Tantrism In Popular Fantasy

People in Bhaktapur without Tantric initiation have various interpretations and fantasies regarding Tantrism. Such fantasies are encouraged by the Tantric strategy of protecting esoteric doctrines through multiple veilings and obfuscations of its doctrinal and symbolic implications (cf. Bharati, 1965, chap. 6). Those veilings and obfuscations are, as we will

discuss below, often associated with some sort of an "advertisement" that there is , in fact, a secret that is being hidden. For the noninitiate, Tantrism means primarily "magic" practices, sometimes referred to as tantra-mantra , that is, to practices that are capable of direct manipulation of supernatural power for worldly ends. Noninitiates, particularly—although not exclusively—lower-status ones, assume that this magic power is used for legitimate, albeit usually private, ends, such as curing disease, chasing off evil spirits, and keeping wandering bulls out of cultivated fields.^[2] Occasionally, it is assumed, the power may be used for love magic or for harming an enemy. It is also popularly believed that particularly powerful Tantric experts can (and could more frequently in the past) levitate themselves or objects, travel through the air to distant places, and control and dominate powerful supernatural beings. From the viewpoint of the legitimate practitioner, such direct personal uses of "power" are possible but illegitimate and peripheral to their goals. However, even sophisticated initiates believe that outside the civic esoteric system, out of Brahmanical and civic moral control, there are such figures as sadhus (wandering "renouncers") witches, sorcerers, and healers who use a degree of Tantric power sometimes for good (in a struggle against a contrary harmful supernatural power), sometimes for evil.

Noninitiates often believe that Tantric pujas are associated with major violations of ordinary moral and religious regulations such as the eating of forbidden foods and overt sexual intercourse—including (according to one informant) even the incestuous intercourse between brothers and sisters. In general, however, noninitiates seem to believe that legitimate Tantric practice is, albeit strange, good behavior and in the pursuit of socially acceptable goals. These same people also seem to believe that most Brahmans, at least, do not know much Tantrism, their fantasies about the dharma -violating procedures of Tantrism are directed to the secular upper thars . This interpretation is, in fact, consonant with another essential aspect of Bhaktapur's Tantrism, its alliance with the realm of power of the king in opposition to the realm of moral order of the Brahman, in his role (for Bhaktapur only one of his roles) as a priest of the benign deities.