February 2026 – Tantric Deception

In Vajrayana Buddhism and related tantric systems, practitioners are taught that enlightened activity manifests in four fundamental modes, often called the Four Activities. These are commonly translated as Pacifying, Enriching, Magnetizing, and Subjugating. In Sanskrit they correspond to śāntika, pauṣṭika, vaśīkaraṇa, and abhicāra. In Tibetan sources they are known as zhi, rgyas, dbang, and drag po.

Doctrinally, the Four Activities are described as spontaneous expressions of awakened compassion. An enlightened being pacifies obstacles, enriches virtue and resources, magnetizes beings toward the Dharma, and subjugates harmful forces. This presentation emphasizes intent and realization, assuring the student that such actions, when performed from enlightenment, are free of karmic stain.

Yet this sanitized description obscures a more uncomfortable reality. Historically and textually, the Four Activities function as classificatory frameworks for large compendiums of ritual technologies. These include magical spells, rites, visualizations, mantras, and talismanic operations designed to bring about very specific effects in the world. Such effects include healing and calming, increasing wealth or longevity, attracting and binding others, and coercing, harming, or destroying enemies.

This dual framing creates a tension that is rarely examined openly within modern Buddhist discourse.

The Four Activities as Magical Technologies

Tantric manuals from India and Tibet make explicit that the Four Activities are not metaphors. They are actionable ritual categories. Tantras such as the Guhyasamāja Tantra and the Hevajra Tantra, along with later ritual compendiums such as the Sādhanamālā and abhicāravidyā genre texts, provide detailed instructions for rites aimed at controlling weather, influencing rulers, compelling lovers, paralyzing rivals, or causing illness and death.[1]

These materials make clear that tantric ritual was never confined to inner transformation alone. The Four Activities structured a full spectrum of practical interventions into social, political, and psychological life.

The Sādhanamālā

The Sādhanamālā is a large Sanskrit compendium of tantric ritual manuals compiled in India roughly between the 8th and 12th centuries CE.

It is Buddhist, specifically Vajrayana or Mantrayāna, and not Śaiva, even though it shares techniques and ritual logic with non-Buddhist tantric traditions. The text consists of several hundred sādhana instructions for meditation and ritual practice focused on Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and tantric deities such as Tārā, Avalokiteśvara, Mañjuśrī, Vajrayoginī, and Hevajra.

Many of these sādhanas are explicitly or implicitly classified according to the Four Activities. They include ritual prescriptions for pacifying illness, enriching wealth or lifespan, magnetizing kings, patrons, or disciples, and subjugating enemies. The intended effects are practical and worldly as well as soteriological.

The Sādhanamālā was translated into Tibetan in parts and circulated widely in Tibet. Tibetan ritual literature draws heavily on this material, even when the Indian source material is not foregrounded explicitly.

Standard scholarly references include: Benoytosh Bhattacharyya, Sādhanamālā, Baroda, 1925–1928, and
David Snellgrove, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Shambhala, 1987.

Abhicāravidyā Texts

Abhicāravidyā is not a single book but a category of ritual literature.

The Sanskrit term abhicāra refers to rites of coercion, harm, or destructive magic. Vidyā means a spell or magical formula. Abhicāravidyā texts are therefore manuals of destructive or coercive rites.

In Buddhist tantra, such texts describe subjugation practices including immobilization, madness, illness, death, expulsion of consciousness, and rites intended to cause death, sometimes described as ritual killing by proxy. These rites are usually justified as actions taken against enemies of the Dharma, oath breakers, or beings deemed karmically irredeemable.

These texts circulated in India among tantric specialists and were selectively translated into Tibetan, often under euphemistic titles or embedded within larger ritual cycles. In Tibet, their contents were reorganized under the heading of drag po, or wrathful activity.

Important examples of Buddhist abhicāra material appear in:

The Guhyasamāja Tantra and its explanatory tantras
The Hevajra Tantra
The Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṃgraha
Later ritual manuals attributed to figures such as Nāgārjuna and Padmasambhava

Because of their ethical volatility, abhicāra rites were rarely taught openly. Access was restricted, which is one reason modern practitioners often underestimate how central such practices were historically.

Key scholarly discussions include: Ronald Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism, Columbia University Press, 2002, and Alexis Sanderson, “The Śaiva Age,” in Genesis and Development of Tantrism, Tokyo, 2009.

Relationship to Tibetan Buddhism

Tibetan Buddhism inherited these Indian materials largely intact. The Four Activities framework in Tibet is not an innovation but a systematization of Indian tantric categories.

What changed in Tibet was less the ritual content than the doctrinal rhetoric surrounding it. Destructive and coercive rites were reframed as compassionate acts performed by realized beings. This rhetorical move allowed the practices to survive while softening their public presentation.

When Tibetan teachers speak of the Four Activities today, they are standing on a ritual foundation built by Indian Buddhist tantra, including the Sādhanamālā and abhicāravidyā traditions, whether this inheritance is acknowledged or not.

In Tibetan contexts, this ritual material was further systematized. The Four Activities became a classificatory framework under which thousands of rites were organized. Fire pujas, effigy magic, thread-cross rituals, and sexual yogas all find their place within this scheme.[2]

The ethical difficulty is obvious. While pacifying and enriching activities can be interpreted charitably, subjugation practices explicitly involve violence, coercion, and psychological domination. Tibetan ritual manuals state that subjugation rites can cause madness, death, or rebirth in hell realms for the target, often justified by vague claims that the victim is an enemy of the Dharma.[3]

Subjugation and Buddhist Ethical Dissonance

From the standpoint of Buddhist ethics, subjugation is the most troubling of the Four Activities. Buddhism is grounded in non-harming and the cultivation of compassion. Yet subjugation rituals rely on wrathful intent and instrumental harm. Traditional defenses argue that enlightened beings act beyond dualistic morality because they have transcended good and evil.

For modern Western practitioners, these explanations often remain abstract. Teachers rarely teach subjugation practices explicitly, and students are encouraged to interpret wrathful deities symbolically. This produces a form of cognitive dissonance. The practices exist, are preserved, and are sometimes performed within group pujas, but disciples can maintain psychological distance by not understanding the wrathful practices or details. Ignorance becomes a form of insulation.

Magnetizing Activity and the Binding of Disciples

Magnetizing activity is often portrayed as benign. It is described as the compassionate attraction of beings to the path. Yet tantric texts are explicit that magnetizing rites are used to influence minds, bind loyalty, and generate devotion.[4]

In ritual manuals, magnetizing practices are used to attract lovers, patrons, followers, and students. They involve visualizations of cords, hooks, nooses, and substances entering the bodies of targets to incline their thoughts and emotions. These are not metaphors for persuasion. They are magical technologies of attachment.

Within guru-disciple relationships, magnetizing activity takes on a particularly disturbing dimension. Once a student takes tantric initiation, they are bound by samaya vows. These vows often include lifelong loyalty to the guru and lineage until enlightenment is achieved.[5]

The power imbalance is severe. The teacher is positioned as the embodiment of awakening. The student is warned that doubt, criticism, or separation leads to spiritual ruin.

What If Enlightenment Is Not Reached?

Traditional literature assumes enlightenment will be reached. But what if it is not. What if the practitioner becomes disillusioned, traumatized, or psychologically destabilized.

In such cases, the Four Activities do not disappear. The same ritual logic that binds can also be used to punish. Tibetan sources describe the use of subjugation rites against oath breakers, samaya violators, and enemies of the lineage.[6]

Modern scholars and psychologists studying tantric communities have documented patterns of dependency, identity collapse, and long-term trauma following abusive guru relationships.[7] Magnetizing activity, in this light, resembles a spider’s web. Attraction is not neutral. It is structured, adhesive, and difficult to escape.

Conclusion

The Four Activities are not merely poetic descriptions of enlightened compassion. They are historical and functional systems of magical action. To ignore this is to misunderstand tantra at its core.

Subjugation challenges Buddhist ethics directly. Magnetizing challenges them more subtly. It operates through devotion, love, and surrender, making it easier to accept and harder to question. For Western practitioners kept deliberately ignorant of these dynamics, the result is not safety but vulnerability and the possibility of ruin.

An honest engagement with tantra requires confronting these practices without romanticism, without denial, and without pretending that malevolent harm disappears simply because it is cloaked in sacred language.

Footnotes and Sources

Alexis Sanderson, “The Śaiva Age,” in Genesis and Development of Tantrism, Tokyo, 2009.
Samten Karmay, The Arrow and the Spindle, Mandala Book Point, 1998.
Ronald Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism, Columbia University Press, 2002.
David Gordon White, Kiss of the Yogini, University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Jamgön Kongtrul, The Torch of Certainty, Shambhala, 1977.
Stephen Beyer, The Cult of Tārā, University of California Press, 1978.
Mariana Caplan, Halfway Up the Mountain, Hohm Press, 2011.

Among the many images that circulate quietly within Tibetan tantric lineages, there are several that are never explained to most practitioners and never shown outside advanced ritual contexts. One such image, often embedded within long Mahākāla rites and other high-level tantric liturgies, depicts a bound, pierced, weapon-studded human figure marked with mantras, seals, and symbolic restraints. To the uninitiated, it resembles a wrathful medical diagram or an esoteric curse talisman. To insiders, it represents something much more disturbing.

These images are not symbolic reminders of compassion, nor are they abstract metaphors for ego-death. They are ritual instruments. Specifically, they are used in rites intended to punish, bind, obstruct, or destroy the lives of those who are deemed to have broken samaya—the sacred vows binding a tantric practitioner to their guru, lineage, and yidam deity.

This fact is rarely discussed openly. When it is mentioned at all, it is framed euphemistically as “removing obstacles,” “protecting the Dharma,” or “subjugating harmful forces.” What is almost never acknowledged is that, within some tantric systems, the “harmful force” being targeted is a former disciple.

Why Beginners Are Never Told

Students entering Tibetan Buddhism are typically introduced through ethics, meditation, philosophy, and aspirational ideals: loving-kindness, compassion, non-violence, and wisdom. Tantric Buddhism is presented as a fast but benevolent path, dangerous only insofar as it requires devotion and discipline.

What they are not told is that questioning, criticizing, or emotionally reacting to a guru can itself be framed as a samaya violation. Nor are they told that certain rituals explicitly teach that lineage holders have the right, and sometimes the obligation, to retaliate metaphysically against perceived betrayal.

Beginners are warned vaguely that breaking samaya leads to “terrible consequences,” often described as karmic rather than intentional. The implication is that the universe itself will respond. What is left unsaid is that these consequences may be deliberately invoked, ritualized, and sustained by human agents acting within a tantric framework.

The unspoken lesson is simple: dissent is dangerous.

The Yidam Is Watching

At the core of highest yoga tantra is the yidam deity, the meditational deity with whom the practitioner forms an exclusive, intimate bond. The yidam is not merely visualized as an external symbol but is gradually internalized, embodied, and ultimately identified with as one’s own enlightened nature.

This process is often described in modern terms as psychological transformation. In traditional terms, however, it is far closer to classical possession.

The practitioner receives initiation from a master understood to be fully realized–meaning fully inhabited by the yidam. Through empowerment, mantra recitation, repeated visualization, and ritual invitation, the practitioner repeatedly invites the deity to enter their body and mind. Over time, the boundary between practitioner and deity is intentionally dissolved.

This is how the yidam “monitors” the practitioner: not metaphorically, but through total psychic access. Thoughts, emotions, doubts, and impulses are no longer private. They are offerings or offenses.

Within this framework, enlightenment, siddhis, and protection are granted conditionally. The deity gives, and the deity can withhold. More disturbingly, the deity can retaliate.

“Sons” of the Deity and Absolute Obedience

Advanced tantric systems often refer to lineage masters as the “sons” of the yidam. These are the men who have fully merged with the deity through practice. Disrespecting such a figure is not treated as a social conflict or ethical disagreement; it is framed as an attack on the deity itself.

This becomes especially dangerous in cases involving sexual relationships between guru and disciple. While not every such relationship is abusive, many are. In some cases, a guru expects sexual access as a demonstration of devotion and service. When the disciple becomes distressed, confused, or resistant, or when she later speaks out, the guru’s response is not accountability but punishment.

From within the tantric logic, the guru is not merely a man abusing power. He is a god-being whose will cannot be questioned. The disciple’s suffering is reframed as karmic purification or divine retribution.

Ritual Retaliation Is Real

There is a tendency among modern defenders of Tibetan Buddhism to dismiss accounts of retaliation as superstition or paranoia. Yet whistleblowers, both Western and Asian, have repeatedly documented actions taken against former disciples over months or years. In the most extreme cases, these are not momentary curses but sustained practices intended to ruin health, relationships, livelihood, and sanity.

I personally have known three gurus who engaged in such retaliatory behavior. These were not fringe figures. They were respected, accomplished masters with devoted followings. The rituals were not symbolic. They were methodical, intentional, and experienced by the practitioners themselves to be effective.

This is witchcraft in the plain sense of the word. It is no different in structure or intent from Haitian vodou curses or European malefic magic. The only difference is the religious branding.

The Ethical Contradiction at the Heart of Tantra

This raises an unavoidable question: how can a system that claims descent from the historical Buddha whose teachings emphasize non-harming, restraint, and compassion contain practices that deliberately destroy human lives?

The answer lies in tantric exceptionalism. Within these systems, ordinary Buddhist ethics are considered provisional. Once one enters the tantric domain, morality becomes subordinate to obedience, secrecy, and power. A guru possessed by a wrathful deity is no longer bound by conventional ethics because the deity is not.

Publicly, tantric masters speak constantly of compassion and loving-kindness. They smile, bless, and perform virtue with great skill. Privately, nothing is free. Every empowerment creates obligations. Every vow tightens the noose. And the deeper one goes, the more rigid and unforgiving the system becomes.

The Real Danger

Not all Tibetan Buddhist teachers engage in these practices. Many do not. But the fact that some of the most accomplished masters have done so for centuries means the danger is structural, not incidental.

The real threat of tantric Buddhism is that it weaponizes devotion, sanctifies possession, and normalizes ritual violence while hiding behind the language of Buddhist compassion and enlightenment.

Until this is openly acknowledged, aspirants will continue to walk blindly into systems that can, and sometimes do, destroy them, all in the name of awakening.

Month: February 2026

The Four Activities: How Tantra Organizes Power, Control, and Harm