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Posts tagged ‘Saiva’

  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. “The Antics of Drunkards” – ascetics and Indian Satire

    As an aside from my series on armed yogis, I thought I’d take a look at some examples of Indian satirical plays that feature ascetics – particularly the so-called heterodox religions, such as the Jainas and Buddhists, but also some tantric (or at least proto-tantric) practitioners.

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    May 5th 2022

    Posted by in History, tantra

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  3. On “continual recollection” – II

    By constant practice the manifested universe
    gets merged in the universal self.
    The world of name and form gets merged in the
    vastness of the void as one homogenous whole.
    This, O Brahmin, is the true doctrine.

    Lalleśwarī
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    April 26th 2022

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  4. On “continual recollection” – I

    “To the One who, although nothing but a mass of consciousness, is yet solidified in the form of the world, to the unborne One who is proficient in the play of concealing his own Self, glory to this Supreme Lord!”

    Paramārthasāra of Abhinavagupta, verse 1

    A few days ago, my friend Gregory Peters tweeted a verse from Abhinavagupta’s Tantrāloka:

    “No lunar day nor asterism, no fasting is prescribed. He who is engrossed in every day life becomes a Perfected Being by means of continual recollection.”

    (chapter 29/v65, transl. John Dupuche)

    My initial interpretation of this verse was: “residing in wonder as the ground state of one’s being”.

    A question was posed in respect to this verse – what does “continual recollection” mean in this particular context? I thought I’d take the opportunity to tackle this – not without some reservations, as though have been reading Abhinavagupta’s works for nigh on two decades, I still struggle to articulate my understanding of his luminous wisdom. But this is important for me. Ever since I came to realize how central the experience of wonder is to nondual tantra, I have been struggling to articulate what this means for me. I may say that I seek to open myself to wonder in the ordinary and every day, to find enchantment and presence in small moments and encounters, but that is somehow not enough. So I’m going to take this as an opportunity to say more about wonder in tantra, both as a beginning, a practice, and a goal. But’s that’s going to have to wait.

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    January 29th 2022

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  5. The Kaula traditions – I

    Who, or what, are the Kaula traditions? It’s a question that has bedeviled me ever since I read the teasing footnote references to “Kaula comment” in Kenneth Grant’s Typhonian trilogies back in the early 1980s. In Cults of the Shadow (Frederick Muller, 1975) for example, Grant made several references to the “Kaula Cult of the Vama Marg”, its secret rites and esoteric sexual practices. It seemed to be all very secret, hush-hush, and confusing. Over the years, I’d occasionally find people throwing the term Kaula about in various forums, and would ask them what the “Kaula Cult” actually was. It was hard to get a straight answer, and I often came away with the impression that these folk didn’t really have much of a sense of what the Kaulas actually consisted of, much less be able to point to a particular historical tradition or scripture. Continue reading »

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    September 14th 2020

    Posted by in History, Occult, tantra

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  6. On the dakṣiṇācāra and the vāmācāra – IV

    In the previous post in this series I took a quick look at the earliest form of the non-Saiddhāntika or vāmācāra traditions of the tantras – the Caturbhaginī or “Four Sisters” system. For this post I shall briefly examine two more early vāmācāra streams, the Mantrapīṭha and the Vidyāpīṭha. Continue reading »

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    August 31st 2020

    Posted by in History, tantra

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  7. On the dakṣiṇācāra and the vāmācāra – III

    In the previous post in this series I gave a brief overview of the “mainstream” or base of the Śaiva mantramārg – the Śaiva Siddhānta. I will now turn to an examination of the non-Saiddhāntika traditions that developed around it. These were a diverse array of traditions focused on the worship of the fierce ectype of Śiva – Bhairava – often seen as a “higher” form of Śiva, and various forms of the Goddess – Śiva’s power or Śākti. Continue reading »

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    July 25th 2020

    Posted by in History, tantra

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  8. On the dakṣiṇācāra and the vāmācāra – II

    In the last post in this series I began my examination of the two streams of tantric discipline – the dakṣiṇācāra and the vāmācāra – or as they have become known, the Right-Hand and the Left-Hand Path. The key point I wanted to make was that the relationship between the two streams was not oppositional and exclusionary – as the two streams are represented in popular occulture. In this post, I will provide a brief overview of the Śaiva Siddhānta tradition. Continue reading »

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    July 10th 2020

    Posted by in History, tantra

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  9. On the dakṣiṇācāra and the vāmācāra – I

    Of late I have been revisiting some earlier work I did on the passage of the concept of the “Left-Hand Path” into Western Esotericism. A consistent theme throughout Western Esoteric discourse almost from its inception (in the work of Madame Blavatsky and later Theosophical works) is that the so-called “Right-Hand Path and Left-Hand Path are binary opposites, and to align with one is to exclude the other. Continue reading »

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    July 7th 2020

    Posted by in Occult, tantra

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  10. Book Review: An Introduction to Indian Philosophy

    Not long ago, I ran into a friend who asked what I was reading at the moment. I replied that I was reading a book on the work of Kumārilabhaṭṭa, a seventh-century Indian philosopher of the Mīmāṃsā school. This led to a good deal of explanation about what the Mīmāṃsās thought, what Kumārila had to say in particular, and why I was interested in his work in the first place. After all that he said something to the effect that he thought that Tantra wasn’t a philosophy – or at least that as a “tradition” it wasn’t given over to much philosophical speculation. Continue reading »

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    February 26th 2017

    Posted by in Book reviews, tantra

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