I’ve been teaching recently at Arcanorium College on the subject of tantra and my students have been exploring different aspects of the texts from that spiritual tradition. Although there are plenty of tantras containing tediously long-winded ceremonial instructions there are also some sparkling gems of poetry. To my mind it’s the poems of the tantric tradition that bring us closest to the soul of that style.

Selected by me and my students I’d like to share  a few of these with you. To get the most out of them you should read them through once silently, once aloud alone, and finally to your beloved (ideally after having ecstatic sex) or perhaps in some other beautiful location 🙂

Enjoy!

Like a cobra that has cast its coils
spiraling conch-like
three times and a half round Shiva,
her mouth laid on that other mouth
that leads to bliss,
the Enchantress of the world,
slender as a lotus stem,
bright as a lightning flash,
lies sleeping,
breathing softly out and in,
murmuring poems in sweetest meters,
humming like a drunken bee
in the petals of the muladhara lotus —
how brightly Her Light shines.

from Satchakra-nirupana Tantra

O Bhavānī! I worship thy body from ankle to knee,
Upon which the bull-bannered one gazes with great love,
And who, as if not satiated by looking thereon with two eyes,
Has yet made for himself a third.

I call to mind thy two thighs,
Which humble the pride of the trunk of an elephant,
And surpass the plantain-tree in thickness and tenderness.
O Mother! youth  fashioned those thighs
That they may support as two pillars the weight of thy (great) hips,

Looking at thy waist,  it would seem as if it had been absorbed
And become the great bulk of thy breasts and hips.
By the youth which clothes the body with hair,
May it ever be resplendent in my heart!

O Devī! may I never forget thy navel,
As it were a secure inviolate pool,
Given to Thee by Thy blooming youth,
Filled with the liquid beauty of the beloved of Smara,
He who was fearful of the fire from the eyes of Hara.

Thy two lotus-like breasts, smeared with sandal,
Which bear ashes telling of Śiva’s embrace,
Call to mind the vermilion-painted temples moist with ichor
Of some (impassioned) elephant
Rising from his bath in waters,
Flecked with foam.

O Mother! Thy two arms, beauteous with the water
Dripping from Thy body bathed from neck to throat,
Seem to have been formed by the crocodile-bannered One,
As long nooses wherewith to hold the throat of his enemy.
May I never forget them!

Hymn to Bhuvanesvari from the Tantrasara

I drink no ordinary wine,
but Wine of Everlasting Bliss,
As I repeat my Mother Kali’s name;
It so intoxicates my mind that people take me to be drunk!
First my guru gives molasses for the making of the Wine;
My longing is the ferment to transform it.
Knowledge, the maker of the Wine,
prepares it for me then;
And when it is done,
my mind imbibes it from the bottle of the mantra,
Taking the Mother’s name to make it pure.
Drink of this Wine, says Ramprasad,
and the four fruits of life are yours.

by Ramprasad

I worship in my heart the Devī whose body is moist with nectar,
Beauteous as the splendour of lightning,
Who, going from Her abode to that of Śiva,
Opens the lotuses on the beautiful way

Bhairavī from the Tantrasāra

The rich
will make temples for Siva.
What shall I,
a poor man,
do?

My legs are pillars,
the body the shrine,
the head a cupola
of gold.

Listen, O lord of the meeting rivers,
things standing shall fall,
but the moving ever shall stay.

Basavanna

Why do I do Magick? I’m serious, I’ve put a lot of effort into this hobby of mine and I think the question’s worth asking. Is it simply that I desire more power and toys? Frankly no. As a Chaos magician, though I might be keen to stress the practical “results magick” focus of the tradition, this in itself is not enough. For this to be sustainable there has to be something more.

One of the big questions for me as a magician has been concerning this whole issue of teleos or end game. When arguably “nothing is true” can those of us caught-up in the swirling vortex of Postmodern culture speak meaningfully of Meaning? As time goes on I find myself thinking less about the magick that I do and more about the magician that I’m seeking to become. That’s not to say that I want to become a mystic who only wants union with Kia/God/the Void-I’m still interested in the terrain of the journey and the techniques of exploration. But Magick without a goal like awakening seems little more than an exotic form of acquisition.

What I’m beginning to suspect is that the transformations that I often strive for in my circumstances, are primarily alchemical changes in myself. The more magick that I do, the more sacrifice that it seems to demand of me and the more my character becomes the locus of change. So I’m sensing one of those strange loops or circularities – I’m a magician who realises that the more I do magic, the more it’s going to cost me. In order to avoid such a price, bizarrely I seem to be acting more skilfully and it’s as though the magick has already been done! Now this is weird – is the magician at risk of becoming the magick? What’s the relationship between my day-to-day self and the aspirant in the robe?

In Liber Kaos, Pete Carroll (peace be upon him) talks about this realm of Magick as being the Octarine or “the eighth power of the self”:

“the growth of the octarine, or eighth power of the self, and the discovery of the type of magician one wants to be, and the identification or synthesis of a god-form to represent it, tend to create something of a mutant being, who has advanced into a paradigm that few others are aware of.” (pg. 113)

My Magick is causing me to mutate – self-inflicted memetic infection if you will.

This seems to be where sorcery gives way to deeper initiatory work- the tantric goal of not eliminating desire, rather using it as a means of transformation and on-going self-refinement.

As a big fan of both Vampires and Storm Constantine’s Wraeththu mythology I like the idea of mutating. We are becoming something more, something else; not in some steel willed ubermensch stylee, but a humans dancing with our potential. We are seeking that state where art meets science-that optimal state of Flow. As magicians we seek to dance with the relativity of time-dreaming of how we might be and invoking our future Selves so that they might whisper in our ears.

For me then, the focus of my current work is less about fixating about who this future self might be; rather I seek to use my spiritual practice to cultivate the type of attentiveness that will help me remain open to the possibilities. Let’s keep dancing!

SD

Let's keep dancing!