In the pipeline…
Patricia MacCormack and I will be giving our Queer(y)ing Chaos Magic presentation at Treadwells Bookshop of London later this year, probably in November. (date to be announced). Also, some Zoom lectures for Brazil are coming up in September, now that various books of mine have been translated and released by Palimpestus - from what I’ve seen so far they’ve done a marvelous job!
I’ve been doing some more work on the Delinquent Elementals anthology I’m co-editing with Rodney Orpheus. After many delays and mishaps (not the least of which has been tracking down former Pagan News contributors from 30-odd years ago), it looks like everything will be soon ready for Strange Attractor to publish.
On Kenneth Grant’s Typhonian Tantra - III
Continuing my discussion of Kenneth Grant’s formulation of Tantric sexual ritual.
On to The Kaula Rite of the Fire Snake II (Beyond the Mauze Zone, p63). Grant opens the chapter by asserting that the ritual he has been discussing is basically the secret of alchemy, and was known to secret fraternities such as the Knights Templars. These ‘psycho-physiological mysteries’ of the Anuttara Amnaya are, he states, still taught by secretive Western and Oriental sanctuaries (presumably the above, and his own Nu-Isis Lodge/Typhoonian OTO). I can’t help thinking that Grant is using a similar rhetorical strategy to Madame Blavatsky – hinting at secrets known fully only to initiates who are hidden away from the common folk in their secret retreats, still pursuing esoteric practices that have been for the most part forgotten, garbled, or veiled in a cloak of mystery. It’s a time-honored tactic that doesn’t really lend itself to mere dates and historical nick-picking of the sort I’m doing. Perhaps that’s the point.
Again, Grant reiterates his assertion that the Suvāsinī is a kind of embodied alchemical vessel, emanating the “magically charged substances that are chemically indistinguishable from bodily secretions of the healthy human female. Their systematic ingestion by the adhikaris is said to bi-sexualize the organism and to “banish fear of all kinds”.” The glossary defines adhikari as “Spiritual or magical competence”. I think this is a fair translation – Adhikāri generally denotes authority or qualification to either pass on or study particular teachings. Grant briefly mentions two ritual gestures made by the Suvasini; the fear-dispelling abhaya mudra, and the downward-turned left arm varada mudra – together, he says, they form a swastika, symbolizing the whirling wheel of light activated by the awakened Fire Snake. These two mudrās - Abhayamudrā and varadamudrā - dispelling fear and granting boons; are common pan-South Asian mudrās used in ritual performance and iconography, Buddhist, Jain, Śaiva, etc. I can’t help wondering exactly though, what Grant means by “bi-sexualize” here. It could however be an oblique reference to the fact that the goal of some Śakta-oriented tantric practice involves a complete identification with the goddess, or perhaps a nod in the direction of Ardhanārīśvara. A tip of the hat to Mike Magee for pointing out that in the Tantrarājatantra (34:84) "Lalitā assumed a male form (puṃrupa) as Kṛṣna and by enveloping all women enchanted the whole world."
Next, we get a brief discussion of some of the ‘substances’. Urine is mentioned, but Grant goes on to discuss Goyama, which he glosses as “the product of the cow.” In Cults of the Shadow (p66) Grant says that Go means ‘cow’ and is a euphemism for woman.
Here’s a lengthy paper by Catrien Notermans - Prayers of Cow Dung: Women Sculpturing Fertile Environments in Rural Rajasthan (India). It’s open access. Not directly relevant but Notermans has a good deal to say about the relationship between women and cows in India.
There’s a passage about Bhairava and pigs – Grant says that the mysteries of Bhairava originated in Egypt, that the pig “symbolized the calcined ashes”, and that the black pig was associated with the lunar current.
It is the author of the secret commentary who makes this assertion about Bhairava’s origins in Egypt. In ACHG, the glossary makes it clear that by ‘Bhairavas’ Grant is talking about tantric practitioners who worship Kali in the cremation ground - not the deity Bhairava or the Bhairava-tantras.
Pigs are sometimes sacrificed to one of the Bhairavas (there are many different forms) during the Nepalese Navadurga festival (in 2015, a petition to ban this practice received over 40,000 signatures – but the pig sacrifice continues). Pig fat is sometimes mentioned as an ingredient for magical salves and ointments in Tantric sorcery.
Grant then returns to the subject of the pañcamakāras – the infamous ‘Five Ms’ – in relation to the secret substances. He seems to be saying, as I read him, that maithuna does not denote sexual intercourse, but rather, the blending of substances (male and female genital fluids) that resulted in the production of the elixir. He makes this clear by stating:
“This union, however, was of a kind peculiar to the yoga, or union, of the Shakta Tantras which do not advocate physical contact between the Suvasini and the celebrants. No earthly child results from this maithuna.”
Perhaps this comment is intended to give the impression that Grant is writing out of a deep familiarity with the ‘Shakta Tantras’. There are a large number of ‘power tantras’ the majority of which are yet to be translated. Mike Magee tells me that Grant was not able to read Sanskrit, so I doubt very much if he had actually read any actual Śākta Tantras other than the few that were available at the time he was writing, and even if he had, I doubt that they would have all agreed with him on this particular issue.
Grant may have gained this impression from the works of Sir John Woodroffe (aka Arthur Avalon) as well as his Kaula source. In his Śakti and Śākta, Woodroffe devotes an entire chapter - ‘The Pañcatattva (secret ritual)’ - to the subject and goes to great pains to disassociate Śākta Tantra from any charges of licentious or immoral behavior. Woodroffe states:
“It must be admitted that the Śākta Tantra at least pretends to be a religious Scripture, and could not as such directly promote immorality in this way. For, under no pretense can morality, or Sādhanā for spiritual advancement, be served by directions for, or tacit permissions of, uncontrolled promiscuous sexual intercourse. There may, of course, have been hypocrites wandering around the country and its women who sought to cover their lasciviousness with the cloak of a pretended religion. But this is not Sādhanā but conscious sin. The fruit of Sādhanā is lost by license and the growth of sensuality.” (Śakti and Śākta, p581)
Another possible source is Elizabeth Sharpe. In Sharpe’s 1934 book The India that is India, she discusses the scandals associated with the Kaula Circle. She then quotes a letter from “the head of an occult society” she has been in correspondence with. Here’s the passage:
“a genuine Shri Vidya Upasaka,” … must always have his lady, or her lord with him or her. Only the really initiated (all italics his own) know the use of the other sex in these practices, which while on the border-land of sex, are actually entirely devotional, mystic and supremely holy. The least trace of evil, or sensual, sexual desire would turn the Sadhaka into a beast: in fact amongst Sadhakas there are many who prowl about and hide their sensualism in the maze of rituals and poojas.”
Is this head of an occult society Swami Pareswara Bikshu (see below)? Sharpe was after all in contact with the Holy Order of Krishna as I discussed in this post.
A third possibility is the opinions of Śri Vimalānanda Svāmi, who introduces and comments on Woodroffe’s 1922 translation of the Karpūrādi-Stotra (‘Hymn to Kali’). Grant rates this work highly, and in ACHG states that it is “a litany of praise that contains the secret of Kaula worship”. Again, Woodroffe works hard in his preface to dissociate maithuna from its sexual connotations. For more discussion, see this paper by John R. Dupuche (pdf, 505kb): The “Scandalous” Tantric Hymn to Kālī Karpūrādi-stotra: an Unexpurgated Translation. It’s a fun read.
Since Woodroffe made this defense there has been a great deal of scholarship devoted to tantric scriptures, and it is now fairly well established that for the early Śākta Tantras and Kaula scriptures, ritual sexual intercourse – and even collective sexual ritual was, according to the prescriptive literature at least, a feature of these traditions (of course we have no way of knowing how widespread these practices were, although there are occasion mentions in other sources). Abhinavagupta, the great tenth-century Tantrika and polymath, says of himself that he was yoginī-bhū – born of the yoginī; that is to say, he was conceived during a Kaula sexual ritual, which gave him a predilection toward the attainment of liberation. The insistence of the Kaula commentary, and Grant’s own statements to the effect that penetrative sexual intercourse was never ritually practiced by ‘true Kaulas’ I read as an effort to sanitize the Kaula tradition - perhaps to rescue it from the general disfavour expressed by many Indian and Western commentators towards it. More about that another time.
However, Grant is, perhaps inadvertently, making an important point – that we need to be careful when attempting to hold Sanskrit terms to simple definitions. The meanings of such special terms change over time and are used by different philosophical and religious traditions and individuals in different ways. For example, let’s take the term māyā – a term used across the entire span of Indian spiritual traditions. Māyā is often translated as “illusion”, but that is not the original meaning, nor, strictly speaking, an accurate one. In the Vedas, māyā indicates the magical power of deities that enable them to shape the world. It is by his māyā, for example, that Indra can assume any form at will. In the tantric traditions, māyā is sometimes worshipped as a goddess – māyā-śakti. In the nondual traditions, māyā is conceptualized as one of the 36 tattvas, the power by which Śiva (consciousness) conceals himself within the plurality of the manifest world. The Matsyendrasaṃhitā also contains an intriguing description of the māyā-woman - a visualized partner in sexual ritual.
Throw in the heavy use of metaphor, coded language, and the science of Nirvacanaśāstra (semantic and rhetorical analysis, often used by tantric exegetes), and making sense of any tantric scripture becomes enormously difficult without a great deal of careful work.
Back to BMZ.
“It is by means of the lower pranayama, coupled with akunchana, that the Fire Snake is aroused and prompted to strike at the base of the conus medullaris in the region of Manipura Chakra which “floats upon the ‘waters’ of the cerebro-spinal fluid.”
The glossary explains conus medullaris as “the sacral region of the sushumna nadi” and akunchana as “the volitional contraction of the anal sphincter used in connection with the arousal and direction of the Fire Snake.”
Anyone up on their human anatomy will recall that conus medullaris is a medical term for the terminal segment of the spinal cord. Ākuñcana can be translated as “contraction” (or bending, drawing together). As far as I know, it does not specifically mean contracting the anal sphincter. Sureśvarācārya's Mānasollāsa ("the splendor of the mind") states that “The contraction (ākuñcana) [and drawing up] of the downward moving breath and the stopping [and drawing down] the upward moving breath and the placement of the tongue above the uvula is the practice of Yoga”. Perhaps Grant means Mūla Bandha – a yoga practice sometimes said to involve the contraction of the anal sphincter and is related to the arousal of kuṇḍalinī, according to the Gorakṣaśataka (‘hundred verses of Gorakṣa’, possibly composed in the 14th century). For more about this text, see James Mallinson’s ‘The Original Gorakṣaśataka’ in Yoga in Practice, edited by David Gordon White, Princeton University Press 2012.
Perhaps this is why Grant is not concerned with the akulapadma (see second essay in this series) lying below the mūlādhāra cakra, it can’t easily be fitted into the biomedical schema he is drawing upon, which of course has kuṇḍalinī-śaktī residing in the mūlādhāra. Again, this is a view from the Haṭha-yoga texts that post-date the classical tantric traditions. Earlier traditions vary considerably in their placement of cakras (and the number) and distinguish between two or three forms of Kuṇḍalinī.
Now Grant serves up some direct quotes from his ‘South Indian Tantric’ source. In the preface, Grant has explained that the late David Curwen had provided him with a commentary on an ancient Tantric work, the Anandalahari (‘Wave of Bliss’, the name sometimes given to the ‘esoteric’ section of Saundaryalaharī, v1-41 of 100). The author of the commentary is now known to be Swami Pareswara Bikshu, Curwen’s guru in the Holy Order of Krishna (see East meets West: New Thought, Thelema, and The Holy Order of Krishna for more. Also Henrik Bogdan’s essay ‘Reception of Occultism in India: The Case of the Holy Order of Krishna’ in the collection he edited with Gordan Djurdjevic: Occultism in A Global Perspective (Routledge 2014).
Referring to the Anandalaharī as ‘ancient’ is a bit of a stretch IMO, but I’ll come back to that another time. Here’s the quote from the ‘South Indian Tantric’:
“In the Mystical Manuals, mention is made of the vasanta, or fragrance, associated with the zone of the va sa, the genito-urinary secretions used to awaken the sleeping goddess. The Tamil Adepts claimed that “if there is any kalpa (medicine) that can open the seven seaths of the conus medullaris it is the ashes of human dung.”
What are we to make of this? I thought vasanta generally referred to the Spring. In the Lalitopakhyāna (a thirteenth-century Śrīvidyā text), Vasanta is the personification of the spring season. He dwells on maṇidvīpa – ‘the island of jewels’ in which stands the city of the goddess Tripurā. Chapter 32 (v.44-60) describes the chakra of Vasanta, which has seven layers. Sixty deities are said to reside within it – they are the deities of the two months of spring. They are described as slow-moving and inebriated, drunk on the honey produced by their flowers. They constantly praise the goddess and delight her devotees. Vasanta is described as holding a piece of meat and a goblet of wine. Of course, Vasanta might be a code word for something entirely different, although spring could be said to be a ‘fragrant’ season, with flowers in bloom, etc. Doubtless, an adherent of Grant’s Typhonian Mysteries could make the obvious jump between Spring, fragrances, flowers, and the ‘flow’ of the elixir (not to mention ‘honey’). In point of fact, Grant does make such a connection in Nightside of Eden: “The flower is the flow-er or flowing one, i.e. the female in her courses.” (p19 in my Skoob Books edition, 1994). Like an overzealous Freudian who sees phalluses everywhere, Grant is determined to relate anything possible - water, blood, wine, etc. to the ‘elixir’.
Just out of interest, Maheśvarānda’s (12-13th century) work, Mahārthamahañjarī (‘The Flower-Bouquet of the Supreme Meaning’), makes the act of smelling synonymous with pratyabhijñā (‘recognition’). Maheśvarānda uses the metaphor of scripture as a flower bouquet. In a bouquet, different flowers are tied together to make one object; by the same token, scripture brings together different layers of meaning, braided together in a coherent synthesis. He also uses the image of the ‘Garden of the Universe’ in which Śiva playfully enjoys the fragrances of the five arrows – i.e. the sense-perceptions. It is through this enjoyment of the senses that Śiva (consciousness) recognizes his own freedom. He traces the etymology of the word puṣpa (‘flower’) to poṣayanti (‘to nourish’). Everything offered to the deity, be it internal or external, is both nourishing and relishing.
Find out more about Mahārthamahañjarī Aleksandra Wenta's 'Smell: The Sense Perception of Recognition' in Bäumer, Bettina S & Stainton, Hamsa (eds) Tantrapuṣpāñjali: Studies in Memory of Pandit H.N. Chakravarty (Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts/Aryan Books International. 2018) You can find it on archive.org
As to the Tamil Adepts and kalpa, well I am given to understand that there is a type of Tamil medicine known as Kaya Kalpa, and I would interpret the reference to ‘Tamil Adepts’ as the infamous Tamil Siddhas. Siddha medicine is said to be thousands of years old, yet contemporary scholars tend to view the Tamil Siddha medical movement to be a twentieth-century phenomenon (see for example, Rise of Siddha medicine: causes and constructions in the Madras Presidency (1920–1930s. For an in-depth treatment of the subject, check out Richard S. Weiss' Recipies for Immortality: Medicine, Religion, and Community in South India. Oxford University Press 2009. Va and Sa btw, are two of the bijas (seed-syllables) assigned to two of the petals of the muladhara.
Next up is a definition of pranayama courtesy of the Sandilya Upanishad (an early - 100 BCE-300CE - text dealing with yoga); pranayama is the uniting of prana and apana. Grant says he isn’t going to go into this in detail. Fair enough. Simple enough though, prāṇa is inhalation, and apāna is exhalation. The Atharvaveda gives one of the earliest mentions of vyāna (retention) and by the time of the early Upaṇisads (800-200 BCE) there were five kinds of bodily winds. The Maitrī Upaṇisad says:
“prāṇa is the wind that passes upward. apāna is the wind that passes downward. Vyāna is the wind that supports prāṇa and apāna. Samāna, a higher form of vyāna, brings the coarse element of food into the apāna and distributes food's subtle essence into the limbs. Udāna is the wind between the vyāna and samāna. It swallows down what is drunk and eaten.”
Grant next comments that according to the Agastyans, the ‘Great State’ (presumably the raising of the kuṇḍalinī to the crown?) is attained by akunchana without the need of pranayama or other yogic procedures. This seems to imply that akunchana isn’t classed as a yogic procedure. A footnote explains that the Agastyans are those that “adhered to the Kadi, rather than the Hadi vidya.” The glossary tells us that the Hadi vidya refers to the knowledge of the ‘Ha’ group of letters placed on the petals of the Sri Chakra and vibrated in the puja of the Goddess. Ditto the Kadi Vidya, this time for the ’Ka’ group of letters.
Agastya is an ancient legendary sage, first showing up in the Ṛg Veda (c.1200-900 BCE), then popping up in South India a few centuries on. He is said to have either developed or refined the Tamil language, performed miracles, and written several important medical texts. He is also said to be a preceptor of Śrīvidyā.
As to the Kādi and Hādi Vidyas, yes this is a thing in Śrīvidyā. I’ll try and be as concise as possible. These two Vidyas are both different forms of the fifteen-syllable Śrīvidyā mantra and preceptorial lineages (there are 10 others). The Hādimata form is said to have been revealed by the female sage Lopāmudra (the wife of Agastya), and the Kādimata form, revealed by Śiva in the form of Kāmarāja. According to Douglas Brooks (in his The Secret of the Three Cities), the Hādimata form is associated with Kashmiri Śrīvidyā and the Kādimata is dominant in contemporary South Indian practitioner communities. See Reading the Saundarya Lahari – XVIII for some observations of the Kādimata, as revealed in v.32-33 of Saundaryalaharī.
More Grant in the next newsletter and I’ll (finally) get on to a discussion of the kalas – the cosmically-charged secretions of the Suvasini which are a major theme across all of Grant’s books.