and other Theosophist authors may well be surprised and even
shocked to encounter the beliefs and practices of Tantra. Helena
Petrovna Blavatsky was a truly remarkable woman, whose
* Many pictures of objects from this exhibition, together with an ex cellent summary of the basic ideas of Tantra, will be found in
Tantra :
The Indian Cult of Ecstasy
by Philip Rawson {Thames & Hudson, London, 1973).140 WITCHCRAFT FOR TOMORROW
achievement in arousing the interest of Europeans in the ancient wisdom of the East cannot be denied ; but her attitude to sexu ality was contemptuously puritanical. Hence the Tantric phil osophy could only be dismissed by her as 'phallicism' and 'black magic'. The Tantras are indeed much concerned with magic; but magic is black or white according to the intention of the operator and the way in which its forces are used. The sexual con tent of the Hebrew Cabbala aroused Madame Blavatsky's dis like, for the same reason.
Moreover, even many Indians came to regard Tantric mystic ism with revulsion, when the influence of European education was brought to bear upon them. When Sir John Woodroffe, who was a Justice of the High Court of India at Calcutta in the late nineteenth century, wrote about Tantra, he was in the position of having to defend the ancient Tantric lore and practices against the combined attacks of European missionaries and high-caste Hindus, who were trying to get the cult banned. Hence his books tend to excuse the sexual content of Tantric ritual, while em hasizing the lofty spiritual philosophy behind it.
In our own day, it may well be felt that much less of such excuse is needed. We can see for ourselves the rightness of the claim in the
Mahanirvana Tantra
that the Tantric path is the path of attainment for the men and women of theKali Yuga,
or Dark Age, in which we live. We may appreciate the statement made in the Tantras that 'by that by which men fall, by that they
rise'.
Modem psychology has unmasked the puritan and the prude. It remains for us to find the way of true harmony and happiness in natural things.It must not be forgotten, however, that not all people are cap able of rightly performing Tantric rites, just as not all people are capable of rightly appreciating the rites of witchcraft. There will always be some who, because of their own lack of spiritual evolution, will pervert witchcraft into black magic and crude sensuality, or tum it into a means of exploiting others, just as they would anything else they took up in their unevolved state. They will have to suffer the
karma
they make for themselves and learn by it.As
we have already noted in Chapter2,
the Tantrics recognize this fact of human nature very clearly. They divide humanity into three dispositions orbhavas.
There isPashu-bhava,
or animal disposition, corresponding toT amas-guna,
the qualities of gross ness and darkness ;Vira-bhava,
or heroic disposition, correspond ing toRajas-guna,
the qualities of activity, force, fieriness; andthe qualities of balance, harmony, pedection. The three types of qualities or
gunas
have some analogy with the salt, sulphur and mercury of the alchemists.The fact that Tantric worship is not 'merely an excuse for sex orgies', any more than genuine witchcraft is, although the eneinies of both accuse them of being so, is shown by the fact that the Tantrics regard the men and women of
Vira-bhava
andDivya-bhava
alone as being competent to take part in thePancha
tattva.
One of the Tantras, quoted by Sir Jolui Woodroffe inShakti and Shakta,
definesVira-bhava
thus: 'He is a Hero who has controlledhis
senses, and is a speaker of truth; who is ever engaged in worship and has sacrificed lust and all other passions.' ThePashu,
on the other hand, is the person who is bound, as the word comes from the rootpash,
meaning to bind. There are various descriptions of the bonds, but they are generally enumer ated as pity (that is, in a contemptuous, belittling sense, not true compassion), ignorance, shame, fainily, custom and caste, as well as the cruder forms of greed and dishonesty. It is an interesting footnote to the legend of Krisluia already referred to, that when Krishna is said to have stolen the clothes of the bathing Gopi girls and made them approach him naked, he was really re moving the bonds of ignorance and all the artificial coverings which are imposed on men and women in this manifested world, which is called in the Eastsangsara,
the world of appearance. This incident gives a further meaning to the custom of ritual nudity, which is found in the east as well as the west.It was not only in the East that the ideas which have come to be called Tantric have been found. Europe, too, had its secret sexual cults in medieval times, other than the obvious one of witchcraft. Omar Garrison, in
his
bookTantra: The Yoga of
Sex
has noted the occurrence of Tantric ideas among the trouba dours of Southern France.These
were the singers and poets of courtly love and chivalry, who flourished in the twelfth and thir teenth centuries. In Northern France they were calledtrouveres,
both words meaning 'finders', as they were supposed to find old songs and legends and present them in their music and poetry. They were often in bad odour with the Church and were ac cused of heresy. Ultimately the Pope launched the notorious Albigensian Crusade against the heretical cults of Southern France, extirpating them in circumstances of horrific cruelty. This led to the decline of the troubadours, but not before they had made their mark upon European culture, notably in their exalta tion of womanhood and romantic love.
142 WITCHCRAFT FOR TOMORROW