Tantra in the West: Western Mystery Tradition (the Occult)


"The supreme power, it was argued, is TOTALITY, and, as such contains
all aspects of reality, even those which seem contradictory to one
another.  The Absolute is at one and the same time (or, rather, outside
time - eternally) 'good' and 'evil', dark and light, knowable and beyond
knowledge or any other comprehension or apprehension.  The very
interplay of these contradictions is the web of reality; without the
eternal opposition and union of the polarized forces - the Yin and Yang
of Taoism, the Shiva and Shakti of Tantra - nothing would exist, whether
its nature was physical, emotional ('astral'), mental, or spiritual."

_Tantra for Westerners, p. 38.


"The phrase 'left-handed' in relation to Tantra of a type involving
physical sexuality is an unfortunate one in an occidental context; it is
very easy for a European or North American to make the false verbal
transition from 'left', via 'sinister', to 'evil.'  Those who have made
such a transition have often been led into a serious misunderstanding of
the historical development of tantric techniques, assuming that
right-handed Tantra is 'authentic' and 'pure', the 'real Tantra' of
which left-handed Tantra is some sort of illegitimate derivation.  Some,
who have included distinguished members of the Theosophical Society,
have even gone so far as to regard left-handed Tantra as a form of black
magic,..."

"Such beliefs are against all the historical evidence.  Not only do
left-handed techniques predate 'substitute worship' of right-handed
Tantra, BUT THE POLARITY THEORIES WHICH ARE ACCEPTED BY ALL SCHOOLS OF
TANTRA SEEM TO HAVE BEEN DERIVED FROM OCCULT RITES AND EXERCISES
INVOLVING PHYSICAL SEXUALITY.  In other words, the methods employed by
practitioners of left-handed Tantra have not been invented as a result
of deliberate or accidental misunderstanding of some 'pure' tantric
theory.  On the contrary, tantric theory has come into existence as a
result of efforts to draw some sorts of philosophical/cosmological
conclusions which would satisfactorily explain the RESULTS of
left-handed practice.

"This is not to say, of course, that there have never been cults derived
from left-handed Tantra which can be regarded as analogous to the black
magic of Western tradition.  There is, in fact, evidence that such cults
have existed in the past, and that some of them still exist at the
present day.

"Characteristically such cults have exhibited an obsession with death,
and have celebrated rites which combine such elements as coprophagy,
anthropophagy, and abnormal sexual practices....

"Whether such rites do, in fact, still take place is uncertain.  People
tend to attribute all sorts of amazingly unpleasant activities to the
members of secret religious groups, and just as in medieval Europe the
hamless Waldenses were believed to indulge in incest, murder, and the
worship of Satan, so in northern India at the present day left-handed
tantrics are sometimes alleged to carry out ceremonies involving human
sacrifice and cannibalism.

"But while many of such allegations can be safely dismissed as malicious
fantasy there can be no doubt that they are based on a substratum of
reality.  Certain sects which can be regarded as having a tantric
derivation, or, at any rate, having been influenced by Tantra, have in
the past practised murder on a very large scale.  The most notable of
these was the notorious robber-cult of the phansigars, 'deceivers', the
Thugs, who adored Kali as an incarnation of Shakti, celebrated rites
with a  worship in which those who tasted a consecrated coarse suger
believed they experienced 'the embrace of Kali', engaged in ritual
strangulation of those whom they robbed.  Undoubtedly of tantric origin
were the Kapilakas (worshippers of Chamunda, another avatar of Shakti)
who still survive at the present day and in the past certainly practised
both necrophilia and human sacrifice - a treatise held in high regard by
some members of this cult proclaims that 'by the sacrifice of three men
the Goddess is happy for a lakh of years'.

"It might be thought that such bloodiness would be alient to the gentle
philosophy of the Buddha, but similar death-orientated derivatives of
Tantra seem to have been widely practised in pre-communist Tibet.

"Some of these cults undoubtedly practised human sacrifice, a feature of
the shamanistic Bon religion which dominated Tibet until its population
was largely converted to Buddhism in the ninth century.  There is littel
doubt that there has been a considerable cross-fertilization between
Tantra and Bon, and its seems likely that at least some of the more
death-obsessed Buddhist tantric cults adapted Bon techniques to their
own purposes."

_Tantra for Westerners, pgs. 95-96.

"Crowley called Shakti by the name of Nuit, the Egyptian star-goddess... 
Shiva he called by another Egyptian name, 'Hadit'.  The 'concrete
incarnation' of Shakti was called 'Babalon' by Crowley, that of Shiva he
called 'the Beast', a name which he specifically applied to himself..." 

_Tantra for Westerners, King, p. 74.


"The 'dark side of the moon' aspect of the realm of images occultists
term the astral plane is a reflection, glamorized and often deceptive,
of Kali - the destructive side of Shakti.  The mastery of the 'dark side
of the moon' is therefore one way of apprehending the nature of this
aspect of Shakti; those who attempt to attain such a mastery and fail
fall victims to the destructive powers of Kali.  This is usually a
psychic rather than a physical process; the 'dark side of the moon' 
becomes master instead of servant and a process of ego-inflation
follows.  Such an inflation is almost an occupational disease in Western
occultism.  At its worst it can lead to a pathological condition in
which the sufferer is unable to cope with the stresses of everyday life;
he or she believes himself or herself to have reached a high state of
spiritual advancement, or to be the recipient of revelations from the
gods, or even to be a 'Secret Chief' or 'Master'." 

_Tantra for Westerners, King, p. 61.