09/12/2020 Sexuality in the Tantric 

Sources – Saiva Tantra – Krama-Trika synthesis of Abhinavagupta

Saiva Tantra – Krama-Trika

synthesis of Abhinavagupta

About Gallery Recommended reading and cited references

Sexuality in the
Tantric Sources
Around the 10th century, there was a
reformation involving a shift away from earlier
forms of practice which had involved cremation
ground-based asceticism featuring the use of
blood sacri ce and alcohol a means to feeding
and satisfying a host of terrible Kula (clan)
deities. In the 9th or 10th century, a paradigm
shift of sorts occurred with a change in
emphasis away from feeding those ravenous
deities towards a type of erotico-mystical
practice involving a female horde, collectively

https://saivatantra.com/sexuality-in-the-tantric-sources/ 1/19
09/12/2020 Sexuality in the Tantric Sources – Saiva Tantra – Krama-Trika synthesis of Abhinavagupta

known as the Yoginis, led by the terrible male

Siva-Bhairava, together with his consort, the
Goddess (Aghoresvari, Uma, Candi, Sakti, etc.).
The Kaula rites were grounded in the cults of
the Yoginis, medieval heiress to the Matrkas
(Mothers), Yaksinis (female Dryads),
and Grahinis (female Seizers) of earlier
traditions who, like them, were often
represented as supernatural or preternatural
hybrids between human, animal, bird, and plant
worlds. These petulant female deities, located at
a shifting threshold between the divine and the
demonic, were by turns terrible and benign with
regard to humans, who traditionally worshipped
them with blood o erings and animal sacri ce.
Once grati ed by said oblations, the Yoginis
would reveal themselves as ravishing young
women and gratify their human devotees in
return with supernatural powers (siddhis), most
particularly the power of ight.

Induced possession by these Yoginis was the

prime means to the ends of the Kaula, the “clan-
generated” practices, also termed the “clan-
practice” (kulacara), “clan religion” (kuladharma),
or the “clan generated gnosis” (kulajnana). Kaula
practitioners were primarily concerned with
worldly powers (siddhis) and bodily immortality
(jivanmukti) with the enjoyment (bhukti) of said
powers and immortality taking precedence over
any ideal of consciousness raising or
disembodied liberation from cyclic rebirth
(mukti), embraced by more conventional Tantric

https://saivatantra.com/sexuality-in-the-tantric-sources/ 2/19
09/12/2020 Sexuality in the Tantric Sources – Saiva Tantra – Krama-Trika synthesis of Abhinavagupta

practitioners. These powers were gained by

transacting with the Yoginis, who, in the Kaula
context, were also identi ed with the female
ritual consorts of the male practitioner. That is,
the Yoginis of the Kaula Tantric tradition were at
once regarded as esh-and-blood women with
whom male practitioners interacted, and the
devouring semi-divine beings who were the
object of their worship cults. In the secular
literature, these Yoginis were often portrayed as
witches or sorceresses, ambiguous, powerful,
and dangerous gures that only a heroic male
would dare approach, let alone attempt to
conquer. It is for this reason that the fully
initiated male practitioners of the Kaula termed
themselves Champions or Virile Heroes (Viras);
alternatively, they referred to themselves as
Perfected Beings (Siddhas), by way of identifying
themselves with another order of semi-divine
beings, the male counterparts to the Yoginis of
Epic and medieval Indian mythology.

Unlike the Kapalika before it, which openly

transgressed in a public space of a town or its
cremation grounds – and unlike the orthodox
Tantrikas, most often household practitioners of
relatively conventional, non-sexual Tantric
liturgies, whose goal was liberation rather than
supernatural enjoyments – members of the
Kaula tended to carry their sexual rites on in
relatively remote areas known only to its
initiates.

https://saivatantra.com/sexuality-in-the-tantric-sources/ 3/19
09/12/2020 Sexuality in the Tantric Sources – Saiva Tantra – Krama-Trika synthesis of Abhinavagupta

On certain night of the lunar month and solar

year, Kaula practitioners would assemble on
cremation grounds, or at “clan mounds” or
“seats” (pithas), “clan-mountains” (kula-parvatas)
or “ elds” (ksetras). These gatherings were
called “mingling” (melakas, melanas, melapas),
involving the union of male and female initiates,
of Yoginis whose presence and interaction with
their heroic (Vira) or perfected (Siddha) male
counterparts was the sine qua non of Kaula
practice.

At these gatherings the Yoginis would descend

from the sky to meet their male consorts
awaiting them on the ground. These Yogini’s
ight was fueled by the man and animal esh
that was their diet; however, the Siddhas or
Viras, by virtue of their own practice, were able
to o er the Yoginis a more subtle and more
powerful energy source. This was their semen
(virya), the distilled essence of their own bodily
constituents. The Yoginis, grati ed by these
o erings, would o er their form of grace to the
Siddhas or Viras. Instead of devouring them,
they would o er them a counter-presentation
of their own sexual discharge, something these
male partners would have been as needful as
the Yoginis were of male semen. Why?
According to the Kaula tradition, the Godhead
externalized himself (or herself in the Krama) in
the form of a cluster of 8 great goddesses, who
in turn proliferated into the multiple circles of
feminine energies (usually 64) that was the

https://saivatantra.com/sexuality-in-the-tantric-sources/ 4/19
09/12/2020 Sexuality in the Tantric Sources – Saiva Tantra – Krama-Trika synthesis of Abhinavagupta

Yogini entourage. These semi-divine Yoginis and

the human women who embodied them carried
in their bodies the germ plasm of the Godhead,
called the “clan nectar” (kulamrta), “clan uid”
(kuladravyam), “vulval essence” (yoni-tattva), the
“command” (ajna), simply the “ uid (dravyam),
or the “clan” (kula). While this divine essence
naturally owed through women, it was
considered absent in males. Therefore, the sole
means by which a male could access the ow of
the supreme godhead at the elevated center of
the mandala, the clan “ ow-chart,” was through
the Yoginis who formed or inhabited its outer
circles.

Only through initiation by and continued

interaction with the Yoginis could these male
practitioners access the uid essence and
boundless energy of the godhead. It was
therefore necessary that male practitioners be
“inseminated” or more properly speaking
“insanguinated,” with the sexual or menstrual
discharge of the Yoginis – rendering the “mouth”
of the Yogini their sole conduit to membership
in the clan and all its prerequisites. Here, the
“mouth” of the Yogini was her vulva, and
“drinking female discharge” (rajapana), the
prime means to ful ll the male needs.
Therefore, the erotico-mystical practice, the
“Tantric sex” practiced by the Kaula
practitioners, mainly involved the drinking of
these power substances that were sexual uids,
either through mutual oral congress or through

https://saivatantra.com/sexuality-in-the-tantric-sources/ 5/19
09/12/2020 Sexuality in the Tantric Sources – Saiva Tantra – Krama-Trika synthesis of Abhinavagupta

a form of genital sex called vajroli mudra

(urethral suction) by which the male partner
used his penis as a straw to suck up the sexual
discharge of the female partner. The ending of
this encounter was the much coveted ability of
ight, which was later to be internalized and
reinterpreted along the means of experiencing
God-Consciousness, but which more likely
re ected the seeking of supernatural power
among the Kaula.

David Gordon White makes the argument that

“hard-core” etic perspective of Tantra,
speci cally the sexualized ritual of the Kaula, is
the quintessential and de ning feature of
Tantra based on the fact that all other elements
of Tantric practice – the ritual use of mandalas,
mantras, and mudras; worship of terrible or
benign divinities; re o erings; induced
possession; sorcery, and so on – may be found
elsewhere, in traditions whose emic self-
de nitions are not necessarily Tantric.
Additionally, all the elements of Tantric
exegesis, that is Tantric “mysticism,” speci cally
the later non-dual synthesis of Abhinavagupta,
was a second-order re ection or later re-
interpretation that was not necessarily unique
to Tantra, but that have in have in fact, brought
Tantra back into a more conventional fold over
time.  

Since its origins in the 6th-7th century, Tantra has

essentially consisted of a body of techniques for
the control of multiple, often female, beings,
https://saivatantra.com/sexuality-in-the-tantric-sources/ 6/19
09/12/2020 Sexuality in the Tantric Sources – Saiva Tantra – Krama-Trika synthesis of Abhinavagupta

both for one’s own bene t and as tools to use

against others. These may be reduced to three
principal types: 1). Mantras, acoustic formulas
that, when enunciated properly under the
proper conditions, control said beings; 2).
Techniques of possession, in which the same
beings act through one’s own body; 3). The
grati cation of these beings through sacri cial
o erings, with or without the transformative
medium of vedic re. In this last case, the
supreme o ering is none other than the bodily
constituents of the practitioner himself. Here,
human practitioners make the supreme
sacri ce of their own person, moving the Tantric
deity to reciprocate with untold powers and
supernatural enjoyments. It is these three types
of practice that have constituted the Tantric
mainstream in the history of South Asian
religions.

A distinction needs to be made here. What we

are calling the Tantric mainstream in re here
refers to the popular practices throughout
South Asia, which is to be distinguished from
the later, aestheticized High Tantric mysticism of
the later Tantric exegetes, such as
Abhinavagupta. Whereas the sexual content of 
Kaula practice had the production of
sacramentally transformative substances as its
principal goal, later Tantric sexual practice came
to be grounded in a theory of transformative
aesthetics, in which the experience of orgasm
e ected a break-through from “contracted” self-

https://saivatantra.com/sexuality-in-the-tantric-sources/ 7/19
09/12/2020 Sexuality in the Tantric Sources – Saiva Tantra – Krama-Trika synthesis of Abhinavagupta

consciousness to “expansive” god-

consciousness, in which the entire universe
came to be experienced as “Self.” The exegetic
synthesis of these thinkers, arguably the
greatest metaphysical writings of the entire
medieval period in South Asia, have become the
basis for the “soft core” practices of the great
majority of High Tantric practitioners of the
Indian subcontinent, but these practices do not
constitute the Tantric mainstream so much as a
Tantric orthopraxy who practices shades into
those of orthopraxy brahmanic ritual. There are
a few examples of Tantric sexuality as ltered
through this High Tantra.

Vital and Sexual Fluids

We can ask what it is about sexual uids that

caused them to be seen as such powerful
substances.

1. Indian traditions have always viewed

sexual uids, and most particularly
menstrual and uterine blood, as
polluting, powerful, and dangerous
substances
2. Ancient cults or “earth mother
goddesses” found throughout India
portray her fertility as requiring
counterprestations of vital uid in
the form of male seed, animal
sacri ce, or some ritual substitute.
3. Tantra originated among a subaltern
stratum of the Indian population
https://saivatantra.com/sexuality-in-the-tantric-sources/ 8/19
09/12/2020 Sexuality in the Tantric Sources – Saiva Tantra – Krama-Trika synthesis of Abhinavagupta

that, lacking the means to procure

the ritual substances of orthodox
worship rites, made use of readily
available human sexual uid in
practice
4. Women reputed as witches,
sometimes called Yoginis, 
consumed vital uids in their covens,
including both the  blood of child
and adult victims, and the sexual
uids of their male partners
5. Emergent understanding of the role
played by sexual uids, both female
and male, in conception, gave rise to
the concept of these as power
substances and to the notion that a
transfer of the same to the initiate
was a requisite moment in Tantric
initiations.
6. Elite Tantric practitioners self-
consciously subverted orthodox
purity codes by manipulating sexual
uids as a means to e ecting a
powerful expansion of
consciousness from the limited
consciousness of the conformist
brahmanical practitioners to an all-
encompassing “god-consciousness”
of the Tantric superman. In the
Kaula traditions, all of these
elements are combined into an
elaborate system of human, animal,

https://saivatantra.com/sexuality-in-the-tantric-sources/ 9/19
09/12/2020 Sexuality in the Tantric Sources – Saiva Tantra – Krama-Trika synthesis of Abhinavagupta

vegetable, and mineral homologies,

often expressed in encoded form.

The Five M’s

Today, many scholars both within and without

Hinduism insist that the sort of hard-core Tantra
that White describes never existed and that
Tantra has always been solely a technique of
meditation. When scholars of this ilk encounter
the blatantly sexual statements of the hard-core
texts (and the Tantras do contain statements
like: “The body of every living creature is made
of semen and blood. The deities who are fond
of sexual pleasure drink semen and blood”),
they interpret them metaphorically, somewhat
in the manner in which rationalizing Greeks
interpreted their own myths as allegories.

An example of this tendency in Tantra is the

case of the Five M-Words: matsya, mamsa,
madya, mudra and maithuna. Their literal
meaning may be approximated in English by
Five F-Words: sh, esh, fermented liquids
(wine), frumentum (grain) and fornication. Fish,
esh, and wine were prohibited for high-caste
Hindus, and there is little debate about either
the connotation or the denotation of these
terms, but the other two have proved
problematic. White argues that mudra, whose
primary meaning is “seal” (as in “seal ring”), has
here the sense that it has in the yogic term
vajroli mudra, “seal of the place of the male
organ”, and therefore refers to “the technique of
https://saivatantra.com/sexuality-in-the-tantric-sources/ 10/19
09/12/2020 Sexuality in the Tantric Sources – Saiva Tantra – Krama-Trika synthesis of Abhinavagupta

urethral suction by means of which the Tantric

yogin, having ejaculated into his partner, draws
his semen together with her sexual emission
back into his penis” (the so-called fountain-pen
e ect). In this interpretation mudra signi es the
practitioner’s consort’s vulva, and, by extension,
the uids from the vulva. The nal element,
maithuna, is usually translated as sexual
intercourse, pairing, but White argues that it
means more precisely “what is derived from
sexual intercourse”, “the uid product of sexual
intercourse” or “sexual emission”.

The Five Ms were substitutes for an early

pentad described in some Kaula texts, the so-
called Five Jewels, which consisted of semen,
urine, feces, menstrual blood, and phlegm and
were also known as the Five Nectars (with
marrow in place of phlegm). These pentads
have a complex history. The Five Jewels were
probably themselves already substitutes for the
“ ve products of the cow” (panchagavya) which
orthodox Hindus ingested to purify themselves
of pollution: clari ed butter, milk, and yogurt,
plus bovine urine and feces. The Five Jewels or
Nectars may have been a deliberate antinomian
travesty of this orthodox ritual; one Tantric text
explicitly parodied the “ ve products of the cow”
by substituting for the bovine urine and feces
the cow’s blood and esh, an abomination
(because it involved the killing of the cow) that
deliberately subverted orthodox categories of
purity. But the early Tantrics may simply have

https://saivatantra.com/sexuality-in-the-tantric-sources/ 11/19
09/12/2020 Sexuality in the Tantric Sources – Saiva Tantra – Krama-Trika synthesis of Abhinavagupta

been too poor to procure the orthodox, bovine

substances and therefore have “made use of
readily available human sexual uids” instead.
(Similarly, White argues, the early Tantrics, not
having access to the complex Sanskrit mantras
that were the prerogative of Brahmins, derived
their mantras of nonsense syllables from the
inarticulate moans that the Goddess made
during intercourse, the divine counterpart to the
sounds that the Kamasutra attributes to human
women.) The soft-core reinterpretation of the
Five Ms did away with the bodily uids entirely,
introducing new ritual substitutes, glossing
madya (wine) as a meditational nectar, mamsa
( esh) as the tongue of the practitioner, matsya
( sh) as his breaths, mudra as inner knowledge
(or, sometimes, as parched grain, kidney beans,
or “any cereal believed to possess aphrodisiac
properties”), and maithuna as “supreme
essence”.

The Kula-yaga: Sexual Meditation

This is a wonderful example of the way sexuality

has been aestheticized from its original Kaula
interpretation to something more palatable and
appropriate as Hindu Tantra evolved.  It is
mentioned in many sources and detailed only in
Abhinavagupta’s Tantrāloka, chapter 29. In this
beautiful ritual, known as the Kula-yaga, the
practitioner must be advanced (this is an
advanced ritual with a sexual intercourse), but
no information is given about how to have
sexual intercourse, this is just what you
https://saivatantra.com/sexuality-in-the-tantric-sources/ 12/19
09/12/2020 Sexuality in the Tantric Sources – Saiva Tantra – Krama-Trika synthesis of Abhinavagupta

meditate on; you meditate on this sexual center

and merge all energy into that center. Instead of
having 5 di erent senses, you should have just
one sense, the sense that you are a mass of
blissful consciousness.

The goal of the Kula-yāga, is to become one

mass of blissful consciousness. But Kula-yāga
doesn`t mean sex, it means sexual meditation;
the two practitioners and their divine essence
all become one in the practice. So,
Abhinavagupta says, and this is the interesting
part, you must not practice this with somebody
that you desire, because if you have desire you
will objectify the act and you will objectify the
person and if anything becomes objecti ed, he
says, this will not work. Abhinava speci es
clearly that one’s partner in the sexual ritual
must be someone that you are not attracted to,
lest the rite become a pretext for indulging
ordinary sexual desire, which can hardly lead to
liberation. Furthermore, if the practitioner was
of high caste, the partner (duti) should be low-
caste, so that the former will be challenged to
overcome the cultural construct that
di erentiates caste and social status, since the
rite requires you to perceive your partner as an
incarnation of the Divine (for your bene t, not
theirs).

In fact, he says that only the advanced

practitioner could do this with his wife that he is
attracted to, because you have to know how to
completely drop that kind of physical desire,
https://saivatantra.com/sexuality-in-the-tantric-sources/ 13/19
09/12/2020 Sexuality in the Tantric Sources – Saiva Tantra – Krama-Trika synthesis of Abhinavagupta

because the purpose is full awareness and

liberation. I should note that in
Abhinava Gupta’s presentation of it, it has a
purpose other than the transgressive challenge
I have discussed, which is to take advantage of
the intensity of sexual pleasure by using it as a
means to merge all the sense- elds into one,
thus becoming “a single mass of blissful
awareness,” rather than a body-mind with ve
distinct senses. Indeed, Abhinava argues that
for the advanced lust-free practitioner, the kula-
yaga can be direct means to liberation.

The Brahmayamala Tantra

The Brahmayāmala Tantra is an earlier source,

mentioned even in the early version of Skanda
Purāna. So there is a practice, called “the
observance of the razor’s edge.” This is a very
di erent sexual practice. The ascetic yogi
obtains a woman to help him with this practice
by bribing her with as much jewelry he can
a ord and so she agrees to do this practice with
him. He must do this mantra and copulate with
her, but not ejaculate and if he does ejaculate
he has to start all over again and do many
mantras to make up for that. This is called
di cult even for gods to practice, but the goal is
siddhi. It is a kind of a practice, where the
woman is not an equal practitioner, whereas in
Abhinavagupta`s Kula-yāga the woman is
theoretically an equal practitioner, both going
for liberation, whereas here there is an ascetic
using a woman like an instrument, with her
https://saivatantra.com/sexuality-in-the-tantric-sources/ 14/19
09/12/2020 Sexuality in the Tantric Sources – Saiva Tantra – Krama-Trika synthesis of Abhinavagupta

permission of course. And throughout the

Brahmayāmala the goal is usually siddhi.

 Sex in the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra

The Vijnana Bhairava Tantra is a seminal text of

the Trika School of Kashmir Saiva Tantra. It
contains 108 verses for “simple” practices that
one can meditate upon to realize oneself as
God.  I have selected four verses from the text,
which have a sexual connotation. Again, I should
stress that the point of these meditations is not
pleasure itself, but rather the delight and union
with God through aesthetics and the senses.

46. The delight of orgasm is the delight of

Brahman.

47. Meditate on the delight of sexual union.

80. Dwell on the reality, which exists between

pain and pleasure.

92. Every sensation is an expression of pure

consciousness.

The Karma Sutra and Tantra

Contrary to popular belief, the Kama Sutra has

nothing to do with Tantra. It is part of an
entirely di erent branch of literature known as
the Kama Sastra, or science of pleasure. This
can be contrasted to the Agama Sastras, which
were the corpus of sacred Tantric texts and

https://saivatantra.com/sexuality-in-the-tantric-sources/ 15/19
09/12/2020 Sexuality in the Tantric Sources – Saiva Tantra – Krama-Trika synthesis of Abhinavagupta

whose goal was completely at odds with the

goal of the Kama Sastra. In the Kama Sutra, the
overall goal is the maximization of sensual
pleasure as a valid end unto itself. By de nition
it is not tantric because, in Tantra, the goal of
pleasure (when it is present) is always
subordinate to the goal of spiritual liberation or
the attainment of supernatural powers. So not
only does it belong to an entirely di erent class
of literature, but its primary goal is not the
primary goal of Tantra.

Summary

Whether or not one accepts White’s

interpretation of maithuna and mudra, few
would deny that the dominant trend in Tantric
interpretation has long been, and remains,
metaphorical or metaphysical. But how do we
know that the original, supposedly hard-core
schools were not also interpreting their texts
metaphorically? The soft-core assumption that
the texts speak only metaphorically implies that
Tantric sex was never a ritual but always a myth,
that (as has been argued in the case of
cannibalism) it was something that some people
thought other people were doing, when in fact
no one was doing anything of the sort. This
would mean that even the people who wrote
the early Tantric texts merely imagined that
they were doing what they said they were doing.
After all, people have imagined that they have
own to heaven and walked among the gods, so
why not imagine that you’re drinking your
https://saivatantra.com/sexuality-in-the-tantric-sources/ 16/19
09/12/2020 Sexuality in the Tantric Sources – Saiva Tantra – Krama-Trika synthesis of Abhinavagupta

sister’s menstrual blood? White, however,

argues that Tantric ritual texts tell us precisely
what the practitioners did, that they mean what
they say.

White supports his assertions philologically,

with a painstakingly detailed study of
statements drawn primarily from Sanskrit texts,
heavily supplemented by literary, artistic,
medical, political and architectural sources (and
further documented by a full one hundred
pages of critical apparatus). He also builds on
the great burgeoning of Tantric studies in the
past two decades, particularly in the work of
Alexis Sanderson, Michel Strickmann,
Sanjukta Gupta, Mark Dyczskowski and Hugh
Urban.

Bracketing the historical development, one

might simply argue that Tantra was for some
people a ritual and for others merely a myth, or
that it was for some people a sexual ritual and
for others a meditational ritual. White’s
historical argument implies that Tantra was a
ritual that became, for the dominant culture, a
kind of myth, that from the eleventh century
Hindus who continued actually to perform the
rituals (hard-core) described them in a code that
made it appear that they were merely
performing them symbolically (soft- core). The
assumption that this transformation has taken
place enables White to restore the text that the
revisionists had eclipsed, to break the code and
reconstruct the pre-transformed text, much as
https://saivatantra.com/sexuality-in-the-tantric-sources/ 17/19
09/12/2020 Sexuality in the Tantric Sources – Saiva Tantra – Krama-Trika synthesis of Abhinavagupta

Freud – a constant presence in this book –

worked backwards to reconstruct the meaning
of the dream before it had been censored, to
restore the dream that the censoring superego
and the dream work had masked.

Hindu fundamentalists are right in saying that

Tantra, as they know it, has nothing to do with
sex, and White is equally right in maintaining
that the Tantra he has excavated has everything
to do with sex. The problem arises only when
either of them becomes monolithic and insists
that there is no Tantra but their Tantra, all
others being heretics.

Sources:

Laskman Joo. Vijnana Bhairava Tantra. Indica

Books. India, 2007.

Shaman Hatley, The Brahmayamalatantra and

early Saiva cult of yoginis. (January 1,
2007). Dissertations available from ProQuest.

Wallis, Christopher. Tantra Illuminated: The

Philosophy, History, and Practice of a Timeless
Tradition. Anusara Press, The Woodlands, TX,
2012.

Wallis, Christopher. Interview: The Tantric Roots

of Hatha Yoga. Retrieved from
http://www.scribd.com

https://saivatantra.com/sexuality-in-the-tantric-sources/ 18/19
09/12/2020 Sexuality in the Tantric Sources – Saiva Tantra – Krama-Trika synthesis of Abhinavagupta

White, David Gordon. Kiss of the Yogini: Sex in

its South-Asian Contexts. The University of
Chicago Press. Chicago, IL, 2003.

kaula Saiva Tantra

karmasutra sex sexuality

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Powered by WordPress and zeeMagazine.

https://saivatantra.com/sexuality-in-the-tantric-sources/ 19/19