24 Wilson, on Hin. Sects. vol. xvii., As Res. (Sellon’s Note.)
25 Ward, on the Vaisnavis, p. 309.
The leading rites of the Sakti Sodhana are described in the Devi Radhasya, a section of the Rudra Yamala. It is therein stated that the object of worship should be either “A dancing girl, a female devotee, a courtesan, Dhobee woman, a barber’s wife, a female of the Brahminical or Sudra tribe, a flower girl, or a milkmaid. Appropriate muntrus are to be used. She is to be placed naked, but richly ornamented with jewels and flowers, on the left of a circle described for the purpose, with various muntrus and gesticulations, and it is to be rendered pure by the repetition of different formulas, being finally sprinkled over with wine by the peculiar mantra.
“The Sacti is now purified, but if not previously initiated, she is to be further made an adept by the communication of the Radical Mantra whispered thrice in her car, when the object of the ceremony is complete. The finale is what might be expected, but accompanied throughout by muntrus, and forms of meditation very foreign to the scene.”—Wilson, As. Res., vol. xvii. 225, on Hin. Sects.(Sellon’s Note.)
26 This sect appears in the Sankara Vijaya as the Uchchishtha Ganapati or Hairamba sect, who declare that all men and all women are of one caste, and that their intercourse is free from fault.—Vide Ward’s Works, vol. ii. 5, on the above subject.—Wilson on Hin. Sects, vol. xvii. (Sellon’s Note.)
27 Yet these Sacteyas (or adorers of Sacti) look upon all but themselves as “pasu iana”, mere brutes! (Sellon’s Note.)
28 In Egypt we learn that Typho sometimes bore the name Seth, “by which they mean the Tyrannical and overbearing POWER, or, as the word frequently signifies, the POWER that overturns all things, and that overleaps all bounds.”—Plutar. de Iside et Osirides, xxxvi. (Sellon’s Note.)
29 Ananda Tantram. (Sellon’s Note.)
30 They are enumerated in the Syama Rahasya. “Mudra and Maithuna are the fivefold Makara, which takes away all sin.” (Sellon’s Note.)
31 Simon Magus is supposed to be the founder of Western Gnosticism, he it was who corrupted the Nicolaitanes (vide Apocalypse, ii. 6, 15). They held sensual pleasure to be the true creed.
In the Foreign Quarterly Review, p. 159, 580, the following passage occurs: “The grand object of the magic of the Christians in the middle ages was to obtain the command over the services of demons: such were the pursuits of witches. But these were always looked upon as criminal. The belief that men possess the power to control spirits was not peculiar to the Gnostick Christians. The liturgies of the Roman and Greek churches contain several rules on these subjects.”
The Memoirs of Scipio di Ricci, of Pistoja, reveal some remarkable facts, plainly demonstrating that Sacteya ideas had found their way into the monasteries and convents of Italy in the latter part of the last century. (Sellon’s Note.)
CHAPTER THREE
The Real Tantricism—Buddhist and Hindu
In pre-Communist Tibet a strange story was told about the fifth Dalai Lama. The “Fifth”, who died circa 1680, was unique among Dalai Lamas in that he was a libertine, a rake and a notorious womaniser. Until recently the love-songs he wrote were still popular with the common people of Tibet and, in Lhasa, certain houses, where tradition averred that he had held assignations with one or other of his mistresses, were marked with a mysterious red sign and were the subject of a furtive and unofficial veneration.
The story runs that the Dalai Lama was on one of the upper terraces of his palace. He was being subjected to the reproaches of his advisers, who found his sexual immorality little to their taste.
“Yes, it is true that I have women”, he admitted “but you who find fault with me also have them, and copulation for me is not the same thing as it is for you.”
He then walked to the edge of the terrace and urinated over it. With the force of gravity the stream of urine flowed down from terrace to terrace, finally reaching the base of the palace. Then, miraculously, it re-ascended the terraces, approached the Dalai Lama, and re-entered the bladder from whence it had come.
Triumphantly he turned to those who had been abusing him: “Unless you can do the same”, he said, “you must realise that my sexual relations are different from yours.”
The inner meaning of this curious tale is illustrated by another story, this time told of Marpa, who flourished in the eleventh century A.D. and was the teacher of Tibet’s great yogi Milarepa. Marpa wished to ensure that a married disciple of his should become the father of a child intended to be the physical vehicle of incarnation of a great lamaistic teacher. To this end Marpa first gave a special initiation to both the disciple and his wife, following which the couple retired, separately, for a prolonged religious retreat during which various rituals were conducted and the Bodhisattvas were invoked and asked to give their blessing to the operation.
At the end of the retreat a further initiation was given to the two, after which they retired into the private oratory of Marpa. Here Marpas at on a throne with his own wife, the semi-divine Dagmedma, by his side, and at his feet lay the newly-initiated couple, writhing in silent copulation. When orgasm had been achieved the sperm was received by Marpa into a shallow bone dish, the brain-pan of a human skull—a type of bowl still used in certain Tibetan rites—and mixed with certain magical herbs, following which it was drunk by the disciple and his wife.
Both these stories reflect the sexo-yogic practices of Buddhist Tantricism and they also illustrate the major non-theological difference between Buddhist Tantricism on the one hand, and Hindu and Jaina Tantricism on the other. For while ritual sexual intercourse (in either actual or symbolic form) is the central religious act in all Tantric cults, there is one considerable variation between Hindu and Buddhist technique; in Hindu rites the sexual act ends in the male practitioner ejaculating his semen into the vagina of the female, while in Buddhist rites the semen is retained by the male and no ejaculation takes place. Thus one Buddhist text instructs the adept that he should “place the Vajra in the padma but should retain the bodhicitta”. This sentence is a good example of the code in which most sexo-yogic treatises are written; the literal meaning of vajra is thunderbolt, that of padma is lotus, and bodhicitta means mind of enlightenment, but here the words mean, respectively, penis, vagina and semen. A variation of this technique of seminal retention has sometimes been used. In this variation ejaculation did take place but the semen was then re-absorbed by the male through the urethra. To the western reader such a practice may seem to have been physiologically impossible, but there is some evidence that this improbable feat has been achieved and certainly the technique was taught in several treatises on hatha-yoga, the novice being instructed to learn the required muscular control by sucking either water or milk up his urethral canal. It is, of course, true that semen re-absorbed in this way would have entered the bladder and not, as at least some Tantric adepts seem to have believed, the testicles. It seems likely that the Fifth Dalai Lama was, rightly or wrongly, supposed to have been trained in this technique and that the story of his miraculous urination was a symbolic presentation of seminal re-absorption.
The