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Posts tagged ‘becomings’

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

   “There is something demoniacal or demonic in a line of flight. Demons are different from gods, because gods have fixed attributes, properties and functions, territories and codes: they have to do with rails, boundaries and surveys. What demons do is jump across intervals, and leap from one interval to another.”
   Gilles Deleuze, Clair Parnet Dialogues II p40

   “Busy in making themselves felt, the ganas were the comparitively infinitesmal quantities replete with the impulsion of his presence that swelled the host of the Great God. … The demonism and density of Siva’s entourage, which throbbed with the invisible and varied texture of feeling alive, was tinged with grotesque and lugubrious hues.”
   Stella Kramrisch, The Presence of Siva p395

   In the previous post, I examined Karraikal Aimmaiyar – “the woman who became a ghoul” and joined Siva’s ganas. This time, I’m going to take a closer look at Siva’s ganas – the hooligans of heaven. Continue reading »

   

   June 25th 2011

   Posted by Phil Hine in Deleuze, Queer, tantra

   Tags: becomings, bodies

   1 comment »

2. Multiplicious Becomings: tantric theologies of the grotesque – I

   “It can be said that becoming-animal is an affair of sorcery because (1) it implies an initial relation of alliance with a demon; (2) the demon functions as the borderline of an animal pack, into which the human being passes or in which his or her becoming takes place, by contagion; (3) this becoming itself implies a second alliance, with another human group; (4) this new borderline between the two groups guides the contagion of animal and human being within the pack. There is an entire politics of becomings-animal, as well as a politics of sorcery, which is elaborated in assemblages that are neither those of the family, nor of religion nor the State. Instead, they express minoritarian groups, or groups that are oppressed, prohibited, in revolt, or always on the fringe of recognised institutions, groups all the more secret for being extrinsic, in other words, anomic.”
   Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

   One of the major projects I am exploring here on enfolding is the sidling towards an (unnatural) alliance between Continental Philosophy, tantrisms, and queer theories. An obvious point of intersection between these three areas is the emphasis on multiplicities, metamorphosis, hybridity and the grotesque. Continue reading »

   

   June 20th 2011

   Posted by Phil Hine in Deleuze, Queer, tantra

   Tags: becomings, bodies

   4 comments »

3. Sakti bodies – I

   “By you is everything supported, by you is the world created: by you is it protected, O Goddess, and you always consume (it) at the end (of time).
   At (its) emanation you have the form of creation; in (its) protection (you have) the form of steadiness; likewise at the end of the world (you have) the form of destruction. O you who consist of this world!
   You are the great knowledge (mahavidya), the great illusion (mahamaya), the great insight (mahamedha) the great memory and the great delusion, the great Goddess (Mahadevi), the great demoness (mahasuri).”
   Devimahatmya 1, 56-58

   Sakti is one of the most fundamental aspects of Tantra – and potentially, one of the most bewildering. Continue reading »

   

   June 6th 2011

   Posted by Phil Hine in tantra

   Tags: becomings, bodies, sakti

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4. Becoming Imperceptible – I

   “Siddhi can be looked at in a number of different ways and one key one is to explore the sources of your own feelings of wonder. Dig deep… our culture expends a lot of energy in attempting to innoculate us against siddhi. … If you can find no wonder in yourself – examine why not? Have you ever felt any? What changed, when and why? Does wonder sustain you or dope you down? Is it good or bad do you think?”
   Vishvanath, in a discussion of siddhis, 2005 Continue reading »

   

   September 15th 2009

   Posted by Phil Hine in Deleuze, tantra

   Tags: becomings

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5. Mantra bodies

   “Then, established in the body of the mantra, he should practice the supreme concentration. The supreme mantra body is manifested in the succession of letters.”
   The Purification of the Body, Gavin Flood, Tantra in Practice, p517

   As one might expect, occasionally in my practice I encounter things I don’t quite understand. I put them aside for later and, occasionally, understanding ‘bursts’ forth at a later point. I’ve been practicing various forms of Bhuta Suddhi for some years now, and from 2004 have been working from various versions of this practice, of which the main two are the chapter by Gavin Flood in Tantra in Practice; the second in The Lakshmi Tantra. But, until recently, I’ve failed to grasp the idea of the mantra-body. It wasn’t really until I read Loriliai Biernacki’s Rewnowned Goddess of Desire: Women, Sex, and Speech in Tantra (Oxford University Press, 2007) that understanding went from a trickle to a flood – the stream joining other streams, as it were. Continue reading »

   

   August 28th 2009

   Posted by Phil Hine in Deleuze, tantra

   Tags: becomings, bodies, mantra, Practice

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