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

“animal”, whereas anyone who could retain it in the sexual act was a vira, a “hero”, and accorded the
attribute divya, “divine” (Bharati, 1977, p. 1977 148).
We have already reported how ejaculation is equated simply with death. This too we already learn
from the pre-Buddhist Upanishads. In fact, Indian culture is, in the estimation of one of its best
interpreters, Doniger O’Flaherty, characterized by a deadly fear of the loss of semen far beyond the
limits of the tantric milieu: “The fear of losing body fluids leads not only to retention, but to attempts
to steal the partner's fluid (and the fear that the partner will try the same trick) — yet another form of
competition. If the woman is too powerful or too old or too young, terrible things will happen to the
innocent man who falls into her trap, a fact often depicted in terms of his losing his
fluids” (O'Flaherty, 1982/1988, p. 56). Agehananda Bharati also shares this evaluation, when he
writes in his book on the tantric traditions that, “the loss of semen is an old, all-pervasive fear in
Indian tradition and probably the core of the strongest anxiety syndrome in Indian culture” (Bharati,
1977, p. 237).
The drawing up of sperm by a woman is viewed by a tantric yogi as a mortally dangerous theft and a
fundamental crime. Is this purely a matter of male fantasies? Not at all — a gynocentric
correspondence to the thieving seed-absorption is, namely, known from the Kali cults to be a ritual
event. Here, the woman assumes the upper position the sex act and in certain rites leaves the man
whose life energies she has drained behind as a corpse. According to statements by the Tibet
researcher, Matthias Hermanns¸ there were yoginis (female yogis) who received instruction in a
technique “through which they were able to forcibly draw their partners’ semen from out of the
penis”, and the author concludes from this that, “It is thus the counterpart of the procedure which the
yogi employs to soak up the genital juices of several women one after another through his
member” (Hermanns, 1965, p. 19). The theft of the male sperm in waking and in dream likewise
counts as one of the preferred entertainments of the dakinis.
Alchemy and semen gnosis
Before we continue with the initiation path in the Kalachakra Tantra, we would like to throw a brief
glance over Indian alchemy and the sexual substances it employs, because this half-occult science by
and large coincides with the tantric seed gnosis. The Sanskrit term for alchemy is Rasa-vada. Rasa
means ‘liquid’ or ‘quicksilver’. Quicksilver was considered the most important chemical substance
which was made use of in the “mystic” experiments, both in Europe and in Asia. The liquid metal was
employed in the transformation of materials both in the east and the west, in particular with the
intention of producing gold. In the Occident it bore the name of the Roman god, Mercury. The
Kalachakra Tantra also mentions quicksilver at several points. The frequency with which it is
mentioned is a result of its being symbolically equated with the male seed (bodhicitta); it was, in a
manner of speaking, the natural-substance form of the semen virile.
It is a characteristic of quicksilver that it can “swallow” other substances, that is, chemically bind with
them. This quality allowed the liquid metal to become a powerful symbol for the tantric yogi, who as
an androgyne succeeds in absorbing — i.e., “swallowing” — the gynergy of his wisdom consort.
The corresponding feminine counterpart to mercury is sulfur, known in India as Rasa-vada, and
regarded as a chemical concentrate of menstrual blood. Its magic efficacy is especially high when a
woman has been fed sulfur twenty-one days before her menses. Both substances together, mercury
and sulfur, create cinnabar, which, logically, is equated with sukra, the secret mixture of the male and