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.
Many explanations of Tantra focus on “techniques” but deny that Tantric practice is religious in its orientation. This is usually achieved by characterizing religion in wholly negative terms. For example, the late Donald Michael Kraig, in his book Modern Tantra, writes: “Religion”, by its very definition of binding together, is the unifying of masses under institutional leadership organized around a mythical story with a dated and unchanging theology.” 1
He goes on to state that people who belong to a religion share a “belief system” which they do not understand, and that provides them with an emotional sense of belonging. This is a good example of a negative portrayal of religion, and Kraig deploys it to reinforce his assertion that “Tantra” is not a religion – it is individual, and it has no central doctrine. What may not be immediately apparent is that Kraig’s definition of religion as “binding together” is a Christian one. 2 So there’s already an element of bias creeping in here. It begs questions – do all religions have a shared, central doctrine and a “dated and unchanging theology”?
In making this argument, Kraig is drawing on a binary opposition between magic and religion. I’ve outlined some of the features of this binary (from a variety of sources) in the table below.
| Magic | Religion |
| Power rests with the Individual | Power comes from a divine source that must be submitted to |
| Magic is pragmatic, dealing with worldly concerns | Religion is transcendental and deals with the “big” questions of life |
| Magic is experimental | Religion demands faith and belief |
| Magic is private | Religion is social |
| Magic does not rely on doctrine/dogmas | Religion is doctrinal (and dogmatic) |
| Magic deals with the gods directly | Religion requires a priesthood |
Binary oppositions are very useful insofar as it is easy to construct an argument by disparaging the side you want to put down and elevating the side you are rooting for (most binary oppositions have this kind of bias built in). In the table, I’ve deliberately made the characteristics of magic more attractive than the characteristics of religion. I could equally have prioritized the negative characteristics of magic against the religious ones.
Where does this distinction between magic and religion come from? Briefly, it first emerged during the Protestant Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries. It was then taken up in the 19th century by the early theorists of comparative religion (Frazer, Tylor, Muller, et al) who believed that all cultures evolved from a primitive state in which magic was the dominant belief, and ended up (if they were lucky) with some form of monotheistic religion (i.e. Christianity). Incidentally, the rest of Kraig’s argument – that religious people do not actually understand their own beliefs – is also reminiscent of 18th-century critiques of religion. Richard Payne Knight, in his A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus (1786) expresses a similar view:
“It is observable in all modern religions, that men are superstitious in proportion as they are ignorant, and that those who know least of the principles of religion are the most earnest and fervent in the practice of its exterior rites and ceremonies.”
(Just as an aside, such arguments were routinely trotted out in the 18th and 19th centuries against all forms of Indian religion – in particular by missionaries such as William Ward).
Let’s go back to a voice from within the tantric traditions that I quoted in the first post in this series, the 10th-century Śaiva, Rāma kaṇṭha:
“A tantra is a body of teachings, constituting the revealed command of the Lord, which establishes the obligatory injunctions and prohibitions for His worship, preceded by the exposition of the special consecrations of those eligible for the higher and lower aims of human existence.”
From Christopher Wallis, Tantra Illuminated: The Philosophy, History, and Practice of a Timeless Tradition Mattamayūra Press. 2013.
This verse tells us several things:
- A tantra is a scripture – “the revealed command of the Lord”. (Śiva)
- A tantra’s teachings include the “obligatory injunctions and prohibitions for His worship” i.e. what a practitioner must and must not do. Sounds like “rules” to me.
- A tantra’s teachings are for those who are “eligible” i.e. the initiated practitioner. It’s not for anyone.
- A tantra deals with the higher and lower aims of existence. The lower aim here is worldly enjoyment, and the higher aim is liberation. Liberation is a soteriological aim – salvation, in other words.
Admittedly, Rāma kaṇṭha is speaking out of the broad base of the tradition, the Śaiva Siddhanta (see this post for an overview), and later traditions – the Kaulas – rejected and reworked many of the earlier doctrinal ideas in favor of a more gnostically-inclined approach.
Furthermore, the tantras complicate the binary opposition between religion and magic. Rituals, and in particular mantras can be used for either worldly enjoyments (wealth, martial prowess, etc.) or for liberation from the cycle of birth and death. There is certainly no hard opposition between the two. Some scholars have made the case that the tantras are neither religious nor magical, due to the origins of these categories in European discourse, and warn against the uncritical application of them to other cultures and periods. Personally, I have no problem with viewing the tantras as both (esoteric) religions and magical.
Notes:
