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Creative Beauty or Destructive Creation

30th December | Full Moon

The days are lengthening
The solstice is passed
The nights recede by a sunlit mast
The first full moon of the rising year
Belongs to Bhairavi, who on this day is here.

Boonath

Bhairavi means the fierce one. Her beautiful face shines fiercely with the brilliance of 1000 suns, she wears a necklace of fresh severed heads, and the moon is on her forehead.

The sight of Bhairavi can be an ugly, frightening one. What starts beautifully can start to creep slowly if we lose honour of Bhairavi. Her lesson is about honouring the dark feminine power.The yogi watches carefully how they approach Bhairavi.

She uses if she is used,
she honours if she is honoured.
She is the mirror
of how we treat our life power.

Bhairavi is the fire that consumes, she incites power and passion, her destructive fire ingests creation in its flames. She is the continual destroyer of the three worlds (Earhtly, Conscious & the subconscious), for this she is called Tripura Bhairavi (“fierce in the 3 worlds”).

Her burning destruction allows for creation to take place. Necessary is destruction if creation is to go on.
Just like her lover Bhairav, Bhairavi is ever present, she is the fire that consumes our lives until death less than the shadow of ash.

Psychic Clouds
in our Inner Skyes

Bhairavi is the grand paradox.

She is beautiful and enchanting. Her beauty excites and calls out our life force as we serve that to which we are drawn.
But Bhaiiravi is also known as Kotraksi, which means the one with deep set sunken dark eyes. The more of our power we give away, the deeper we fall into her dark eyes, and the more ghostly her form becomes.

Bhairavi Jayanti Puja
is the study of that which
we give our power to.

We see this now as the solar fire in nature grows with the lengthening of days grows, previously nourished by the darkening season.
The night of Bhairavi is the time to study where we are giving our power, and where perhaps we are wasting our power by feeding corpses.

This Purnima (full Moon) is the first one of the rising half of the natural year, with its now lengthening days after having crossed the threshold of the solstice.
Bhairavi sits on a corpse as her vehicle, called the Savasan in Tantra.
The corpse does not move and neither does Bhairavi. But we move towards them. The more we waste our Shakti, the uglier and more fierce she becomes.

This is why she is the drinker of blood.

In this life we have to give our energy and life blood, living and loving requires the investment of Shakti, we have to make focussed effort to live, but sometimes it is not focussed, but obscured by psychic clouds.

Bhairavi is the one
who reveals the psychic clouds
in the skies our soul.

Bhairavi is the force that requires focus to face, she requires our involvement and relationship. She is the force of living and dying which both go hand in hand. 

It might seem easier to feed our power to a dead corpse than to Bhairavi who is the most exacting woman of all.

Bhairavi can be displeased easily, but the corpse will never complain, we can turn away from Bhairavi and complain into the ears of a corpse, but Bhairavi grows more frightening and ugly as we waste our energies on dead things.

In Frustration there is power

This might sound abstract, but simply spoken, this is what we do when we don’t use our energies well. For example, Complaining is something we might take for normal and necessary. It is easy to discover an injustice, if we look for it.

With our acquaintances, we might make coffee meetings with the intention of releasing frustration through unloading by complaint. The complaint might stand in the light of absolute justice and we might believe it absolutely necessary to speak it out.

Rather than internalising the power inherent in the frustration, we release it prematurely when complaint and being against something is not internalised but externalised habitually.

When we open
& start to touch & hold
the powers that frustrate
we prepare for Bhairavi.

It is prepared by facing deeply the origin feelings that are created within us, and not all too easily turn to complaint as an outlet.

These days there are many more ways of complaint perhaps available as technology seems to broaden the horizons of expression.

The practice of Bhairavi Jayanti is a subtle inner ritualistic work that honours the birth of the growing half of the year of lengthening days, with this first full moon in the bright half of the year we ritually come forward to the study of the habits and familiar ways we might be wasting our life force. Facing the gaze of Bhairavi with honour  on the other hand, requires us to harness our life force. A volcano builds its fiery forces in the dark, it follows the path of knowing when to restrain, sometimes it’s destructive explosions give birth to the new by destroying the old. Yet…

… to be like an ever emitting volcano,
leaving no power in the base
is the path of feeding the corpse.

On this night, Tantric’s have timelessly gathered in a circle of power. Together they have ritualised with the blessing of nature’s currents and practiced Antar Bhairavi Mudra in concentrated puja (ritual).

Bhairavi Mudra
is the deep investigation
of the harnessing, usage & wastage
of our life force.

Agni & Tejas in the 3 Worlds

Bhairavi is the opposite of Lalita, the second of the Mahavidyas.
Lalita Jayanti follows on February the 27th, on the Full Moon.
Both Goddesses have the prefix Tripuri (the three worlds) before their names.

Bhairavi is the consuming fire of Agni, and Lalita is the cooling fire of Tejas.
Tripuri Bhairavi is the consuming Agni fire of the three worlds, and Tripuri Lalita is the cooling Tejas fire in the three worlds.

When Agni and Tejas are in balance, they brew Soma, the psycho physical compound of spiritual insight.
The fires exist in the 3 worlds, that is, in the subconscious underworld, in the world of celestial awareness above and in the middle plane of the earth in between.
We live, move and have our being in these 3 realms. 

The study and balance
of the hot and cooling fires
in our threefold world
is a focus of the Tantric practitioner.

If the psychic fire within us is hot and emphasis is on the Agni, then the body will be heated and the breath and heart burning. If the psychic fire within us is focussed on Tejas (the cooling fire) the body will be cool with heart and breath rhythmical.

The fires must be balanced in the right measure to create Soma.

The movements of nature and the moon intersect with these two fires which are ever moving and reflecting the currents of atmospheric and lunar energy.

The balance of the two fires is the ever moving Yogic pursuit.

When Agni does not overly consume, then the solar plexus fire recedes from it’s all too often seat of dominance. Balance is then established and the cool fire of Tejas burns in the soma chakra and creates the psychic elixir of Soma in the 3 worlds that we inhabit.

The Soma chakra
is the other polarity of the solar plexus
and brews the downward glowing moon fire
from above.

The mantras for Soma and Agni are balanced in Tantra.

For example, the Mantras of Bhairavi exist as three syllables which are the 3 tips of the downward facing triangle at the base of our being. This triangle is her primal Yantra (symbolic and sound form).

Bhairavi’s heating mantras are the bijas (seed syllables) that activate the fire of the 3 worlds, one for the physical, one for the unconscious, and one for the celestial awareness. 

The 3 Bija mantras of Lalita on the other hand are cooling in nature, the mantras are combined in the right measure, and this measure is ever changing, just as the Moon is. Tripuri Bhairavi and Tripuri Lalita, together teach us about the destructive fire and the creative fire respectively.

They reveal to us how both the creative and destructive fires of our destiny are ignited.

If you would like to join our ceremony
CLICK HERE

The Womb of Creation

Monday 21 December

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A big planetary
rotation of forces
occurs on Winter Solstice,
as the longest night
of the year
takes us to the very depth
of outer darkness.
This extended darkness
of the macrocosm
is mirrored
in our inner microcosm,
as we are but a reflection
of nature.

– Boonath

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Dear Friends of the Healing Circle of Shadow & Light,

The longest night of the year is upon us.
Winter Solstice presents a polarity shift in the three worlds, that is the earthly, the lunar, and the underworld.

This holds true in both a physical and spiritual sense. The physical energies in our body are expressed in the three metals of Silver, Gold and Iron. These elements intersect with our spiritual being and influence us deeply.

The Solstice is such a day of potent physical and spiritual influence, tantrics recognise this and timelessly work with and harness such cosmic waves in the context of healing ritual.

Moon, Sun & the Black planet
Shuni (Saturn)
are expressed in the metals
silver, gold and iron.

On the morning following the winter Solstice, the rising light will melt the cycle that we have been in and the solar force will lengthen the days in the endless cycle of Death, Life and Mystery.
In the language of Tantra, Silver is lunar, Gold is solar and Iron is Saturnian darkness.

The balance
of these ever moving
three elements
is the Tantric pursuit.

The right measure of each, opens doorways within and without and creates magic.
Upon cosmic events such as the Solstice, Silver, Gold and Iron meet upon the year’s longest night and a transform of relationship between them and us takes place.
The structures of one’s Soul can be glimpsed within such polarity-shifting times under the guidance of the Tantric goddess Kali.

KALI MANDIR

The Womb is the Temple

The deep shadows that obscure her face are glanced and glared into, upon this ritual tantric night of Kali Puja, that is, the night of the Dark Goddess.
Tantrics reveal that the shadows of the womb are most accessible upon this night most Tantric.

Kali Mandir
is the Tantric name
for the Womb.

It translates as the temple of the dark goddess.
Kala is time, but Kali is that which takes away time. This is revealed in the Tantric image of Kali Dancing upon the body of Shiva. Shiva lays there with phallus erect, receiving the life giving currents of the One who destroys time. That one is Kali Ma, the Dark mother.

The child in the womb lives in the timeless realm. The Child’s birth is a death out of timelessness into the realm of time. This realm of time is the realm of Kala. It is the realm of time and space, the realm of cause and effect, in which we live and die.

HEALING

The Traumas of the Womb

Kali Puja is a night when the axis shifts and the days start to lengthen, it is a death of the dark season and a first birth of the light. Kali is most powerful on this night of witchery just before, when her night is the longest we will know in the year.

The darkness
creates a portal
that draws the spirits near
and offers a chance of healing
deep ancestral Karmas
related to the womb.
The womb being
the one that birthed
the whole enterprise.

The womb refers to the Shakti area of creation in both Woman and Man.
This long night has a very deep energy that can be observed by listening to the currents of energy. It is a night as deep as the womb of Kali Ma, the womb from whence we came and to which we will return.
Tantrics have followed these junctions since time immemorial and aligned themselves in concentrated ritual to the currents of nature.

We will follow suit
and partake of many
a dark mudra and mantra
on this night of Ceremony
to the Dark mother herself.

Practices of working with the womb are central to this night. What more can be said other than that it is a deep place, indeed the deepest cave of all creation.

DARK MOON & SOLAR ECLIPSE

MONDAY 14th December

This will be the last dark Moon of the year, the dark time when the night will be at its longest.

A further blessing is that this dark Moon falls upon a Monday, Somavhwar, literally the ‘Day of Soma’ – the Moon God. 

If a dark moon falls upon a Somavhwar it is known as the festival of Somavati and it occurs only once or twice a year, bringing forth many Tantric rites. It is an event most conducive for practice and for seeking healing, especially in relation to ancestral work.

BLOOD, SEX & DEATH

The Tabooed Forces of Life

Somavati is a day when water, milk and blood (in the form of wine) are worked with ritualistically.

The wine represents the blood of Kali (the Goddess of Life), the Milk is the juice of Kamakhya (the Goddess of Desire), and the water represents the river of time in the realm of Kala Bhairava (God of Death, which we celebrated last monday).

It is with these divine forces of blood, sex and death that we shall work with on Monday’s ritual in the search for healing our relationship to Life, Pleasure and Surrender, which are often infused with patters and Shadows we struggle to understand in our daily lives.

SOLAR ECLIPSE

The Spirits come to Heal

The coming Dark Moon is the last one embedded within the darkening half year of lengthening nights, upon this we have a solar eclipse, known to Tantrics as a Surya Grah.

Spiritual practices on eclipses 
are intensified 100 fold, 
it is said in Tantra.
It is a time when consciousness 
is overshadowed 
& the application of our psychic will
proves the strength of Soul.
The spirits are close 
to the earth plane on eclipses 
& much healing 
with the world of spirit 
can be set in motion.

Traditionally it is a time when our ancestors would stay inside and not venture outside. Mundane activities would be left to rest and one would rather take to spiritual focus in times of eclipse.

These things are slowly being forgotten and classified as a mere superstition by Modernity which overshadows spiritual wisdom.

By being sensitive to our inner currents of feeling, we come to see the spiritual dimension of our being, which the eye of civilisation has been trained to overlook.

The Moon  under the rulership of Soma, relates to fluidity and flow of life force.

In Tantra, Soma refers to the Moon and carries several connotations.

SOMA

The Moon’s Healing Fluid

Soma refers to the sacred 
& Healing Moon fluid. 
It is a subtle 
psycho/physical compound 
that is the essence of Tejas 
– the cool fire 
of psychic & spiritual power.

The opposite of Tejas is the hot fire of Agni.
Tantra is concerned with bringing both the cooling and the heating fires into a balanced dance with each other.

Soma vivifies and creates, whereas Agni consumes and destroys. Both of these fires are needed in the correct proportions in the constituents of our body and spirit. A balance of these forces is required to open the subtle portals of awareness. 

An abundance of Agni fire in our psycho/physical mechanism is the ill of modern times. The overemphasis of Agni not only consumes the finer currents of awareness but creates stress in the system and ages the body.

Soma on the other hand is the juice of eternal youth – you may enjoy reading a previous post, The Forgotten Jewel of Tantra, which goes in more details about the qualities of Soma.

Some forms of Shakti consume Soma and some forms of Shakti vivify the Soma fluid of the Moon within us. Heating pursuits and emotions, extroversion and over activity consume Soma.

Introversion, rest and slowing down the currents of being are what nurture Soma. Noise and speech create Agni, which is hot and active. Silence and stillness create Soma, which is brewed in passivity.

Passivity is a quality 
that might have disappeared 
from our lives 
& considered a sign 
of weakness of illness even. 
In Tantra it is sought 
like a rare jewel.

Passivity is a secret Moon-type state of consciousness that the Yogis venture to know in the midst of the fires and actions of life.
The Yogis prize Soma and are cautious and careful to nurture, cultivate and preserve it. Soma is psychic power.

Soma is the cool healing fire that melts the obstructions in the way of our Shakti life energy. The cool fire of Soma is not as obvious as the active expression of Agni.

Soma lives internally and signifies and is experienced as a magical inner life.. .perhaps even independent of external factors. The introverted fire of Soma is an internal glow that gives one strength of focus and ‘awake-ness’ upon the astral levels.

AGNI

The Fire of (Self-)Destruction

In present times 
Agni burns strong 
& stands in a predominant place. 
This is most visible 
in the magnitude of destruction 
on a planetary scale, 
through wars, 
violence towards all forms of life, 
& even in the warming of the atmosphere. 
There is too much heat 
in the system.

This calls for the cultivation of Soma, which must become a priority both individually and collectively if we wish to shift the balance back to a state of harmony.

To give strength to the God of softness and simplicity that Soma is. Soma is cultivated in simplifying our lives. Somnath is one of the names which Shiva goes by, for he is the eternal Yogi who wears the moon in his hair.

Somnath lives in the spirit of all souls who tread the path of shining in the dark.  The path of the Magic Moonlight. Like the moon that shines brightly in the night sky, Soma is cultivated in the dark.

The practice of Kechari Mudra has several preparatory steps, it is initiated and practiced when the Soma Moon is at its strongest.

Ketchari 
is a secret science of Mudra 
that activates points of energy 
in the system 
that releases Soma 
in the form of a hormonal substance 
that creates profound 
softness & trance.

PRACTICES ON SOMAVATI

Honouring the Ancestors

The day of Somavati happens rarely, one or twice yearly when a dark Moon falls on a Monday, it is a strong ritualistic time, when it is combined with an eclipse it is made more profound, a most rare occurrence it be.

It is a time to give homage 
to the deceased ancestors. 
To perform Shraddh 
(psychic ritualistic offerings) 
this is to bless & heal 
the spirits of one’s dead ancestors. 

To assist in earthbound elements that can affect us in the Astral world, tantrics call this effect the Pitru Dosha. Somavati is a sacred ritual time of liberating Pitru Dosha. The new Moon sequence of Chandra Parampara supports this and is ritualistically practiced by the tantrics at this Moon junction.

Chandra Parampara is the Yog sequence of practice that among all the practices of Yog. It creates the greatest softening and flexibility in the organism, both psychicaly and physically.
Prayer and ritual under the Soma Moon is a time of opening body and soul towards the deepest levels of softness.

Simplification is the way to Soma… and the way of Soma.

We shall work with the three liquids that make up Soma. They equal Soma if they are balanced in equal equations.
Blood, Milk and Water shall lay upon the altar on this a Dark Moon night – the Darkest Moon of the Year.

You would be most welcome to join the Online Ritual
on Monday 14th of December

To Face One’s Own Death
Descending Half Moon Ritual

“Oh Bhairav,
Ruler of the North,
You who are the House of Death,
And the Death itself,
You who are Time,
Teach us the secrets of Fear and Devotion,
Maha Kaal Siddhi be yours to teach,
The magical secret beyond time.”

Boonath

Monday the 7th of December is the Descending Half Moon. This is known to Tantrics as the annual day of Maha Kaal BhairavJayanti, the ‘birthday’ (Jayanti) of Kaal Bhairav, the Tantric deity of darkness and fear. The 8th night of lunar waning every month is Sacred to Bhairav, the darkest form of Shiva.
The 8h descending lunar night is known as Bhairav Astami. Or Kaal Astami.
Kaal means time, Astami means the eighth. The last Bhairav Astami of the dark half of the year is the most sacred one and is Bhairav Jayanti, which is why it is considered Bhairav’s ‘birthday’ (Jayanti).

Kaal Bhairav represents Time and Death. In fact,  Kaal means ‘dark’. He is represented as the Crow master who rides upon the Black Dog. Crows and black dogs belong to his realm and are the messengers of his secrets.
Kaal Bhairav is the heavy and slow planet Saturn. The Planet Saturn is highly active upon the inner astral plane in the Northernmost hemisphere at this time of the year.
This night of Bhairav is sandwiched right between the last Full and Dark Moons of the Darkest Season of the year, when the length of the nights are at their peak and Tantrics spend time investigating the dark layers of their being.
   

THE DEEP DARK LAYERS

Of the Soul

In the ritualistic circle of Tantra this is a time in which to study the deep dark layers of oneself, peeling away the outer layers like an onion to reach the sometimes tear-inducing taboos of the nether-regions.  

Subjects such as death,
fear and time are approached
in this ritualistic night.

Time is of the essence and our time can be something devoid of magic. It then becomes something to waste away when it is barren of moonlit magic.
Some of the modern rituals we repeat are worth our investigation. If something is repeatedly done with our concentration then it becomes a ritual.
Rituals can both entrap and liberate.
Kaal Bhairav ritual-worship has the potential to show us the most obvious yet easily unseen things of what we are doing with time – or perhaps what time is doing with us.
   

IN FEAR

We find Devotion

Bhairav is the ultimate destroyer.
The story tells that it was he who beheaded even the creator. Bhairav suffered for it, yes, whereas the creator found liberation.

This night’s ritual follows the narrative of the subtle tale of Bhairav’s journey to the North. It is a subtle tale that encompases the deepest and darkest corners of the soul, not to mention the most destructive aspects.

The story tells that, after Kaal Bhairav beheaded the creator, he could not get free of what he had done. Destruction and creation literally stuck together, as the head of the creator stuck to Bhairav’s hand and rotted putridly for aeons upon aeons. In the end Bhairav finally crossed the invisible line between life and death and traversed the threshold of creation and of destruction.

This story points to an inner reality that is to be meditated on.
Life and time, creation and death, all hold hands in the fear-inducing realm of a Kaal Bhairav.

Within Tantra
the Bhairav ritual & practices
are highly secretive.
They are to be proceeded with caution,
for they arouse
our deepest & darkest
innermost fears.

Raising fear carries a great healing power if one works with the raised material in the landscape of the soul.
The various names of Kaal Bhairava are powerful Mantras that move repressed fears in us.
The freedom of finding and facing repressed fears, frees us from agitation as there is nothing to move away from, this works like a mirror, there is then also nothing to move towards either.
The place of Yogic power comes in this inner constellation.
Drive dies and spirit power takes its place.

The creative spiritual impulse
is not free of death,
for creativity without death
is stagnation.

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NORTH

The Direction of the Spirit

Bhairav is the ruler of the North.
North flowing rivers take the spirit out of the body, the dead are placed to the North in Tantric wisdom.
The liberated spirit goes North beyond the grip of the illusions of the astral plane.
Bhairav is the God of Kashi (today renamed ‘Varanasi’), the sacred city of death in the North. The place in India where the Ganga river flows North. It is a region of the astral-plane alike.

Bhairav
is therefore a deep friend,
liberator and protector,
if he is approached in honour.

He holds the Danda, the stick of power he gained after aeons of pondering the dead creator’s head in his hand.
For this Bhairav is called Dandapaani, ‘the one who carries the stick of power’.
It is the magic wand of the Wizard and Witch.
It is the spine that flows with the dance of circuitry in the currents of life and death.
It is the stick within grasp when we study the mysteries of Bhairav.
It is the stick that carries the soul across the portals of life and death.
The stick is called Kankala Danda, literally the ‘skeleton stick’.
The stick of Bhairav gives the protection of courage to go under the surface of skin and flesh, right to the very bone of the matters that weigh most upon us.
Bhairav asks us ‘are we here to live or are we here to die?’

This practice
is a most northward pursuit
in which one works
with one’s death.
It works with
the time one has
…and the time
one does not have.

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THE RITUAL

Investigating Death

On the occasion of the yearly Bhairav Jayanti, the Tantric practitioner tunes to the celestial and atmospheric waves of nature and harnesses the flood of the spirit.

The Tantric
comes to know that destruction
is the other hand of creation,
both go together in the cyclic dance
of death & life.
Both destruction & creation
go hand in hand.

In this ritual we might chant his 64 names if we come that far.
By tradition, his Bija mantra is never written, but it will be uttered in this dark night’s ritual.

His mudras are Maha Kaal Asan and Kashi Mudra. These physical movements send the spirit North to the world beyond.

Maha Kaal asan takes a step through the three worlds, it reaches skyward, whilst rooting deeply, and requires the focus of the middle realm that we inhabit. This Mudra teaches us slowly of the walk – called life – we take through the triple realm of our being (which we began to explore last Monday on the first part of this new 4-part series – read about the myth of Shiva destroying the three worlds of illusion on our blog).

The inner and outer Danda mudras are practiced, including the antar Kankala mudra (the inner skeleton practice)…

… a dark practice
of calling upon one’s death,
not suitable for the faint hearted
or the spiritual consumerist
and sensationalist.

Tantra may have become sensationalised as pleasure and spiritual indulgence, easy to buy into in the modern era.
But the old-school rules of Kaal Bhairav are within the timeless laws of pain and pleasure: the two go together.

Under Kaal Bhairav’s  jurisdiction,
the taboo – even unto ourselves –
is approached on the ritual
of his birthday night.

He is Time, he is Death, he is obstinate, tenacious, terrifying and immovable by his laws. He can reveal where we are obstinate, tenacious and immovable to his laws of Time and Death.
He can show us how to die, many may be consumed with the issue of  ‘how to live’, but the tantric equally concerns themselves with ‘how to die’.

He can show us the lessons we are not learning and having to repeat for lifetimes long.
But he demands that we have courage to face our pain as well as our pleasure, for pleasure alone does not fill the cup in his realm.
Just like Shuni (the planet Saturn) that he is, Kaal Bhairav, takes us beyond and far behind the limits of darkness, death and time, he is heavy and slow and gives depth to the soul who dares to meet his gaze, the soul who dares to face themselves in the dark finds a deep friend.

We hope you will choose to join us forthis ritual and
venture together on this journey into one of the darkest
themes in Tantra.

HARA RING  

– Boonath & Kim