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Posts tagged ‘ritual’

  1. Tantric Ritual Procedures – II

    Following on from the previous post in this occasional series, here’s a look at an example of bhūtaśuddhiḥ – the purification and divinization of the body. This practice is a core component of tantric daily practice, and examples are found both in scriptures and ritual manuals of the Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava traditions. There are also similar practices in tantric Buddhism.

    In bhūtaśuddhiḥ practice, regions of the body are homologized with the five elements, tattvas and kalās. What follows is a condensed description of bhūtaśuddhiḥ compiled from Śaiva texts such as the Kāmikāgama, Īśānaśivaguradeva, and Somaśambhu-paddhati. There are very similar accounts of this rite in both the Jayākha Saṃhitā and the Laksmī Tantra, two texts of the Vaiṣṇava Pāñcarātra.

    This essay will appear in my next Twisted Trunk release: Wheels within Wheels: Chakras and Western Esotericism. I’m hoping to have it published before the end of the year.

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    October 31st 2023

    Posted by in tantra

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  2. Tantric ritual procedures – I

    For this occasional series, I’m going to provide some short notes on various tantric ritual procedures. Tantric rituals tend to follow a fixed sequence of actions (pūjā-vidhi) as set forth in the ritual manuals (paddhati) – often distillations of much longer tantric scriptures, giving step-by-step guides for practitioners.

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    July 8th 2023

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  3. Book review: Women’s Lives, Women’s Rituals in the Hindu Tradition

    Women's Lives, Women's Rituals in the Hindu TraditionThe anthology Women’s Lives, Women’s Rituals in the Hindu Tradition edited by Tracy Pintchman (Oxford University Press, 2007) explores the ways that Hindu women’s engagement in ritual holds agentive and transformative capacity beyond the immediate ritual context, and complicates the limited idea of “domestic” space as an analytic category. As Tracy Pintchman points out in her introduction “In many cultural and historical contexts, including contemporary India, women’s everyday lives tend to revolve heavily around domestic and interpersonal concerns, especially care for children, the home, husbands, and other relatives; hence women’s religiosity also tends to emphasize the domestic realm, and the relationships most central to women. … the domestic religious activities that Hindu women perform may not merely replicate or affirm traditionally formulated domestic ideals; rather these activities may function strategically to reconfigure, reinterpret, criticize, or even reject such ideals.” (p6) Continue reading »

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    September 14th 2013

    Posted by in Book reviews, Gender, tantra

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