Tantra Goddess is Caroline Muir’s memoir of her personal journey from innocent Kansas girl to skilled sexual and spiritual healer and leader. She shares the experiences that shaped her and lessons learned over a lifetime of searching for, and most often finding, love. While pioneering the now burgeoning Tantra movement in the United States and abroad, she experiences the highs and lows of the polyamorous, Tantric lifestyle, finds peace at last in a sexually monogamous relationship, and a new found sense of herself.

For the first time, Tantra, Ritual Performance and Politics in Nepal and Kerala offers a comparative approach to Tantric mediumship as observed in two locales: Navadurgā rituals in Bhaktapur, Nepal, and Teyyāṭṭam in North Kerala.

This book provides an excellent introduction to the essence of Hindu Tantrism, discussing all the major concepts and correcting many existing misconceptions.

Tantra is a family of rituals modeled on those of the Vedas and their attendant texts and lineages. These rituals typically involve the visualization of a deity, offerings, and the chanting of his or her mantra. Common variations include visualizing the deity in the act of sexual union with a consort, visualizing oneself as the deity, and "transgressive" acts such as token consumption of meat or alcohol. Most notoriously, non-standard or ritualized sex is sometimes practiced. This accounts for Tantra's negative reputation in some quarters and its reception in the West primarily as a collection of sexual practices. Although some today extol Tantra's liberating qualities, the role of women remains controversial. Traditionally there are two views of women and Tantra. Either the feminine is a metaphor and actual women are altogether absent, or Tantra involves the transgressive use of women's bodies to serve male interests. Loriliai Biernacki presents an alternative view, in which women are revered, worshipped, and considered worthy of spiritual attainment. Her primary sources are a collection of eight relatively modern Tantric texts written in Sanskrit from the 15th through the 18th century. Her analysis of these texts reveals a view of women that is generally positive and empowering. She focuses on four topics: 1) the "Kali Practice," in which women appear not only as objects of reverence but as practitioners and gurus; 2) the Tantric sex rite, especially in the case that, contrary to other Tantric texts, the preference is for wives as ritual consorts; 3) feminine language and the gendered implications of mantra; and 4) images of male violence towards women in tantric myths. Biernacki, by choosing to analyse eight particular Sanskrit texts, argues that within the tradition of Tantra there exists a representation of women in which the female is an authoritative, powerful, equal participant in the Tantric ritual practice.

The Great Goddess, in her various puranic and tantric forms, is often figured as sitting on a corpse which is identified as Shiva-as-shava (God Shiva, the consort of the Devi and an iconic representation of the Absolute without attributes, the Nirguna Brahman). Hence, most of the existing critical works and ethnographic studies on Shaktism and the tantras have focused on the theological and symbolic paraphernalia of the corpses which operate as the asanas (seats) of the Devi in her various iconographies. This book explores the figurations of the Goddess as corpse in several Hindu puranic and Shakta-tantric texts, popular practices, folk belief systems, legends and various other cultural phenomena based on this motif. It deals with a more intricate and fundamental issue than existing works on the subject: how and why is the Devi – herself - figured as a corpse in the Shakta texts, belief systems and folk practices associated with the tantras? The issues which have been raised in this book include: how does death become a complement to life within this religious epistemology? How does one learn to live with death, thereby lending new definitions and new epistemic and existential dimensions to life and death? And what is the relation between death and gender within this kind of figuration of the Goddess as death and dead body? Analysing multiple mythic narratives, hymns and scriptural texts where the Devi herself is said to take the form of the Shava (the corpse) as well as the Shakti who animates dead matter, this book focuses not only on the concept of the theological equivalence of the Shava (Shiva as corpse) and the Shakti (Energy) in tantras but also on the status of the Divine Mother as the Great Bridge between the apparently irreconcilable opposites, the mediatrix between Spirit and Matter, death and life, existence-in-stasis and existence-in-kinesis. This book makes an important contribution to the fields of Hindu Studies, Goddess Spirituality, South Asian Religions, Women and Religion, India, Studies in Shaktism and Tantra, Cross-cultural Religious Studies, Gender Studies, Postcolonial Spirituality and Ecofeminism.

In Hindu theology, Divine Power is conceived as a divine woman-the Goddess. Sometimes she is wholly autonomous and sometimes she is the divine spouse of the creator God, Siva or Visnu. She is also held to be the evolving material source of every created phenomenon. Religious texts like Puranas and Tantras have thoroughly investigated the mysterious nature of the Cosmic Goddess. Tantra as a religious practice endeavoured to show how through ritual and Yoga one may achieve the realization of the mystery of the Supreme Goddess. Authors in Sanskrit and modern Indian languages have poured out their ecstatic devotion to the Goddess. She is close to the heart of the passionate devotee, who adores her as mother or daughter - a mortal emotional bond with the divine so peculiar to Hindus. She is also sovereign Power a little part of which reigning royalties covet to possess in order to be good rulers. AS the divine woman she is represented in all women. Therefore women should be holding a high position amongst Hindus. But the question is, do they? In spite of the obvious contrary evidence, women do succeed in carving out a very important position in Hindu religious practices by having their alternative religious rituals highly valued by Hindu women have a very complex interrelationship. The book focuses on the great cosmic Goddess and her ritual worship, Tantric theology and praxis in a wider sense, the attitude of her devotees towards her authority and the social character of the Tantric practitioners, and the position of Bhakti. It also figures out the position of women inside the Tantric and non-Tantric Hindu religious milieu. The Goddess symbolizes the supreme divine authority that activates the creation, protection and governance and necessary dissolution of the world in accordance with the ancient Indian concept of cyclical time. But She also discharges the divine sovereign privilege of punishing evil-doers and rewarding true devotees. Finally, the relevant forms of the Cosmic Goddess in this book are Sri/Tripurasundari/ Lalita; Goddess Kali and Her various emanations; and Laksmi and Her powers in the Pancaratra canonical texts.

The revealing memoir of the tantric sex pioneer at the forefront of the now burgeoning tantric movement.