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Ecstasy and Danger: Yogini, Woman, Witch and Whore

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 ECSTASY AND DANGER: YOGINI, WOMAN, WITCH, AND WHORE

The Yoginis… were a group of powerful, sometimes martial, female divinities with whom human “witches”
were identified in ritual practice… their power was intimately connected to the flow of blood, both their own
menstrual and sexual emissions, and the blood of their… victims… [they] initiated male practitioners through
fluid transactions via their “mouths”… they were possessed with the power of flight… they took the form of
humans, animals, or birds, and often inhabited trees… [and] their temples were generally located in isolated
areas…
David Gordon White, Kiss of the Yogini, 20031

Male and female witches met at night, generally in solitary places, in fields or on mountains. Sometimes,
having anointed their bodies, they flew, arriving astride poles or broom sticks; sometimes they arrived on the
backs of animals, or had transformed into animals themselves. Those who came for the first time had to
renounce the Christian faith, desecrate the sacrament and offer homage to the devil, who was present in
human (most often), animal, or semi-animal form. There would follow banquets, dancing, sexual orgies.
Before returning home, the female and male witches received evil ointments made from children’s fat and
other ingredients.
Carlo Ginzburg, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches Sabbath, 19912
Amba J. Sepie/1
The yogini (or dakini, ‘sky-dancer’) of Tantric practice are mythologicised in Hindu and Buddhist scripture as

women of power: ferocious, domineering, untameable, and aggressive women, diametrically opposite the

docile and respectful daughter, sister, or wife. Naturally, this conceptualisation of the yogini lends itself to

the consideration of these personality traits and the behaviours associated with them as threatening and

subversive in the ‘orthodox’ cultural and religious milieus of India. The yogini’s are often described as

witches, and their volatile sexual power as threatening to social order and orthodoxy as the European witch

was to Christianity.3 Understanding the stereotype is therefore reliant on contrasting motifs, identifying

underlying social and ‘religious’ tensions, and conducting an exercise in comparison; as the yogini is not at all

unique in her features. The negative associations between female sexuality, magical potency and fertility are

pervasive throughout world history, myth, and religion. The yogini is the archetypal dangerous female

‘other’ and as such, has classic features that remain consistent throughout all her worldly manifestations.4

David Gordon White writes that in the secular literature of India, “Yoginis were often portrayed as

sorceresses or witches, ambiguous, powerful, and dangerous figures that only a heroic male would dare

approach, let alone attempt to conquer,”5 though it is perhaps premature to assign the word ‘secular’ so

readily. In the Rajasthani oral narrative of Devnarayan, for example, the sixty-four6 yoginis that reside in the

banyan tree are referred to variously as witches, whores, dangerous, bloody-thirsty hags, and flesh-eating

devourers who receive offerings of intoxicants and ultimately, the body of the bard Chocho Bhat: which they

are forced to vomit back up.7 In an account from the Rajatarangini (1148 CE) the king’s minister, Sandhimati,

was executed by the king’s orders, his guru, Isana, proceeds to the place of execution to find he has been torn

apart by wolves (animal forms of the yoginis).8 He sees on the burial ground yoginis enveloped in a halo of

light, intoxicated witches who ‘magically draw back’ the spirit of Sandhimati, who is then carnally enjoyed to

their fullest desire.9 This second example takes a slightly more favourable view of the yoginis, who consume

the sage and then re-make him, to enjoy him a second time as a source of sexual pleasure, but they are

nonetheless described as fearsome witches.10

Wolves are commonly affiliated with the shape-shifting yoginis, as are snakes or serpents, and birds of prey;

an analogy White believes to be derived from one their predecessors, bird-faced female Seizers “whose harsh

cries resemble the booming of kettle drums.”11 White notes that the Rajatarangini describes a cremation-

Amba J. Sepie/2
ground ritual in which the yoginis are portrayed as violently ringing bells and beating drums.12 Yoginis are

said to possess the power of flight, to devour raw human flesh (which powers their capacity for flight); are

variously referred to as infanticidal harpies, crones, ugly hordes, and female demons; 13 and are associated

with many features of the darker manifestations of the Goddess. They are often portrayed as ugly, hideous,

or terrifying, with wild hair and dominant sexuality; are skull-bearing, child-harming, blood-drinkers, and

they are variously acquainted with a host of other generally violent tendencies. Like the Goddess however,

these qualities are not necessarily inauspicious, and just as devotion to her reveals her benevolence and

overcomes dualism, the yoginis are also able to be propiated in exchange for the bestowal of powers.

Diana Eck’s opinion is that the yogini’s are among India’s oldest deities, always linked to a particular place,

grove, river, or cave.14 She contends that they are primarily locative, and may possess a variety of qualities

ranging from the fearsome to the benign, with names that overlap with the divine personages that become

emergent in later traditions.15 Goddesses such as Brahmi, Mahesvari and Indrani are sometimes also called

yoginis and matrkas, reflecting their origin, though they are also ‘domesticated’ in the attempt to bring their

power into the range and control of brahmanical traditions.16 In evaluating the contemporary portrayal of

goddesses as benign or malevolent, another author suggests that whilst goddesses bear a seemingly

auspicious demeanour when they are subjected to the will of their husbands or consorts, they appear

dangerous and threatening when they do not.17 Both their erotic power and their celibacy become

problematic, because in life as well as mythology, the female is truly deadlier than the male.18 The

‘domestication’ of goddess as consort and the ‘good wife’ ideal emerges strongly in scripture, myth and

social practice in India, and is supported by nineteenth and twentieth century colonial discourse in which a

constructed Indian identity imprinted the ideals of submission, self-sacrifice and chastity upon women.19 The

yogini is diametrically opposed to this female ideal of pativrata, the chaste and obedient wife;20 and she is

representative of the dangerous female power that is acknowledged but subjugated at every turn.

Situating the yogini within a Tantric discourse opposed to, or prior to, orthodox Vedic religion, or as a

primordial archetypal deity (as Eck would argue), is in practice quite impossible; scholars are not in

agreement as to the position and interaction of different philosophies and practices on the historical arc of

ancient India, and nor are they able to ascribe any regional origin that does not incur contradiction, often

stumbling on the dates of Vedic codification, the existence or non-existence of distinct ‘tribal’ praxis, and so

forth. From Vedic sources, the earliest mention of yoginis can be traced to the Agni Purana (possibly 6CE)21
Amba J. Sepie/3
and the earliest Buddhist source appears to be the Lankavatara (4CE), in which the dakinis are female quasi-

human beings associated with the Raksasi demons and an outcaste group of human carnivores.22 It is not

clear, however, that the Vedas are textually representative of an ‘imported’ practice, or that there is a

category of ‘tribal’ or ‘folk’ belief that they can be contrasted with; the binary is not sustainable in anything

but the purest sense.23 What is evident is that India has a diverse history of belief and practice that is difficult

for the ‘imported’ scholar to make sense of, much less classify without deliberately ignoring contradictions.24

White suggests that the Vedic goddesses, Apsarasas (Nymphs), Grahis or Grahanis (female Seizers), Matrkas

(Mothers), Yaksinis (female Dryads), and Dakinis (Flyers or Noisemakers) of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain

mythology, the various unnumbered local Devis, and general attitudes towards woman and femininity are all

precursors to the emergence of both the yogini cults of medieval times and, I would add, the negative

stereotypes which attach to them.25 Both logic and world history dictate that female sexuality or power out of

context and out of place would be sufficient to provoke the demonisation of a human woman, entity, or

goddess, as witch.

White traces a development within Tantric practice specifically from an early and widespread emphasis on

the Matrkas, Yaksinis and Grahanis, who were symbolically located at the threshold between the divine and

demonic; to the erotico-mystical hoards of yoginis led by Siva-Bhairava and the Goddess in the ninth or tenth

century.26 Human yoginis were simultaneously conceived of in Kaula practice as flesh and blood women but

also, devouring semi-divine beings who were their object of worship.27 He portrays the yoginis as petulant,

terrible and benign by turns, traditionally worshipped with the blood offerings and animal sacrifice which

fuelled their flight.28 Once gratified, they would transform into beautiful young women who would then

bestow supernatural powers, the power of flight in particular, onto their human devotees.29 In terms of

human practice, White determines this power of flight to be a sexual metaphor, the exchange of male seminal

fluid for female sakti: only through sustained sexual interaction with the yogini could the initiate become the

siddha (or ‘perfected being’) and attain these powers.30

In Tantric practice, the yogini is the Goddess embodied by a woman, and is thus the natural residence of sakti;

it is through her that an awakening by desire may be achieved.31 Siva and sakti, which are envisioned within

the human body, are moved (via the kundalini serpent) through the cakra’s, each consumed with fire as it

ascends, by breath, to the head, which is thus replenished with the lunar nectar, the soma, or semen of Siva.32
Amba J. Sepie/4
As it rises, this same semen is gradually ‘cooked’ or transformed into amrta, the divine nectar of immortality,

which, when enabled at the crown cakra, wholly transforms the body into that of the god-man.33 The

mechanics of this transformation are achieved by vajroli mudra, the emanation and re-absorption of semen

from the female partner, catalysed through its interaction with her sexual fluids and uterine blood. 34

Emission and re-absorption are ubiquitous properties of the manifest cosmos, and as retaining semen

produces the heat (tapas) of spiritual ascent in the celibate ascetic, so too, does the fire of ritualised love-

making drive the kundalini upwards, igniting the cakras as it goes.35 Semen is important not only as a symbol

of male virility, but the raw material or fuel through which the immortal body is conceived out of the

biological.36 Though Siva’s semen is associated with soma, the deified moon and the fluid of immortality, it is

also, in human terms, the symbol of fertility that is sacrificed for the procurement of powers.

Though it is not recognised as such, I would suggest that the act described above is directly paralleled by the

erotic magic attributed to the witches of Thessaly, also the mythological home of the Centaurs, particularly

Chiron, and site of some of the adventures of Heracles, Jason, and Achilles.37 These witches were attributed

with ‘drawing down the moon’, a form of erotic magic which would make the moon pale, or turn blood red,

leaving a ‘foam’ of moon-juice which could be used in love magic.38 The price Thessalian women paid for

this is to lose either children, or an eye; and the practice was associated with the clashing of cymbals.39 Ovid

wrote in 16BC, “Incantations draw down the horns of the bloody moon and call back the snowy horses of the

departing sun. By an incantation snakes are burst and their jaws broken off, and waters turn around and

flow back to their sources.”40 Though these are obscure references, I would suggest that the typical

characterisation of these witches is consistent elsewhere with the yogini (or perhaps earlier, Seizer) stereotype,

and that the mechanics of the ritual may have been similar. Like the later yoginis, the Thessalian witches are

accused of gathering noxious herbs and human bones for magic, shape-shifting (usually into wolves),

constraint of the gods, necromancy, patronage to Hecate (goddess of the underworld), and wearing their hair

loose.41

This loose hair is significant, for not just Thessalian witches but the witch stereotype in general, and women

who pose a sexual threat to men are often portrayed as possessing an abundance of loose, untamed hair.42

Female sexuality is antithetical to marriage and fertility, and this is mirrored in the hair rules that apply to

liminal goddesses, but also, menstruating women in India. A menstruating woman is not fertile, which

means that her sexuality is not bound to her ability to procreate during this time and she is therefore ritually
Amba J. Sepie/5
dangerous. She is not permitted to perform puja, or touch representations of the gods;43 and she is also

prohibited from combing her hair during this time, which is designed to make her unattractive to men.44 She

is restricted in her interactions with male members of the family and community, and she may not participate

fully in cooking food.45 The preparation of a meal by a person who is polluting creates the risk of co-

mingling, or absorbing the traits of the person who has prepared the food, 46 which may be linked to the idea

that food creates seed, which is the source of fertility.47 Similarly, a study of Buddhist women in India noted

that a woman communicates the onset of menstruation with the statement “I have to wash my head”, and

her washed hair is then re-knotted with plaits to form a central part, which is then stained red.48

The sacrifice that is symbolized in Tantric ritual (that of seed and fertility for the acquisition of spiritual

power), is also suggested by the hair symbolism attached to the maiden, bride, and wife; except that the raw

sexuality of the woman is sacrificed and in its place, she becomes a symbol of fertility; the wife and mother.

Binding or covering of the head and often, the removal of hair, is common to wedding ritual throughout the

world, but also to sacrificial ritual; the Greeks wreathed and garlanded the heads of both brides and

sacrificial victims,49 whereas shaving and bagging the head is the European equivalent, usually before

hanging or beheading the victim.

The significance of the hair to fertility indexes the relationship between maternal love and the emotion of

lust;50 and menstruation is problematic because it variously signals both the potential for fertility, but also,

the danger of sexuality that is not constrained to procreative purposes. Doniger notes some consistency in

the notion that intercourse at the time of menstruation is strongly prohibited, in one example it is possibly

linked to the death of the male via convulsions,51 and the Dharmasastra further emphasises this with the

warning that coitus during the critical three days of ritual separation will result in offspring who are

outcastes or cursed.52 The connection between the sexual relationship, as prescribed within marriage, and the

birth of children, is symbolically mediated by ideas about seed, milk and blood; the loss of which suggests

loss of life.53

The radical subversion of these within Tantric practice is obviously antithetical to these conventions, but the

point at which yoginis are symbolically transformed into ‘witches’ is, I believe, specifically connected to this

loss of fertility and the juxtaposition of reproduction (life) with death.54 The stereotypical witch has not only

loose hair and dubious sexual morals, but also a lust for blood, an interest in ‘stealing’ the nocturnal
Amba J. Sepie/6
emissions of men, and a negative effect (often, death) that is specific to fertility, pregnant mothers, and

infants. A female who would kill a child or prevent its birth runs contrary to the societal ideal of the

nurturing mother,55 and demonising women who deliberately flaunt this norm would be natural to those for

whom the subtleties of tantric practice were obscure. The ‘othering’ of practices which are unfamiliar could

fix what is usually an ambiguous, benevolent/malevolent combination of features to its negative polarity, and

the same logic could be applied to the shifting characteristics of deities.56

Child-killing demons are found in a wide range of ancient mythological sources, the most well-known being

Lilith and Lamashtu (Mesopotamia), and Lamia (Greece). The features of all three are alike and a single

example is illustrative. Lilith makes her first appearance in Sumer in the 3rd millennium BC on a terracotta

relief in which she possesses wings and owl-feet, though she later appears strongly in medieval Jewish

mysticism as a sexually ravenous succubus who preys on children.57 She is variously described as roaming

the night, making sport with men to cause them to emit seed; adorning herself like a harlot with long, red

hair, white cheeks, and six ornaments; giving wine to men to make them drunk, fornicating with them,

thereafter to fly up to heaven and turn into a menacing figure.58 To quote from the Zohar, “She stands before

him clothed in garments of flaming fire, inspiring terror and making body and soul tremble, full of

frightening eyes, in her hand a drawn sword dripping bitter drops. And she kills that fool and casts him into

Gehenna.”59 As a child-killer, she preys on the children of men and women who are unclean, specifically

men who were in a ‘dream’ of lust when the child was conceived.60 In Kabbalistic thought, Lilith began this

practice when her serpent partner, Samael, is castrated, lest they fill the world with a ‘demonic brood.’61

It is not difficult to see the parallel between this medieval tale of the serpent partner and the demoness who

becomes a threat to human men, and the Kaula practices of medieval India. The witch trails in Germany in

the seventeenth century also stereotyped witches with issues surrounding maternity; with a focus on breast,

milk, and nourishment as key substances used by the witch against a mother.62 The fornication of the witch

with the serpent devil was the reputed source of her power to harm children, and the most dangerous threat

to the child was the older or barren woman whose fluids did not flow outwards.63 Youths were warned

against marrying such women as “they were sexually ravenous… would suck out their seed, weakening

them with their insatiable hunger for seminal fluids…”64

Amba J. Sepie/7
The depictions of witches flying to the Sabbat also contained all the elements of the stereotype; their flying

hair, their nakedness, intoxication, cannibalism, and their transformation into animals are all parallel with

how the yoginis are portrayed, including the organisation of the Sabbat around sexual bodily contact.65 There

is a striking difference however: in the former, the pact between witch and devil is sealed by intercourse,

which provides the basis for the witch’s power including her power of flight.66 In the Indian understanding

the roles are reversed; it is the feasting of the witch on flesh that gives her the power of flight, which is then

transferred to the male adept through the sexual rite.67 The yoginis do not ride broomsticks per se, but they do

ride the phallus of their consorts; just as the fierce goddess Kali mounts Siva both with, and without, the rest

of his body; and along with the goddesses Kubjika, and Camunda, rides through the air astride a male

corpse.68 European witches, similar to Kali, do seem to be accused of acquiring disembodied penises

however, and the threat of castration, the ultimate threat to fertility (and virility) was of perpetual concern

during the period of the witch-trials.69

Another parallel recalls the earlier mention of the bird-headed Seizers that White considers an important

precursor to the emergence of the symbolic features of the yoginis. Though sculptural and ethnographic data

suggests they have a long history of recognition in India, the first noted appearance of the Seizers in text is in

the Mahabharata, in association with the birth of Skanda, son of both Agni and Rudra-Siva.70 The Skanda-

Seizers are generally demonesses, devourers, disease-bearers, and ghouls, but also various protectors who

might be propiated in order to cease the suffering of children.71 Because Skanda comes from both Agni and

Rudra-Siva he embodies both their benevolent and malevolent qualities, and the acts of the Seizers, in turn,

alternate between ‘seizure’ and ‘release’; actions transcribed later into the yogini traditions.72

There are various sculptural portrayals of Skanda attended by goat-faced beings and bird-faced beings;

multiple nativity scenes of the infant Skanda, a Mother, and a goat-faced figure (likely to be Agni); and one of

Skanda’s heads is goat-headed.73 Sasthi, a bird goddess and the wife/sister of Skanda, is known throughout

India as the Goddess of Childbirth. She has six heads, like Skanda; she is the sixth in a series of deities

including Skanda and his four ‘brothers’; and they are both worshipped on the sixth day of the lunar month

and on the sixth day after childbirth.74 She is also closely identified with her cat, a trait which White argues

links her closely to another very early goddess, Hariti, the ‘kidnapper of infants’, and she is also associated

with Manasa, the serpent goddess.75 It would be errant not to note the evident parallels with modern witch

symbolism, though it is difficult to develop this whilst maintaining the integrity of the context. It is possible,
Amba J. Sepie/8
however, that just as the yogini became stereotyped gradually over time, the stereotype of the European

witch was formulated out of a now-obscured Indo-European heritage which shared elements with Indian

culture, but was modified by time and cultural interaction.

Walter Stephens develops the European associations between screech owls, goats, witch-cats, werewolves

and the death of children in his history of sex and witchcraft, suggesting that these come out of a Greek and

Roman heritage.76 He notes that the devil is portrayed variously as both cat and goat, but suggests that the

relation between witches and birds of prey is largely metaphoric.77 I would argue to the contrary, that it has a

particularly long history throughout the ancient world, as evidenced by the vast number of bird headed

goddess depicted in sculptural form that have been unearthed on archaeological sites.78 The Mesopotamian

goddess Ishtar is closely associated with birds, goats, and sexual intercourse, and the child-killing

demonesses of Mesopotamia and Greece are variously associated with the birds of prey, horses, asses and

wolves.79

Lamia, the child-killing demoness of Greece, is depicted in a lekythos dated to 4CE, in which a naked,

ithyphallic woman is tied to a palm tree, her belly hanging out over her groin with pendulous breasts and

fang-like teeth.80 Though this is a part of her anatomy, the attachment of a penis is not particularly novel if

the disembodied penises stolen by witches are recalled. Surrounding Lamia are satyrs, who are the usual

companions of maenads: the wild women who accompany Dionysius in feasting, drinking, and orgiastic rites

and, like yoginis, are variously chaste or ferocious depending on the context. In the Bacchae, maenads are

described as lustful birds; in the myth of Leucippe and Hippasus they become flying nightmares, or witches;

and they are elsewhere replaced in myth with horses (literal ‘night-mares’).81 In India, the mare is the erotic

and devouring whore-mother, contrasted with the domestic ideal of the ‘safe’ cow, or benign and docile

mother.82 Also, the mare is the quintessential female androgyne; the consort of which is either the impotent or

castrated male.83 In the Matsya Purana, Visnu/Kalki plays the role of the mare or woman, sucking out the

blood, urine or moisture of living creatures: “He is the mare’s head in the ocean of milk, the whirlpool fire

that drinks the oblation made of water.”84 There is a clear analogy with the fluids which are sucked out of the

body by the yogini, who “suck up the person’s breath, drink his blood, and steal away his life.”85

Though the same combination of animal and sexual associations might apply to women who threaten

fertility, the fixing of the stereotype to the negative polarity does not occur with goddesses within India as it
Amba J. Sepie/9
does with the yogini/witch or human woman. In India, Putana (or Sitala), the goddess of smallpox, is

possibly depicted in a tenth century image mounted on an ass,86 and she is elsewhere described as a sexually

ambiguous bird who assumes the form of a beautiful woman with poisoned breasts.87 Doniger writes that in

images depicting the killing of Putana by Krsna, he is often shown as a small child on top of a supine Putana,

with a gaping mouth, sharp teeth, and a protruding phallic tongue.88 She is named twice in the Puranas, once

as a female Seizer and once as a yogini, and her name is also used in numerous instances as a signifier for a

group of Putanas who are variously Mothers and Seizers.89 Though she possesses both malevolent and

benevolent characteristics, she is nonetheless propiated as a protectress, not a sorceress.

In the yogini stereotype, on the other hand, the iconography which allies them with the birds of prey is

inherited from the Mothers and Seizers, but it does not remain ambiguous. It is the human context which

designates the powers attributed to yoginis as dangerous, and I would argue that despite the discourse on

human-divine affinity within Indian religious philosophies, humans that transgress the borders have

nonetheless been consistently viewed as marginal others; as indicated by the very early emergence of the

stereotype in textual sources. Women are more libidinous than men, dangerously so, but as Doniger argues,

one man’s witch is another man’s goddess.90 She notes that even when rejected, the Tantric philosophy plays

a critical role within Indian society, establishing the boundaries of the normative world by expressing the

tensions between eroticism and restraint.91

Whilst the practices of an ascetic woman have been sufficiently purified and ‘semanticised’, posing no

physical threat to society, marriage, and fertility; the tantric female is beyond the reach of orthodoxy and

conservative practice. The alignment of the yogini symbolically with the darker manifestations of the

Goddess and the other female deities (such as the Seizers and Mothers) legitimise their practices and

symbolism, but do not provide social sanction. Whether the practices attributed to yoginis are those of semi-

divine beings or human women, the symbolic content is so antithetical to other aspects of Indian society that

it is permitted only in divine personages; and where it occurs elsewhere it is explicitly marginalised. The

submersion of the yogini in the witch stereotype is both convenient and symbolically potent for these

purposes, supplying a context for the broader discourse on purity and pollution, sexuality, women, fertility,

and motherhood.

Amba J. Sepie/10
NOTES
1
Italics mine. White, D.G. Kiss of the Yogini: "Tantric Sex" in its South Asian Contexts, p. 27.
2
Ginzburg, C. Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches Sabbat, p. 1.
3
It is important to note the distinction however, because whilst the function of magic in ‘Western’ societies was all but
extinguished by Christianity, the sorceror or sorceress often plays an important social role in Indian communities. The stereotype
is therefore functional in both, but with different relationships to practice and belief.
4
Undertaking an exercise in comparison in order to understand the dense symbolic content that results in the conception of
yoginis as witches is not a task that is compatible with the approach that is generally taken in modern studies of religion; and in
fact, it is unfashionable. But I argue that this insistence on containment of cultural content to bounded wholes is just a reaction
against the diffusionist approach taken earlier in ancient history and religion, and considering that the various agendas of this
approach have only come to light relatively recently, it seems ridiculous to ignore the dense transaction in symbolic content that
certainly occurred cross-culturally in earlier times in the interests of academic politics. The stereotype of the yogini as witch did
not occur in a vacuum, and nor did the emergence of the same stereotype in the European witch trials, and I therefore support
analogy as an illustrative device whilst making no claims for the direct route or context for the transmission of such symbolism
across time or cultural groups.
5
Italics mine. White, p. 10.
6
The pithas (“seats” or “benches”) of the goddess are also sixty-four in number and said to be attended by sixty-four yoginis who
are also local goddesses, presiding over geographically specific hilltops or villages. Eck, D.L. Banaras: City of Light, p. 159.
7
Malik, A. Nectar Gaze and Poison Breath: An Analysis and Translation of the Rajasthani Oral Narrative of Devnarayan, pp. 22, 64,
123, 44, 47-48.
8
White, Kiss of the Yogini, pp. 193-94.
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid, p. 194.
11
Ibid, p. 207.
12
Ibid.
13
Gupta, B. Magical Beliefs and Superstitions, pp. 141-42.
14
Eck, p. 157.
15
Ibid, p. 158.
16
Ibid.
17
Lawrence Babb in Hawley, J.S. 'Prologue: The Goddess in India' in Hawley & Wulff, Devi: Goddesses of India, p. 11.
18
Hawley, p. 14; Doniger O'Flaherty, W. Sexual Metaphors and Animal Symbols in Indian Mythology, p. 86.
19
Thandani in Penrose, W. 'Hidden in History: Female Homoeroticism and Women of a "Third Nature" in the South Asian Past' in
Journal of the History of Sexuality, p. 32.
20
Doniger O'Flaherty, p. 112.
21
White, Kiss of the Yogini, p. 27.
22
Gray, D.B. 'Eating the Heart of the Brahmin: Representations of Alterity and the Formation of Identity in Tantric Buddhist
Discourse' in History of Religions, p. 50.
23
David Gordon White argues that it is artificial to insert a distinction between “Vedic” or “Indo-Aryan” tradition or “non-Vedic”
and “Indus Valley” as both the religion and culture of the Vedas is present in the Indus civilisation, alongside many artefacts
suggesting female deification. Also, he argues that yogini cults of medieval times have multiple Vedic and classical Hindu
precursors, suggesting that the concept has a history in India in excess of three thousand years. White, Kiss of the Yogini pp. 28-
29.
24
This disclaimer stands for all the scholars cited herein, and even myself, as author. In order to extract a narrative, writers select
out some threads, definitions, and opinions over others, and whilst I will attempt to make this argument in as balanced a way as
possible, my discussion of the yoginis necessarily relies entirely upon the work of these scholars.
25
White, Kiss of the Yogini, pp. 8, 29.
26
Ibid, p. 8.
27
Ibid, p. 10.
28
Ibid, p. 8.
29
Ibid.
30
Ibid pp. 11-12.
31
White, D.G. The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India, p. 200.
32
Ibid, pp. 38-40.
33
Ibid,p. 39; Eliade, M. Yoga, Immortality and Freedom, p. 235.
34
White, The Alchemical Body, p. 200.
Amba J. Sepie/11
35
Davis, R. 'Becoming and Siva, and Acting as One, in Saiva Worship' in Goudriaan, Ritual and Speculation in Early Tantrism: Studies
in Honor of Andre Padoux, p. 109; Filippi, G. Mrtyu: Concept of Death in Indian Traditions, p. 81.
36
White, The Alchemical Body, p. 26.
37
Phillips, O. 'The Witches Thessaly' in Mirecki & Meyer, Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World, p. 379.
38
Ogden, D. Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook, pp. 236-37.
39
Re, the clashing of cymbals, note the similarity to Seizers and yoginis. Ibid, pp. 237, 40.
40
Ibid, p. 238.
41
Ibid, pp. 116, 24-25.
42
Myerowitz Levine, M. 'The Gendered Grammar of Ancient Mediterranean Hair' in Eilberg-Schwartz & Doniger, Off with Her
Head! The Denial of Women's Identity in Myth, Religion, and Culture, p. 92.
43
Abraham, L. 'Redrawing the Lakshman Rekha: Gender Differences and Cultural Constructions in Youth Sexuality in Urban India' in
Srivastava, Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes: Sexualities, Masculinities and Culture in South Asia, p. 223.
44
Lang, K. 'Shaven Heads and Loose Hair: Buddhist Attitudes toward Hair and Sexuality' in Eilberg-Schwartz & Doniger, Off with Her
Head! The Denial of Women's Identity in Myth, Religion, and Culture, p. 40.
45
Abraham, p. 223.
46
Hanssen, K. 'Ingesting Menstrual Blood: Notions of Health and Bodily Fluids in Bengal' in Ethnology, p. 374.
47
Doniger O'Flaherty, pp. 17-61.
48
Lang, p. 41.
49
Myerowitz Levine, p. 101.
50
Doniger O'Flaherty, p. 48.
51
Ibid, p. 35.
52
Lang, p. 40.
53
Doniger O'Flaherty, pp. 19-20.
54
For a parallel in Judaism, see Eilberg-Schwartz, H. The Savage in Judaism: An Anthropology of Israelite Religion and Ancient
Judaism, pp. 186-90.
55
Johnston, S.I. 'Defining the Dreadful: Remarks on the Greek Child-Killing Demon' in Meyer & Mirecki, Ancient Magic and Ritual
Power, p. 367.
56
The transition from Seizers to yoginis, for example.
57
Patai, R. The Hebrew Goddess, p. 222.
58
Ibid, pp. 233-34.
59
Ibid, p. 234.
60
Ibid, pp. 236-43.
61
Patai notes this may be a reinterpretation of the old Talmudic story of God castrating the male and slaying the female Leviathan
in order to prevent them coupling and destroying the earth. In medieval Jewish mystical thought the female is not killed but made
barren, becoming a symbol of fornication. Ibid, pp. 245-46.
62
Roper, L. 'Witchcraft and Fantasy in Early Modern Germany' in Levack, New Perspectives on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology,
p. 311.
63
Ibid, pp. 311-12.
64
Ibid, p. 312.
65
Stephens, W. Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief, p. 19.
66
Zika, C. 'Fears of Flying: Representations of Witchcraft and Sexuality in Early Sixteenth Century Germany' in Levack, New
Perspectives on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology, p. 391.
67
White, Kiss of the Yogini, pp. 196-97.
68
Ibid, p. 204.
69
Stephens, pp. 300-05.
70
White, Kiss of the Yogini, p. 37.
71
Ibid, pp. 45-49.
72
Ibid, p. 47.
73
Ibid, pp. 37-39.
74
Ibid, p. 41.
75
Ibid, p. 43.
76
Stephens, pp. 280, 83.
77
Ibid, pp. 280-81.
78
Johnson, B. Lady of the Beasts: Ancient Images of the Goddess and Her Sacred Animals, pp. 7-97.
79
Johnston, pp. 375-387.
Amba J. Sepie/12
80
Ibid, p. 373.
81
Doniger O'Flaherty, p. 200.
82
Ibid, pp. 207, 78-79.
83
Ibid, p. 236.
84
Ibid, p. 237.
85
Ibid.
86
White, Kiss of the Yogini, p. 51.
87
Doniger O'Flaherty, p. 182.
88
Ibid, p. 334.
89
White, Kiss of the Yogini, pp. 51-53.
90
Doniger O'Flaherty, p. 278.
91
Ibid, p. 272.

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Amba J. Sepie/14

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