Tantric Sexual Rituals

In the creative process, initially the sexual pair, Shiva and Shakti, within both man and world, are so deeply joined in sexual union they are unaware of their differences and beyond Time. They then become aware of their distinction and the female objective separates from the male subject. She performs her dance of illusion, persuading the male subject he is not one but many, and generating from her womb the world of multiplied objects in what seems to be a sequence in time. These subjects now each perceive a differentiated reality, seeming to be composed of separate particles of objective fact, and live lives that seem to be extended in time. --Philip Rawson

A close analogy was found by Shellon [Annotations on the Sacred Writings of the Hindus] between the rituals of the Hindus and those of the Egyptians. He equated Shiva with Osiris, and Shakti with Isis, represented by the same equilateral triangle with a dot in the center, the same emblem of the generative power--two coexisting principles of nature, active and passive, linga and yoni. Shellon describes Hindu Tantric sexual rituals as being performed with naked temple courtesans or yoginis, young and beautiful, representing the goddess Shakti, or power, reciting mantras, becoming sexually excited and inducing promiscuous orgies among the votaries which he qualifies as very licentious but constituting a mysterious initiation. He further describes Shakti as represented in coitu sitting on Shivas erect member, just as Isis the goddess who grants all desires did with the dead Osiris. --Peter Tompkins, The Magic of Obelisks ...Not only initiation, but the very capacity to reach to Tantric goal can only be transmitted along a line of female power-holders... Tantra demands that every bond with the everyday conventional world must be broken if one is to obtain enlightenment. --Philip Rawson In all Tantric magic, the essential requirement--whether in the ecstasy of couples or the solo rituals of a priestess--involved the raising of the energy known as the serpent of fire, or kundalini....The excited chakras are seen clairvoyantly as whirls of multicolored lights, glowing and pulsing along the spinal column, with lesser lights pulsating like stars throughout the ganglionic network of nerves which constitute the subtle anatomy of man. The aroused chakras are described as petaled lotuses, tuned as receivers of powerful cosmic rays to link the microscopic body to the macroscopic universe. --Peter Tompkins, The Magic of Obelisks

...All the faculties--the senses, the emotions, and the intellect--should be encouraged and roused to their highest pitch, that the persons store of memories and responses can be awakened and reconverted into the pure energy from which they all originated. Feelings and pleasures thus become the raw material for transformation back into enlightenment. Raise your enjoyment to its highest power, and then use it as a spiritual rocket fuel. --Philip Rawson

The ambrosia is the nectarlike reproductive secretion which, at the highest point of ecstasy, pours into the brain with such an intensely pleasurable sensation that even the sexual orgasm pales into insignificance before it. This unbelievably rapturous sensation--pervading the whole of the spinal cord, the organs of generation and the brain--is natures incentive to the effort directed at selftranscendence, as the orgasm is the incentive to the reproductive act. --Gopi Krishna

Kenneth Rextroth, in his introduction to the works of the seventeenth-century alchemist Thomas Vaughan, states that the Vessel of Nature, the vessel in which the alchemical operation takes place, is a menstruous substance. It is the matrix of Nature, wherein you must place the universal sperm as soon as it appears beyond its body. The heat of this matrix is suphureous, and it is that which coagulates the sperm...This matrix is the life of the sperm, for it preserves and quickens it. And he ends his postscript by stating that he is convinced that this basic secret of alchemy was originally revealed to man, for it is the secret of Nature, even that which the philosophers call the first copulation... Such sexual symbolism is not rare in alchemy (i.e., the sexual yoga of Chinese alchemy and Tantrism). It looks as though either Vaughan is hinting that the vessel is the female vagina, or the alchemical operation closely parallels sexual intercourse. --Colin Wilson, Mysteries

The left-hand worshippers, who follow the destructive principle and claim that they can utilize it, worship [Kali] in secret. In the higher levels of initiation, worship is changed, for both the Tantra (left hand) and other worshippers The Tantrics explain that the physical license of the worship of Kali is needed for brutish mankind in this evil (Kaliyuga) time. This is because only a few can liberate themselves from the flesh and reach divinity direct. Kalipuja (Kali-worship) gives the brutish man and woman an outlet and an idea of how intoxicating true communion with the divine could be. For this reason, according to the priest, it is not uncommon for mass orgies to be held in the early stages of initiation of even the right-hand worshippers, so that they may get a glimpse of the physical reflection of the true ecstasy which comes with acceptance by Kali. The fourth stage in the training comes only when the worshipper is able to throw himself into a trance on a word (such as A-KA-SHAA); and when he can, he no longer needs the idol or the rituals: he is part of Kali. Those who have reached this advanced stage believe that they have great magical power; they are told the final secrets by their Guru. There is no such thing as Kali, no power but energy, no right and wrong; nothing but you and those like you. You are of the nature of a god. You have been led to this stage by the only avenues possible for a man of your type, as you were: through the path of the physical senses because they have to be killed. Now you have lost the power to employ your senses, the sexual urge, the need for wine, for corn, for meat and other things. --Arkon Daraul, Secret Societies