Tantra (a Sanskrit word which means "woven together") is a term loosely applied to several divergent and even contradictory schools of Hindu yoga in which the sexual union of male and female is worshipped either in principle or in human practice. It has also come to be applied to sex-based religious practices developed in other religions, including Bon, Tibetan Buddhism, Taoism, Christianty, Judaism, and Transcendentalism.
Pre-Hindu tantra: Shaktiism and Shaivism
Although tantra yoga texts themselves are only dated to the medieval period in India, it is thought by some that the earliest
strand of tantra yoga, derived from the Dravidian, pre-Hindu religion of
Shaktiism (worship of the goddess in her numerous forms), focuses
on yoni puja, a ceremony honouring the vulva -- either of a
statue or a living woman. Depending upon the school of study,
this puja may involve making offerings of food and liquids while
chanting prayers or it may involve the deliberate sexual arousal
of a woman who is believed to embody or personify the deity. A
related thread of tantra yoga that derives from Shaivism (the
worship of the god Siva, which predates the syncretistic
religion now known as Hinduism) has at its center linga puja, a
ceremony honouring the penis, often in the form of a natural
upright stone. Similar objects of worship have been found among the archaeological remains of many neolithic people around the world, leading some theorists to speculate that "sex worship" in some form or another is humanity's oldest relgiion.
Contemplative yoga as an influence on tantra
One major strand of Hindu tantra yoga centers on meditation.
Allied to non-sexual meditative schools of yoga, such as hatha
yoga (the yoga of body posture) and bhakti yoga (the yoga of
devotion), this contemplative school of teaching advocates
a fairly non-sexual approach to worship, in which
visualization of a deity, chanting of a mantra, concentrating
on iconographic symbols called yantras, and the practice of tapas (austerites) are the foremost activities. A highly
attenuated form of yoni puja is sometimes encountered in this school, with
the practitioner meditating on a yantra -- often a downward-pointing
triangle -- that symbolizes the vulva of the goddess.
Kundalini yoga as an influence on tantra
Some Indian tantra yoga teachers recommend practices
that may include meditation but also share elements with kundalini
yoga, in which subtle streams of energy are thought to be "raised"
in the body by means of conscious posture and strenuous breath control. Most
teachers in this school of tantra advocate the retention of semen as a
prerequisite for spiritual advancement, although they differ on
how much sexual arousal it is good to provoke while retaining
semen -- and few have anything at all to say about a possible female
counterpart to semen retention as a spiritual path.
Hindu "right hand" and "left hand" path tantra yoga
Best known to Westerners are the several strands of tantra yoga
in which worship services take the form of a sexual ritual
featuring slow, non-orgasmic intercourse as a prelude to an
experience of the divine. This broad category of tantric sex
ritualism, which derives from the pre-Hindu religions of Shaktiism and
Shaivism, has in turn produced two schools of practice: The
"right hand path" is one in which the ritual is more or less seen as meditational, or a
monogamous rite, or may be allied to the yoni puja of
Shaktiism; while the "left hand path" is one in which dozens -- or hundreds -- of couples may
engage in the ritual sex act at the same time, sometimes following the
lead of a pair of teachers. This latter path is the one that has
earned tantra yoga the reputation of being orgiastic and even
"satanic" among thse who are ignorant of its history or
prejudiced against sexuality.
Tibetan Buddhism and pre-Buddhist Bon forms of tantra
A modified verion of pre-Hindu tantrism can be found in
contemporary Tibetan Buddhism, where it seems to be a blend of
pre-Buddhist goddess worship mingled with influences from the ancient
Tibetan animist religion known as Bon. Like Hindu tantra, Tibetan
Buddhist tantra encompasses schools of practice that range from the
meditational to the sexually active.
Taoist "tantric" alchemy
That other great Asian religion, Taoism, has its own
tantric schools, each with a different view of the role of sexual
activity in the life of the aspirant. One strand of Taoist tantra
is called sexual alchemy, or, more popularly tantric alchemy. Like Western alchemy, Taoist sexual alchemy places
a certain amount of emphasis on the search for immortality or at
least long life. Presumeably influenced by the male-centered, kundalini-derived forms
of Hindu tantra, Taoist tantric alchemy involves breath and muscle
control and emhasizes the retention of sperm as proof of
spiritual attainment. Other Taoist tantra teachers, working out
of a paradigm that seems to be derived from Shaktiism, claim that
Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism, was in fact advocating a form of
yoni puja or worship of the vulva when he wrote about "the valley spirit."
Judeo-Christian "tantric sex": karezza et al
Going still farther afield, the term "tantra" or "tantric sex" is frequently -- for
the sake of convenience -- applied in error to Western religious or
spiritual practices in which slow, mindful sexual union (or
masturbation) creates a path to the experience of spiritual
ecstasy. Some of these Western practices arose during the 19th century,
apparently by spontaneous discovery, and have no specific relationship to tantra yoga at all -- although one American popularizer of
Western sacred sex (Alice
Bunker Stockham) is known to have travelled to India to
study Hindu tantra yoga. Each "discoverer" gave his or her system
a unique name -- the Reverend John Humphrey Noyes preached the
doctrine of "Male
Continence"; A. E. Newton wrote of "The Better Way;" Alice
Stockham pioneered "Karezza"; Paschal Beverly
Randolph advocated "Eulis!...or the Anseiratic Mysteries"; Thomas Lake Harris
practiced a form of breath-eroticism as well as non-corporeal
sexual union with beings from other dimensions; George Washington Savory described "Hell Upon Earth Made Heaven" through the religio-mystical practice of "Passive Coition" and "Bosom Love;" Stockham's
student John William Lloyd coined the term "Magnetation;" and
Stockham herself published George N. Miller's novel, "Strike of a
Sex," in which he described the fictional but karezza-like
"Zugassent's Discovery." While these Western spiritual practices
share certain common sexual techniques with traditional Hindu
tantra yoga, most of them fit conveniently into Christian,
Jewish, or Transcendentalist conceptual frameworks, obviating the
need for the practioner to adopt a culturally "foreign" religion.
Neo-Tantra in America and Europe
Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s the so-called
"sexual revolution" in cultural mores, along with increased
interest in Eastern religions, led to the widespread
popularization of spiriutal-sexual techniques derived from
Indian tantra yoga under the slightly misleading name "tantric sex."
From that time to the present, gurus and teachers both Eastern and
Western have promoted a variety of belief-systems that incorporate
to a greater or lesser degree the religious and cultural
assumptions and practices of Indian tantra yoga in pursuit
of a range of goals as disparate as what one detractor calls
"better sex" and actual "moksha" or liberation (e.g.
liberation from reincarnation, if reincarnation is included
in one's cosmological paradigm). One of the characteristics
that sets neo-tantra teachers apart from tantra yoga gurus
is that in neo-tantra the emphasis on sexuality is usually
quite obvious; in tantra yoga, the opposite
is often the case, with some modern gurus insisting that tantra
yoga is not sexual at all or that it teaches nothing about
sex per se and that the entirety of the practice is
concerned with the chanting of mantras, visualization of
yantras, practicing of tapas, and the like.
Sex ritualism: a biological appraoch to the sacred
The sexual rites found in tantra yoga, Taoist sexual alchemy, karezza, neo-tantra et al form
the basis for orthodox religious worship services and are also at the
core of the personal spiritual paths of countless individuals.
This has been true for millennia and continues to be the case to
this day, despite the persecution of sexuality in most modern
civilizations. In my opinion, the reason that such strikingly
similar sexual rituals have arisen spontaneously in different
eras and places -- and the reason they so easily cross
socio-cultural boundaries -- is that sex worship itself is rooted
in the neurological
hard-wiring of the human body; because it is something
which, when practiced correctly, allows the participants to
experience what seems to be -- what IS, for all intents and
purposes -- the presence of deity in the person of the sex
partner.
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