Review

Reviewed Work(s):
Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahāvidyās
by David Kinsley
Review by: Rachel Fell McDermott
Source: Journal of the American Academy of Religion , Mar., 1999, Vol. 67, No. 1 (Mar.,
1999), pp. 219-221
Published by: Oxford University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1466047

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 Book Reviews 219

Tantric Visions of the Divi

Kinsley. University of Calif

This book reads like a good m

ley on the track of ten elusiv
ciety he is attempting to crack
a group, what do they reveal?
they do in the future? Our c
discusses all the known texts
literary traditions with icono
on their meaning and history;
geographical contexts by visi
Pradesh, and Himachal Prades
exactly the sort of book we h
written, with excellent use of
graphs, and it follows nicely
desses, also from the Univers
Kajl and K.rsna, Dark Visions o
[1975] and Hindu Goddesses: V
gious Tradition [1986]). Ultima
the historical conundrum as t
bined. Nevertheless, Kinsley's
The book is divided into thr
Mahavidyas as a group; in the
of the ten goddesses individua
meaning and interpretation w
learn from all three sections.
Associated with each other f
represent a diversity of bac
(Laksmi), have venerable hist
existences outside their Mahav
masta, Dhfimavati, and Matag
raphy. All ten, however, even
auspicious and inauspicious, b
alities, all are related to ?iva,
shiped in Tantric contexts. Alt
ing parallels between the ten
that world maintenance is sec
Mahavidyas' interpretation. P
nature of this cult, there are v
found only one devoted to all
the more common tendency b
cated to a goddess outside the
To this reader the most inte
Kinsley's appraisal of thirteen
work, for the alliance betwee

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220 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

suggestion-such as that the ten are linked because they are all forms of the
Great Goddess, because they have ?aivite connections, or because they represent
stages in women's lives or stages of consciousness-and concludes, with evident
disappointment, that there seems to be no satisfactory internal logic, historical or
philosophical, to the group as a whole. This is a brave and tantalizing admission
for a scholar to make at the outset of his investigation.
Part II proceeds methodically, with many intriguing details, through the
materials available on each goddess. Embedded in these discussions are good
descriptions of how a goddess-centered Tantric pija actually operates (50-55)
with its unique use of mantra and cakra (122-128) and yantra (136-140). Because
Kinsley took the time to visit temples and speak with Tantrics and scholars, he is
able to make fascinating juxtapositions between different levels of interpretation.
For instance, a Ramakrishna swami in Varanasi told him that Chinnamasta's
stance on the copulating Kama and Rati is meant to indicate the necessity of sub-
duing sexual desire. Kinsley, by contrast, uses iconographic portrayals of Chin-
namasta to reveal that the opposite interpretation is equally, if not more, likely-
namely, that sexual potency is energizing and life-giving (154-157). Similarly, he
reports that even though the priest at the Dhfimavati temple in Varanasi told him
that the goddess should never be worshiped by happily married men like himself,
he could see that the cult was primarily patronized by householders (186-187).
Tantric Visions is not merely journalistic narration, however; Kinsley's own
surmises-often unsubstantiated by textual or oral evidence, due to the relative
paucity of information on the Mahavidyas-provide interesting, generally con-
vincing food for thought. Why does Bagaldmukhi pull the tongue of a demon she
is quelling? Might this, in part, reflect the Tantric admonition to bite off the
tongue of the corpse one is sitting on, if it becomes unruly during ?ava-sddhand
(205)? Why do some pictures of the widow goddess, Dhfimavati, portray her as
voluptuous and sexually arousing, when the texts describe her as a hag? Might
this not indicate the dangerous allure of real-life widows, not all of whom are old
or ugly (190-192)?
In Part III, "Concluding Reflections," Kinsley sums up what he sees as the
themes or significations common to the ten Mahavidyas. As goddesses of trans-
formation, altered consciousness, and numinous links between the human and
spirit worlds, they have a proclivity for corpses and cremation grounds, and
skulls and severed heads. Explicit sexual imagery is also common to many of
the Mahavidyas, and several of them represent what Kinsley calls "social anti-
models"-beings whose behavior is the opposite of what is expected of a normal
Hindu woman. All ten, he concludes, "fit" the logic of Tantra, "in which a central
aim is to stretch one's consciousness beyond the conventional" (251). This sec-
tion is the least satisfying of the book. As Kinsley recognizes, these themes do not
apply equally well to all ten of the Mahavidyas: his characterization is best sup-
ported by Kali, Tara, and Chinnamasta, whose iconographic depictions are full of
corpses, heads, death, sexual imagery, and "unfeminine" behavior, and least well
corroborated by Bhuvaneivari, Kamala, and Tripura-sundari, who provide him
with almost no examples for his claims. For the intrigued reader, who hopes that
at the end of Tantric Visions the capable scholarly investigator will reveal a con-

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 Book Reviews 221

vincing common denominato

However, this is the best boo
Kinsley's caliber cannot solve
Here one can take comfort fr
ritual worship of all these godd
is" (7), and honest scholarship
all the answers.

Rachel Fell McDermott

Barnard College

Conversion to Islam: A Study of Native British Converts. By Ali K6se. Kegan

Paul International, 1997. 220 pages. $59.50.

There is a small but growing body of work on the Islamic communities

of North America and Europe. One thinks of edited collections such as Barbara
Daly Metcalf's Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe (1996) or
Yvonne Haddad and Jane Smith's Muslim Communities in North America (1994).
However, none of these works deals with the role of converts to Islam in a sub-
stantive way. Jeffrey Lang has described his own experiences as an American con-
vert to Islam (Struggling to Surrender: Some Impressions of an American Convert
to Islam, 1994), and there do exist several other autobiographical accounts of con-
version, most notably Steven Barboza's American Jihad: Islam After Malcolm X,
1994). Into this sparse literature Ali K6se has introduced something truly new.
K6se, a Research Fellow at the Center for Islamic Studies in Istanbul, exam-
ines the stories of seventy (fifty male, twenty female) native British converts to
Islam. His subjects were selected by snowball and convenience sampling from a
pool of some 100 converts with whom he was in contact. Anyone who does field
work on contemporary Islamic societies must immediately be impressed with
the number of subjects Kose interviewed for his research. The purpose of his
research "is to record the conversion experiences of 70 native British converts to
Islam and to provide, to a certain extent, the reasons underlying them" (2). K6se
accomplishes exactly what he sets out to do.
The book is divided into five chapters, bracketed by an introduction and a
conclusion. It is written in a style that makes it easily accessible to scholars and
students with an interest in either contemporary Islam or the psychology of con-
version. To this end, there is a helpful glossary for those unfamiliar with specific
Islamic (usually Arabic) terms.
The opening chapter is a good introduction to Islam in Britain. It details the
histories of both immigrant Muslims (the overwhelming majority of Muslims in
Britain are immigrants, or the children of immigrants) and native converts to
Islam. The estimate that K6se gives for the total Muslim population in Britain is
between 750,000 and one million. This is certainly conservative (others have esti-
mated the population to be over two million), and demonstrates his unwill-
ingness as a scholar to go beyond the data available to him. Kose ends this first

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