Preface
The Tantric Dakini Oracle is an ancient concept of psychic divination brought into contemporary form. The cards which make up the Oracle can be used in a number of different ways, both for divination and as an aid in personality transformation. The Tantric Dakini Oracle works on many different levels and the powerful. symbolism of the cards can enhance the psychic faculties of clairvoyance and visualization.
All mystical and alchemical treatises are concerned with transformation. For years the idea of an individual's conscious transformation appealed to me as the surest way to achieve goals which are beyond the range of any fixed personality. I journeyed to the East and spent many years there exploring the mystery-teachings and especially the Tantras. The texts known as the Tantras, more than any other teachings, affirm that conscious transformation is an evolutionary act.
My studies of yoga and tantra introduced me to the concept of the dakini. A dakini is an archetype of feminine wisdom-energy. Traditionally there are sixty-four dakinis which are believed to be expressions of archetypal energies within every human being. Dakinis are said to be sometimes creative and sometimes destructive, and without their different energies we would cease to exist. The dakini concept is paramount in the yoga and tantra mysteries.
I traced references to dakini temples and managed to locate the most ancient of them, Ranipur Jharial, in the Sambalpur region of Orissa, India. This temple was built in the eighth century, at the height of the tantric period, and was used as a place of initiation. By the fifteenth century it had become disused and forgotten but was rediscovered in 1879.
With great difficulty I managed to reach this temple of the sixty-four dakinis. The building was positioned on the top of a huge black rock rising upward from the shores of a small lake. The temple is made of sandstone, with tapered walls and a single entrance leading into a circular enclosure open to the sky. At the center was a single dancing male figure, Shiva, and in separate niches or cloisters around the inner circumference were sixty-four dancing female figures, the shaktis, or dakinis.
The temple of Ranipur Jharial illustrates perfectly the concept of psychic transformation as described in the Tantras. It outlines the basic metaphysics of the transformation teachings: sixty-four energies, personalized as dancing goddesses, either peaceful or wrathful, bearing weapons, symbols and making gestures. Like passengers within a great flying saucer, these figures surround the central axis, Shiva. The temple became better known to me after I had made detailed measurements and studied the iconographies of the figures and compared my findings with esoteric teachings found in the yoga and tantra mystic traditions. That a temple of the eighth century could so precisely illustrate the concepts of psychic transformation found in the tantric texts became a source of inspiration as well as an obsession. I searched out, located and studied four other dakini temples and made detailed comparisons.
In my studies I discovered that the dakini temple of Ranipur Jharial was considered the original teaching-place of the Tantras, a teaching in stone illustrating both the cycles of transformation and the paths of destiny. Early texts refer to "the magical land of Shambala, to the Northwest of the Kingdom of Uddiyana"; other texts refer to the king of Shambala as Indrabhuti. I was able to locate King Indrabhuti in Orissa, to the northwest of which I found modern Sambalpur with the circular Ranipur Jharial temple of the dakinis. The Kalachakra Tantra, a major text dealing with the cycles of transformation, was said to have been developed in Shambala itself by the great tantric master, Pitopa. It is the Kalachakra Tantra which relates the inner energy centers (chakras) of the subtle, or yoga, body to the outer spheres, the natural rhythms and cycles found in the external world of phenomena. The sixty-four dakini temple is a direct expression of this concept, and The Tantric Dakini Oracle is a contemporary form of these ancient wisdom-teachings.
The Dakinis in the Tantric Tradition
One of the most interesting references to the dakini concept is to be found in the life story of Guru Padmasambhava, who first brought the tantric teachings to Tibet in the eighth century (the period of the Ranipur Jharial temple in Sambalpur district). The standard text relates how Padmasambhava spent some time "in the land of Shambala, where he learned the Kalachakra Tantra and other mystic transmissions." The story tells how he received his final initiation.
Padma's initiation was through an-ordained Dakini who dwelt in a sandalwood garden in the midst of a cemetery, in a palace of skulls. When he arrived at the door of the palace he found it closed, but then there appeared a servant woman carrying water. Padma sat in meditation so that her water-carrying was halted by his Yogic power. Thereupon, taking a knife of crystal, she cut open her breast and exhibited within it the peaceful and wrathful deities, dancing in a circle. Addressing Padma she said, "I observe that you are a good Yogi. But look, have you not faith in me?" Padma bowed down and requested her teachings. She replied, "I am only a maid-servant. Come inside.
Abhinavagupta (34)
Buddhist (69)
Chakra (42)
Goddess (152)
History (35)
Kundalini (144)
Mantra (70)
Original Tantric Texts (15)
Philosophy (118)
Shaivism (72)
Yantra (49)
हिन्दी (87)
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