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practitioners a wide variety of spiritual truths, including that the body and sexuality can
be spiritual and that what many, if not most Westerners consider to be sex is just a tip of
an enormous, spiritual, blissful iceberg.
TANTRA: THE TRADITIONAL
Just as the sexual revelations of neo-Tantra indicate that what is commonly considered
sex is just a small part of a much broader possibility, so, too, is neo-Tantra but a small
part of the very ancient ideas of what I call Traditional Tantra.
As Moura revealed, the earliest sources of what became Tantra and Hinduism began in
the northern parts of the Indian subcontinent and expanded in all directions. Originally, it
was strictly a growing, oral tradition. The books known in India collectively as The
Tantras (of which there are traditionally 108, which is a number of numerological
importance) were not written down for thousands of years, however most scholars
acknowledge that the roots of Tantra go back 7,000&Mac246;10,000 years or more.
Even today there are Traditional Tantric paths which can trace their roots, leader by
leader, back many hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. It is, indeed, an ancient
Pagan spiritual path. For a modern look at the ancient traditions of Tantra as well as
neo-Tantra, Witchcraft, and even Western sex magic, I highly recommend Dr. Jonn
Mumford&Mac226;s unique book, Ecstasy Through Tantra.
As a Pagan religion, there are two major directions. One worships Shiva and his consort.
The consort is usually seen as the goddess Parvati, also known as Uma by and several
other names. The other direction worships Shakti and her consort, Shiva. If this sounds a
bit confusing, remember that all the gods and goddesses are simply variations of
Brahman, each expressing different qualities of the divine. The sounds of the names are
triggers to releasing the qualities of Brahman (which is why they are used in spiritual
practices) that are identified by the name.
Each direction has many sub-paths, ranging from asceticism to the more famous
spiritualizing of sexuality. Most Traditional Tantrics accept all of these paths as
necessary for various individuals, even if their personal path differs from those of others.
There are numerous holidays on the calendar as well as daily rituals and practices. The
rituals can be as simple as lighting a candle and chanting to very complex ones that take
more than a week to perform. The holidays are celebrated differently in various parts of
India, even having different names from location to location. They range in attitude from
somber to the joyous holiday known as Holi, where people spray each other with colored
water or powder. Generally, there is at least one religious holiday per lunar month.
Traditional Tantra has various religious traditions which can only be defined as Pagan.
Modern Hinduism bases itself primarily on the Vedas, a series of books which were
written earlier than the books known as The Tantras. However, the Tantras were initially
an oral tradition, and many believe that the oral version of the Tantra predates the Vedas
by as much as a 1,000 years or more.
NEO-PAGANISM AND TRADITIONAL TANTRA
Beside having numerous spiritual paths which honor both a god and goddess, modern
Western Neo-Paganism and Traditional Tantra have numerous other similarities. For
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