Excerpt from Chapter 4, "Spiritual Gardening Tools in the East and the West," of Judy Kennedy's book:

Vajrayana Buddhism, Witchcraft, and Magic 

The distinction between theory and practicum is important when trying to put hats on people.  A great scholar on alchemy and occultism is not necessarily a practicing occultist or a magician.  This same distinction can be applied to Buddhists, Hindus and students of other Eastern  schools.  Some Buddhists concentrate on the study of sutras – knowledge and wisdom texts.  They might engage in prayer and mantra but not tantric ritual and visualization.   Sutra in Sanskrit means thread.  Tantra, on the other hand, means woven.  It is the art of doing something with those threads --  just like witchcraft, magic, and alchemy are applications of Ageless Wisdom .  Some Buddhist scholars, such as Vessantara, plainly recognize this similarity:

"The Tantras are all attributed to Shakyamuni – usually under his Tantric name of Buddha  Vajradhara – and it is claimed that their teachings were given by him secretly.  When you attempt to relate to the everyday through the archetypal, or to manipulate spiritual forces through natural ones, what you are involved in is magic.  The contents of the Tantras are a witch’s brew of magical spells and rituals, yogic instructions and profound teachings, often in jumbled fragments which make them unintelligible to the uninitiated.  They are like grimoires of an Enlightened wizard – who practices a transcendental magic which cannot be said to be either black or white."[i]

Yet the practice of magic is not for everyone.  Even His Holiness the Dalai Lama admits, 

"The Secret Mantra Vehicle is hidden because it is not appropriate for the minds of many persons.  Practices for achieving activities of pacification, increase, control and fierceness, which are not even presented in the perfection Vehicle, are taught in the Mantra Vehicle but in hiding because those with impure motivation would harm both themselves and others by engaging in them.  If one’s mental continuum has not been ripened by the practices common to both Sutra and Tantra Mahayana – realisation of suffering, impermanence, refuge, love, compassion, altruistic mind generation, and emptiness of inherent existence – practice of the Mantra Vehicle can be ruinous through one’s assuming an advanced practice inappropriate to one’s capacity.  Therefore, its open dissemination is prohibited; practitioners must maintain secrecy from those who are not vessels of this path."[ii]

Old schools of occultism in the West used this same rationalization for grading the levels of advancement for initiates.  While adhering to a strict grading scale and sworn secrecy are no longer valid issues for true esoteric orders in the current millennium, it was useful as a screening device when knowledge was not so readily available.  Unfortunately, some branches of the Western mysteries, particularly the Freemasons, became corrupted  in their use of these devices as a means of withholding privilege and political  power.  This has often led to their wholesale indictment by conspiracy theorists.  While a suspicion of overemphasis on secrecy and selectiveness is warranted today, it does a disservice to all branches of the esoteric orders to insist that they are all guilty of this when they are not.  Each organization, each school, should be judged on its own merits and not subject to paranoid, conspiratorial overgeneralization. 

The basic ritual implements used by all Western magicians and witches correspond to the four elements:  The wand corresponds to fire (spirit, belief, will, intent.)  The sword corresponds to air (the incisive and defining power of mind, reason, intellect).  The cup corresponds to water  (feeling, the emotional  flow or energy.)  And finally, the pentacle corresponds to earth  (substance, form, solidity.)  Supplemental items and props also have their own significance.  While no magical power is attributed to the props or instruments in and of themselves, they can be magnetized with signature energy.  The power mostly comes from the mental association with the symbolic significance of the object.  These tools aid the practitioner in narrowing focus and concentration. 

The same principle of association and symbolism is at work in Vajrayana or tantric ritual.  In fact, a Buddhist altar can be just as busy as a witch’s with a wide assortment of ritual implements.  Two primary instruments used in Vajrayana ritual conform to the Hermetic laws of polarity and gender:  the vajra and the hand bell .  The vajra or thunderbolt sceptre, of which there are many types, is masculine and basically represents the perfection of method or skillful means.  The lightening bolt has the same symbolic significance as the sword.  The bell is feminine and represents the perfection of wisdom, impermanence and emptiness (empty of intrinsic separateness).  It loosely corresponds to the cup or grail of the Western tradition.  Both traditions make use of a ritual dagger or athamé as it’s called by witches.  There is even a tantric staff to match the magician’s wand.  

In the West, we have Tarot keys.  In the East, they have thangkas and mandalas.  Thangkas are huge tapestries of various Buddhas, deities and dharma protectors.  The Buddha manifests in many forms, and each form has its own meaning.  Each item in the thangka has symbolic significance, as does every item in a Tarot key.  A utilitarian difference between thangkas and the Tarot is that each thangka is self-contained and does not directly relate to other thangkas, at least to my knowledge.  The Tarot is a sequence of images or keys that when considered collectively illustrates a pattern and tells a story, and the relationships between the symbols in each image or key extend to all the other keys in the sequence as well.  Innumerable combinations of these keys contain their own stories in addition to the meanings they hold on their own as individual keys.  For instance, different stages of spiritual development are represented by different combination sequences of the keys.  These combinations are woven together in such a way as to elicit elaborate and detailed interpretations of these symbols and their interrelationships in the context of those particular combinations.  I have never heard of thangkas or mandalas being used this way.  In other words, Tarot is a system of symbolism.  You can work a Tarot key by itself or in combination with other Tarot keys.  Each thangka is pretty much on its own. 

A common tantric synchronicity often experienced by beginning students while working with the Tarot, is that nine times out of ten, the particular key that is the object of study will be all about a specific principle that has great bearing on a current problem in the student’s life.  It’s as if the Tarot key has come to life and is teaching the lesson of its inner meaning through the circumstances of the student’s life in real time.  This is subtle, intricate stuff.  This is also why B.O.T.A. students are asked to keep an occult diary.  The more this stuff gets written down, the easier it becomes to see how these principles manifest in ordinary day to day events.  Pattern recognition becomes very important to the practicing occultist.  The students practice as they learn, like real apprentices.  There’s no waiting to graduate.  Hands on experience is the only way to grow.  This is what distinguishes a spiritual  practitioner from a spiritual scholar.

In the West, we learn to visualize and become Tarot  keys, gods, goddesses, or whatever we want.  A Native American shaman  might choose to become a bear or a mountain lion, for instance.  This process helps to activate the corresponding dormant abilities and powers of that deity or animal within us in a way that nothing else can, especially when enhanced by intoning sacred words of power.  Tantric practitioners do precisely the same in their rituals with their chants and visualizations.  A popular tantric ritual is a purification practice called Vajrasattva.  Of course, as with all occult practices, rituals are only as detailed and complicated as we make them.  That’s why beginners usually start out with simple visualizations which help to cultivate intent and feeling first.  When visualizing deities, this process can be especially powerful because it unlocks the powers of that deity within us ideally.  In Wicca, the high priestess, in drawing down the moon, actually becomes an embodiment of the Goddess.  Similarly, in tantra one becomes the deity that is being visualized, tapping into nonlocal mind where those powers exist.  Ability to handle them and then bring them forth to effect a change or materialization on the physical plane externally is another story.  That takes skill, time, focus, practice and precision.  But in any event, doing this to even a small degree can profoundly affect the individual psyche.  Author Bokar Rinpoche reminds us:

"In meditation, one replaces this ordinary pride by the “pride of the deity”; one engenders the conviction “I am Chenrezig.”"

"Ordinary pride is the base on which conflicting emotions, illusory thoughts, and the ensuing sufferings develop.  The pride of the deity helps us to stop these productions.  When “I am Chenrezig,” I am no longer the one with ordinary desires, aversions, and projects.  The impure appearances with which we usually identify ourselves are replaced by pure appearances that are Chenrezig’s body, his pure land of manifestation, his mantra, and so on."

"One may think that replacing an identification – the one of our ordinary individuality – by another – the one of the deity – is not a significant change.  The difference is, however, very great.  In the first case, there are conflicting emotions and suffering and in the second case, there are none."[iii]

Though the concept of Chenrezig in Tibetan Buddhism  goes deeper than deity – it is also the essence of bodhicitta -- that’s the general idea of what goes on.

Assuming god forms and similar practices in ritual and meditation are good ways to train, condition, and wean the psyche from too much reliance on ritual props and symbols.  In other words, some day we won’t need to use radios in order to hear radio waves.  Instruments are no longer needed when the physical body becomes the fully realized expression of the energy itself.  Dion Fortune reminds us,

"It must be emphasized that the study of occultism is only a means to an end, and that end is the Way of Divine Union.  Some there are who can take that journey direct, but others have to proceed by stages through the planes of form, of which the mental plane is not the least, and for them the mind has to be trained and raised and taught to function under new forms that shall more nearly approximate to the spiritual actuality.  But let it never be forgotten that all forms but obscure the light, and we only know them by the shadows they throw upon a lower plane.  The aspirant should use the symbols of occultism to train consciousness, not to furnish it, and it should be his aim to cast them aside at the earliest possible moment that pure consciousness can dawn upon him."[iv]

This is one reason why I don’t have a permanent altar.  I like to improvise and make wherever I am my altar or meditation space.  Witches actually had to do this in times of persecution.  This is the real origin of how broomsticks got to be associated with them.  In the dark days of the inquisition, spiritual practitioners had to disguise their ritual implements in order to avoid possible detection and certain death.  Therefore, loosely attached broomsticks became wands, ordinary cups became chalices, kitchen knives became athamés, and coins or discs made of wax became pentacles or symbols for earth.  Molded wax was especially useful in this regard because magical signs and symbols could be drawn on it with a sharp object.  In the event of a bust, the witch could simply melt or crumble the waxen object. 

This is also why I like the practice of dzogchen.  It can be done anywhere with eyes fully open and requires nothing.  So often you can be doing it and nobody can tell you’re doing it, because ironically, it is more like “not-doing.”  It is a way to bring about that “pure consciousness” or “naked awareness ” that Dion Fortune mentions above. 

Do all adepts, gurus, lamas, Masters and spiritual teachers have siddhis – the Eastern term for supersensory  powers?  Have they all unfolded and developed their innate telepathic abilities, for example?  Some of them have; some of them haven’t.  It all depends on focus, orientation, and specialization.  There’s a scene from the movie  Interview with the Vampire that alludes to this.  The vampire Lestat is telling the vampire Louie all about the devious deeds of the countess sitting a short distance from them at a ball.  Louie says, “How do you know that?”  Lestat answers, “Read her mind.”  Louie replies, “I can’t.”  To which Lestat sighs, “Oh well.  The dark gift is different for each of us.”   And so it is. 

An overemphasis on any form of psychism, however, may serve as a dangerous distraction for the serious student.  Though these powers may be helpful in some instances, demonstration of these abilities is not required for progress on the Path.  This is what the tales about going down to Egypt are all about.  Egypt, an early Atlantean stronghold, was a major center of learning for the esoteric mysteries for so long, that naturally  it became associated with the attainment of supersensory powers that have their basis in the lower levels of consciousness.  Animals are closer to operating in these realms than we; therefore many creatures appear to be psychic .  The Biblical tales about Jesus, Moses, and the Israelites, along with the modern tale of the Rosicrucian adept C.R.C., going down into Egypt, symbolize entering these realms in order to learn about these powers head on.  Yet if the sojourn into those lands is prolonged, the danger of slavery becomes imminent.  Paul Foster Case states,

"Psychism of this kind is so great an obstacle to liberation that Buddha not only agreed with Patanjali as to its dangers but actually made the exercise of such powers in any form of miracle working cause for expulsion from the Buddhist brotherhood.  Yet C.R.C. goes to Egypt for a short time.  Psychic powers must be investigated, and the laws of subhuman forces that are part of our makeup must be understood.  There is a danger here, but it must be met, not avoided."

"Cowardly refusal to make oneself acquainted with subhuman powers is not the way to mastery.  The business of the occult  teacher is to warn his pupils against the dangers of  “Egypt,” and even Buddha’s strict rule is only against the public performance of marvels of thaumaturgy and against public claims to the possession of the Siddhis.  But that teacher is remiss in his duty who utters words of discouragement.  It is both false and cowardly to make people afraid of the “powers of Egypt.”  It is even worse to malign those powers as being in themselves evil.  We repeat, the evil is in returning to the level represented by those powers, not in the powers themselves."[v]

 It is also important to remember that just because a person may manifest supersensory  powers – that doesn’t necessarily make them a Master, bodhisattva, spiritual adept, or illumined being.  As John Rankin once told me, “We don’t grow evenly.  We grow lopsidedly.”  It is possible to meet charismatic individuals who may have cultivated great psychic or natural  healing abilities but who may leave a lot to be desired in ethics and character.  This is why the development of your own inner sense of discernment is paramount when dealing with people of this kind.  It is so easy to become misled and possibly hurt by them.  This is why folks like Lama Surya Das and other teachers worth their salt will tell you that great discretion should be exercised in choosing a spiritual teacher.  Ann Davies, one of the co-founders of B.O.T.A., offered this invaluable insight:  An adept is only an adept when acting as one.  That brings us to a general discussion of the differences between teaching styles in the East and West .

© Judy Kennedy