Wicca and Tantra

The subject about which I will speak tonight is a comparison of modern Wicca, as inspired by Gerald Gardner, and certain aspects of the Tantric Buddhism of Tibet known as Vajrayana. According to its practitioners, Wicca represents in modern times a revival of the ancient pagan religion of the Great Goddess and the Horned God. But these divine figures are actually universal archetypes that are not limited to pre-Christian Europe. They also appear in the Ancient Near East in the fertility cult of Astute and Ball, as well as in Ancient India as the cult of Shiva and Devil. Particularly, in this Tantric cult of India, the sexual union of the God and the Goddess in ecstatic bliss represents the unification of male and female energies within the psyche and the physical body of the Sadhaka or individual practitioner. This mystical experience of union, known as Mahasukha or the Great Bliss, gives birth to a higher and expanded level of consciousness, as well as to the potentiality for the development of psychic and spiritual powers. The integration of the divine principles of the archetypal masculine and the archetypal feminine in the human being is the basis of the practice of Tantra in both Hinduism and Vajrayana Buddhism.

Celestial and Chthonic Symbolism

Let us first look at the symbolism involved with the Anuttara Tantra in general, for this has great significance bearing on the comparison with Wicca. From the point of view of conventional Christian religion, Wicca, as well as other pagan and non-Christian religions, are the handiwork of the Devil And this Devil is Satan, the Prince of darkness, the Lord of the World, the Evil Spirit, the fallen angel Lucifer who rebelled against God in heaven and was cast down, the Adversary who is the opponent of God's rule on earth and over humanity, the corrupter of all that is good, an d so on. Although in theory, a creature and a fallen angel and, therefore, subservient to God's will, the Devil at times looms so large in Christian mythology and Calvinist theology that he almost seems to be an independent operator apart from God's will and providence.

This is not surprising because John Calvin based his Reformation theology on the writings of St. Augustine who, before his conversion to Catholic Christianity, was a Manichean and in Manicheanism the Devil is held to be of an absolutely different nature than God. Manicheanism is a thoroughgoing dualistic view of the world. The theology of the American Puritans who founded New England was derived from Calvin and Augustine and, through them, Manichean dualism came to color American consciousness and world-view. From almost the very beginning of things, there has existed a perennial struggle of the angels representing the forces of light, against the demons representing the forces of evil and darkness, the same old melodrama of the good guys against the bad guys, which makes for good fiction, but for bad theology. This struggle between light and darkness will not be resolved until the end of the world, with the triumphal return of Jesus Christ and the Last Judgment. Thereafter the devil and his demonic minions, as well as all human sinners, including all non-Christians, will be cast down below and bound in chains where they will suffer everlasting torments in the flames of hell. Then creation will be renewed and evil totally eradicated from existence; there will only be light without shadows.

Also, on the personal level, there is an ongoing struggle within the soul of each individual Christian against the temptations of the flesh and the wiles of the devil. From the recent fate of certain TV evangelists, it appears that this struggle with the devil and temptation is not even resolved by having the born-again conversion experience. Only the death of the physical body, it would seem, will remove the temptations of the flesh. So, for the devout Fundamentalist Christian, witches and pagans, indeed non-Christians in general, are all on the side of the prince of darkness, either willingly or through ignorance, and will after death be judged and sent to eternal damnation in hell where the Devil is said to have now his residence. Any pagan deity, past or present, are either manifestations of the devil or of one of his minions of demons. Any magic that is worked that is not through the so-called Holy Spirit, no matter how healing or how beneficial it may be, is the work of the Devil. This includes all of the New Age Movement, for example. Although not all modern day Christians are as extreme s this, Fundamentalists are people who take their mythology very seriously and feel compelled to act on these feelings, taking actions against those who do not share their beliefs. Tolerance and live and let live are not Christian principles in terms of Fundamentalism. On the contrary, the heathen must be evangelized; heretics and apostates must be condemned.

From the psychological point of view, the Devil is really the dark twin of God, a veritable shadow-side of God. To be a true Satanist, one must really be a Christian, immersing oneself in the Christian mythology and cosmology, but with all the values inverted. The pagan, on the other hand, is the follower of an earlier non-Christian religious cult with a totally different mythology, theology, and cosmology. Yet, we find in the image of the witch that there exists a certain element of darkness that is not just Christian stereotyping and propaganda, for this image of the witch is found in non-Christian culture as well. This element of darkness is not evil as such, but some thing that belongs to the twilight-side of consciousness, to the night and to the underworld. And the symbol of the witch is something very significant and important in the ecology or world consciousness.

In Vajrayana Buddhism this same symbol is called the Dakini or in Tibetan Khandroma (mkha'-'gro-ma, she who goes in the sky). Flying naked on the backs of wild animals in the moonlight to Sabbats or Tantric Feasts is something that witches do. But the Dakini does not belong very much to the sunlit world of the Yoga Tantras; rather she belongs to the night and to the moon, to the nocturnal world of the Anuttara Tantras. Her troop of naked sisters, the Dakinis and the Matrikas, ride upon fantastic beasts through the night time sky under the moon led by their queen Vajrayogini, familiar to us in the West as Diana or Aradia. They gather on a remote mountain top, far from the prying eyes of priest or magistrate. To the sounds of cymbals, drums, and flutes, they dance wildly and abandonly in the presence of the Horned God, whether he is called the Devil, Dionysos, Bhairava, or Heruka. This is something wild and uncontrolled, something beyond social convention and decorum, something beyond reason-- something feared by the patriarchs who rule society. The witch runs with the wild beasts of the forest and field; she is the wild woman outside the control of patriarchal society. She is the Witch and the Dakini. And for this reason she is dangerous to the male-dominated social and intellectual order. Therefore, she must be suppressed and kept within proper bounds. She is on the night side.

Yet, she is as much a a part of human existence as the other archetypes who come forth into the sunshine world of waking consciousness: the king, the magistrate, the priest, the warrior, the child, the maiden, the matron, and all the rest. but the witch belongs to the shadow, that part of the total psyche that the ego rejects and denies about itself. That is the reason while the Dakini must first appear to the future Mahasiddha before he can discover the truth about himself and receive initiation. The Dakini is the true initiatrix of all the Yogins. To use Jung's terms, to become whole one must first acknowledge and accept one's own Shadow and Anima. The Dakini is a man's Anima or repressed feminine side and, correspondingly, the Daka is the Animus, the suppressed masculine side of the woman. But because in Ancient India and even today in Tibet, histories and biographies were written by men, the story begins with the male practitioner's encounter with his Dakini, as was the case with Saraha, Virupa, Naropa, and others.

And Jung also pointed out that the Christian Trinity is incomplete in itself because the Shadow is excluded from it. Indeed, both the feminine side and the Devil are excluded from the Trinity; they belong to the rejected fourth function, thrust into the darkness beneath the earth. Yet to the sunlit world of male consciousness, the feminine is associated with the earth and with the darkness. Beneath the earth is a dark place filled with serpents and goddesses; nevertheless, it from that very place that life emerges. the practitioner of Tantra enters that dark place of serpents and goddesses and transforms. it is the cauldron of rebirth.

As we have seen elsewhere, Ancient Greek pagan religion distinguished two kinds of cults, both of them were complementary and necessary for the well being of humanity: the uranic cult of the Olympian gods of the public civic religion and the chthonic deities of earth and fertility surviving from the old Goddess religion of the pre-Hellenic inhabitants of Greece. These chthonic deities were not evil nor were they demons, but their mode of operation and epiphanies were clearly different that those of the bright celestial Olympians. These old chthonic deities were associated with the Mysteries, such as those at Eleusis, and with fertility magic generally, as was usual in ancient agricultural societies. Only with the suppression of the chthonic earth religion of the Goddess by the invading patriarchal Indo-Europeans from the north and the triumph of the patriarchal imperial monotheism of the Church millennia later, where the gods of life and fertility were demonized and thrust down into the shadows.

But neither was this chthonic cult of fertility and its repression unique to Ancient Greece, or even Old Europe, as we see in the case India with its pre-Aryan Goddess religion. The cult of the dark chthonic gods is a nearly universal religious phenomena, not just among agricultural peoples, but also in the shamanism of hunting and gathering tribal peoples. With the latter, there is usually a Lord of Heaven and a Lord of the Underworld who were originally brothers, and the great Goddess was the lover of one of them or of both. In the Old Celtic myth of the seasons, these two gods battle over the hand of the Goddess until the end of time. But more usually, the god of the underworld becomes demonized as the result of prophetic or priestly reformers, such as Zoroaster, who would elevate the principal celestial god to the status of the sole Lord and Creator of the universe.

This elevation raises the theological problem of evil. If God is the supreme, all-powerful, all-knowing creator, how can he permit evil to exist? If God is good, from hence does evil originate? What usually occurs is that evil, the shadow-side of God, is projected on to an alien figure, the despised and denigrated lord of the underworld from the old religion, whatever may be his name in a particular culture. He becomes the Devil of the reformed religion or the new religion. This is a wide-spread pattern in the history of religions. but to only accept as valid the sky religion, the uranic cult of the celestial gods, is to deny something within ourselves. This represents a denial of earth, matter, emotion, and the feminine. it is a denial of the chthonic world, the world of water and of the womb, of all that has given us birth. it is a repudiation of motherhood and the rule of the mothers. Coming to the time of puberty, the male child leaves the care of the mothers and to receive initiation and enter the adult world of the fathers. This procedure is only natural in the life of the male, but to make this the norm for all existence is unbalalnced and one-sided. The world of the fathers is exalted to the detriment of the world of the mothers. A realm of pure spirit, light, intellect, and consciousness is exalted and made the goal of celestial ascent and the spiritual path, even the abode of eternal salvation itself. But this gives rise to a dreadful fear of unconsciousness and death. death of the male body and especially the death of the male ego consciousness represents the ultimate denial of the father, for it is a return to the womb of the earth and the cauldron of rebirth.

Both the cult of the sky gods and the cult of the earth deities require their offerings and their proper respect. Both the Goddess and the devil continue to exist even today, as secret lovers in the darkness of night, while God remains alone on his throne in heaven sexually frustrated. That is perhaps why he has been in such a bad humor. These two slandered against deities, the Goddess and the Devil, exiled from heaven and the light of consciousness, need to be called back from the outer darkness to which they have been banished by Western consciousness and the churches of the celestial gods. Let them return to our day time world and take their rightful places in the sun and within the temples of humanity.

When the Goddess and the Devil return to the sunlit world of human consciousness and are again acknowledged with the proper cults and offerings, they will cease to be demons and the embodiments of evil, the role to which patriarchal religion an d imperial monotheism now allots them. only then can the burdensome schism within humankind's psyche be healed., the split between spirit and nature. For both spirit and nature, masculinity and femininity, are part of human nature and they are complementary. The presence of both is necessary in order to realize our full potential. The one-sided exaltation of the spirit and the denial of the flesh is ultimately self-defeating because we are denying something that is part of our own being-- the external material world is not some alien planet and the physical body is not some prison of the spirit. Both the world and the body are manifestations of an inner principle that transcends the dichotomy of spirit and nature. The external is a manifestation of the internal. Monotheistic religions assert that evil and materiality will be overcome by a radical alienation-- there will be a cataclysmic end of the world, a resurrection, and a final judgment. For those judged worthy, they will thereafter abide in a purely sexless spiritual existence, in a new world of light without shadows, without evil, without matter, and without the feminine. But this scenario is not possible because both light and shadow are created by the Nature of Mind. The light and the shadow require each other; otherwise there would be only stasis, an endless boredom and ennui for all eternity. in Buddhist terms, both Samsara, the world, and Nirvana, the celestial paradise, are ultimately of the same origin-- they both proceed out of the Nature of Mind. Not even the gods know this, for it is the Great Secret of Secrets. And that realization lies behind the teachings and the methods of the Tantra.

Tantra is the Way of the Serpent because the serpent is the archaic symbol of change and transformation and rebirth. it is the serpent who taught the Mysteries to the first woman in paradise at the beginning of the world. The serpent is the companion of the Earth Goddess, the Mother of all life. The serpent lives beneath the earth and in the dark waters of chaos. but it is from these same waters and the womb of the earth that all forms come forth into manifestation and enter the sunlit world of consciousness. The chthonic deities not infrequently manifest themselves in serpent form. The spirits of the dead may also appear as serpents.

Moreover, the serpent is the bearer of Wisdom and the Gnosis to humanity. Whereas the celestial God would have kept primitive humanity in ignorance within the gardens of paradise during the great summer time of the world before the ice ages descended, it was the serpent, called by the ancient Sumerians Enki, the lord of the earth, who gave humankind the Gnosis of self-knowledge, for only with self-knowledge could this walking hairless ape evolve into a god. An d the transmission of this Gnosis was only possible because of the alliance between the serpent and the woman. It is only the Gnosis that can liberate humanity from bondage and servitude, for the slave shall neither be liberated by faith nor by obedience to the tyrant in heaven.

However, these are the images of myth and myth does not actually represent a factual chronology of events in profane history. Rather myth is a sacred history of the gods and their deeds at the very beginning of time, those creative acts which brought the world as we know it into manifestation. but at a higher level, myth tells us in narrative form something essential about the human condition. Myth is a primordial and fundamental way human beings organize their experience of the world and understand themselves. Theology and philosophy only came later; but religion and self-understanding began with vision and myth.

Characteristically, as exemplified by the dragon combat myth, the patriarchal sky gods overthrow and suppress the older chthonic gods worshipped by the mothers. The great sea serpent Yam, otherwise known as Lohan or Leviathan in Canaanite mythology, was driven back and bound beneath the earth or else slain by the young celestial hero god Baal, in the same way as did the Babylonian Marduk with the dragon Tiamet, or as did Zeus with the dragon Typhon and Apollo did with the serpent Python, or as did Indra with the great serpent Vritra, and so on. Yet in the later Biblical religion, mighty Baal himself became demonized and retired beneath the earth to become a chthonic god of sex and death, banished from human consciousness by the triumphant desert god Yahweh. The prophets commanded that the Old Gods be expelled from the temple and their idols destroyed, being ground in to dust, so that non e might even know and remember their names. Yet the Old Gods have lived in the shadows for far too long, and now the stars have turned in their courses once more, and the priests in their temples shall have nightmares of their return.

[Excerpted from Wicca, Paganism, and Tantra by Vajranatha, Vidyadhara Publications, Amsterdam 1994]

Contents of WICCA, PAGANISM, AND TANTRA
1. Wicca and Tantra
2. Journey to the East
3. Posing the Question
4. Witchcraft in the Bible
5. Witchcraft in Ancient Greek Tradition
6. Witchcraft in Roman Tradition
7. Witchcraft in the Middle ages
8. The Archetypal Source of Wicca
9. The Vedic religion of the Ancient Aryans
10. The Dravidian Religion of South India
11. Buddhism and the Shramana Movement
12. Hindu Tantra and the Goddess Cult
13. Buddhist Tantra and the Mahasiddha Tradition
14. Buddhism in Tibet
15. Celestial and Chthonic Symbolism
16. The Psychological Dimension
17. Chakrapuja and the Witches' Sabbat
18. Wiccan and Tantric Rites Compared: Preparations
19. Casting the Circle
20. Sadhana - Tantric Transformation
21. Mantra Recitation and Magic
22. Ganachakrapuja
23. Conclusion