path. As Francis X. Clooney writes (2005, p156): “The hymn is itself a beneficient utterance; to hear it enables one to draw on the riches latent within it. Sankara’s extraordinary gift intends the widest possible audience: all those willing to look upon Her”.

Although it is ostensibly a “tantric” text of the Sri Vidya school, it can be approached (i.e. read) and interpreted in a number of ways. For instance, it can be approached/enjoyed purely as a literary work; read from a Bhakti (“devotional”) perspective, or treated as a ritual manual. Furthermore, the text can “speak” to – and thereby “produce” different (theological) identities. For example, the Saundaryalahari is often celebrated (helped no doubt by the popular attributation of authorship to Sankara) as an Advaitin text – an interpretation which is bolstered through several commentaries. It is not the case (as is sometimes assumed) that there is one interpretation of the text which is “superior” or more authentic than others, rather that the text lends itself to multiple interpretations and uses – and as a practitioner one can simultaneously appreciate the text as a aesthetic production, as a devotional work, and a set of coded ritual instructions or guidelines. In fact, I would say that the way Saundaryalahari is written implies such a pluralistic approach.

There are many English translations of the Saundaryalahari available – for example Sastri and Ayyangar (1948), Norman Brown (1958), & Francis X Clooney (2005). There is also an extensive commentarial tradition associated with the text (according to Pande, over thirty-five commentaries), one of the most well-known of which is Laksmidhara’s (16th century). The authorship of Saundaryalahari is popularly attributed to Sankara.
There is a great deal of scholarly debate around Sankara’s purported authorship, and some scholars have opined that this is (yet another) example of a tantric work’s authorship being attributed to a respected source; whilst others have suggested that Sankara was involved in some degree of tantric practice.

The vision of the Goddess
Saundaryalahari is directed at Tripurasundari Devi; She is the Supreme Power, the creator-sustainer-destroyer of the world. Gods such as Hari (Vishnu), Virinci (Brahma) and Hara (Siva) are players within her drama (I will have more to say about how the text presents Devi’s relationship with Siva in a later post). Devi is both the supreme transcendent power and is immanently present in the world – directly apprehendable to those who are willing to recognise Her presence:

“You are mind, You are air.
You are wind and the rider of wind,
You are water, You are earth,
beyond You as You evolve
there is nothing higher,
there is only You, and
when You transform Yourself by every form,
then You take the form of consciousness and bliss
as a way of being,
O Siva’s youthful one! (35)
(Transl. Clooney, 2005, p159)

At the same time, She is a beautiful, erotic woman, the embodiment of desire (Kama). The verses emphasise Her maternal (caring) and erotic (desiring) qualities – there is no direct reference to Tripurasundari’s exploits as a battle-goddess (which can be found in the Lalitopakhyana) nor is She identified with Kali or Durga, as occurs in the Lalitasahasramana. Saundaryalahari is not so much concerned with extolling the past deeds of Devi, but directly speaks to Devi in the present tense of who is speaking/reading the verses – and frequently addresses Her as “You”.

I noted earlier that the second half of Saundaryalahari is given over to a head-to-toe extolling of the beautiful body of Devi, overlaying her body with mythological themes and a profusion of rich natural metaphors – many of which are common themes in Indian poetics. This is a popular, formal Indian literary set piece called a nakh-sikh varnana – “toe-to-head description”. There is a convention that in the case of goddesses or gods, the poet’s/viewers eyes should first dwell on the divine feet and move upwards, whereas for human beings, the description may begin with the face and move downward. See for example, Keshavdas’ Kavipriya – ‘Handbook for Poets’, chapter fifteen of which discusses this convention:

“Keshavdas says,
Seeing the beauty of a goddess one should describe her from toe to head
But a mortal woman should be described differently: from head to toe.”

Saundaryalahari however, follows the descriptive course from the head of Devi to Her feet. Admittedly, I do not know if this literary convention is commonly inverted (or just ignored) in tantric-oriented poetics, but it could be interpreted as another literary device to underscore that the Devi is an embodied woman as much as She is the all-pervading Goddess – and that she is easily and directly approachable via devotion rather than ritual and ascetic practice.

The embodiment of desire
Just as the world is an emanation of Her beauty and her play (lila,) so too, to apprehend the world – through the modalities of the senses (vision, taste, etc), through speech, and through desire, the devotee can recognise the presence of Devi in all things, in each passing moment – and that very act of recognition is transformative. Just as Her body is homologised with the world/cosmos, it is through bodies that the encounter with the divine becomes comprehensible. She is the Source, the apprehension of, and the fulfilment of desire/bliss in every realm of experience. That Saundaryalahari presents Devi as both desiring and desired is not surprising if we consider the primacy of desire (kama) within the Hindu tradition. From the Vedas onwards, desire is a primary motivating force:

“It is a cosmic force, but not to be understood as a kind of blind energy or impersonal urge. On the contrary, the personal is so much included in the transpersonal element that kama is said to be the first seed of mind, the firstborn of the Absolute and thereafter the loftiest characteristic of all created beings, and more particularly of human beings. Kama is the driving force in any enterprise, the highest of all human qualities. There is one and the same urge stimulating the entire range of reality, one and the same energy pushing the universe to expand – and it is kama. … Kama is not a hankering after what is lacking in the individual; it is not an imperfection and thus a cause of suffering. Kama is not the proof that we have not yet arrived, that we are imperfect and enmeshed in unfulfilled longings and unsatisfied urges. Kama is, on the contrary, the perfection of expansion, the quality of creativity, the positive dynamism to be more….”
Raimon Panikkar (1995, pp242-243)

According to Saundaryalahari, Devi is the source of Kama’s power:

“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 world single-handedly.”(6)
(Transl. Clooney, 2005, p50)

Kama – the bodiless (“he has no limbs”) is destroyed by the burning gaze of Siva (as recounted in the Siva Purana and Kalidasa’s Kumarasambhava) – and this narrative is recalled in a later stanza:

“O daughter of the mountain,
the mind-born one plunged himself into the deep pool of Your navel,
his body enveloped by the flames of Hara’s anger,
and from there rose a creeper of smoke:
people say it is Your line of down,
O Mother.” (76)
(Transl. Clooney, 2005)

- which implies that Kama has merged (or returned) into the body of Devi – again suggesting that the experience of kama is impelled by Devi (many of her epithets suggest this); that all desire emanates from Devi; in particular, through Her gaze or glance:

“Daughter of the king of the unmoving mountain,
To whom would the ridges between Your eye and ear not convey
The eagerness of the bow of that god whose arrows are flowers?
Your passionate glance travels sideways
From the corner of Your eyr and along the path of hearing,
And there it gleams,
Suggesting the mounting of an arrow.”(59)
(Transl. Clooney, 2005)

An earlier sloka illustrates the power of Devi’s glance to impell desire:

“If an old man,
unpleasing to the eye and impotent in play,
falls within the range of Your glances
then hundreds will run after him,
all the young women,
locks disheveled,
clothes falling from their breasts,
girdles bursting with force,
fine garments slipping down.”(13)
(Transl. Clooney, 2005)

A fairly common trope within tantric-oriented texts is that one of the fruits of practice for the male practitioner (and the majority of texts do reflect a male perspective) is that women will become attracted to him (Loriliai Biernacki describes this aptly as “James Bond Syndrome”). This verse is expressing something different. Some commentators have taken this verse to indicate that anyone (or anything), no matter how outwardly unattractive will – once favoured with Devi’s glance – become an attractor; become desirable. However, there is more. The “old man” can be interpreted as referring to Siva in his ascetic mode – and again stressing that Siva’s power to attract, ultimately, comes from Devi. Possibly, the verse is referring to the well-known narrative (see for example, the Linga Purana) wherein Siva seduces the wives of the Sages in the Deodar Forest.

The verse also higlights the speed and suddenness with which desire can flood a person; the power of a sudden and overwhelming infatuation which causes one to throw caution to the wind and no longer rely on the conscious self-presentation represented by fine clothes and coiffure. There is also a hint here of a larger theme within Saundaryalahari – that to be favoured by Devi; to open oneself to “the flood of beauty” is superior to all other paths and practices. The verse can also be read as a confirmation of the mutuality between a single, inert, absolute figure (the old man/Siva) – and dynamic multiplicity (the hundreds of running young women/multipleSaktis).

In the next post in this series, I’ll take a closer look at some of the themes present in verses 1-41 – the Anandalahari.

Sources
Loriliai Biernacki Renowned Goddess of Desire: Women, Sex, and Speech in Tantra (Oxford University Press, 2007)
Douglas Renfrew Brooks, Auspicious Wisdom: The Texts and Traditions of Srividya Sakta Tantrism in South India (State University of New York, 1992)
Norman Brown, 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)
Meera Kachroo, The Goddess and Her Powers: The Tantric Identities of the Saundarya Lahari (MA Thesis, McGill University, June 2005)
Govind Chandra Pande Life and thought of Śankarācārya (Motilal, 1994)
David R. Kinsley Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahavidyas (University of California Press, 1997)
Raimon Panikkar, The Vedic Experience (Motilal, 1995)
Pandit S. Subrahmanya Sastri and T.R. Srinivasa Ayyangar, Saundarya Lahari (Theosophical Publishing House, 1948)

Web Sources
Saundarya Lahari online translation by P. R. Ramachander

Mike Magee has been providing invaluable translations and insights into tantric texts since the late 1970s. He’s also renown as an IT journalist – launching two major news sites – The Register and The Inquirer and has been named by the Daily Telegraph as one of the 50 most influential Britons in technology. Now he’s taken the leap onto Amazon’s Kindle platform and released The Mysteries of the Red Goddess which combines a translation of the Vamakesvara Tantra together with an exposition of themes and ideas which relate to the Sri Vidya tradition.

The Vamakesvara Tantra is widely recognised as one of the primary texts of the Sri Vidya tradition. Although, like many tantras, it is difficult to date accurately, scholars such as Guy L. Beck and Douglas Renfrew Brooks have offered the opinion that it was composed before the the ninth century (a 12th-13th century commentary ascribed to Jayaratha states that an earlier commentary was made by Isvarasiva, a 9th century Kashmiri author). In this book, Mike gives a translation of the five patalas of the text – which is one part of a larger work – the Nityashodashikarnava (he gives a summary of the content of the second part, the Yogini Hridaya on his website.

The translation of the tantra itself is prefaced by a general introduction to Lalita Tripurasundari and to the key themes of Sri Vidya practice. Mike provides an overview of the nine arvanas (or mandalas) of the Sri Yantra and the various groups of saktis dwelling therein, briefly discourses on Lalita’s fifteen-syllable mantra, and provides some extensive dhyanas on Lalita and Her Paradise Island. There is an excellent and very welcome section detailing Lalita’s fifteen Nityas (“eternities”) including their yantras, mantras and dhyanas. This exposition forms a very useful recap for practitioners, and those with some familiarity with tantric themes, but I daresay that a general reader who is new to all this will find themselves having to do some research.

The Vamakesvara Tantra is a dense, sophisticated text which shows influences of Kaula and Kashmiri Saivism (for a discussion of the relationship between Sri Vidya and Saivism see Brooks in The Roots of Tantra, Brown, Harper, SUNY 2002). The first patala is mainly concerned with instructions for creating the “great chakra” (i.e. the Sri Yantra). The second patala is an exposition of various abhicara rituals (see this post for some discussion) – sometimes termed the “six acts”. The third patala is an exposition of the Tripura Mudras and the fourth gives the siddhis obtained from the worship of the Goddess. The fifth patala gives the rules for homa and japa sadhana.

All in all, The Mysteries of the Red Goddess is a great little ebook, and whilst it will be of particular interest to contemporary practitioners of Sri Vidya, it will benefit anyone who is interested in finding out more about tantric practices and traditions. Hopefully, Mike will see his way to releasing more of his translations and expositions in this format.

For more translations and summaries of tantric texts online and in pdf format, visit mike’s Shiva Shakti Mandalam website.

Notes
If you don’t have a Kindle, then you can always install one of the other Kindle format Reading Apps. I’ve tried both the PC and iPad versions of the Kindle App and they both work well – although the PC version does not support the creation of notes as the iPad does. I haven’t investigated the Kindle Cloud Reader as yet.

For scholarly approaches to Sri Vidya, I’d recommend Douglas Renfrew Brooks’ The secret of the three cities: an introduction to Hindu Śākta tantrism (Univ. Chicago Press, 1990) & Auspicious Wisdom: The Texts and Traditions of Srividya Sakta Tantrism in South India (SUNY 1992) and Rajmani Tigunait’s Sakti: the power in Tantra : a scholarly approach (The Himalayan Institute Press, 1998)

“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.

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.

I was standing in water the other day and the angle of it created a stream broken into drops, cascading from the end of my chin. Each drop chased the preceding one and, looking down at them, I was hit by amazement. Their light-catching, simple procession immersed me in immediate wonderment. But I was not bathing in a dramatic waterfall, merely showering on ordinary morning. Tantrism is a philosophy of the cultivation of everyday ecstasy. 

Some contributors to enfolding.org study and practise a form of tantrism grounded in Sri Vidya. Sri Vidya tantra focuses on the divine as Sri Lalita Tripura Sundari, which translates as “she the most beautiful goddess of the three worlds”. Lalita, or “she who plays”, may be thought of as a triplicity because it is said that Brahma the creator, Visnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer are her powers.

Sri Vidya is Shaktism, where the divine as feminine is given prominence, whilst other forms of tantrism may emphasise Shiva or Vishnu. It is also a cult of ecstatic experience. Sri Vidya “espouses a kind of ‘divine materialism’ where “matter and spirit are not ultimately distinct but are a continuity subsumed within sakti, the dynamic feminine creative principle” The Hindu World (2004: 143). 

As a philosophy or a theaology (thea = goddess, as opposed to theo = god) Sri Vidya is startlingly different from the historical philosophies and theologies that Westerners are most familiar with. Aristotle, in The Generation of Animals (circa 330 BC), considered that “the female always provides the material, the male that which fashions it… While the body is from the female, it is the soul that is from the male, for the soul is the reality of a particular body”. This active/ passive, mind/ body split, foundation of Western thought, gave to man the mind and to woman the body, elevating the former and debasing the latter. And it was coded into the next two thousand years of Western culture (for an excellent history of that trajectory in medical science see Thomas Lacquer’s Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, 1992).

Written tantric texts cannot be dated earlier than the 9^th or 10^th centuries AD, but some scholars, for example Thomas McEvilley,  consider, based on an interpretation of archaeological evidence, that the roots of tantra lie in the Indus valley culture some 2800 BC.

In Sri Vidya tantrism there is no mind/ body split nor is there a separation between the human spirit and the divine. This makes it a philosophy of monism, as opposed to dualism. It is a pantheistic (the divine is present in all living things) and also an immanent philosophy (the spirit as material). It differs from the non-dualism of Aidvata Vedanta, a school of philosophy, based in the Vedas, which also believes human spirit and the divine are not separate; because in that philosophy the material world is a reflection or an illusion of the divine, and for the soul to return to consciousness of union with the divine that illusion must be overcome. Plato, Aristotle’s teacher, also conceived of the world as a less perfect reflection of the divine, as the famous “allegory of the cave” in the Republic (circa 400 BC) exposits, and Plato had a profound influence on Christianity with its conceptual split between the divine ideal and the debased material. By contrast, in Sri Vidya the material world simply is divine. Thus, for Sri Vidya tantric practitioners, it is in mindful/ worshipful experiences of and through the body that we may experience spiritual ecstasy, our one-ness with Lalita:

“This whole world is interwoven in Me; It is I that am the Îs’vara that resides in causal bodies; I am the Sutrâtman, Hiranyagarbha that resides in subtle bodies and it is I that am the Virât, residing in the gross bodies. I am Brahmâ, Visnu, and Mahes’vara; I am the Brâhmâ, Vaisnavi and Raudrî S’aktis. I am the Sun, I am the Moon, I am the Stars; I am beast, birds, Chandâlas, and I am the Thief, I am the cruel hunter; I am the virtuous high-souled persons and I am the female, male, and hermaphrodite… There is nothing moving or unmoving, that can exist without Me.”

Devi-Bhagavata Purana (11^th century text: chapter 33).  

And unlike Aristotle, tantrism views the feminine principle Shakti as active and dynamic and the male principle Shiva as passive and quiescent, although in Sri Vidya tantrism both are aspects of Lalita and are thus not in fact separate and distinct.

Contemporary Western paganisms tend not to have tremendously developed theo or thealogies; these religions are after all very young. But, whether elaborately theorised or not, “divine materialism” or the divinity of the body, is a core belief. This means that the celebration the sacred principle of sexuality tends to be key. And additionally, because second wave (1970s) feminism is one of the roots of contemporary Western paganisms, the divine feminine likewise tends to be prominent.

 “Of all the world’s religions, Hinduism has the most elaborate living goddess traditions… [but]… a necessary correlation between powerful goddesses and empowered women would imply simplistic theories of role models” write Alf Hiltebeitel and Kathleen Erndl  in Is the Goddess a Feminist? The Politics of South Asian Goddesses (2000: 11 and 17) The complexities of the relationship between the divine feminine and the social position of women was brought home to me very recently. I met a young woman from India on a weekend workshop with Starhawk, who had come, she said, on a “spiritual pilgrimage” to the UK in search of feminist goddess religion. She told me she did not feel comfortable visiting the temples back home because the priests were inclined to sexually molest young women and she said felt stifled by the expectations of her parents’ patriarchal culture. As a Western student of Sri Vidya tantrism, a goddess-centered spiritual practice originating in India, I had to smile at the juxtaposition of our journeys, she to the West and I to the East, crossing continents in search of divinity we could stand tall within. 

Because it blasts Aristotle out of the water, Sri Vidya tantrism feels revolutionary, mind-blowingly radical even, to me. In fact tantrism has both strongly egalitarian and strongly elitist tendencies, of which more in another post… 

On a closing note, I wonder what the difference might be between the “divine materialism” of Sri Vidya, the celebration of the body we find in modern Western paganisms, and contemporary capitalism itself, which has, after all, elevated consumerism to the status of right moral action? More on this next time…

Let’s take verses 7-8 for instance, which apparently give a description of Lalita suitable for meditation/external worship:

“Banded with a tinkling girdle, heavy with breasts like the frontal lobes of young elephants,
slender of waist, with face like the full moon of autumn,
bearing on the palms of her hands bow, arrows, noose, and goad,
let there be seated before us the pride of him who shook the cities.(7)
In the midst of the Ocean of Nectar, where covered with groves of heavenly wishing trees
is the Isle of Gems, in the mansion of wishing jewels with its grove of nipa trees,
on a couch composed of the four gods Shiva, your seat a mattress which
is Paramashiva – some few lucky ones worship you, a flood of consciousness and bliss.(8)”

Verse 8 in particular homologises the image-modality of Lalita with her as Yantra. The Ocean of Nectar is both the bindu of the yantra, the heart-space and possibly, the Sahasrara. The heavenly wishing trees can be taken as a reference to the five downward-pointing triangles of the Yantra.

Lalita’s weapons (v7) can be understood in the following ways. Firstly, in terms of likes and dislikes as noose – attachment/desire; goad – aversion/anger. Another perspective would be that through the noose Lalita draws her devotees to Herself and through the goad, she encourages their resolve to worship Her.
The bow and arrows is of course the sugarcane bow of the mind and the five tanmatras. The three weapons together can be thought of as: noose=icchashakti; goad=jnanashakti; bow+arrows=kriyashakti. Again, Lalita is the source of these – recalling the Tattvas – through her sport or play in emitting the Universe.

The four gods who make up the couch (they are the four supports, or legs, of her seat) are Brahma (southeast), Visnu (southwest), Rudra (northwest) and Isvara (northeast). The Isle of Gems and the mansion of wishing gems may be taken as references to the nine chakras in Sri Vidya.

Nipa trees (“water coconuts”) are a type of palm tree, bearing clustered fruits, from which can be extracted sugar. Its sap ferments very quickly.

Likening Lalita’s face to the autumnal full moon reinforces the radiance of her face to the devotee. India’s autumnal period (aproximately mid-October to December) is relatively free of clouds, allowing the moon to shine brightly and clearly.

The pleasure-garden setting reinforces the fact of Lalita’s royal status.

“the pride of him who shook the cities” – is a bit more tricky. Obviously a reference to Siva; this particular translation seems to indicate that Lalita is the source of Siva’s ability – i.e. inseperable Sakti.

This is just a beginning obviously – I’m not even going to go into the process of decoding the mantras hidden in the verses.