Review (PDF) Kiss Of The Yogini: "Tantric Sex" In Its South Asian Contexts
For those who wonder what relation actual Tantric practices bear to the "Tantric sex" currently being marketed so successfully in the West, David Gordon White has a simple answer: there is none. Sweeping away centuries of misunderstandings and misrepresentations, White returns to original texts, images, and ritual practices to reconstruct the history of South Asian Tantra from the medieval period to the present day.Kiss of the Yogini focuses on what White identifies as the sole truly distinctive feature of South Asian Tantra: sexualized ritual practices, especially as expressed in the medieval Kaula rites. Such practices centered on the exchange of powerful, transformative sexual fluids between male practitioners and wild female bird and animal spirits known as Yoginis. It was only by "drinking" the sexual fluids of the Yoginis that men could enter the family of the supreme godhead and thereby obtain supernatural powers and transform themselves into gods. By focusing on sexual rituals, White resituates South Asian Tantra, in its precolonial form, at the center of religious, social, and political life, arguing that Tantra was the mainstream, and that in many ways it continues to influence contemporary Hinduism, even if reformist misunderstandings relegate it to a marginal position.Kiss of the Yogini contains White's own translations from over a dozen Tantras that have never before been translated into any European language. It will prove to be the definitive work for persons seeking to understand Tantra and the crucial role it has played in South Asian history, society, culture, and religion.
File Size: 6499 KB
Print Length: 391 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0226894835
Publisher: University of Chicago Press; 1 edition (July 7, 2006)
Publication Date: July 7, 2006
Sold by: Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B00CL6DEZO
Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray: Not Enabled
Word Wise: Not Enabled
Lending: Not Enabled
Enhanced Typesetting: Not Enabled
Best Sellers Rank: #124,946 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store) #17 in Books > History > World > Religious > Hinduism #236 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Sex #635 in Books > Self-Help > Sex
The book discussed in these pages is brilliant, well done and highly recommended. I have just finished reading it, more or less non-stop, in 2 full days. As with his earlier work (The Alchemical Body), the author's research is detailed and professional - and anyone calling it "pathetic" (anonymous review May 26 2004) or "saddening" (anonymous review May 29 2004) only admits in so doing that he or she has personal problems with the sexual aspects of Tantra as they are discussed in "The Kiss" open and honestly by David Gordon White.Someone else called his conclusions "controversial" (anonymous review June 16 2004), yet the only "controversial" thing I can find in this book is the author's honesty - and one can only congratulate him for this - and of course he's intelligent enough to have foreseen that his theme and stance won't be liked by many - both in India and within the "New Age Tantra" community across the hemispheres.To everyone who has read actual Tantric texts - even in translation - White's conclusions are fully in concordance with previously published material AND with actual practice - the real merit of this book lies in presenting us with more and new material (translated by the author), and by connecting and combining previously difficult to relate evidence.So what is the book actually about that shocks so many sensitive minds? It is the fact that White establishes more firmly than has been done (in scholarly circles) before, that Tantric ritual makes use of the fluids that arise from the genitals - both female and male. And we're not only talking about orgasmic emissions, we're also talking about the magical blood we call menstruation. And we're talking about oral sex.
David White gives clear, detailed insights into the origins and evolution of Tantric practices. Serious students of South Asian religious history will find his meticulous work a wealth of information filled with practical examples, diverse sources and original accounts rarely, if ever, this accessible in English.The work's logical analysis of Tantric traditions visits its roots, components, rituals and development through the centuries. White states his goal "to reconstruct a history as well, perhaps, as a religious anthropology, a sociology, and a political economy of (mainly Hindu) Tantra, from the medieval period down to the present day." Indeed, this is what his book accomplishes. Unlike other works focusing on a particular aspect of Tantra, White takes a holistic approach that includes texts, imagery, politics, art, architecture, social relationships and practice in his sources.His linguistic abilities enabled him to include translated excerpts from more than 25 ancient Sanskrit works. He also references many modern sources that had me frequently returning to to order more books!White's creative vocabulary delights and stimulates; Acoustic phoneme, aestheticize, cosmeticized, countercasuistry, dissimulation, doctrine of radical nonduality, gerocomy, gnoseological, homologous, hegemonic, nondiscursive agglomerations, occulted, photeme, photic grapheme, polyvalence, postmodernisme oblige, semanticize, scholasticist, soteriology and typology are a few examples of the verbal tools he wields to make his finer points.The resulting prose is necessarily dense; a complex treatment by an expert immersed in his topic. Most paragraphs cite multiple sources, all thoroughly described in his bibliography and copious endnotes.
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