By Carl Llewellyn Weschcke
The author of this book just recently passed away at far too young an age. Two years previously, he wrote me his objectives for this book:
The goal of this book is to present Tantra as a complete spiritual system,
just as my Modern Magick presented a complete magickal system.
I first met Don Kraig in San Diego where he shared an apartment with Scott Cunningham, author of so many of our books on magical herbs, earth magic, crystals and gems, Paganism and Wicca, and more. Scott and Don had attended college together and shared their interests in these subjects and in becoming writers and authors, which led to them both submitting their first books to Llewellyn. The rest, so to speak, is history.
From this start I knew Don Kraig for more than forty years, first as a friend, then as a contributor to Gnostica magazine and author of the early edition of Modern Magick, and on to his joining the Llewellyn staff in St. Paul as a copy writer, then as an editor of New Times, then as editor of Fate magazine, and then back to Los Angeles as an acquisitions editor, manager of the Llewellyn Encyclopedia, and copy manager for our trade catalogs.
In all these years we were good friends, sharing ideas for books we wanted to write and books we wanted to see published, and ideas and ideals about subjects of mutual interest—mainly the serious studies and practices of Magick, Tantra, Kabbalah, and the various Pagan traditions in today’s New Age.
And we shared in the belief that the “New Age” is REAL, and not just a passing phase. For us, it is the beginning of a long-term Cosmic Cycle of challenge and response, of climate and environmental change, of the advent of amazing scientific and technological change, and a raising and expansion of Human consciousness—all leading towards a coming era of global civilization free of present-day religious and political conflict with individuals increasingly free of dependency on the “other.”
I underlined the word “serious” in a previous paragraph for some very good reasons. “Serious” in the context of the Book World means books with depth, breadth, validity, and vision. Such a concept was always important to both of us as cultural observers, as writers, editors, and publishers. Yes, we want books that attract a substantial audience, but we write for an audience of Doers and Users, not just readers and students.
Of course I do not mean to denigrate “students” in any way—we are all (or should be) life-long students: individuals learning, developing, and growing in skills and accomplishment, thus becoming more than we are!—but some people are content just to know about a subject in an academic sense, while Don wrote for those that are Doers and User-Practitioners. Nor do I mean to denigrate more casual or curious “readers” who just want to read about subjects actively mentioned in the news or talked about among friends. Contrary to some old folklore, curiosity is a good thing that starts one on the path to greater knowledge and innovation.
All those students and readers are the people who can later decide to pursue these subjects in a more intensive manner, so it is important that we make our “serious” books accessible to all readers. When we say this book is a “Complete Spiritual System,” we do mean exactly that, and also that it is accessible and meaningful to all readers—casual, curious, student, academic, beginner, advanced, and serious practitioners.
In other words, you can be confident that this book qualifies to meet your goals as a reader and then as a book that will “grow” with you as your interest may expand and deepen.
Tantra Is More
Than You May Think!
Many people, perhaps most Americans and Europeans, think of Tantra only as an extended sexual performance in which men and women both learn to delay orgasm in order to experience more intense and prolonged sexual pleasure—even to the point (particularly for women) of genuine ecstasy and even altered states of consciousness leading to such extra-physical phenomenon as spontaneous ESP and Out-of-Body Experiences.
Stop for a moment and think: Tantric Sex practices can lead to spontaneous psychic experiences, and altered states of consciousness. “Spontaneous” in this context is nearly the same as saying “Accidental.” Tantra, as a “Complete Spiritual System,” was not given to the pioneering Tantrics as a fully developed system by angels or other “Higher Beings,” nor was any other system, evolved practice, or religion, despite the many myths to the contrary.
Rather, as we live and “reach” for new and more complex objectives, we grow—actually we evolve—not in the Darwinian “Survival of the Fittest” sense, but in the Human sense of “responding to the challenge” of need and desire leading to “Growth and Development through the Effort to Accomplish Specific Goals.” Humans are Innovators, Inventors, Instigators, and Improvers: As we seek to improve our condition or situation, making our lives richer, we are rewarded through Inspiration and Intuition to accomplish our goals and thus to develop new abilities and skills. That’s how Human Evolution works.
Real Tantric Sex Can Lead to
States of Higher Consciousness
Any activity that accidentally induces such particular psychic and spiritual experiences (as through Tantric Sex) can be turned into serious controlled methods of Higher Development and Attainment. Altered States become the means to explore realities beyond the purely physical dimension even as Bodily States provide the “leverage” to raise and focus consciousness in other dimensions that facilitate psychic empowerment and the power to “map” the non-physical universe and the “anatomy” of our own subtle bodies.
We Now Call Those Early
Self-Initiates “Shamans”
Shamanism was never a so-called “primitive religion,” nor was it confined to any geographic area (such as Siberia, where it was first explored by relatively modern “Soul Academics”), nor was or is Shamanism specific to any historic period. Shamans, men and women alike—often as couples—are the Astral Travelers who “see” where the best hunting grounds are, when and where the best fishing can be had, where the best food crops grow, and where the natural healing springs and waterfalls are. They have become energy healers, have learned the inner nature of plants and herbs, and have built a huge pharmacopeia of natural remedies and magickal herbs benefiting all of humanity.
As Shamans, and other “seekers,” found ways to open hidden doors to alternative levels of consciousness and new dimensions of the non-physical universe, new systems developed and continued to evolve into those that today we know as Tantra, the Kabbalah, Taoist Cosmology and Alchemy, Magick, and Spiritism. It is from these and their related mythologies that various religions developed (and not the other way around), but those religions and later physical and psychic sciences are not advancements upon their roots, but are institutionalized alternatives that have largely lost their way as they became political and economic powers lacking the very spirit of those early initiates.
It is Shamanic Tantra that inspired and slowly developed into the Hindu religion that today (with over 960 million adherents) is acknowledged as the world’s oldest, with a mythology still shared between Tantra, the older shamanic-based spiritual and magickal system, and the Hindu religion, the mythic-based cosmology and priest-based institution, and each together led into the development of the various Yogas and knowledge of the chakra system, the Ayurvedic system of alternative medicine, and more.
The Contrasting Role
of Myth in Religion vs.
Experiential Shamanism
In contrast to the developmental role of Alternative States of Consciousness leading to actual experience of the inner realities of the Human Person (physical and spiritual), of Nature in all its manifestations (physical and spiritual), of the universe (physical and cosmic), Myth is all together another story!
Mythology can best be understood as a kind of “pre-science” attempting to explain observed phenomena in familiar human terms related to the memories and culture of peoples in a relatively defined geographic area. This is important! The mythology of people living in a hot, dry desert is going to be different from that of people living in a pleasant coastal area. And yet there are certain similarities between those cultures (and their mythologies and shamanic experiences) that developed along major river basins like the Nile, the Tigris and Euphrates, the Indus and Ganges, the Rhine, the Mississippi, the Yellow, the Niger, and others. Such large river basins led to stable agrarian cultures, while their navigable rivers led to communication and trade with others.
The pre-history of the people living in the Indus Valley, now part of India (just as the name suggests), was that of a peaceful agrarian people experiencing Nature as bountiful and nurturing in an “Earth Mother” sense, and primarily free of contact with people of a different way of life—until the invasion by Aryan cattle herders with a strong military and a ruling all-male “Sky Father” priesthood. While this is a simplistic presentation, the conquering Aryans introduced a Caste system with male priests at the top, the male military next, then a developing trading and merchant class, and the “native” farmers at the bottom. Women lost the status they previously held to become veritable chattel of the men.
The new rulers adapted much of the previous culture’s Shamanic Tantra into the new religion we know today as Hinduism—the same Gods and Goddesses, but with a switch to a mainly male god dominance over the female, and a loss of many of the personal magickal elements that conflicted with the male priesthood’s political dominance over the Hindu society.
The Mythical Foundations
of Various Religions Have
No Historical Validity
The primary distinction between Eastern and Western culture today is the exclusionary monotheism of the three major religions of Middle Eastern origin (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), with the additional element proclaiming the various mythic stories as actual history—and thus removing the inner spiritual dimension from the individual person to that of an external spiritual power delegated to a mythically empowered historic figure (Moses, Jesus, Mohammed) and administered by an institutional priesthood with a theology fixed to a past time.
“Religion,” by its very definition of binding together, is the unifying of masses under institutional leadership organized around a mythical story with a dated and unchanging theology. Simply speaking, people belonging to the dominant religions are united by a common “belief system” of which they have little understanding, and in which they have little interest other than the emotional security of Belonging.
Historically, religion united people into a tribal community. The myth is the story of a religious foundation that has little to do with historical accuracy. It is, rather, a story to justify the organization of a leader and followers under a common defense shield. The group is a kind of extended family unified not by blood or genuine belief but by confidence in mutual support against any enemy—or “stranger.”
The belief system was of little importance to most members of the group who would blindly follow the leader who promised protection against warring tribes. At the same time, the belief system itself became important to the leadership (1) as a means to “crowd control” and (2) as a means of self-justification for their position.
But that leadership cannot tolerate internal competition, hence personal spiritual communication and any development of psychic skills are condemned under the monopolistic dominance of the centralized control of Temple, Church, and Mosque. A famous example is the sad story of Joan of Arc, burned to death because she refused to recant her claim that Angels spoke directly to her in contradiction to the Church’s dicta that only ordained clergy had that power.
Spirit, as an inner reality of individual experience, is forbidden other than in minor “outsider” evangelical and mystical sects.
The Personal Shamanic
Experience at the Beginning
All religions have their foundation in personal Shamanic experience, and each has a “pre-historic” element generally called “mystical,” but in actuality is also “shamanic” and “magickal.” The “Mystical” is involved with the beginnings of a religion, while the pre-religious “shamanic” continues to become a “Complete Spiritual System” which necessarily is inclusive of both a Magickal and a Psychic Empowerment Program unique to its cultural origins.
The basic Mythology is a shared element to both the Religion and the originating Shamanic Beginning. But for the Religion, the mythic story is proclaimed to be historically real and hence is frozen in time along with its theology and eventually its rituals and dogma.
For the Shamanic Spiritual and Magickal system, the mythic elements and related correspondences, rituals, and Vision continue to evolve with personal experience. Nothing is “frozen,” nothing is perpetuated but rather is modified as new experience deepens and broadens knowledge and practice.
Where did the original story come from? From direct and personal Shamanic experience which is tribal (geographical local) and hence its “truths” were variously unique to time and place. Hence, “my God is not your God,” and wars often result as the interests (real estate and economics) of one group (tribe) collide with another. It is only in modern times that the belief systems of various myths have evolved into comprehensive psychological and spiritual systems independent of the organizational leadership. Thus, most Rabbis know little about the Kabbalah, most Hindu priests know nothing about Tantra, and most Christian, Islamic, and Buddhist clergy reject “unauthorized” magickal and mystical practices. While they refer to them as dangerous to the soul of the practitioner, their fear is to their own inability to “practice what they preach.”
In other words, the religious clergy do not want to lose control over the individual but prefer that everyone remain among the spiritually dependent “flock.”
Tantra Is Not a Religion, but a Complete Spiritual
System of Personal Growth and Psychic Empowerment
As a student of Tantra and a Tantric practitioner, YOU are the empowered Priest/Priestess. You are free from external domination. You may choose to participate in a small group of like-minded individuals—a coven, a magickal order, a study group, or a group coming together for seasonal and other celebrations—but in the final analysis you are ultimately “your own guru.” Your growth and advancement are experiential and not a matter of initiatory or academic degrees.
Tantra is a complete Spiritual System. More importantly, it is not a system derived from an older tradition, or one that is an amalgam of other traditions. Even more important, it is not one constructed for political purposes or maintained by an organizational structure.
Tantra is Shamanic and personal in origin, inspired by images and symbols experienced in altered states of consciousness. These images and symbols are those from many shamanic journeys, and each has grown in strength and meaning through repeated experiences, both of invocation and evocation. Over the centuries and millennia, experiment and direct experience have added to the complexity of the images of deities with associated signs and symbols giving each deity specific application of their energies. And those added Signs and Symbols have become “cross-indexed” as correspondences much in the manner of the Kabbalah. “Here be Magick!”
It is this that makes Tantra REAL, a technology of living that is both Spiritual and Practical, together not separate. Tantra can be a system of personal growth and development, can be a system of Magick and a method for personal Success, can be a means to a deep Intimate Partnership, and can be a lifestyle that comprehends all that is potential to our New Age. We are the Masters of our own Destiny!
While Tantra is not a religion in the conventional Western sense, it has helped shape both Tibetan Buddhism and many branches of Hinduism. Tantric ideas can be found in most of the world’s mythology, in most of the world’s Spiritism and Spiritual practices, in the mystical foundations of most of the world’s religions—East-West, North-South. In the Far Past and Near Present. We wrote our own Mysteries!
Most “real religions” (other than those partially derived from others, such as both Christianity and Islam) were based on Shamanic experiences of live, local individuals entering into the universal Astral World. It is not the case that early Tantrics traveled the world, missionary-style, to convert the “natives,” nor that all religions and all spiritual systems come from Space Travelers or Inner Plane Masters. We are the Source of our own Wisdom!
Shamanism is as ancient as Humanity, and what we call Real Tantra nearly as old. Tantra survived because early people survived a very long time without interference in the Indus Valley, and when that valley was invaded by Aryan tribes bringing a different culture, the invaders integrated much of the local culture into theirs while at the same time instituting a caste system with priests and soldiers at the top and the indigenous farmers at the bottom—much in the same manner as the Catholic invaders of northern Europe and then of Central and South America integrated bits of local Pagan cultures into the Church’s system of holy days and sacred places.
“Tantra does not have a central doctrine. The written texts are primarily practical manuals, and no one text or group of texts can be considered authoritative.” This is true not only for Tantra, but for all spiritual systems and religions formed prior to the invention of writing about 4000 BCE. All modern religions are based on adaptations of various mythologies to suit the purposes of their organizers.
As a complete spiritual system, Tantra can be defined in many ways, and the author gives us this list:
“Tantra is the magic of transforming your consciousness and thereby transforming your entire being. Your body is the most powerful tool for bringing about this transformation.
‘Tantra is a spiritual science. Tantric techniques have been tested and have proven effective for many centuries. If you practice diligently, you will experience results.”
“Tantra is a way of life. The Tantric approach to exploring your own consciousness is an ever-evolving process of discovery that emerges
from daily practice.
“Tantra can provide you with the
means to deepen your sense of
connection to self, to your partner,
to all that is.
“Tantra is a technology of mind
and body that will lead you
to know yourself deeply.”
“Tantra is a practical way to loosen
the bonds of unconscious, habitual behavior and thereby start to live more freely and fully.
“Tantra is the discipline of
becoming yourself completely.
“Tantra is pragmatic and non-
moralistic. You can utilize whatever
tools are at hand for the purpose of expanding consciousness.”
And his concluding statement:
“Tantra is the Science of Self-Exploration.”
That’s the real foundation of any Complete Spiritual System.
In the section titled “Some Tantric Goddesses of Magick,” the author reveals more than what the words say. It is the Feminine that contains and provides the creative energy that is Magick, and it is by the Feminine form and her costume and ornaments that Masculine will is excited and given direction. In Anima and Animus, form is transformed, matter becomes energy, and energy under will, and Divinity manifests the World we Know.
In invoking the Goddess, and other ritual and meditative practices of identification with a particular deity, you are doing two things: (1) applying a specific deific force for a particular purpose (Magick) and (2) ultimately conditioning your lower self to become whole and united with your Higher Self.
In the mystical language of Tantra’s Sri Vidya, symbols (including images of gods and goddesses and their accessories), and the Kabbalah’s Tree of Life and system of correspondences, we have the underpinning of modern metaphysics, magick, psychology, divination, mysticism, and—surprise, surprise—science and mathematics! In fact, the Tree of Life acts as a structural map of the astral world, and hence a guide to inner plane understanding and action.
“One of the secrets of Tantra is that, above all, Tantra is experiential. All of the writing is meaningless unless you can incorporate the concepts into your consciousness and your actions … The ultimate guide, as with shamanic practice, is your experience, not what someone else writes or says.”
The author compares the universal organizing principle of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life to the Tantric Sri Yantra. He refers to Sir John Woodroffe, the British scholar and translator, writing in the early twentieth century when India was still part of the British Empire:
According to Woodroffe, the Sri Yantra represents both the human body and the universe. In this sense, the system of the Sri is in complete harmony with the Kabalists’ Tree of Life.
Because it’s important to understand the concept that the Divine can be in everything, I’m repeating a basic idea here: Yantras, including the Sri Yantra, are more than the purely linear diagrams they appear to be. They actually are the goddess or god in two-dimensional form—they are not a symbol, an analog, a representation, or a metaphor of the Divine—they are the Divine. At least, this is the traditional description. I prefer to consider them a home for the Divine. They become the Goddess or God when you call the appropriate deity into the device.
Projecting the Sri Yantra onto the human body is another concept and practice comparable to a standard Kabalistic practice. It can also be seen as a technique for conscious bridging of Inner and Outer—called “individuation” in Jung’s Analytical Psychology, and far more suitable for personal “Self-Transformation” or “Transformational Alchemy.” Either the Kabalistic or the Tantric practice is at the base of the Complete Spiritual System of the two fundamental non-religious mystical systems.
The practice of Mantra with the Sri Yantra is another valuable meditational practice that is “core” to REAL TANTRA. In other words, there comes a point when this is no longer a book about Tantra but is Tantra itself.
“The most important ‘tool’ for Tantric work is the body/mind/spirit.”
This is, of course, true for any “living” spiritual practice, but has been negated and forgotten in those traditions still based on religious theologies and myths frozen in time. All Magickal, Spiritual, and Divinatory “Tools” are very useful, both in symbolic form and as a means to multiplying our projection and specification of energies—but that of the trained mind is the most powerful of all. In the major religions, that mental aspect is replaced by rote gestures.
The Inner Secrets of “Esoteric Anatomy”
While knowledge of the subtle bodies and their physical and etheric connections has become relatively familiar in the West over the last two hundred years, at least to students and practitioners of various esoteric subjects, even serious students still lack a comprehensive understanding of the “Whole Picture” and are unable to fully integrate these “higher” levels into their “Conscious Awareness” for direct perception and intentional application in spiritual and magickal work.
In this book, we have a basic outline of the esoteric anatomy long ago experientially discovered by the earliest shamans from which pre-Hindu Tantra evolved. It doesn’t really matter what the real “history” may be—whether these origins are 30 thousand years old or 30 million, whether brought to shamans in many cultures around the globe by Deific Masters or Space Aliens, or that they may be purely the result of shamanic journeys deep into inner space.
We are, unfortunately, too conditioned to look to external authority and guidance—whether to the “Distant Past” or to the “Distant Present” (anointed gurus and credentialed academics)—when the ultimate resource is personal experience. We benefit from Past explorers and teachers, but human growth and development is accomplished through personal action, not from “following the leader,” no matter who or what that may be.
The More You Know, the
Deeper and Higher You Can Go!
While this rule is true for any subject, the understanding of “esoteric anatomy” and subtle energy movements is a deeper matter requiring “inner work” to bring it to the same level as we have today in Western education and life style.
Just “Sex Stuff”!
The story of how Tantra was denigrated as just “sex stuff” and “black magic” is familiar in the evolution of all religions from their shamanic origins. The ordained priesthood cannot tolerate competition from the individual shamanic magician, healer, prophet, clairvoyant, etc., against the organization. Despite claims to the contrary, all religions are “anti-spiritual”—they cannot tolerate the Inner Spirit of the individual in place of the proclaimed External Deity of their Divine Myth.
In the case of Tantra, as “discovered” by the British “Victorians” in nineteenth-century Imperial India, Sex was just too blatant—in the newly translated literature, everywhere in Temple sculptures showing men and women in exotic sexual positions engaging in oral sex and even anal sex, in the art depicting busty goddesses in provocative costumes and gods responding with huge erections, and everywhere in depictions of yoni and lingam joined together.
It was all too much for British Victorians!
The author corrects the erroneous perceptions by quoting Mark Michaels and Patricia Johnson, two popular writers of what we sometimes call “Neo-Tantra,” that which is primarily devoted to good and better sexuality:
“Tantra is an ancient tradition that recognizes sexual energy as a source
of personal and spiritual empowerment.
This sets it apart from most Western traditions and helps explain why most Westerners have reduced it to its sexual elements alone.”
“Tantric sexuality is about raising and manipulating energy. Both of these are done with a combination of physical
and mental techniques.”
“You can also enjoy Tantric sexuality for just the physical pleasure. But there is so much more if you involve all aspects.”
Sex and Tantric Magick
When two people make love together, there is energy exchange between their chakras—with variations of the energy flow relating to their respective positions and visualizations.
The goals of Traditional Tantric sexuality, and those for practitioners of Modern Tantra, are parallel with the goals of Neo-Tantra, but they are not the same. All of the goals of Neo-Tantric sexual techniques are side benefits to the Tantric sexuality of Modern Tantra. The primary goal in traditional Tantra is to experience and realize that you and your Atman (your Higher Self) are a single unity. The key to this is to “let go” and surrender to the intensified sexual experience in the form of the Goddess.
Creation on the Spiritual Planes Results in Creation on the Physical Plane
One of the most important lessons in this book is “by understanding that everything you do has magickal results, you can literally design your own rituals.” Even more important is that “designing your own rituals produces more powerful magick than copying someone else’s spells.” An almost universally true corollary is that “personal magick is generally more effective than group magick because of the difficulty of getting everyone to focus on one thing at the same time.” This fact is rarely admitted because people try to justify leading a group, even a small one.
Worship and Invocation
of the Goddesses
Another important subject is the “worship” of select Tantric Goddesses, actually an aspect of Invocation. Each Goddess is distinctly named, colored, adorned, costumed, postured, etc.—all of which are symbolic keys and correspondences to Her nature and the experience to have through Her. If a male “calls down” a particular Goddess to become one with his sex mate—whether through Invocation or Evocation, or some form of voluntary and temporary induced possession—she is that Goddess and is transformed by the experience, and so is he!
In a different perspective, the woman thus offering herself in such a ritual makes of herself a symbolic temporary “sacrifice” of her personal self to experience with her lover/priest and her circle/community the “ecstasy of the Goddess” through an extreme and extended orgasmic trance and perhaps the highest attainable union with Divinity.
The Ultimate Journey
What more can I say about this wonderful book? The Next Step is yours: JUST DO IT! Read, Study, Learn, Practice, Grow, and Become More than You are, and All You can Become!
Shortly after Don’s passing, I agreed to help with some of the unfinished manuscript’s few rough spots, and Don came to me in a dream—with that broad smile so characteristic of his approval and happiness—making me feel confident with my ideas. As a reader, you will find a few “unanswered questions” in the text reflecting small disagreements between us on matters of modernization of ancient pre-Hindu Tantra to meet the desires for group working of traditional couple’s rituals adapted for modern Pagans.
As in all things, it is NOT rigid adherence to olden ways that we need, but personal realization of what works for you, your partner, and your group. Become empowered through personal experience and personal realization.