Demon Directories: On Listing and Living With Tibetan Worldly Spirits - A Perfumed Skull

Demon Directories: On Listing and Living with Tibetan Worldly Spirits | A Perfumed Skull 29/06/2022, 15*04
A Perfumed Skull
anthropology, esotericism, and
notes on the numinous
Demon Directories: On Listing and

Living with Tibetan Worldly Spirits
Posted on June 5, 2016
https://perfumedskull.com/2016/06/05/demon-directories-on-listing-and-living-with-tibetan-worldly-spirits/ Page 1 of 28
(An image of a blue the’u rang or tebrang spirit from a Tibetan manuscript.
Scanned images from this manuscript of many Tibetan worldly spirits
described in the post that follows can be found here at himalayanart.org but
unfortunately the name and date of the source-text is not given. If anyone
knows these details, please do let me know!)
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I came across the following condensed directory of worldly spirits,

gods, demons and other non-human Tibetan persons that go bump
in the night in a book of essays which deal with the history and
controversies surrounding the Tibetan protector-spirit Dolgyal,
which I brie!y discussed here. The book, whose short title is ‘The
Impurity-Dispelling Mirror – An Investigation into the Origination
and Controversy of Dolgyal’ was compiled by the O"ce of the
Central Executive Committee of Dhomay (Amdo) Province in exile.
The Committee spent some four odd years conducting research
into the contentious spirit’s origins and nature and has penned a
series of excellent essays explaining the role of spirit-protectors in
Tibetan Buddhism and the development of the controversial
sectarian issues associated with this spirit in particular. The essays in
the book provide much needed context for a very complex issue,
part of which revolves around divided opinions on the theological
status of the spirit in question. Supporters of the spirit claim that it
is a legitimate protector that is upholding its vows and deserving of
propitiation; whereas His Holiness the Dalai Lama and numerous
other authorities consider the being to be a harmful and demonic
presence, a di"cult to control hyper-zealous (and hyper-sectarian)
force of violence and evil that should be avoided altogether.
The chapter which I have translated below provides a general

overview of ‘worldly’ (unenlightened) spirits which feature
prominently in Tibetan cosmologies and everyday lives. Worldly
spirits are powerful and can thus prove both helpful and harmful.
Despite their abilities or knowledge they have not achieved
Buddhahood and should therefore not be relied upon like with
Buddha-beings as a source of refuge, as guides on the path to
liberation or salvation. Worldly protector gods and spirits which
have been tamed and made to swear oaths of service to the Dharma
by accomplished tantric masters operate instead like friends (and
enemies) in high (and low) places, and there exist a whole range of
ritual technologies designed to enlist their aid and thwart their
dangers. Here’s the list (time-pressed readers, feel free to skip to the
bottom and just refer back to it instead as you read through my
thoughts on it below):
“A Brief Introduction to some di!erent kinds of Gods and

Spirits
Lha or ‘Gods’: this word is used for those beings who have
entered into a state of love (kindness or mercy) or bliss. Such
beings, who revel in pleasure and bliss, are called lha. They are
a class of non-human being that possesses great merit, rejoices
in the dharma and has the capacity to experience (every
manner of sensuous) enjoyment as they please. At the same
time, in the commentaries on nomenclature in the ‘100, 000
accounts’ (gleng ‘bum) of the Vinaya [the scriptures on
monastic conduct] the term lha is also used as a designation for
worldly deities – so-called rgyal po or ‘kings’; for the Great
Kings of the four abodes (i.e. or cardinal directions), and so on,
who are the gods of ordinary people, and for noble persons,
who are the gods of the wholly pure.
Lha min (non-gods) or ‘Demi-gods’/’Titans’: (These beings)
mostly just compete with the wealthy and prosperous gods.

Previously, they grew accustomed to the non-virtues of envy
and quarrelling and by means of that karma they were
propelled into taking up their (current) bodily form or
incarnation. From about this point (governed by) the coarse
conception of envy, they have fought in factions in their own
abodes, and not being in accord with the gods, their sole past-
time is to "ght against them. According to the
Abhidharmakosha the demi-gods live in a crevice below the
shoreline of Mount Meru.
Lto ‘phye chen po (lit. Great Belly-Crawler) or ‘the Great

Serpents’: These are the ‘Mahorag’, the name given to a great
demon land-lord (i.e. earth-spirit genius loci). Moving about
by means of their belly, they are like klu (nagas) and serpents.
Mkha’ lding or ‘Sky-Soarers’: This is the ‘Garuda’ or

Khyung, commonly called the ‘Khyung bird’. The Khyung is
called the ‘King of the Birds’ and is (found) in the shal ma li
tree forest of Southern India [the shemali tree has weapon-
blades for leaves]. It is said to eat nagas and serpents as part of
its food.
Mi ‘am ci (lit. ‘Human or what?’) : These have a human body

with heads of various appearance – some have tiger’s heads,
some horses, some bears, and so on. Looking at their form
(makes one want to ask, hesitantly) “(Hang on), is this a
human, or what?” and so they are named (for this ambiguity).
Klu or ‘Nagas’: These live in the ocean and have the upper-
body of a human and a snake’s tail for their lower parts. Their
head is adorned with the hood of a cobra and jewels. They

possess various kinds of silks and precious objects. They are
commonly divided (more speci"cally) into the ‘Conch-
Protecting ‘King of the Nagas’ and the ‘Eight Great Nagas’. Of
the lesser klu there are also the ferocious or malevolent klu, the
gnyan klu and the btsan klu, which send leprosy and other
maladies to humans.
Gnod sbyin or ‘Harm-givers’: This is one class of harmful

and commanding spirits from the total classes of demons
(gdon ‘dre). Vaishravana (rnam sras) ‘Eight Horse-Owner’,
and the eight and twelve Great Harm-givers as well are
claimed to be a speci"c kind of wealth-god gnod sbyin.
‘Byung po: These are called Bhut [in Sanskrit] and are said
to be a kind of formless, harmful demon (gdon) or obstructing
spirit (bgegs).
Bdud: A kind (of being) that causes injury to other sentient

beings and obstructs the performing of virtue. There are two of
these, those with and those without form. Of the formless kind
there are four that create obstacles to complete liberation.
Gshin rje or ‘Master of Death’: ‘The Master of All the Dead’ –

the servants of Hell, male and female spirits of the dead, Lord
or Owner of Death death-spirits, all belong to the Dharma-
King Gshin rje [Shinje] and as their work send out signs of
death to the living through Shinje’s chart/liturgy (gshin rje’I
khram la btab) and snatch away human’s life-force. When a
dead person arrives in the land of the dead their virtues and
sins are divided out and evaluated – (gshin rje) are the
sinners, who are a sort of torturer-servant in the hell-realms.
Btsan: Tsen are a ferocious kind of non-human spirit. The

btsan rgod ‘bar ba spun bdun or ‘Seven Wild and Blazing
Tsen Siblings’ etc. go about leading the insubstantial hosts of
the ten and one hundred million btsan armies. If houses or
people and so on block the course of these btsan, these will be
harmed due to being struck by the btsans’ arrows and poison.
Ma mo: As it says in the ‘(Inanimate) Matter of Existence’ (a

text, Srid pa’I bems), “The inconceivable myriads of ma mo
are gathered together into two (groups), ‘action’ or karmic ma
mo and wisdom ma mo,” Palden Lhamo is described as the
great essence of wisdom of all of the gathered retinues of
liberating (enemy-destroying) sorcery-linked ma mo. Ma mo
derived from karma or action are included within the class of
#esh-eating ‘byung po.
The’u rang: A class of ‘byung po that moves through the sky

or air. From this category (comes) the powerful and magically-
potent oath-bound protector Rdo rje legs pa (and) from the
retinue of this great protector of the Secret Mantra comes the
oath-bound spirit Mgar ba nag po or ‘Black Smith’. (He,
along with) Mon pa ser skya (‘The monastic-lay Monpa’),
and all the encircling retinue of three hundred and sixty
sibling spirits are also for the most part from the the’u rang
category.
Gza’: ‘The Great Pervader’ (khyab ‘jug) Rahula with the

upper parts of a human and the lower parts of a snake. His
entire head and body are full of eyes and his nine heads have
the faces of ravens. If one comes into opposition with these one
is a$icted by their noxious vapours. It’s a kind (of spirit) that
causes the channels/arteries on one’s brain to burst and which
strikes one dumb and makes one’s eyes go squint. It causes the
functions of (one) side of one’s body and one’s feeling tone or
sensation to be impaired, and brings about fainting sicknesses.
However, the supreme gza’ Rahula is also a great protector of
the teachings of the Buddha.
Srin po (‘ogres’): A type of being that lives in the southern and

northern Chamara (‘Tail Whisk’) continents. They eat humans’
#esh and drink (their) blood. They fasten bones and garlands
of dried out and still wet human heads to themselves as
ornaments. They wear still dripping human and tiger skins as
clothes and are a kind (of spirit) that indulges in rites of ‘union
and liberation’ (i.e. tantric sex and ritual murder) in actuality
(i.e. not symbolically/in the imagination) with (total)
abandon.
Dri za (‘scent-eaters’): So named on account of being a type of

spirit that eats all of the good and bad smells (produced) by
good and bad fate in the intermediary realm of desire. They
are also the singers of the gods, and the ‘songs of the scent-
eaters’ are perfectly melodious. The well-known king of the
scent-eaters Tatrira and the horse-headed king of the scent-
eaters of the forest (realm) and so on are also types of dri za.
Gdon: A type of non-human spirit that lives inside a person,

or else a sort of being that sends various sorts of illnesses and
misfortunes. These are exempli"ed by the likes of the "%een
great children’s gdon, and there are said to be many kinds of
gdon demons, the upper (part), middle (part) and lower (part)
gdon, male and female gdon and so on.
‘Dre: A speci"c kind of non-human spirit that causes harm

and injury to humans. It resides inside people and having
brought them under the sway of its other impressions or
fantasies, all of the thoughts and behaviours that may enter
(their consciousness) are said to be those of the ‘dre.
Sri: A type of harm-causing demon (gdon ‘dre). In the

‘History of the Small Sri of the Kilaya (i.e. ritual dagger) the
father and mother bdud are described as the thirteen sri: the
body sri (phung) king sri, the minister sri, the vow-breaker sri,
the enemy/warrior sri, sri of losses (god), the sri of the
(sensory?) gates or doors, the child sri, the charnel ground sri,
the losses sri of Helambu (gyol mo in Nepal), the hostility sri,
and the sri of evil omens and magic.
Ro langs (lit. ‘raised corpses’): A%er a person dies, some other

gdon spirit enters their body and it rises again. Symptoms of
being gripped by this gdon are said to be that one likes to sleep
a lot, that one adorns oneself, and that one’s body shakes.
Bse rag: This is a speci"c kind of ‘byung po that eats the

essence of foodstu!s and wealth.
‘Gong po: A%er a person who has gone against their own
sacred vows and the guru or teacher connected to their religion
dies, they’re reborn as a demon (gdon ‘dre) called a ‘gong po.
Dmu: A%er the various kinds of ‘dre and gdon united with
each other, there emerged a cross-breed gdon ‘dre demon

that’s known as a dmu.
Gnyan: A spirit that belongs to the class of land-owning klu.

Various gnyan – land gnyan, water gnyan, wood or tree
gnyan, and stone or rock gnyan, and so on, as well as the
land-lord spirits (sa bdag) that accompany them are
considered as equivalent.
Zo dor: The chief, or most renowned kind of local deity or

spirit of a place (yul lha gzhi bdag) which protects the
surrounding locale.
Rgyal bsen: Ferocious male and female ‘dre gdon demons.

They are noxious (‘dre) demons that bring harm to infants
and newborn babies. They are known as rgyal bsen and as
bsen mo [this seems to be the more feminine forms].
Yi dwags or ‘hungry ghosts’: These are the so-called ‘pretas’

whose minds (yid in Tibetan) are bound to/"xated on (btags
pa) hunger and thirst, or those ‘who have gone that way but
cannot turn back’ are known as yi dwags [the sound of phyir
mi ldog chi (mi) dog, ‘can’t go back’ resembles yidak]. They
abide in a state of torpor. There are two disparate types: Those
with outer obscurations and those with inner obscurations
[these pretas live in the preta-realm]. There are also said to be
many speci"c sub-divisions of magical pretas. There’s also said
to be separate categories of pretas that exist in the god and
human realms.
Sha za or ‘#esh-eaters’: The Pishatsa. The kinds of ‘dre
demons and ogres (srin po) that eat human #esh are called
this.
The aforementioned descriptions are merely a summary of

some of speci"c characteristics of worldly gods and so on, and
are not an exhaustive or fully-detailed list. Even so, from these,
some have been di!erentiated by type, some have been
distinguished in terms of their functions or activities, and yet
others have been singled out in terms of their (magical) powers
and abilities. In summary then, it’s necessary to understand the
father-lineages and mother-lineages of the srin po and the
eight classes of gods and spirits and haughty demons all
equally in kind.
Chapter 2 from ‘A Thorough Investigation based on the

Hundred Thousand Rays of Sunlight of Scripture and
Reasoning of the Origination and Controversy involving Dol
rgyal, the Gyalpo spirit from Dol, the Properly conducted In-
depth analysis which Illuminates Truth from Falsehood like the
Day, which is called Impurity-Dispelling Mirror – or ‘The
Impurity-Dispelling Mirror, an Investigation into the
Origination and Controversy involving Dol rgyal for short:
dol rgyal gyi byung rim dang rnyog gleng la rnam par
dpyad pa lung dang rigs pa’i ‘od snang ‘bum gyis legs
par drangs pa’I mtha’ dpyod bden rdzun nyin mo ltar
gsal bar byed pa g.ya’ sel me long zhes by aba bshugs so)
Compiled by the lesser Dolgyal Research Committee of Dhomay

(Amdo) Province, printed and published by the O&ce of the
Central Executive Committee of Dhomey, Tibetan year 2133,
common year 2006, pp. 105-111.
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As the authors of the chapter note, the list above is brief, and far
from an exhaustive overview of di#erent Tibetan spirit categories.
Still, it strikes me as a valuable list in a number of ways. It touches
on a range of spirit types and despite its brevity amply
demonstrates the heterogeneity of Tibetan spirit worlds – the
diversity of sources which have shaped them, and the complicated
overlaps, slippages and ambiguities that exist between spirit-
categories. Readers will note that Sanskrit equivalents are provided
for many of the spirit types. The list includes among its entries
various imported Indian spirits which came to Tibet as part of the
country’s Buddhicization as well as other spirits that are more
distinctly indigenous. The distinction between ‘imported’ and
‘indigenous’ is not always so obvious, however. The catalogue is
useful for what it reveals, if somewhat indirectly, about processes of
cultural assimilation, adaptation, and indigenization. Beings like klu
(equivalent to Indian nagas) and khyung (corresponding to the Indic
garuda) are on one level ‘imports’, but on another, it’s clear that klu
and khyung are also indigenous Tibetan categories which over time
have been both ampli$ed and obscured by Indian Buddhist
concepts. As Robert Mayer recently recapitulated in his study of
avian symbolism in pre-Buddhist Tibet and Central Asia more
generally, the khyung clearly relates to strands of cosmology and
cultural practice that extend well beyond Buddhism in signi$cant
ways. Likewise, despite the klu’s standard association with snake-
th
imagery, we are provided in Bönpo sources like the probably 11
century Gzer myig, which details the life of the pre-Buddhist Bön
religion’s founder Tönpa Shenrab Miwo, with a slightly di#erent
picture of klu which may arguably point to more indigenous
models. At one point in the text, the Master summons and binds a
black klu by the name of ‘The Many-Limbed Grasper’ (‘dzin pa lag
mang) which he sends to possess and a%ict the daughter of a king.
The spirit is described as drooling venom, as having a single eye and
multiple legs like a spider, with which it pushes into and infests the
princess’ veins a&er climbing into her mouth and settling in her
heart while she is sleeping. Take a look:
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It’s worth remembering that Buddhist cosmologies and spirit

directories in ancient India themselves stand as continuations and
adaptations of earlier pre-Buddhist Indian beliefs and practices, an
issue examined at length in Robert De Caroli’s important

book.Some of the spirits below are described in terms of ‘classical’
scriptural Buddhism – entries for the ‘Great Serpents’ and ‘Demi-
Gods’ for instance, directly reference ‘standard’ Buddhist theological
models of the cosmos from the Abhidharma (Mount Meru, various
‘continents’ and so on), whereas entries for distinctly pre-Buddhist
spirits like gnyan suggest slightly di#erent and maybe less abstract
locales or cosmic maps. To the casual reader without much interest
or conviction in spirits, this list might read as merely colourful
cultural trivia, may seem (as I discussed in this post) little di#erent
from a directory of monsters in a Role Playing Game. For the
authors of this list, however, this kind of specialist knowledge has
far more than just purely intellectual value. It is vital knowledge,
both in the sense that it is important and in the sense that the stakes
of such expertise frequently hinge around matters of life-and-
death. The authors of this directory make clear that understanding
the di#erent ontologies and activities of such beings is crucial to
making sense of issues like the Dolgyal controversy, to
understanding the moral order of things. In light of the range of
severe community and geo-political implications that the Dolgyal
controversy has had, this kind of knowledge can hardly be thought
of as quaint folklore. Tibetan religious specialists and non-celibate
tantric ritual specialists or ngakpa in particular, make use of such
specialized knowledge as part of ritual repertoires designed to
redress the !ow of forces of fortune and vitality (or what
anthropologist Giovanni Da Col has aptly dubbed the ‘cosmo-
economics’) that make up the everyday, moral fabric of people’s
lives.
Yet for all this knowledge’s importance, it can be messy and vague.
In typical Tibetan fashion, the catch-all generic term for demon is
itself a composite noun made of two similar but not identical terms:
gdon ‘dre. Both gdon and ‘dre are listed as distinct kinds of spirits and
as somewhat more generic categories which subsume other types.
Spirit categories snake in and out of each other, we see how some
spirits are ranked as sub-categories and as servants of others,
sometimes bdud and ‘dre are speci$c types, at other times they are
general umbrella terms. The entry for dmu too suggests inter-
breeding, a certain generational complexity within spirit categories,
and we read of lesser and greater spirits, of spirit armies and
military divisions, of leaders and followers, masters and servants.
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(Scholar, Dzogchen master and traditional Tibetan doctor Chogyal

Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche)
Spirit hierarchies can thus be bewildering both for their Byzantine

precision and for their ambiguity. Spirit kinship patterns and
hierarchies can change from one text or ritual liturgy to the next.
This is where the RPG manual analogy falls apart – as living and
evolving agents, spirits resist standardization, may refuse to sit still,
to remain in place, in category or in character. Spirits’ ambiguity
extends to their moral status. To expand on some of these thoughts,
what follows below is my translation of an excerpt from a set of
memoirs by Tibetan scholar-practitioner Chögyal Namkhai Norbu
Rinpoche, in which he discusses at length his personal and
traumatic interactions with Dolgyal. Namkhai Norbu’s account is

valuable in many ways, not least because it comes from a Rime or
non-sectarian lama whose (negative) experiences with this spirit
took place long before the controversies surrounding it came to a
head in the Tibetan exile community from the 1970s onwards. As
Namkhai Norbu lays out, as far as he and his own family/religious
community were concerned when he was growing up, this
particular entity ranked as one of many powerful worldly protectors
(or as we learned from our list above, gyalpo or ‘kingly spirits’). As
such, it was very powerful, but inherently temperamental and
dangerous. Namkhai Norbu refers to the being using another
composite term, rgyal ‘gong. This designation points to the idea that
this particular worldly protector arose a&er the (violent) demise of
some high-ranking religious $gure, involving dubious vows, and so
on, which does indeed relate to one leading theory of Dolgyal’s
origins. Namkhai Norbu’s father’s account of his own dealings with
the gyalpo spirit point too to certain characteristics of the spirit that
have become somewhat infamous more recently, such as the idea
that making o#erings to the being can secure great fortune in
business, for example. Namkhai Norbu’s father’s description of how
he started o#ering to the being out of a kind of peer pressure also
recalls the most common metaphor I metaphor I have heard used
by Tibetans in exile today to describe worship of the spirit, namely
that of addiction, self-destructive dependency, and withdrawal.
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Altogether, the following excerpt from Namkhai Norbu’s book

o#ers a rich window into the overlapping lives of humans and
spirits in pre-1950s Tibet, and gives more person-centred and
historical/ethnographic details about typically shi&ing and

ambiguous human-spirit relationships than we glean from the list
above. Namkhai Norbu’s recollections highlight as well the
sometimes generational quality of spiritual a%ictions, and point to
the nebulous borders between spirit-related and
psychological/neurological complaints and the boundaries between
self-and-other (what Charlene Makley has elsewhere called the
‘partible self’) in Tibetan contexts:”
In the mewa year of 3863 or the common year 1946, in mid-

autumn of the male Fire Dog year, when I myself was eight
years old, one evening while I was learning all manner of
ritual practices and recitations for the great monastery at
Derge from my uncle Lama Ngawang Lodrö, while looking for
my uncle I arrived at the door to the gyalkhang or gyalpo
shrine-room or temple in the ‘shady-side’ gompa of the great
Derge Gönchen monastic complex. I could hear that my uncle
was sitting inside the shrine-room beating a drum and o!ering
prayers. I went through the door of the lower story of the
gyalkhang a little way o!. The pillars there were heaped full
of countless jenzik, the sorts of o!ering objects that pleased the
sight of the protector spirit: arrows and bows, armour, helmets,
shields, spears decorated with silk, swords, the pelts of
carnivorous animals, and so on. I climbed up the ladder. On
the surface of the pillar beside the steps I saw that there were
many di!erent pieces of silk of all sorts of colours. Thinking
that I should decorate my horse with one of these silk pieces, I
took up from among the collection a piece of yellow, good
quality silk with a lattice-design. Suddenly, while I was doing
so, I heard a person say near to me, in a low, rough voice,
“What are you doing?” I looked around me in every
direction but saw no one. At that time, boundless terror arose

in my mind and I immediately and quickly went home and
stayed close to my uncle, unable to move at all. From that point
on, I never again went inside the gyalpo temple on the shaded
side of the monastery.
At that time, I also experienced terrifying dreams on several

occasions. I can’t clearly remember what the dreams were like
now other than just the fact that there was a monk with a
yellow hat that manifested to me in a terrifying way. This
incident was the "rst time in my current life that the
gyalgong terrorized me.
Again, in the mewa year 3863, common year 1946, during

the latter part of the autumn of the male Fire Dog year, my
eighth year, my father Tsewang Namgyal la became the
pönpo or chief of Wöntö (dbon stod) dzong or county in
Derge, Dokham. While I was living in the county, and staying
at the Wöntö county palace to conduct the forty-nine day
dechö rites of passing for my most gracious grandmother
Lhundup Tso, everyone at the palace, young and old, told me
unanimously “Don’t ever go onto the roof of the castle!” I asked
them what the reason was for this and they said, “If you go
onto the roof of the castle, you’ll incite the wrath of the gyalpo,
he will be o!ended!” (phog thug shor gyi red). I asked them
multiple times “How will he be o!ended?” but they didn’t give
any clear answer about how this would happen. The castle
food-provisioner Tshaphu Tenzin said, “There’s a big store-
house that’s to one side on the edge of the palace roof – that’s
Wöntö monastery’s gyalpo temple. If you make a racket on top
of the palace you’ll o!end the gyalpo.” I wondered to myself,
“If I trigger the gyalpo’s wrath, what will he do?” I thought to

myself that I should experience this myself [and "nd out]. One
day, during a break in the forty-nine day rituals, I went up
slowly to the roof of the castle. Hitting the surface of the
gyalpo temple storeroom with a pretty big piece of a wooden
beam that was there I made a loud and shouted, “Waei,
gyalpo! What are you doing?! D’you hear me?!” That night, in
my dream, a Chinese man wearing a long and black
ancient dasho robe was standing in front of the hundred-
pillar** front door of the assembly hall of Wöntö monastery. I
was walking on the stone paving of the shrine room in the
direction of the southern door but as soon as the Chinese man
saw me he #ashed an extremely wrathful expression [in my
direction] and braying terrifyingly like a donkey, he came
chasing a%er me. I #ed outside through the southern gate and
woke up immediately in a state of terror. At that time,
however, I did not yet understand that my nightmares were
the magical emanations (cho ‘phrul) of the gyalgong.
Also, about a week a%er this, one day during a break from the
forty-nine day rituals, I again went up to the castle roof.
Banging on the storeroom with a plank, I clamoured like
before, “Gyalpo, do you have ears, are you listening?! Can you
hear me?!!” As I was striking the surface of the storehouse over
and over with the beam the castle cook suddenly arrived on the
roof and escorted me home. My father learned about the
incident and scolded me extremely severely. From that point
on, the Chinese man in the dasho chased me in my dreams. At
times the Chinese man in the da sho transformed into a
monk wearing yellow silk robes who also chased a%er me in a
totally enraged fashion n. Waking up from fear became
something like a routine or habit for me.
I went to my Father and discussed with him how I wasn’t

sleeping well at night due to my dreams being so greatly
disturbed. All the people in the castle encouraged my father
emphatically. “Oh! The gyalpo has become insulted! Now you
have o!er payment to the lama of the gyalkhang and request
that he o!ers [propitiation] prayers to the spirit! If we don’t
quickly give o!erings and ask the lama of the gyalpo temple to
do these rites immediately, if we request that such gyalpo
prayers be done, he won’t be able to save himself from the
gyalpo’s harmful in#uence!” My father responded, “When I
was young and living in Ga, Kyegumdo to do business, some of
my businessmen friends said that through making prayers and
o!erings to the gyalpo they had experienced great luck in
business. Wanting to exchange my lot for their own, I
sponsored gyalpo prayers on a number of occasions at a few
gyalpo shrines within Ga. I did experience good fortune a
few times which I thought might have been as a direct result of
this. However, a few years later, I experienced a severe illness
caused by the rising up of heart-wind, i.e. nyingloong
sickness [a type of sickness which can have serious psychiatric
symptoms, o%en linked with depression] and while I took both
Chinese [i.e. allopathic/ biomedical) and Tibetan medicine, it
progressively worsened. In the end not only could I no longer
do business but I almost went mad from not being able to relax
and be comfortable staying at home either. For a little while I
was le% helpless, not knowing what to do.
My mother Lhundup Tso was living at Adzom [religious]

encampment in Dokham where she was requesting religious
instructions from Adzom Drukpa Rinpoche and was practicing

the holy Dharma. I had received successive letters from her
several times in which she said that if I went to have an
audience with Adzom Drukpa Rinpoche he would be able to
bring about a cure for my illness, and that, previously, the
togden or realized yogi Urgyen Tenzin had been in the grip of
a heart-wind sickness and had become mad, and he had also
gone to see Adzom Drukpa Rinpoche and his sickness was
suddenly cured. If you also really want to recover from your
sickness too, she’d said, come see Drukpa Rinpoche quickly! At
last, having been encouraged or pressured [by her in this way],
I went to Adzom encampment to see Drukpa Rinpoche. My
Mom and I went together to have an audience with Drukpa
Rinpoche. He looked at me very closely and carefully, and said,
“Oh, I see you’re in the grip of the gyalgong’s chyedön (byad
gdon), a ‘curse’ or harmful magical in#uence due to gyalpo
provocation. From tomorrow I’ll do a curse liberation
(procedure) for you.” The next day my Mom and I went
together to see Drukpa Rinpoche, who was preparing things
for a ritual. He made us sit in front of him and he bound my
head, body, limbs, and minor appendages ("ngers) to each
other with "ne silk thread made of "ve di!erent colours. He
recited many mantras and prayers and then when he was
done, he himself cut my threads into multiple small pieces. He
piled these threads on a plate and then placed them to one side.
Then, a%er performing an ablution on me, we went outside of
Drukpa Rinpoche’s house where we made a "re in which he
completely incinerated the threads, a%er which we made
dedication and aspiration prayers. About one week a%er
Drukpa Rinpoche graciously protected me with his gyalgong
curse-liberation ritual my severe heart-wind sickness was
completely cured. As such, if we go to the gyalpo shrine and

o!er prayers in the future inauspiciousness will certainly arise.
So, it’s better that we don’t o!er prayers.”
During the forty-nine day ‘showing of the path’ for my

Grandmother [in the Bardo or intermediary state between
rebirths], I discussed the matter of my disturbed dreams with
my mother’s brother, Uncle Khyentse Rinpoche. He gave me
extensive instructions as well as a protective anti-gyalgong
circular amulet. I fasted the amulet around my neck and from
that time on, for a little while my dreams became calmer…
‘My Experiences connected with Dolgyal’ (Dol rgyal dang

‘brel yod rang thog gi myong ba) by Chögyal Namkhai
Norbu, written in Tashigar, Italy, 2000, pp.3-9.
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In the pages that follow, Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche goes on to

recount the many subsequent years during which he struggled to
secure the ritual remedies which $nally freed him once and for all
from the spirit’s harmful in!uence, and which did not require him
to submit himself to its authority.
One way of looking anthropologically and historically at spirits (as I

discussed brie!y in this book review) is to see them as a kind of
living embodiment of history, of various layers of time, memory
and experience. Earlier social mores, fears, kinship patterns and so
on, may persist in the lives and worlds of spirits, they may point to
older speech patterns, forms of etiquette and social relations
(anthropologist and Tibetan Studies scholar Charles Ramble

captures this aspect of Tibetan spirit kinship traditions in this
excellent talk on Tibetan ‘vampire’ (sri) slaying practices). The social
organization of spirits o&en dramatizes and mirrors particular
historical periods and problems. Yet as neat and compelling as such
etic explanations of spirits and their behaviours might be, they
remain ultimately provincial. As human-centric accounts of non-
human beings, they treat spirits as categories that ultimately stand
for human values and orientations. As ontological ‘others’, spirits are
beings with their own lives, priorities, and motivations, all of which
are o&en partially, or even wholly opaque to humans. Ultimately,
it’s possible to argue that spirits’ di"cult-to-categorize quality and
shi&ing (and shi&y) status may say less about human ways of
thinking and more about the vagaries of spirits themselves.
If spirits are o&en inscrutable, and yet their lives and activities
intersect in o&en crucial ways with humans, it follows then that
much of human experience must take place beyond the immediacy
of humans’ own direct agency, understanding and control. The lives
and activities of Tibetan Buddhist protector spirits are intimately
tied up with the ongoing vitality and e"cacy of religious lineages.
These lineages in turn amount to those chains of accomplished
practitioners who, branching back in time, form a living conduit or
vehicle for animating currents or waves of blessing-power and
realization into which devout practitioners may plug themselves,
and which serve as a controlled context for their spiritual progress.
The links that bind these chains, that which keeps the ‘blessing-
cables’ of lineages sealed and secure, which makes of them perfect
conduits, are practitioners’ sacred pledges, their binding tantric
oaths (dam tshig) or samaya. As intersubjective commitments,
spiritual family ties, dam tshig span across human and non-human
domains and life-times. The way that the life-force and well-being
of individuals, communities, and spirits all intertwined was brought
into focus recently when Nechung Pehar, the state-protector deity
declared during one of his prophetic announcements that unless
the Tibetan exile community worked harder to improve their
common karma (spyi las) and became less politically divided, even
he did not have the power to fully protect the Dalai Lama’s life-
force or fortune (sku phywa).
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Given that o&en all that separates a powerfully helpful worldly

protector or spirit from a deeply destructive demon is tantric vows,
humans’ entanglement with these beings is subject to constant
investigation and anxiety as commitments are checked, renewed
and re-checked, and repeatedly called into question. Spirit
relationships and shi&ing categorization thus point to the fact that
many of the most vital aspects of human experience remain subject
to uncertainty, ambiguity, and paradox. In an article on Nkulaelae
spirits, linguistic anthropologist Niko Besnier theorizes that the
ambiguity present in spirit categories points to something more
inherent in their nature, to what it is that makes them so
challenging to researchers:
“In most cultural contexts, spirits are liminal entities, whose ambiguous
social status poses problems for cultural accounts of self and personhood…
Not only are [Paci"c spirits] encountered in geographical and temporal
margins, such as the bush, the beach, and nighttime, but they are linked
with areas of social life that are least controlled and systematized…In short,
the world of spirits and the cultural processes with which it is associated
(e.g., mediumship, possession, sorcery) are fraught with ambiguity,
contradiction, and shi%iness of a kind for which traditional models of
cultural anthropology, with their emphasis on structure and coherence are
ill-prepared. Based on this case study in a Polynesian atoll society, I
demonstrate that spirits and their world cannot be understood through a
search for resolution of such ambiguities and contradictions; rather these
qualities must be perceived as constitutive of the very nature of spirits.”
For readers looking for more insights into the complexities of

worldly spirits and deities in Tibetan history and cultural life,
I’d recommend looking at the overviews provided by my
friend Christopher Bell in his MA thesis available online. Chris
is an excellent Tibetan Studies scholar who does very
interesting work that focuses speci$cally on the history of
protector-deity cults.
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Demon Directories: On Listing and Living with Tibetan Worldly Spirits | A Perfumed Skull 29/06/2022, 15*04

Demon Directories: On Listing and

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I came across the following condensed directory of worldly spirits,

The chapter which I have translated below provides a general

“A Brief Introduction to some di!erent kinds of Gods and

Lha min (non-gods) or ‘Demi-gods’/’Titans’: (These beings)

mostly just compete with the wealthy and prosperous gods.

Lto ‘phye chen po (lit. Great Belly-Crawler) or ‘the Great

Mkha’ lding or ‘Sky-Soarers’: This is the ‘Garuda’ or

Mi ‘am ci (lit. ‘Human or what?’) : These have a human body

head is adorned with the hood of a cobra and jewels. They

Gnod sbyin or ‘Harm-givers’: This is one class of harmful

Bdud: A kind (of being) that causes injury to other sentient

Gshin rje or ‘Master of Death’: ‘The Master of All the Dead’ –

sinners, who are a sort of torturer-servant in the hell-realms.

Btsan: Tsen are a ferocious kind of non-human spirit. The

Ma mo: As it says in the ‘(Inanimate) Matter of Existence’ (a

The’u rang: A class of ‘byung po that moves through the sky

Gza’: ‘The Great Pervader’ (khyab ‘jug) Rahula with the

Srin po (‘ogres’): A type of being that lives in the southern and

Dri za (‘scent-eaters’): So named on account of being a type of

Gdon: A type of non-human spirit that lives inside a person,

‘Dre: A speci"c kind of non-human spirit that causes harm

Sri: A type of harm-causing demon (gdon ‘dre). In the

Ro langs (lit. ‘raised corpses’): A%er a person dies, some other

Bse rag: This is a speci"c kind of ‘byung po that eats the

each other, there emerged a cross-breed gdon ‘dre demon

Gnyan: A spirit that belongs to the class of land-owning klu.

Zo dor: The chief, or most renowned kind of local deity or

Rgyal bsen: Ferocious male and female ‘dre gdon demons.

Yi dwags or ‘hungry ghosts’: These are the so-called ‘pretas’

Sha za or ‘#esh-eaters’: The Pishatsa. The kinds of ‘dre

The aforementioned descriptions are merely a summary of

Chapter 2 from ‘A Thorough Investigation based on the

Compiled by the lesser Dolgyal Research Committee of Dhomay

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It’s worth remembering that Buddhist cosmologies and spirit

issue examined at length in Robert De Caroli’s important

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(Scholar, Dzogchen master and traditional Tibetan doctor Chogyal

Spirit hierarchies can thus be bewildering both for their Byzantine

traumatic interactions with Dolgyal. Namkhai Norbu’s account is

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Altogether, the following excerpt from Namkhai Norbu’s book

historical/ethnographic details about typically shi&ing and

In the mewa year of 3863 or the common year 1946, in mid-

direction but saw no one. At that time, boundless terror arose

At that time, I also experienced terrifying dreams on several

Again, in the mewa year 3863, common year 1946, during

“If I trigger the gyalpo’s wrath, what will he do?” I thought to

something like a routine or habit for me.

I went to my Father and discussed with him how I wasn’t

My mother Lhundup Tso was living at Adzom [religious]

instructions from Adzom Drukpa Rinpoche and was practicing

completely cured. As such, if we go to the gyalpo shrine and

During the forty-nine day ‘showing of the path’ for my

‘My Experiences connected with Dolgyal’ (Dol rgyal dang

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In the pages that follow, Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche goes on to

One way of looking anthropologically and historically at spirits (as I

(anthropologist and Tibetan Studies scholar Charles Ramble