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Trump The Tantric Politician
The essence of Tantra is the reclamation of excluded, forbidden, or stigmatized viewpoints and practices as a source of power.
Leave aside for a moment everything you think you know about Tantra (or check out my recent article about what it is and is not here). The essence of Tantra is the reclamation of excluded, forbidden, or stigmatized viewpoints and practices as a source of power.
Ok, now bear with me for a brief history lesson before we get to Drumpf.
Tantra arose in 5th century India after the triumph of Vedic Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism in the religious sphere. Despite their differences all three religions were similar in what they stigmatized as unethical or impious.
Tantra arose as a group of esoteric traditions that offered access to excluded practices to the initiated. The more genteel version was called right hand tantra (dakshinamarga). It’s focus included new innovations in ritual and meditation, invocation of under-emphasized aspects of the divine, white magic incantations, and experimental use of the body as a spiritual tool. Right hand tantra was the more popular, “mainstream” tradition.
The less genteel, and more infamous variety, was known disparagingly as left-hand tantra (vamachara) because in India you eat with the right hand and wipe yourself with your left. Vamachara went much further than it’s well-behaved sibling. Practitioners re-incorporated animal sacrifice, created elaborate new rituals, practiced magical spells for unethical purposes (like rape), used alcohol, cannabis and hallucinogens in their practices, worshipped violent and terrifying deities, broke moral and purity norms, and practiced ritual sex (and not with feminist or healing purposes in view, again see here). Their practice was sometimes called svecchara, or the “way of the will”, i.e. freely doing whatever you want.
Left Hand Tantra aimed at allowing the forbidden as a way to release psychological forces and cultivate power. This power was felt and wielded personally by practitioners (called Tantrikas or Yogis), but by no one more than the Tantric Guru himself. The Guru had the power of initiation and authority. He received offerings, sometimes lavish ones, from his followers. One Buddhist Tantric guru was said to be so fat he could barely walk and was…
