Kritik am Buch „The Shadow Of The Dalai Lama ... - Neues von Shi De

tribal queen, who herself was supposed to be the incarnation of a goddess. Following the expiry of his
period in office, the priestesses sacrificed him and soaked the soil with his royal blood in order to
generate fertility.
Aside from this, it is highly likely that ancient castration were linked with the double-headed ax
(Hummel, 1954, pp. 123ff.). At any rate, the almighty Cybele bore this sharp implement as her
emblem of power. Classical authors report with horror how the fanatical priests of this Phrygian
mother-goddess let themselves be ritually emasculated or performed the mutilation themselves.
“Cybelis” is said to be a translation of “double-headed ax” (Alexiou, n.d., p. 92).
If we accept Hummel’s account of the origin of the vajra as the man-destroying scepter of the great
goddess, then the excessive reverence with which the Tantric Buddhists treat the “thunderbolt”
becomes more comprehensible: The ax, which once felled or mutilated man has now become his mostfeared
magical weapon, with which he graphically demonstrates his victory over the great goddess.
In the vajra, the “diamond scepter”, “thunderbolt” or “phallus”, the androcentric control of the world
is symbolized. It represents the superiority of the masculine spirit over the feminine nature. “The
vajra”, Lama Govinda writes, “became ... the quintessence of supreme spiritual, a power which
nothing can withstand and which is itself unassailable and invincible: just as a diamond, the hardest of
all substances, can cut to pieces all other substances without itself being cut by anything
else” (Govinda, 1991, p. 65). In order to demonstrate this omnipotence of absolute masculinity, there
arose within “Vajrayana” the linguistic obsession which links all the events and protagonists of the
tantric rituals to the word vajra.
It is not just the objects which are ceremonially sacrificed, like vajra-incense, vajra-shells, vajralamps,
vajra-perfumes, vajra-flowers, vajra-flags, vajra-dresses and so forth which bear the Sanskrit
name of the “diamond scepter”, but also all the ritual activities such as vajra-music, vajra-dance,
vajra-motion, vajra-gestures. “The whole of this system pivots upon the idea of the vajra, which is
the supreme ideal, but at the same time environs the initiate from his first steps. Everything which
concerns the mystique training bears this name. The water of the preliminary purification, the pot that
contains it, the sacred formula to repeat over it ... all is vajra” (Carelli, 1941, p. 6).
Even the symbol of supreme femininity, the “emptiness” (shunyata), is not spared its application.
“The vajra represents the active principle,” writes Snellgrove, “the means towards enlightenment and
the means of conversion, while the bell represents Perfection of Wisdom, known as the Void
(sunyata). In the state of union, however, the vajra comprehends both these coefficients of
enlightenment, the means and the wisdom” (Snellgrove, 1987, vol. 1, p. 131). “Shunyata”, we can
read in Dasgupta, “which is firm, substantial, indivisible and impenetrable, incapable of being burnt
and imperishable, is called Vajra... Vajra ... is the void and in Vajrayana everything is
Vajra” (Dasgupta, 1974, pp. 77, 72).
Vajra and the “bell” (gantha) count as the two most important ritual objects in Tantrism. But here too
the masculine “thunderbolt” has achieved supremacy. This is most graphically expressed in the
symbolic construction of the feminine “bell”. In order to display its subordinacy to the masculine
principle, it always possesses a handle in the form of a half vajra. One will also not find a gantha,
which does not have numerous tiny “diamond scepters”, i.e., “phalluses”, engraved on its outer edge.
The bell, visible and much-praised symbol of the feminine, is thus also under the hegemony of the