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A Brief History of Christianity in Tibet

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Early Traces: The Nestorians and the Eighth Century

The history of Christianity in Tibet stretches back far earlier than most assume. The earliest Christian presence likely came from the Nestorian Church of the East, which had spread along Silk Road routes from Mesopotamia into China by the 7th century. Evidence from the Xi’an Stele of 781 CE shows that Nestorian missionaries were active under the Tang Dynasty, and given Tibet’s close relations with Tang China, it is plausible that Christian communities emerged within the Tibetan cultural sphere during the 8th century.1 However, these early Christian enclaves left no sustained legacy; Tibet’s conversion to Buddhism under Trisong Detsen soon dominated its spiritual landscape.

Jesuits in Guge: Antonio de Andrade and the Lost Kingdom

The next major encounter between Christianity and Tibet came through the Jesuit missions of the 17th century. In 1624, the Portuguese Jesuit Antonio de Andrade became the first known European to enter Tibet. He reached Tsaparang, the capital of the Guge Kingdom in western Tibet, where he was warmly received by King Tri Tashi Dakpa (also called Chadakpo). The king even laid the cornerstone for Tibet’s first church, completed in 1626.2

De Andrade’s arrival, however, sparked tensions. His success in converting local nobles alienated the powerful Buddhist clergy. A political conflict between the king and his brother, who was aligned with Buddhist monastics, led to the downfall of the Guge mission. Around 1630, the king was overthrown with assistance from the Ladakhi ruler Sengge Namgyal, who viewed Guge’s alliance with Catholic missionaries as a provocation.3 The Jesuits were expelled or killed, and Guge itself disappeared from the political map soon thereafter.

The Jesuits in Lhasa: Ippolito Desideri and the Capuchin Controversy

After Guge’s fall, the next great missionary endeavor came with Ippolito Desideri, an Italian Jesuit who reached Lhasa in 1716. Desideri immersed himself in Tibetan culture, mastered the language, and composed treatises comparing Christian and Buddhist metaphysics. His conciliatory approach, attempting dialogue rather than confrontation, won him both local sympathy and later admiration among scholars.4

Desideri’s work, however, was undone not by Tibetans but by Church politics in Rome. The Vatican’s Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Propaganda Fide) restructured Asian missions and in 1703 assigned Tibet to the Capuchins, a Franciscan order. The Jesuits were ordered to withdraw, leading to Desideri’s forced departure in 1721. The decision reflected not only internal rivalry but also a Vatican preference for an order more controllable and less inclined toward syncretic engagement.5

Suppression and Exile: The 18th and 19th Centuries

After the Jesuits’ departure, Capuchin missionaries continued their work until the 1740s. A crisis erupted in 1742, when a Tibetan convert refused to bow before the Dalai Lama, an act perceived as defiance against both religion and state. The government expelled the missionaries and banned Christianity in Central Tibet, a policy enforced by 1760.6

Despite this, individual attempts persisted. In the 19th century, the British missionary Annie Royle Taylor undertook a daring journey toward Lhasa in 1892, becoming the first Western woman to reach central Tibet, though she was ultimately turned back by Tibetan guards.7 Her journey epitomized the enduring fascination and futility of Christian outreach in a land long closed to foreigners.

Elsewhere, especially in eastern Tibet (Kham), anti-Christian sentiment often flared into violence. During the 1905 Batang Uprising, missionaries and Tibetan converts were targeted and killed. Among those martyred were André Soulié (1858–1905) and Jean-Théodore Monbeig-Andrieu (1875–1914), who are commemorated in Catholic hagiographies as victims of faith-driven hostility.8

The Vatican’s Strategic Shift: Why the Jesuits Were Replaced

The Vatican’s decision to replace the Jesuits with Capuchins was rooted in both theological and geopolitical concerns. The Chinese Rites Controversy (late 17th–early 18th centuries), in which Jesuits were accused of tolerating Confucian and local religious practices, had eroded papal trust. The Propaganda Fide viewed Jesuit accommodationism, especially Desideri’s open dialogue with Buddhist philosophy, as dangerous relativism. Capuchins, by contrast, were stricter and less likely to blur doctrinal lines. As historian Donald Lach notes, “the Capuchins represented the centralizing impulse of the Counter-Reformation, where obedience outweighed intellectual innovation.”9

Christianity and Modern Tibet: A Restricted Faith

Under Chinese administration since the 1950s, Tibet’s relationship with Christianity has remained tightly controlled. The People’s Republic of China recognizes only state-sanctioned religious institutions, and Catholic practice in the Tibet Autonomous Region exists only under the auspices of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, which does not recognize Vatican authority. The Holy See’s cautious diplomacy, especially during Pope Francis’s efforts to reestablish relations with Beijing, has led to a de facto acceptance of limited Catholic presence, primarily among Han Chinese residents in Lhasa rather than ethnic Tibetans.10

The Vatican continues to regard Tibet as part of its mission territory, but evangelization remains almost nonexistent. Tibetan Buddhism remains dominant, and Christian symbols such as crosses, churches, even icons are scarce across the plateau.

Legacy

From the Nestorian wanderers to Jesuit polymaths and Franciscan ascetics, Christianity’s story in Tibet is one of ambition, misunderstanding, and endurance. While never a major presence, its traces linger in forgotten ruins in Tsaparang, in Desideri’s Tibetan manuscripts preserved in Rome, and in the historical memory of dialogue between two of the world’s most mystical spiritual traditions.

Footnotes

  1. Samuel H. Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia, Vol. I: Beginnings to 1500 (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1992), 291–295.
  2. Antonio de Andrade, Novo Descobrimento do Gram Cathayo ou dos Reinos de Tibet (Lisbon, 1626); Timo Schmitz, An Overview of Tibetan History (2025), 91–92.
  3. Le Calloc’h, J. (1991). “Antonio de Andrade and the Mission in Western Tibet.” Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 60: 57–60.
  4. Ippolito Desideri, Notizie Istoriche del Tibet (Rome, 1727); Hattaway, Paul. Tibet: The Roof of the World (2021), 41.
  5. Peter Clarke, The Jesuits in Asia (Cambridge University Press, 1993), 204–207.
  6. Schmitz, Timo An Overview of Tibetan History, 91–92; Hattaway, 2021: 41–44.
  7. Hattaway, 2021: 68–71.
  8. Servin, Michael. “Christian Martyrs of Tibet.” Journal of Asian Church History 11 (2010): 23–39.
  9. Donald F. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, Vol. III (University of Chicago Press, 1977), 225–228.
  10. Holy See Press Office, “Relations between the Vatican and China,” L’Osservatore Romano, 2020.

Tertons, Termas, and the Curious Origins of Hidden Teachings

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Tibetan Buddhism’s terma tradition is usually framed as a luminous, providential means by which enlightened masters hide and later reveal teachings at the exact moment needed. That’s part of the story, but it’s not the whole story by any means. Read closely, and a darker current runs through the terma corpus: treasures hidden and guarded by wrathful powers, revelations that arrive through strange, sometimes malevolent intermediaries, and rituals whose intent and method look remarkably like what modern people would call dealings with spirits or demons. In short, many tertons don’t simply find teachings; they negotiate with non-human, often wrathful forces that can reasonably be described as demonic. Below I’ll examine Dylan Esler’s study of Gya Zhang Khrom (rGya Zhang khrom)¹ and other scholarly sources as a base to examine the phenomena of tertons and terma.

What the words mean

A terma (gter ma) is literally a “hidden treasure”: text, ritual object, or practice concealed (often in a rock, lake, or the mindstream of a guru) to be discovered by a tertön (gter ston), the treasure-revealer. Academic treatments correctly emphasize the social and legitimating functions of these discoveries in prophecies, lineages, and performative acts that make the revelation believable to followers. But the same sources that record authentication narratives also preserve striking descriptions of how termas are hidden, guarded, and recovered: they are defended by territorial spirits or “treasure-lords,” transmitted by non-human yogins, and often carry explicitly wrathful, “black magic” contents. Non-human yogins can take the form of visionary yogins, dakinis/dakas, local spirits, or wrathful entities, and they act as the intermediaries who hide, protect, or hand over the treasure.

A close example: Gya Zhang Khrom and wrathful treasures

Dylan Esler’s article on Gya Zhang Khrom in the (Byang gter) Northern Treasures tradition recounts the classic terma motif: a mysterious yogin leads the future tertön to a hidden cache of ritual objects and scrolls that come out of fissures in rock, and the revealer deciphers and transmits material that includes both beneficent and harmful ritual instructions. Esler notes items described as “cycles for benefiting and harming,” in other words, materials for both white and black magic, and he situates Gya Zhang’s revelations within a Northern Treasure program that explicitly deploys wrathful, coercive ritual means. That combination of secret caches, hidden custodians, and instruction sets for destructive rituals is exactly the pattern that supports reading many termas as arriving via a demonic or semi-demonic channel.

Treasure-protectors and Lords of the Treasures: the institutional side of the “demonic”

The literatures that record terma narratives repeatedly mention gter srung (treasure-protectors) and gter bdag (lords of the treasures). These are not neutral filing cabinets: they are spirits of place, frequently wrathful, who demand protocols and substitutions (gter tshab) when a cache is opened. Ethnographic and textual scholarship treats these beings as part of the class of local, elemental, or “demonic” forces that Tibetan ritual both confronts and incorporates. Scholarly surveys of protector deities and the oral/ritual ecology around termas make clear that treasures do not simply sit inert but are guarded by active, sometimes dangerous entities. If a tertön is authorized by prophecy, that can mitigate local resistance; if not, accusations of theft and collusion with spirits arise.²

Demon-taming, wrathful methods, and ambiguous agency

The well-known motif of Padmasambhava as demon-tamer is instructive: foundational tantric figures are often framed as subduers of hostile spirits, and the very act of revealing a terma can be portrayed as the tertön’s success in negotiating or subduing a guardian force. But negotiation is not always tame or benign. A number of terma traditions preserve wrathful practices intended to overthrow enemies, cure epidemics, or control hostile spirits—techniques that look like pacts or coercive exchanges with non-human agencies. Scholarly work on Dzogchen/Northern Treasure liturgies and on early treasure careers shows repeated, explicit intersections between revealing termas and advancing ritual technologies of domination or protection over local powers.³

So, do tertons get their termas from demons?

In many traditional narratives and ritual contexts, yes. Termas are mediated by, guarded by, or negotiated with non-human beings that function similar to what observers would call demons. That’s a historical and anthropological claim. The primary sources and modern scholarship present a consistent pattern: treasures are hidden in the landscape or mind, are protected by wrathful custodians, and are sometimes transmitted by shadowy yogins or through visions that are indistinguishable from encounters with spirits. Where the contemporary, institutional presentation emphasizes enlightened intent and salvific purpose, the deeper ritual ecology reveals frequent recourse to powers that are territorial and morally ambiguous.

Final thoughts

Terma studies that stop at the rhetoric of revelation miss the subterranean reality that produces and polices those revelations. Esler’s account of Gya Zhang Khrom’s discoveries of materials explicitly useful for harming as well as helping presents a pattern replicated across the terma corpus. Read with discernment, the terma tradition looks less like a straight line from enlightened source to human disciple and more like a braided negotiation between the human revealer, local spirits or demons, and the institutional needs of Buddhist communities. That picture is central to my argument: many tertons operate at the shadowy margins where demonic forces and tantric techniques meet, and their termas are as much the products of those encounters as they are of the “pure” spiritual origins claimed by their lineages.

Notes:

  1. Dylan Esler, “Yamāntaka’s Wrathful Magic: An Instance of the Ritual Legacy of gNubs chen Sangs rgyas ye shes on the Byang gter Tradition via the Figure of rGya Zhang khrom,” Revue d’Études Tibétaines, no. 62 (Feb. 2022): 190–215, https://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/ret/pdf/ret_62_08.pdf (accessed Oct. 7, 2025).
  2. Jean-Luc Achard, “A Brief Note on the Northern Treasures of the Bon Tradition,” Revue d’Études Tibétaines, no. 68 (Jan. 2024): 16–35, https://d1i1jdw69xsqx0.cloudfront.net/digitalhimalaya/collections/journals/ret/pdf/ret_68_02.pdf (accessed Oct. 7, 2025).
  3. Christopher Bell, “Worldly Protector Deities in Tibetan Buddhism,” in Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism, vol. 2: Major Personages in Myth, Hagiography and Historical Biography (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 1254–66, https://brill.com (entry available online; access depends on subscription) (accessed Oct. 7, 2025).

How So-Called “Buddhist” Dhāraṇīs, Images and Mandalas Were Developed Post Buddha

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I spent years as a Tibetan tantric Buddhist practitioner. I once assumed the mantra, ritual, and mandala machinery I practiced was simply the Buddha’s own teaching passed down intact. We were taught that although the historical Buddha did not teach tantra in person, he taught it after his passing, on Mount Malaya, to gods and men. Koichi Shinohara’s work forces a different view and poses the question: Did Sakyamuni really teach the long formulaic dhāraṇīs, image worship, and mandala visualization as later practitioners used them? Or did later communities invent those ritual technologies and then cloak them in the Buddha’s authority so people would better accept them?

In Spells, Images, and Maṇḍalas: Tracing the Evolution of Esoteric Buddhist Rituals, Shinohara gives us a working hypothesis that can be pressed hard for answers.[1] The rituals in question are most plausibly later innovations that used the Buddha’s prestige to become authoritative. They were not the Buddha’s core teachings in any strictly historical sense. That does not make them illegitimate as religious forms for people who practice them today. It does mean historians and critics should stop pretending these rituals are reflections of Sakyamuni’s own instructions. The burden of proof rests on anyone who wants to show unbroken doctrinal transmission from the Buddha to the later esoteric ritual machinery.

Shinohara offers a testable, evidence-driven reconstruction. He traces a plausible sequence from simple spoken spells through image ritual to organized visualization. Crucially, he foregrounds early, datable Chinese dhāraṇī collections and ritual manuals. Those Chinese witnesses often predate the surviving Sanskrit and Tibetan corpora scholars have relied on. That chronological fact is the hinge of the whole argument. (Columbia University Press)

What Shinohara’s working hypothesis means

A working hypothesis is provisional and falsifiable. Shinohara is not issuing an ideological verdict. He is proposing a historical explanation that organizes the evidence and makes concrete predictions that could be falsified by earlier, securely dated Indian or canonical texts showing the full ritual machinery already present in the Buddha’s time. To press the hypothesis hard, scholars should look for those disconfirming witnesses. So far the datable documentary and manuscript evidence he emphasizes points toward post-Buddha innovation that relied on attribution to the Buddha for legitimacy.

The core empirical point

Early Buddhism included ritual speech. The Pali paritta corpus shows that communal protective chants and recitations were an early feature of Buddhist practice. Importantly, these early chants are directed primarily to the historical Buddha and the Triple Gem, the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Saṅgha, rather than to the later, expanded pantheon of cosmic buddhas and bodhisattvas that appear in Mahāyāna and tantric literature. By contrast, the long, formulaic dhāraṇīs with non-lexical syllables, their ritual manuals, and the tightly scripted mandala visualizations appear in the surviving record mainly in later sources, often first in Chinese translations and compilations dated to the fourth through eighth centuries. That pattern strongly suggests the later technical dhāraṇī and mandala apparatus developed after the historical Buddha and used his name as an authority seal rather than being his literal, unbroken teaching (see Ratana Sutta and the paritta collections; Access to Insight).

Pali paritta versus three representative dhāraṇīs

Below is one short Pali paritta example and three representative dhāraṇī excerpts that have early Chinese witnesses. For each dhāraṇī there is a short literal transliteration excerpt, the earliest datable Chinese witness, and why this matters for Shinohara’s thesis.

A note about transliteration and length. Full dhāraṇī texts can be very long and use non-lexical syllables. I quote short, clearly identifiable openings or kernel sequences and give citations to the editions or translations where you can read the full texts.

A. Pali paritta exemplar (short protective chant from the Buddha’s time)

  • Text (Pali, introductory formula used in paritta recitation):
    Namo tassa bhagavato arahato sammāsambuddhassa.
    Translation: “Homage to the Blessed One, the Worthy One, the Fully and Exactly Awakened One.”
    Dating and context: part of the Ratana Sutta and the paritta repertoire attested in the earliest Pali strata and used continuously in Theravada protective ritual. These are short, lexically meaningful formulas employed in communal contexts. (Access to Insight)

This matters because paritta recitation shows early Buddhists used spoken protective formulas directed to the Buddha and the Triple Gem. That continuity leaves an opening for later mantra culture to develop, but continuity alone does not prove that the later technical dhāraṇīs were the Buddha’s teaching.

B. Uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī: short transliteration excerpt and dating

  • Transliteration excerpt (IAST style, short kernel):
    oṃ aḥ hūṃ uṣṇīṣa vijaya svāh. Translation: “Om. Ah. Hum. Victory to the Ushnisha. Svāhā.” Note: full versions are much longer and include complex Siddhaṃ syllables. The line above is a short recognizable kernel rather than the entire dhāraṇī.
  • Earliest datable witness: multiple Tang dynasty Chinese translations; primary translations appear in the late seventh century and the text circulated widely in Tang China thereafter. Several ritual manuals for this dhāraṇī were also translated into Chinese. (84000)

This is important because Uṣṇīṣavijayā is a canonical example of a dhāraṇī that crystallized as a ritual unit in China by the seventh century. Its early and repeated Chinese attestations show how the formulaic dhāraṇī corpus became standardized in East Asia, a datum that supports Shinohara’s emphasis on Chinese witnesses. (84000)

C. Nīlakaṇṭha / Great Compassion dhāraṇī: short transliteration excerpt and dating

  • Transliteration excerpt (short recognizable opening):
    Namo ratna trayāya … oṃ namaḥ parāya svāhā. Translation: “Homage to the Three Jewels… Om. I bow to the Supreme. Svāhā.”
    Again, the dhāraṇī in practice is very long; this is a short illustrative kernel.
  • Earliest datable witness: Bhagavaddharma’s Chinese transliteration of the Thousand-armed Avalokiteśvara dhāraṇī is commonly dated to ca. 650–661 CE at Khotan, and Dunhuang manuscript copies are attested from the eighth century onward. The standard East Asian version is listed in Taishō as T.1060. (Wikipedia)

This matters because the Great Compassion dhāraṇī’s early Chinese and Central Asian circulation shows the mobility of formulaic spells across cultural borders and their crystallization in Chinese textual layers before the later Tibetan tantra apparatus matured. That pattern again undercuts a simple claim of unbroken oral descent from the historical Buddha.

D. The Dhāraṇī of the Six Gates: transliteration indicator and dating

  • Short indicator: the sutra opens with formulaic addresses and contains six gate dhāraṇī sequences; full transliteration is available in modern critical editions. The Chinese translation by Xuanzang is dated to 645 CE (Taishō 1360). (84000)

This matters because Xuanzang’s mid-seventh century translation gives a secure terminus ante quem for certain dhāraṇī forms in East Asia. The existence of such dated translations is exactly the kind of evidence Shinohara places in the foreground when reconstructing the genealogy of ritual techniques. (84000)

Short methodological point about dates and what they prove

When a long formulaic dhāraṇī and a ritual manual appear in a secure, dated Chinese translation in the seventh century but not in any securely dated Indian source from the centuries immediately after the Buddha, the safest historical inference is that the particular ritual form crystallized later and that Chinese transmission played a major role in its textual preservation and standardization. That does not prove the practice first originated in China. It does show that the textual and ritual machinery as preserved and circulated in East Asia is early and often predates surviving Sanskrit witnesses. Shinohara uses exactly this dating logic to show how spells, images, and visualization interrelate historically. (Columbia University Press)

Did the Buddha forbid images or deification of himself?

Canonical passages caution against attachment to the person of the teacher. A well known example is the Vakkali Sutta where the Buddha tells the sick Vakkali that seeing the Dhamma is what matters, not seeing his physical body: “One who sees the Dhamma sees me; one who sees me sees the Dhamma.” That admonition has been read as discouraging hero cult and literal deification. (SuttaCentral)

The archaeological and textual record complicates the claim that the Buddha formally forbade images. However, here is a settled scholarly debate about early “aniconism” in Buddhist art. Most scholars agree that standardized, large anthropomorphic Buddha images do not appear widely until several centuries after the historical Buddha’s death. Some specialists argue that early absence of the anthropomorphic image reflects doctrinally driven aniconism. Other specialists argue the evidence is better explained by devotional practice, material culture, and local circumstances rather than by a simple canonical ban. In short, canonical caution about attachment to persons exists, but practice evolved in ways that embraced images for devotional, pedagogical, and institutional reasons. (Wikipedia)

For the former practitioner who wants a practical takeaway

If you were taught that tantric rituals are from Sakyamuni’s own instructions, the historical picture is more complicated and poses big questions to that narrative. The very technical dhāraṇī machinery, image cults, and visualization systems that define much of later tantric practice have a historical biography. They emerge, consolidate, and professionalize in the centuries after the Buddha lived, and much of the documentary evidence that preserves them comes from dated Chinese compilations and Dunhuang manuscripts. That history changes how they should be presented when someone claims they were directly taught by the Buddha himself.

History cannot prove the metaphysical provenance of a ritual. Textual and manuscript research can show whether a practice dates to Sakyamuni’s lifetime or to later cultural development, but it cannot by itself settle whether a given visionary or ritual impulse is benign or malign. If you take the language of spiritual warfare seriously, that uncertainty argues for caution. Here are four practical questions to ask before you embrace a practice: Where does its chain of transmission point? Does it coherently line up with the ethical core of the Buddha’s teaching, such as nonharm, compassion, and right conduct? What fruits does it produce in practitioners’ lives, emotionally and morally? And how transparent are its teachers about origins and effects? If a practice fails those tests, step back and favor practices that visibly cultivate ethical integrity and mental clarity. For someone who has been inside the tantric world, this is not an abstract exercise. It is a matter of spiritual survival. Let historical honesty inform your discernment, and let the lived, ethical results of practice be the final arbiter.

Sources and Bibliography

[1] Koichi Shinohara. Spells, Images, and Maṇḍalas: Tracing the Evolution of Esoteric Buddhist Rituals. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. xxii, 324 pp. ISBN 9780231166140. See especially Chapter 1, “The Three Ritual Scenarios” (pp. 1–28), the material on the Collected Dhāraṇī Sūtras and the All-Gathering ceremony (pp. 28–89), and the chapters on the introduction of visualization practice (pp. 89–160). Recommended exact pages to quote when discussing the three scenarios and Chinese-dated evidence: consult pp. 1–4, pp. 28–64, and pp. 89–118 for Shinohara’s core arguments and manuscript citations. (Columbia University Press)

Primary dhāraṇī witnesses and editions (quick references)

  • Dhāraṇīsaṃgraha, Taishō no. 901, translated by Atikūṭa in the Tang; contains collected dhāraṇī sūtras and an early mandala initiation ritual. See Taishō T.901 and catalog entry. (NTI Reader)
  • Uṣṇīṣavijayā Dhāraṇī. Multiple Tang Chinese translations; widely circulated from the late seventh century. See 84000 Reading Room entries explaining translation history. (84000)
  • Nīlakaṇṭha / Great Compassion Dhāraṇī. Bhagavaddharma’s Khotan transliteration dated ca. 650–661 CE; standard Taishō entry T.1060 and Dunhuang manuscripts attest its early East Asian circulation. (Wikipedia)
  • Dhāraṇī of the Six Gates. Chinese translation by Xuanzang dated 645 CE (Taishō 1360). See Xuanzang colophon and modern critical editions. (84000)

Pali and early canonical material (for paritta comparison)

  • Ratana Sutta, Sutta Nipāta 2.1. Standard Pali editions and translations; see SuttaCentral and Access to Insight translations for text and context. (Wikipedia)

Secondary literature and resources on dating, aniconism, and early ritual evidence

  • Scholarly debate on Buddhist aniconism and the delayed appearance of anthropomorphic Buddha images. See Susan L. Huntington, “Early Buddhist Art and the Theory of Aniconism” and subsequent debates summarized in surveys of early Buddhist art. (Buddhism Library)
  • Columbia University Press page for Shinohara’s book with contents and excerpt. (Columbia University Press)

The Slow Dawning: Rethinking Tibetan Tantric Buddhism

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It has taken me decades to admit something that began as a faint suspicion, then settled into unease, and now has crystallized into a sober conclusion: Tibetan tantric Buddhism is not what I thought it was. Nor is it what I believed when I first encountered it many years ago, a bit before the time His Holiness the Dalai Lama received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.

Back then, the first wave of Tibetan lamas and rinpoches were arriving in the West. To many of us, they seemed like emissaries from a lost Shangrila. Coming out of the disillusionment of the Vietnam War years, with trust in government and organized religion badly shaken, we were primed to seek something transcendent and pure. And here were these men, holy men trained in the monasteries of old Tibet, carrying with them an aura of mystery and profound wisdom. Meeting them felt like an unimaginable stroke of good fortune.

The historical Buddha’s teachings struck us as luminous and deeply humane. The philosophical treatises were subtle, the meditation techniques precise and effective. And then there was tantra. We were told, almost in passing, that tantra too came directly from the Buddha. No mention was made of its roots in Shaivism, or its overlaps with the worship of Shiva, Kali, and the other tantric currents in Indian religion. Yes, there were references to the 84 Siddhas, some of whom practiced in Hindu traditions, but it was presented as a kind of colorful backdrop rather than something that demanded careful inquiry. The task, we were told, was to study the dharma, not to ask too many uncomfortable questions.

And yet, the Buddha himself had urged his students to test his words as one tests gold: cutting, burning, hammering to see if it is true. I carried that instruction into Tibetan Buddhism. But the environment I found myself in didn’t encourage such testing. Quite the opposite.

Very quickly, I was drawn into the highest yoga tantras. After a series of initiations that were performed in Tibetan, a language I didn’t understand, I was informed by a lama I scarcely knew that from now on, I had to do whatever he told me. Cognitive dissonance set in immediately. Around me, others spoke of him as a fully enlightened buddha. Terms like samaya and vajra hell were introduced without context, wrapped in a swirl of historical Buddha teachings and cryptic tantric concepts. Critical thought was not just discouraged; it was quietly undermined. The lama was king, and the student’s role was obedience.

For Westerners raised with democratic ideals and an education that stressed inquiry, this was a bewildering fit. Many of us unconsciously overlaid our early religious conditioning onto what was, in fact, a foreign and feudal religious structure with a pantheon of strange and colorful deities. The result of treating the lama as an omniscient god created confusion, sometimes tragedy. I have heard of suicides, psychotic breaks, and lives unmoored. At the same time, I know people who genuinely believe they have benefited from Tibetan Buddhism. For years, I counted myself among them, until my own turn came.

I was privately attacked by my gurus during a tantric ritual for what I considered minor offenses related to situations outside of my control. What followed was worse: a series of what can only be described as black magical assaults. I now look back at those suicides I had once heard about and wonder: had they endured similar attacks, subtle or overt, after questioning or disappointing their teachers? Perhaps. I cannot know for sure. But I do know this: the mask of compassion many lamas wear often drops when they feel challenged or exposed. Not all, certainly. But enough to form a pattern.

That slow dawning that Tibetan tantric Buddhism was not what it was presented to be has been deeply painful. The disillusionment runs far beyond personal disappointment; it speaks to a betrayal of trust, the suppression of critical thought, and the dangers that arise when power is handed to unaccountable gurus who claim authority over hidden magical practices and wield them at will. Brought into a Western culture of sincere but searching seekers, this has created a toxic mix that leaves people vulnerable at the very moment they are most open.

The Shadow Side of Tantra: Magic and Violence Lurk Behind the Mask of Compassion

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A ritual battle scene: Kschetrapala rising from a burning sacrificial torma outside Lhasa, facing the monstrous nine-headed Chinese demon in a clash of spirit armies.

This article contains excerpts from The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism by Victor and Victoria Trimondi

Who were the Trimondis?

Victor and Victoria Trimondi are the pen names of German cultural historians Herbert and Mariana Röttgen. In the 1980s and early 1990s, they were active supporters of the Dalai Lama, translating and publishing his works into German and helping to organize international events in support of Tibet. Initially, they saw Tibetan Buddhism as a beacon of compassion and ethical renewal.

But their perspective changed. Over years of study, they became disillusioned by what they regarded as the darker, concealed aspects of Tibetan tantric Buddhism: ritual magic, sexual practices, secrecy, and the fusion of religion with political power. Their critical work The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism (2003) full text here seeks to expose these elements, drawing heavily on Tibetan source texts and the earlier ethnographic research of figures like René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz (Oracles and Demons of Tibet, 1956) and Matthias Hermanns.

Because of this trajectory, from enthusiastic supporters of Tibetan Buddhism to outspoken critics, the Trimondis occupy a controversial position. Admirers of Tibetan Buddhism accuse them of exaggeration and hostility, but their book nonetheless catalogs texts, rituals, and historical examples that complicate the popular image of Tibetan Buddhism as peaceful and compassionate.

Excerpts from The Shadow of the Dalai Lama

Part II, Chapter 8: Magic as a Political Instrument

The following excerpts illustrate how the Trimondis argue that ritual magic was systematically integrated into Tibetan politics and warfare:

Invocation of demons
Since time immemorial ritual magic and politics have been one in Tibet. A large proportion of these magic practices are devoted to the annihilation of enemies, and especially to the neutralizing of political opponents. The help of demons was necessary for such ends. And they could be found everywhere — the Land of Snows all but overflowed with terror gods, fateful spirits, vampires, ghouls, vengeful goddesses, devils, messengers of death and similar entities, who, in the words of Matthias Hermanns, “completely overgrow the mild and goodly elements [of Buddhism] and hardly let them reveal their advantages” (Hermanns, 1965, p. 401).

For this reason, invocations of demons were not at all rare occurrences nor were they restricted to the spheres of personal and family life. They were in general among the most preferred functions of the lamas. Hence, “demonology” was a high science taught at the monastic universities, and ritual dealings with malevolent spirits were — as we shall see in a moment — an important function of the lamaist state.

The war demon Kschetrapala
Once the gods had accepted the sacrifice they stood at the ritual master’s disposal. The four-armed protective deity, Mahakala, was considered a particularly active assistant when it came to the destruction of enemies. In national matters his bloodthirsty emanation, the six-handed Kschetrapala, was called upon. The magician in charge wrote the war god’s mantra on a piece of paper in gold ink or blood from the blade of a sword together with the wishes he hoped to have granted, and began the invocation.

Towards the end of the forties the Gelugpa lamas sent Kschetrapala into battle against the Chinese. He was cast into a roughly three-yard high sacrificial cake (or torma). This was then set alight outside Lhasa, and whilst the priests lowered their victory banner the demon freed himself and flew in the direction of the threatened border with his army. A real battle of the spirits took place here, as a “nine-headed Chinese demon”, who was assumed to have assisted the Communists in all matters concerning Tibet, appeared on the battlefield. Both spirit princes (the Tibetan and the Chinese) have been mortal enemies for centuries. Obviously the nine-headed emerged from this final battle of the demons as the victor.

“Voodoo magic” in Tibetan Buddhism
The practice widely known from the Haitian voodoo religion of making a likeness of an enemy or a doll and torturing or destroying this in their place is also widespread in Tibetan Buddhism. Usually, some substance belonging to the opponent, be it a hair or a swatch from their clothing, has to be incorporated into the substitute. It is, however, sufficient to note their name on a piece of paper…

Such “voodoo practices” were no rare and unhealthy products of the Nyingmapa sect or the despised pre-Buddhist Bonpos. Under the Fifth Dalai Lama they became part of the elevated politics of state. The “Great Fifth” had a terrible “recipe book” (the Golden Manuscript) recorded on black thangkas which was exclusively concerned with magical techniques for destroying an enemy.

Why all this matters

These passages highlight a side of Tibetan Buddhism that is largely hidden from public view: the integration of destructive magic and spirit warfare into the machinery of the lamaist state. Nebesky-Wojkowitz’s research on ritual manuals, Hermanns’ cultural observations, and the Trimondis’ synthesis all converge on the same conclusion: alongside compassion and wisdom, Tibetan Buddhism preserved and continues to use technologies of coercion and violence.

For modern practitioners and students in the West, this raises unavoidable questions:

  • Are newcomers told that tantric ritual includes not only deities of compassion but also demon invocations and rites of subjugation? What risks do these violent magical technologies pose for the unsuspecting student?
  • What does “consent” mean if disciples are invited to take refuge in Tibetan Buddhism and receive empowerments without knowledge of these dimensions?
  • How much of this is framed as symbolic or metaphorical today, and is that distinction clearly explained? Evidence suggests that such practices continue much as they did in the past, which makes a thorough and honest examination all the more urgent.

Conclusion

The Trimondis’ work is controversial, but it is also important because it insists on remembering what is usually forgotten or denied. If the compassionate face of Tibetan Buddhism is to be embraced honestly, then its shadow side, the reality of political magic, demon invocations, and coercive ritual, must also be acknowledged. Only then can students and practitioners engage with full awareness, rather than be fooled by the illusion of partial truths.

References and Further Reading

  • Victor & Victoria Trimondi, The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism (2003).
  • René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Oracles and Demons of Tibet (1956).
  • Matthias Hermanns, The Indo-Tibetan Religion of the Great Goddess of the Land (1965).
  • Melvyn C. Goldstein & A. Grunfeld, The Making of Modern Tibet (1996).
  • Samten Karmay, The Secret Visions of the Fifth Dalai Lama (1988).

The Illusion of Consent

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Kurukullā, the red goddess of magnetizing, depicted in a traditional Tibetan thangka style, embodying the tantric power to attract and bind.

Western seekers approaching Tibetan Buddhism are usually drawn to its most humane face. Chenrezig practice promises the cultivation of boundless compassion through visualizing Avalokiteśvara and reciting his mantra Om Mani Peme Hung. Tonglen “taking and sending” practice trains the mind to breathe in the suffering of others and breathe out relief. These sincere aspirations are the public face of Tibetan Buddhism. Yet this religion also preserves a hidden curriculum. Alongside compassionate practices sit the four activities that structure tantric ritual: pacifying, enriching, magnetizing, and subjugating. This fuller picture is rarely presented to beginners, and yet it has consequences for any claim to informed consent.[1]

The four activities: not just compassion

The four activities, known in Sanskrit as caturkarman, classify tantric rites by their intended effect:

  • Pacifying (śāntika) calms illness and obstacles.
  • Enriching (puṣṭika) augments longevity, merit, charisma, retinues, and wealth.
  • Magnetizing (vaśīkaraṇa) draws people and circumstances into a chosen orbit.
  • Subjugating (abhicāra) forces or destroys enemies.

These are not modern inventions but standard categories across tantric manuals and commentaries.[2]

While Western students are typically introduced to the activities of pacifying and enriching, the other two, magnetizing and subjugating, remain obscure, despite being prominent in tantric ritual literature. Historian Jacob Dalton has shown that violent tantric rites were not marginal but integral, even harnessed by Tibetan states to consolidate power in the medieval period.[3]

Kurukullā: the red goddess of attraction

Kurukullā, a red goddess associated with Amitābha and Tara, epitomizes magnetizing. In traditional texts she is praised as the deity of attraction, and in Tibetan sources she is sometimes known as the “Magnetizing Tara.” She is depicted holding a arrow, bow, flower and hook, all instruments of enchantment. [4]

Contemporary dharma centers sometimes describe her as a deity of love and influence, a kind of esoteric Cupid. But Tibetan ritual manuals, as catalogued by Stephan Beyer and translated in part by modern scholars, show that Kurukullā rites include binding the loyalty or desire of others.[5]

The omission of this material in introductory teachings is significant. Students often hear of compassion, not of enchantment and coercion.

Subjugation and tantric violence

Subjugating rituals, by contrast, can be overtly violent. Dunhuang manuscripts detail effigy rites and “liberation” practices, in which enemies are ritually slain to protect practitioners and their patrons. Dalton notes that these methods scaled from local shamanic forms into state-sanctioned tantric technologies by the 13th century.[6]

Even today, wrathful practices remain part of Tibetan public culture. Cham dances of Mahākāla, staged annually in monasteries, dramatically enact the destruction of obstacles. While these are often seen as symbolic, their presence keeps alive a framework where wrathful force is ritually mobilized against perceived threats.[7]

Samaya: the binding vow

In Highest Yoga Tantra empowerments, disciples take vows of refuge, bodhisattva vows, and tantric samaya commitments. Samaya is described as a “sacred bond” with the guru and the deity. Root downfalls include disrespecting the master or revealing tantric secrets. Breach is said to bring spiritual ruin.[8]

This means that students who take empowerments without understanding the full scope of tantric practices, including magnetizing, subjugating, and punishment rites, are effectively giving consent under partial information. Despite not understanding fully what they are entering into, the bond of samaya can become a blanket mechanism of control.

As the 17th Karmapa indicated in teachings earlier this year, samaya breakers are spoken of in language that implies wrathful retribution, both spiritual and physical. The retribution he described is not symbolic but actual. See my essay, “Read Between the Lines,” for more on this.[9]

Survivors’ voices

Accounts from survivors and critical practitioners suggest that magnetizing and wrathful practices are not just metaphors. Women have described experiences of sexual energy being manipulated at a distance, sometimes calling it a form of “astral rape.” Whether one interprets this as energetic manipulation or psychological intrusion, the perception of violation is real.

Lion’s Roar published testimonies arguing that samaya has been used as a principal mechanism of coercion in abuse cases. Independent investigations of groups like Shambhala document patterns where devotion and secrecy prevented victims from speaking out.[10]

Buddhist communities are now grappling with these realities. Some organizations are introducing explicit consent policies, recognizing that the charisma of a guru, altered states of consciousness induced during a ritual, and the binding reality of vows can impair a student’s capacity to freely choose.[11]

Historical context does not erase ethical duty

Scholars such as Ronald Davidson have contextualized tantric violence as a product of medieval frontier politics and kingship.[12] This explains how such rites developed. But historical context does not remove the ethical obligation to disclose them to modern students.

Without disclosure, the vows taken in empowerments are not truly informed. The student consents to Buddhist compassion, but is bound to a system that also contains sexual enchantment, psychological manipulation, and deadly punishments.

Conclusion

The compassionate practices of Chenrezig and Tonglen have a genuine power to transform, yet Tibetan Buddhism’s esoteric side contains hidden technologies that are not peaceful but harmful: the rites of magnetizing, subjugation, and punishment. These are attested in texts, preserved in ritual, and acknowledged by scholars and survivors alike. Until these dimensions are more fully disclosed, the vows taken in tantric empowerments remain shadowy. Consent given without knowledge of the whole spectrum of practice is not true consent. It is, as this essay argues, an illusion.

Source Notes

1. Rigpa Wiki, “Four activities,” accessed 2025.
Rigpa Wiki is a practitioner-maintained encyclopedia that summarizes key Vajrayana concepts. Its entry on the “four activities” clearly lays out pacifying, enriching, magnetizing, and subjugating as the classical categories of tantric ritual. It is not a critical academic source, but it reflects how contemporary Tibetan Buddhist institutions themselves present the material.

2. Study Buddhism, “What is Samaya?” and “Empowerment.”
Study Buddhism is a project led by Alexander Berzin and colleagues, offering accessible introductions to Buddhist theory and practice. These entries explain samaya as a binding relationship with a guru and empowerment as the ritual granting of authority to practice tantra. They are useful for showing how Tibetan teachers explain vows and empowerments to Western audiences.

3. Jacob P. Dalton, The Taming of the Demons: Violence and Liberation in Tibetan Buddhism (Yale University Press, 2011).
Dalton’s book is a landmark study of ritual violence in Tibetan Buddhism. Drawing on Dunhuang manuscripts, he shows that wrathful rites, including violent subjugation and “liberation” rituals, were integral to tantric practice. Dalton’s work challenges romantic views of Buddhism as purely peaceful.

4. Wikipedia, “Kurukullā”
The Wikipedia entry gives a concise overview of Kurukullā as a magnetizing deity across Buddhist cultures.

Tomlin, Adele. “MAGNETISING RED QUEEN, KURUKULLĀ: ‘Outshining the perceptions of others and bringing afflictive emotions under control’ teaching of 8th Garchen Rinpoche,” Dakini Translations, 8 June 2021. Available at: https://dakinitranslations.com/2021/06/08/magnetising-dancing-queen-kurukulla-outshining-the-perceptions-of-others-and-bringing-afflictive-emotions-under-control-teaching-of-8th-garchen-rinpoche/

5. Stephan Beyer, The Cult of Tārā: Magic and Ritual in Tibet (University of California Press, 1973).
Beyer’s study remains a foundational ethnography of tantric ritual in Tibet. His translations of ritual manuals include examples of both compassionate and wrathful practices, including rites of attraction and subjugation. It is particularly valuable for showing how deity practices were embedded in everyday Tibetan religious life.

6. Dalton, Taming of the Demons; see also Jacob P. Dalton, “A Crisis of Doxography,” in Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 28, no. 1 (2005).
In addition to his book, Dalton’s article “A Crisis of Doxography” analyzes how violent rites were classified in Tibetan scholastic traditions. He shows that even systematizing scholars struggled to reconcile wrathful tantric methods with Buddhist ideals, which underscores their presence and their tension.

7. Associated Press, “Wrathful deities in Tibetan Cham dance,” 2024.
This news report covers annual cham dances in Tibet and in exile communities, where wrathful deities like Mahākāla are invoked to repel obstacles. It illustrates that wrathful practices are still a living part of Tibetan Buddhist culture, even if framed from the public as symbolic or theatrical.

8. Study Buddhism, “Samaya”; Rigpa Wiki, “Empowerment.”
Both entries describe the vows and commitments made during empowerment rituals. They confirm that samaya includes strict obligations to the guru and to secrecy. Their language highlights how the bonding process is explained to new students, and how much is left unspoken.

9 “Read Between the Lines: A Glimpse Into the Dark Heart of Guru Devotion,” Tantric Deception, April 4, 2025.
This essay analyzes a teaching by the 17th Karmapa, where he discussed samaya and hinted at punitive consequences for breaking devotion. It shows how even contemporary high lamas continue to invoke the discourse of samaya enforcement, reinforcing the concerns about consent.

10. Lion’s Roar, “When Samaya is Used as a Weapon,” 2018; Buddhist Project Sunshine Reports, 2018–2019.
Lion’s Roar published reflections by teachers and survivors on how samaya language has been used to silence or coerce students in abuse cases. Buddhist Project Sunshine was a grassroots effort to document sexual misconduct in Shambhala and other Tibetan Buddhist organizations. These sources provide survivor-centered evidence of how samaya functions in practice.

11. Buddhist Ethics Working Group, “Consent in Vajrayana,” 2021.
This collective statement from Buddhist practitioners and ethicists proposes new standards for sexual and spiritual consent in Vajrayana contexts. It emphasizes enthusiastic, ongoing consent and rejects the misuse of tantric language to excuse coercion. It is an attempt at reform efforts from within the tradition.

12. Ronald M. Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement (Columbia University Press, 2002).
Davidson’s historical study situates tantric Buddhism in the political and social context of medieval India. He shows how esoteric practices were bound up with kingship, warfare, and elite patronage. His work helps explain how violent and manipulative rites could become integral to the tradition, even if they clash with Buddhist ethics.

“Books of Spells” in Tibetan Buddhism: Magnetizing and Subjugation Rites, and the Problem of Sexual and Spiritual Abuse

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To view Tibetan Buddhism as purely meditative and philosophical is to miss a large and still under-mapped terrain of ritual manuals and spell collections. A 9th to 10th-century Tibetan “book of spells” from the Dunhuang cave library (British Library IOL Tib J 401) shows that Tibetan monks compiled practical ritual instructions covering healing, protection, exorcism, and subjugation. It is the earliest surviving compendium of Tibetan Buddhist magical ritual and looks exactly like what we’d call a grimoire: a working handbook of spellcraft.¹

Moving forward in time, the 18th-century polymath Slelung Zhadepa Dorje (Sle lung Bzhad pa’i rdo rje) assembled a large tantric cycle centered on the Jñānaḍākinī. Within that cycle, scholars have identified several distinct grimoires of spells that are, again, practical instruction sets embedded in a broader tantric collection. As one study notes: “This paper seeks to examine such techniques in several grimoires of spells found in the tantric cycle of Gsang ba ye shes mkha’ ’gro… compiled and edited… by Sle lung Bzhad pa’i rdo rje (1697–1740) in the 1730s.”²

“Magical practices in Buddhism are still one of the least studied aspects of the religion.”³

Despite strong indications that there are many such grimoires, from Dunhuang through later ritual cycles, there is no comprehensive catalog. Scholars themselves admit the field’s patchy mapping. Sam van Schaik emphasizes the neglect, and others underline that studies too often treat magic as a literary trope rather than as practical ritual.³ ⁴

Personal experience

I do not come to this subject as a detached scholar. I was targeted by two different lamas at different times, one of whom used coercion to draw me into a sexual relationship and then employed what I can only describe as black magic when I resisted, questioned, and tried to break free. Living through those experiences is what drove me to investigate Tibetan spell craft.

“From the inside, the grimoires of Tibetan Buddhism do not feel very different from the grimoires of Western occultism.”

Although I practiced intensely for years in long retreats, I was never taught these darker rituals, yet I witnessed unsettling rites performed by my lamas. After rebuffing the advances of the first guru, I experienced what felt like severe magical attacks that reverberated for years. The cognitive dissonance was crushing: I believed these teachers were fully enlightened buddhas, yet I suffered severe trauma and PTSD.

“Fear of vajra hell kept me clinging to the practices, even as abuse intensified.”

My second guru was later exposed publicly for sexual and psychological abuse. Being caught in his orbit, I became the target of annihilation rituals. Surviving and recovering has been extraordinarily difficult. I now see that while some teachers avoid such practices, others weaponize spells of magnetism and subjugation to manipulate students, especially women, for sex and energetic vampirization. This gray area of practical magic within Tibetan Buddhism is vast and dangerous.

What the rites actually claim to do: magnetizing and subjugation

Classical Vajrayāna sorts ritual aims into four “activities”: pacifying, enriching, magnetizing, and subjugating. These are not marginal ideas; they are a standard frame for tantric ritual. Magnetizing (Tib. dbang du sdud pa) is explicitly defined as bringing others “under one’s control,” while subjugation names violent rites directed at overcoming obstacles and destroying opponents.⁵ ⁶

Texts and prayers for magnetizing circulate broadly, for instance, the “Wang Dü” prayer attributed to Mipham, described as “magnetizing or bringing under one’s control.” None of this is esoteric in the sense of being unknown; it is central to tantric categories and practice rhetoric.⁶ ⁷

From ritual claims to real-world power: how coercion maps onto communities and individuals

A ritual manual promising to attract, influence, or subdue doesn’t automatically produce abuse. Still, the rhetoric of magnetizing and subjugation sits within a social system that grants absolute authority to gurus and expects strong devotion from students. When high-status teachers have access to rites whose very names project attraction and control, the risk of translating ritual language into interpersonal domination is real.

Recent history demonstrates the danger. In 2018 Rigpa, the international organization founded by Sogyal Rinpoche, published the results of an independent investigation by the law firm Lewis Silkin that validated numerous allegations of physical and sexual abuse and identified serious safeguarding failures.⁸

The published report recounts patterns of violence and coercion including “slapping,” “punching,” “hitting with a backscratcher, phones, cups and hangers,” and documents testimonies of sexual abuse, concluding that the community had failed to protect students.⁹

This is not to claim that tantric ritual texts instruct teachers to abuse students. It is to note a combustible mix: magical mechanisms of control, asymmetries of authority, sacralized obedience, and the frequent absence of external accountability.

Bringing the strands together

  • Books of spells are the norm: Tibetan Buddhist literature contains actual “books of spells” and multiple grimoires embedded in tantric cycles. These are not aberrations but part of the tradition.¹ ²
  • An under-researched domain: Leading scholars explicitly acknowledge that this area of Buddhist practice is still understudied.³ ⁴
  • Control as a ritual aim: The four tantric activities include “magnetizing” and “subjugating,” both routinely glossed as bringing beings or circumstances under one’s control.⁵ ⁶
  • Abuse linked to ritual rhetoric: Documented cases in Tibetan Buddhist communities show how claims to ritual power combined with intense guru-devotion can provide cover for coercion and severe abuse.⁸ ⁹

Where the research gap still matters

A fuller picture of “how many” grimoires are in Tibetan tantric collections requires systematic cataloging across canons and private libraries. Right now we have case studies and local inventories rather than a master list. These texts need to be thoroughly studied in their historical and contemporary contexts and exposed to the world for what they really are–recipes for white and black magic–not sugarcoated as quaint and innocuous artifacts.³ ⁴

Without naming and analyzing how these are taught and performed, it is hard for communities and individuals to protect themselves from magical attacks.

What better safeguards look like

  • Name the risk: community materials should explain what “magnetizing” and “subjugation” denote in practice and how these can and will be used against students at the guru’s discretion.
  • Independent oversight: adopt and publish external safeguarding standards and reporting channels. The Rigpa case shows why self-policing fails.⁸
  • Informed consent and boundaries: spell out that teacher/student sex, even where allowed by law, requires adult consent free of spiritual pressure, and that the bar for “free of pressure” is very high in asymmetric relationships.
  • Don’t assume that all Tibetan Buddhist lamas have pure intention and integrity.

“The safest course is to avoid Tibetan Buddhism altogether, since in practice the guru’s needs and moods often override the Buddha’s teaching of non-harm.“

A closing note on method

This article is a call for transparency and insistence on precision. Tibetan Buddhist archives contain grimoires. The tradition attracts students to its supposedly compassionate practices while concealing that darker “magnetizing” and “subjugation” practices are core ritual elements. Scholars say this area is understudied. And history shows that these techniques of control, in the hands of unaccountable authorities, can easily become abusive, even deadly.

Footnotes

  1. Sam van Schaik, “The Early Tibetan Book of Spells.” Analysis of British Library manuscript IOL Tib J 401 from Dunhuang (9th–10th century). This manuscript is recognized as the earliest surviving Tibetan compendium of spells and rituals, containing instructions for healing, protection, and exorcism. See: Sam van Schaik, Early Tibet blog (2008), and also referenced in his book Tibetan Zen: Discovering a Lost Tradition (Snow Lion, 2015).
  2. Sle lung Bzhad pa’i rdo rje’s Jñānaḍākinī cycle study (Academia.edu). Scholarly paper examining several grimoires embedded in the tantric cycle of Gsang ba ye shes mkha’ ’gro, compiled and edited in the 1730s by Sle lung Bzhad pa’i rdo rje (1697–1740). The paper highlights ritual techniques, their organization, and their status as practical spell collections within a broader cycle. Available on Academia.edu.
  3. Sam van Schaik on magical practices in Buddhism. Statement that “magical practices in Buddhism are still one of the least studied aspects of the religion.” Quoted in his writings on Buddhist magic, including his blog Early Tibet and in Tibetan Zen (Snow Lion, 2015).
  4. Cameron Bailey, “The Magic of Secret Gnosis: A Theoretical Analysis of a Tibetan Buddhist ‘Grimoire’.” Journal of the Korean Association of Buddhist Studies 84 (2020): 145–176. Available via Academia.edu. Bailey notes that “magic power in Buddhism has been studied more from the perspective of a literary trope than as practical and exactingly specific ritual techniques,” and examines grimoires embedded within the Gsang ba ye shes mkha’ ’gro (Secret Gnosis Dakini) cycle compiled by Sle lung Bzhad pa’i rdo rje in the 1730s.
  5. Vajrayāna framework of four activities. Standard tantric taxonomy of ritual aims: pacifying (zhi ba), enriching (rgyas pa), magnetizing (dbang sdud), and subjugating (dbang ’joms). Discussed in multiple Vajrayāna handbooks and summaries, including descriptions in online resources such as Rigpa Wiki and introductory texts on Vajrayāna Buddhism.
  6. Definitions of magnetizing. Magnetizing (dbang du sdud pa) is routinely glossed as “bringing others under one’s control.” See standard glosses in Vajrayāna dictionaries, sadhana commentaries, and contemporary teaching materials (e.g. Rigpa Wiki, “Four activities”).
  7. “Wang Dü” prayer attributed to Mipham. A widely recited prayer describing magnetizing activities, attributed to the 19th-century scholar Mipham Rinpoche (1846–1912). Circulates in Tibetan and English translation as a practice of magnetizing or bringing beings under one’s control.
  8. Rigpa Independent Investigation, Lewis Silkin LLP (2018). Commissioned by Rigpa International following widespread allegations against founder Sogyal Lakar (Sogyal Rinpoche). The final report documented physical assaults, psychological abuse, and sexual exploitation, and called out systemic safeguarding failures. Full report available through Rigpa’s website and media coverage (2018).
  9. Findings on abuse in Rigpa/Sogyal Rinpoche’s communities. The Lewis Silkin report and subsequent coverage summarized multiple testimonies: repeated slapping, punching, use of objects to hit students, as well as sexual coercion and exploitation of women. Findings were corroborated by survivor accounts and reinforced calls for reform in Tibetan Buddhist organizations.

The Grimoire of Secret Gnosis

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A Hidden Side of Tantric Buddhism

Buddhism is usually presented in the West as a religion of mindfulness and compassion. But hidden in its tantric wing is something darker. In the eighteenth century, Sélung Shepa Dorjé (Sle lung Bzhad pa’i rdo rje) compiled a sixteen-volume cycle called Secret Gnosis Dakini (Gsang ba ye shes mkha’ ’gro, or GYCK). This was not just a collection of esoteric philosophy, but also a grimoire filled with magical spells.

According to Cameron Bailey in The Magic of Secret Gnosis: A Theoretical Analysis of a Tibetan Buddhist “Grimoire,” grimoires of spell instructions are common in Tibetan Buddhism. They often appear inside larger tantric cycles like the GYCK or in the collected works of great lamas. As the scholar Berounsky, cited by Bailey, put it, the operations in such texts are “an amalgam of tantric interventions combined with popular magic.” [1]

Volumes four and twelve of the GYCK preserve dozens of rituals for worldly power. The twelfth volume in particular reads like a magician’s handbook. It does not hide its intent; it offers ninety-two spells to heal, protect, enrich, and subjugate.

Rituals of Control

Among these spells are some dedicated to domination. Far from the common image of Buddhism as a purely gentle path of liberation, the Secret Gnosis spells allowed practitioners to bind and control others. One entire text, The Magic Lasso, instructs adepts on capturing their targets through visualization and mantra. Other spells direct them to create talismans and effigies, ritually charged to influence or destroy enemies.

Bailey emphasizes that these rituals work by merging tantric deity yoga with ritual techniques: the practitioner visualizes themselves as a wrathful god, projects light rays at the target, and seals the action with mantra. Your meditation becomes, in effect, a weapon.

The Spellbook as Technology

The grimoire aspect of the Secret Gnosis cycle cannot be overlooked. It contains practical instructions for bending reality to one’s desire. Substances like herbs, turquoise, and even urine or flesh are prescribed as tools of ritual practice.

Bailey notes that these spells are framed within a bodhisattva ethic. They are said to protect the Dharma or defend communities. Yet to modern eyes, they read unmistakably as instructions for control. This is where interpretation diverges. Bailey highlights the philosophical and ritual integration, while a critical lens reveals the coercive logic beneath the compassionate rhetoric.

A Tradition of Ambivalence

Figures like Milarepa warned against sorcery, even though his story is entangled with it. The Buddhist tradition as a whole often drew a line between miracle powers that “arise naturally” from meditation and deliberate ritual magic. But that line was blurred from the beginning. The Secret Gnosis makes clear how deeply magical domination was preserved within the canon.

Conclusion

The Secret Gnosis Dakini cycle exposes a side of tantric Buddhism rarely acknowledged publicly. Bailey shows that its grimoire-like sections are integral to tantric practice, not just marginal curiosities. What I emphasize here is that these spells—especially those of subjugation—show a system where manipulation was not an aberration but an option built into the tradition. What is presented today as a path of compassion was also, sometimes, a path of great harm.

[1] Cameron Bailey, “The Magic of Secret Gnosis: A Theoretical Analysis of a Tibetan Buddhist ‘Grimoire,’” Journal of the Korean Association for Buddhist Studies 93 (2020): 535–570.

Kundalini Possession vs. Classic Demonic Possession: A Comparative Study

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Kundalini is often described in modern yoga and New Age spirituality as a universal spiritual energy coiled at the base of the spine, waiting to rise and bring enlightenment. This portrayal is misleading. In reality, what is called a “kundalini awakening” is better understood as a form of possession. Rather than a benign inner energy, kundalini is a demonic force that enters the human mind-body continuum, hijacks the nervous system, and rewires perception, behavior, and physiology. This explains why the symptoms of kundalini often overlap with those of classic demonic possession.

Symptoms: Kundalini Possession vs. Demonic Possession

Kundalini possession symptoms

  • Involuntary bodily spasms or kriyas, often violent or exhausting.
  • A sensation of a serpent or current moving through the spine, causing heat, pressure, or pain.
  • Rapid swings between bliss and terror, often accompanied by visions or auditory phenomena.
  • Disassociation and feelings of being controlled by something non-human.
  • Progressive neurological deterioration: insomnia, paranoia, and psychosis.
  • Identification with Hindu deities or serpentine archetypes, which parallels demonic manifestations described in other cultures.

Demonic possession symptoms (more broadly recognized)

  • Aversion to the sacred, where holy names, prayers, or symbols provoke rage.
  • Manifestations of supernatural strength or the sudden ability to speak foreign languages.
  • Violent outbursts, self-harm, or aggression against others.
  • Distorted voice, grotesque facial expressions, or animal-like behavior.
  • Physical disturbances such as objects moving, foul odors, or sudden temperature drops.
  • A clear sense of hostile external control.

Both states are marked by loss of sovereignty and the intrusion of an alien intelligence. What makes kundalini more deceptive is that it cloaks itself in the language of spiritual progress.

The Entities Behind the Possessions

Kundalini-related beings

  • Kundalini is personified as Shakti, the serpent goddess. While Hindu texts portray her as divine, serpent symbolism universally points to deception and danger, as the serpent has long been associated with Satan in Christianity.
  • Many afflicted report contact with or identification as Kali, Durga, or other fierce Hindu and tantric Buddhist deities whose attributes of blood, violence, and intoxication align closely with demonic qualities.

Entities in wider demonic possession

  • Christianity: fallen angels under Satan’s authority.
  • Islam: malicious jinn, created from smokeless fire.
  • Judaism: dybbuks, wandering spirits of the dead seeking to inhabit bodies.
  • Indigenous traditions: hungry ghosts, nature demons, or restless ancestral spirits.

The same destructive force that is worshiped in India as divine feminine energy is interpreted in other traditions as demonic intrusion.

Why Kundalini Possession Often Appears Different

There are many anecdotal accounts of people afflicted by kundalini who do not display the same dramatic symptoms seen in major exorcisms performed by the Catholic Church. They may not display superhuman strength, speak unknown languages, or react violently to holy objects. Instead, their suffering appears as neurological collapse or uncontrollable kriyas.

Why does this happen? One possibility is what some exorcists call “perfect possession.” By willingly engaging in yoga, Eastern meditation, or tantric practices, the person effectively invites the spirit in. Once invited, the demon does not always need to manifest with violence or open hostility. It is already enthroned, so to speak, in the person’s consciousness and nervous system. It burrows in and embeds itself. The possession is often quieter but no less real.

Another possibility is that kundalini spirits simply manifest differently than other categories of demons. The absence of classic symptoms described by the Catholic Church may not mean the person is not possessed. It may mean they are afflicted by a different type of spirit, or by a demon whose preferred mode of influence is more insidious and long-term. Rather than breaking furniture or speaking in foreign tongues, it works by corrupting the nervous system, trapping the victim in cycles of ecstatic highs and devastating lows, and slowly eroding the mind and spirit.

Implications for the Catholic Church

Because many of these cases do not fit the criteria traditionally used to diagnose possession, individuals suffering from kundalini affliction are sometimes turned away by exorcists. Yet the sheer number of Westerners who have turned to yoga, meditation, and tantric practices since the 1960s suggests that the Church may need to reevaluate how possession presents in modern contexts. Kundalini demons may not manifest with the same overt signs as other kinds of possession, but their effects are no less destructive.

To dismiss these cases as mere psychological breakdowns risks ignoring an entire category of demonic assault that has proliferated under the guise of spirituality. The deceptive packaging of kundalini as “spiritual energy” makes it one of the most dangerous forms of possession today.

The Secret Religion of America’s Founding Fathers

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When we are taught the story of America’s birth, it is usually a tale of idealism. Enlightened men gathered in Philadelphia to declare independence, draft a Constitution, and form a free republic unlike any other. They were men of reason, we are told, men who broke the chains of monarchy and dogma. That is the official version.

There is another version though, one that rarely finds its way into the nation’s history textbooks. It is a story of secret societies, hidden rituals, and a shadow religion that shaped the foundations of the republic. Many of the founders were not only statesmen but initiates of the Masonic lodges. They swore oaths in candlelit chambers surrounded by symbols older than Christianity, and they believed in occult truths that they encoded into architecture, city plans, and perhaps even the clauses of the Constitution itself.

It is sometimes claimed that these men were “33rd degree Freemasons,” but that phrase is an anachronism. The Scottish Rite’s 33rd degree did not exist until the early 1800s, after the Revolution. In the America of Washington and Franklin, the system of Masonry offered three primary degrees, with Master Mason as the highest level attainable. Yet to dismiss these three degrees as merely entry level would be a mistake.

George Washington, for example, was a documented Master Mason and conducted the laying of the Capitol’s cornerstone in 1793 with a full Masonic ritual, apron and all. Benjamin Franklin advanced even further, becoming Grand Master of the Lodge of Nine Sisters in Paris, where Masonry blurred into Rosicrucianism and the hidden philosophies of Europe. Paul Revere and John Hancock also became Grand Masters in Massachusetts, placing them at the pinnacle of the craft in the colonies. Thomas Jefferson, though never conclusively proven to be a Mason, was deeply immersed in esoteric literature and deistic philosophy, moving in the same intellectual currents. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were both confirmed Masons, carrying the symbols of the lodge as they mapped the continent at Jefferson’s command.

So while the founders were not 33rd degree in the technical sense, many were far more than casual lodge members. They were Masters and Grand Masters, men who presided over rituals, commanded respect, and carried with them the authority and secrecy that would later be associated with the highest degrees of Masonry. In their time, these roles carried the same aura of power and hidden knowledge. To understand their position is to see the founding not just as a political act, but as an occult project guided by initiates of a secret order.

Liberty As A Shield

The First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom can be seen as more than just a shield against sectarian conflict. For men who belonged to lodges that drew on symbols and allegories older than Christianity, it also functioned as legal protection for their own rites. The Constitution made it impossible for the government to persecute secret gatherings, whether they were Masonic initiations or other esoteric practices. What looked to the public like a safeguard for Protestant dissenters doubled as a safeguard for the private rites of the elite.

This was no small matter, because in Europe such societies had been hunted and suppressed for centuries. The Knights Templar, once one of the most powerful military orders of Christendom, were destroyed in 1307 when King Philip IV of France moved to seize their wealth and eliminate their independence. On October 13 of that year, hundreds of Templars were arrested, tortured, and forced to confess to strange crimes: spitting on the cross, engaging in forbidden rites, and worshipping an idol called “Baphomet.” The name may or may not have been drawn from an actual deity worshipped at that time in Europe. Most scholars believe it was a corruption of “Mahomet,” a medieval way of referring to Muhammad, used to smear the Templars as crypto-Muslims and heretics. Some trial records describe a head or strange effigy, but no evidence of such an idol was found, and the confessions were extracted under brutal torture.

Much later, in the nineteenth century, occult writers revived the legend. The French magician Eliphas Lévi reimagined Baphomet as the goat-headed figure known as the Sabbatic Goat, a symbol of esoteric balance and hidden knowledge. That image, now iconic in the modern occult imagination, had little to do with the medieval Templars, but it grew out of the accusations against them. The effect of the original charges, true or not, was devastating. Many Templar leaders were burned at the stake, and the order was annihilated. More importantly, the spectacle set a pattern: when the Church encountered a secret society it could not control, it branded it as diabolical and destroyed it.

That suspicion carried forward into the Enlightenment. Freemasonry faced the same hostility. In 1738, Pope Clement XII issued the first papal bull banning Catholics from joining the lodges, condemning them as heretical and politically dangerous. Pope Benedict XIV reinforced the prohibition in 1751, ensuring that Masons remained under suspicion across Catholic Europe. Lodges were forced underground, their rituals hidden from the public eye, even as whispers linked them to the same dark charges once leveled against the Templars. By the time of America’s founding, the memory of suppression was fresh, and the lodges in the colonies offered a freedom their European counterparts could only dream of. Writing religious liberty into the Constitution was therefore not just an Enlightenment ideal, but also a coded guarantee that the persecutions of the past would not be repeated on American soil.

Esoteric Echoes In The Constitution

There is another layer to the founding philosophy. In occult traditions there is a split between the exoteric, the outer teachings for the public, and the esoteric, the inner teachings for initiates. By separating church and state, the founders created a dual structure: an outer civic faith in liberty and equality that everyone could see, and an inner realm of private belief where initiates could pursue forbidden truths. Even the structure of government can be read symbolically in this light. The Constitution divided power into executive, legislative, and judicial branches, a design openly inspired by Montesquieu’s philosophy. Yet the pattern also echoes older currents of Hermetic and alchemical thought, where balance is achieved by setting opposing forces against one another and resolving them into harmony. Whether by design or coincidence, the republic’s framework resonates with the esoteric idea that true order emerges only when tensions are held in careful balance.

The Name Of A Hidden God

The Masonry Washington practiced was limited to three degrees, and the records of his lodge never mention anything beyond them. Yet as the Craft expanded into higher rites during and after the Revolution, a curious word surfaced: Jahbulon. Introduced in the Royal Arch degree and whispered as a “sacred name,” it fused Jehovah, Baal, and an Egyptian sun god into a single blasphemous trinity. To Masons it was defended as a symbol of universality, a way of joining together divine names from different traditions. To outsiders, it looked like sorcery and proof that the Craft concealed a god of its own. The charge of demonism attached itself to Jahbulon, and for generations pastors and ex-Masons would point to it as the true hidden lord of the lodge.

Franklin’s Bones In London

In 1998, during renovations at Benjamin Franklin’s former London home, workers discovered a pit filled with skeletal remains. More than a dozen bodies, many of them children, were buried beneath the house where Franklin lived for nearly two decades. The accepted explanation is that an acquaintance of Franklin’s was performing medical experiments. Yet the image of one of America’s most celebrated founders living above a hidden grave is hard to shake. Franklin was a Freemason and a member of elite clubs in both London and Philadelphia. Did he share in these experiments, or was something else taking place in the basement of his home?

Jefferson, Lewis, And Clark: The Quest For Giants

Thomas Jefferson publicly presented himself as a rationalist, skeptical of superstition. In private he was fascinated with bones, especially those of giant stature. Reports circulated among Native nations of colossal beings who had once walked the continent. Mounds in the Ohio Valley yielded bones that seemed to support the legends. Jefferson tasked Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, both Freemasons, to gather evidence as they explored the new territories. The expedition is remembered for mapping, diplomacy, and science, but it was also a search for remnants of a forgotten race. Set beside Europe’s long history of suppressing heterodox knowledge, that search reads like a counter-move: recovering what the Old World had buried.

Francis Bacon And The Vision Of A New Atlantis

A century before the Revolution, the philosopher Francis Bacon had sketched the outlines of a world that looked suspiciously like what America would become. In his unfinished work New Atlantis, published in 1627, he imagined a secretive island nation ruled by an invisible order of wise men. Knowledge was their power. They collected information from across the globe, preserved hidden sciences, and governed not through kings or priests but through an unseen hierarchy of initiates. For Bacon, this was not just a utopian dream. It was a blueprint.

Bacon was tied to the Rosicrucian movement, an esoteric current that preached secrecy, symbolic architecture, and the union of science and spirituality. These ideas filtered into Freemasonry, which in turn shaped the worldview of many of America’s founders. The New World, far from the reach of papal bulls and European monarchs, offered the perfect stage on which to bring Bacon’s vision to life.

When Washington, D.C. was laid out in the 1790s, it bore the fingerprints of an esoteric tradition. The Capitol’s cornerstone was set with full Masonic ritual by George Washington in 1793. The city’s street plan, designed by Pierre Charles L’Enfant and later adjusted by Masonic surveyors, is filled with geometric alignments. Triangles, squares, and compass shapes radiate through the avenues. The Washington Monument, an obelisk borrowed from ancient Egypt, rises as a stone needle between the Capitol and the White House. And on the nation’s Great Seal, later emblazoned on the one-dollar bill, an unfinished pyramid crowned with the all-seeing eye declares in Latin: Novus Ordo Seclorum, a New Order of the Ages.

For those steeped in Bacon’s writings, this was more than civic planning. It was sacred geometry, an attempt to encode cosmic truths into the stones and avenues of the capital. The city itself became a temple, a visible New Atlantis built on the banks of the Potomac. America was not only a republic in the political sense, but also an experiment in hidden architecture and esoteric governance. In the vision of Bacon and the Masons who followed him, the United States was to be both a nation and a ritual machine, replete with symbols that would shape its destiny.

The Hidden Pantheon

The secret religion of the founders was not a single system. It was a mixture of Enlightenment deism, Masonic ritual, Templar legends, Rosicrucian utopianism, and an obsession with the lost giants of the New World. They spoke in public of reason and progress. In private they gathered in lodges, invoked symbols, and swore oaths that bound them to a different order altogether. The nation they built was more than a republic. It was an occult machine written into stone, ritual, and law.

America was born with the promise of liberty and justice for all. Yet as the centuries unfolded, that mandate became overshadowed by a darker reality. Eisenhower’s warning of a “military-industrial complex” has long since hardened into fact. From Vietnam to Iraq, from the deserts of the Middle East to the hidden prisons of the modern empire, America has become feared as much as it was formerly admired.

Was this corruption a hostile takeover by dark forces, or were the seeds of it sown from the very beginning, in the secret oaths and hidden gods that shaped its founding? Perhaps the two Americas were always there: the outer republic of freedom, and the inner machine of ritual power. One speaks of liberty and equality, while the other feeds on secrecy, empire, and control.

Which America do you live in? And which America will prevail?