Wheels within Wheels: Book Launch!
On Thursday 25 April Treadwells Bookshop is hosting a launch party for my new book Wheels within Wheels: Chakras and Western Esotericism. I am very happy about this, as Wheels began as a four-part lecture series as Treadwells back in 2018. Booking details here.
Wheels has been well-received, and I recently received a lovely endorsement from scholar Keith E. Cantú, author of Like a Tree Universally Spread: Sri Sabhapati Swami and Śivarājayoga (Oxford University Press 2024).
“Wheels Within Wheels is a masterpiece on the topic that is at once academically engaging and popularly accessible. While there are many books on the chakras, no other book comes close to capturing as concisely their development in premodern Indic contexts, while in the same breath also capturing with depth, nuance, and clarity the ways in which they were transformed by modern Theosophical, occult, and psychological innovators. Wheels Within Wheels will certainly remain an indispensable resource for scholars and practitioners alike in the foreseeable future, and even has the potential to usher in a new “Year of the Chakras.”
Wheels within Wheels is available directly from Amazon in paperback and digital editions. Signed copies are available from Treadwells.
New blog posts
Two new blog posts this month: Don’t be a Dipshit. Some reflections on taking care when conversing on social media platforms, and Reflexivity as Occult Practice – I – making the case for Reflexivity as a core occult practice.
Yoginīs update
My next release for Original Falcon Press, Yoginīs: Sex, Death, and Possession in Tantric Traditions is progressing well, although it has inexplicably grown another chapter or two beyond the material I originally wanted to include! I have found a wealth of yoginī stories in texts such as the Skanda purāṇa, Somadeva’s Kathāsaritsāraga, and Kalhaṇa's Rājataraṅgiṇī.
The lover who was turned into a monkey
Here’s a lovely story from the Kathāsaritsāraga. It begins with the narrator finding a monkey who is stuck in the earth. To his surprise, the monkey calls out to him for help in getting free. The monkey says that he was once a man, and in gratitude, tells his tale. The monkey was once a man named Somasvāmī. He was carrying on a passionate affair with a married woman, one Bandhudattā. When Bandhudattā’s husband announced that they were to move from Vārāṇasī to Mathurā, Bandhudattā was distraught and felt that she could not live without seeing her lover. She seeks the advice of a friend, Sukhaśayā, a yoginī. Sukhaśayā says that she knows two mantras – one that will turn Somasvāmī into a monkey (although he will remain as intelligent as a man) and one that will turn him back into a human. In this way, Bandhudattā would be able to keep Somasvāmī around as a pet when her husband was in the house, and turn him back into a man when her husband was absent. Unfortunately, whilst Bandhudattā and her husband are journeying to Mathurā through a forest, their party is attacked by a band of wild monkeys, who seem intent on rescuing one of their kin. Despite the efforts of the party to rescue the pet monkey, they are unsuccessful, and the wild monkeys beat up the pet monkey, sensing perhaps, that he is not quite like them. Praying to Śiva, Somasvāmī manages to escape his wild brethren. He wanders in the forest, wondering if it was his illicit affair that caused him to become a monkey. But his troubles are not over. He runs into a female elephant, who picks him up in her trunk and stuffs him into an anthill that had become muddy with rain. The mud hardened, and the monkey could not free himself. He spent his time imprisoned in the earth meditating upon Śiva, and thereby gained knowledge.
Another tale from the Kathāsaritsāraga features a ḍākinī, plus a barber and a dissolute king. The king takes a fancy to the barber’s wife and has his way with her. The barber’s wife is pleased by the attention of the king, and the barber hits upon a plan to exact his revenge on the pair. Of course, he cannot confront the king directly. The barber starves himself so that he appears emaciated, then presents himself before the king to offer his services. The king, noticing the barber’s weakened appearance, asks the barber what is the matter. The barber tells the king that his wife is a ḍākinī and that she pulls his innards out every night through his rectum, sucks them dry, and then re-inserts them. The king is worried by these revelations and begins to fret that he has fallen under the spell of a ḍākinī. He resolves to be on his guard when he next visits the barber’s wife. On returning home, the barber tells his wife that he was performing his duties to the king when he noticed that the king had teeth in his rectum – and they were so strong that he broke his razor on them! He feared that he’d have to buy a new razor every day, which he could not afford. That night, the king comes and makes love to the barber’s wife once more. She, her curiosity aroused, brushes the king’s buttocks with her hand to feel for the teeth in his anus. The king, who is feigning sleep, fearing that his intestines are going to be pulled out and sucked on, shouts “A witch! A witch!” and disappears into the night, never to return to the house of the barber.
Stories such as these show how yoginīs and ḍākinīs were popularly perceived, and go beyond the boundaries of the tantric scriptures in which they feature.
That’s all for now. I will return to planet Kenneth Grant at some point - promise! Thanks for reading.