Tibetan Buddhism – Page 2 – Tantric Deception

Tantric Deception: Black Magic and Power in Tibetan Buddhism

October 24, 2025February 13, 2026 mim

I am amazed that the PR for Tibetan Buddhism in the West managed for so long to conceal the extent of black magic practiced by lamas in Tibet historically and even to the present day. This concealment, aided and abetted by the squeamishness and obliviousness of some scholars, has to stop. In the dharma centers I was involved in, anything dark in Tibetan lore was relegated to the Bön religion, and the implication was that once Buddhism took hold in Tibet, any kind of evil acts such as harming or killing sentient beings was completely off the table. The truth is that black magic is in the lexicon of the highest lamas in the lineage as well as ngakpas and others. I believe these techniques are used liberally and current scholarship is finally exposing it.

Solomon G. FitzHerbert’s study of the mid-seventeenth century makes the core point plainly. He argues that tantric ritual and the rhetoric of ritual violence were central to how the Ganden Phodrang state established and legitimated power, not a peripheral curiosity. He writes that Tibetan sources “more than compensate” for the lack of hard military data with abundant materials about the “legitimation and maintenance of authority” through ritual technologies and narratives.¹

Before the rise of the Fifth Dalai Lama, Tibet’s Tsang rulers were already forging political alliances through tantric warfare. FitzHerbert shows that the Tsang kings deliberately patronized lamas famed for their mastery of wrathful and repelling rites. The most favored were the hierarchs of the Karma Kagyu, the “black hat” Karmapa and the “red hat” Zhamarpa, along with the Jonang scholar Taranatha, who was also enjoined to perform repelling rituals on behalf of his patrons.² Their alliances were explicitly religious and martial: an “ecumenical alliance in the name of defending religion and Tibet from foreign armies.”³

Among the Tsang rulers’ most celebrated ritual specialists was the Nyingma master Sokdokpa Lodrö Gyeltsen (1552–1624), self-styled “Repeller of Mongols.”⁴ A disciple of Zhikpo Lingpa, Sokdokpa was the main heir to the revealed cycle Twenty-Five Ways of Repelling Armies (Dmag zlog nyi shu rtsa lnga).⁵ His Mongol-repelling rites were widely famed, and he worked directly with the Tsang ruler Phuntsok Namgyel. One elaborate rite performed in 1605 to coincide with a Tsang military offensive involved producing “some 150,000 paper effigies of enemy soldiers.”⁶ These were ritually destroyed to annihilate the opposing force, with Bonpo specialists also enlisted for their expertise in magical harm.⁷

According to FitzHerbert, Phüntsok Namgyel successfully forged a broad anti-Geluk alliance using tantric technologies of protection and destruction.⁸ After his death, “reputedly at the hands of offensive magic being hurled at him by the Shabdrung Nawang Namgyal (Zhabsdrung Ngag dbang rnam rgyal) (1594–1651), founder of the state of Bhutan,”⁹ his son Karma Tenkyong (1604–1642) inherited a weakened position. The Shabdrung’s tantric assault, still treated in Bhutanese and Tibetan sources as a historical fact, thus became the legendary moment when a ruler famed for weaponizing ritual power was himself undone by it. It is one of the rare episodes where the logic of esoteric warfare entered the realm of accepted political history.

This is where the Fifth Dalai Lama comes into focus. FitzHerbert shows that in the 17th century the Great Fifth cultivated and systematized an official repertoire of destructive and protective rites in service of government aims. In his words, the Dalai Lama showed a “lifelong concern with learning, authoring and instituting an armory of defensive and offensive rituals for the mobilization of unseen forces” for the state.¹⁰ That program contributed to the Ganden Phodrang’s reputation for “magical power,” and helped stage what FitzHerbert calls the grandest “theatre state” in Tibetan Buddhist history.¹¹

FitzHerbert details three overlapping strategies. First, the new government suppressed, marginalized, or co-opted rival traditions of war magic associated with other schools, including Karma Kagyu and strands within Nyingma, while appropriating selective cycles that could be redeployed under Geluk authority.¹² Second, it rebuilt Nyingma institutions such as Dorjé Drak and Mindröling under Ganden Phodrang patronage, folding their esoteric prestige into the state project.¹³ Third, it sponsored new state rituals based on the Dalai Lama’s own visionary experiences, further centralizing ritual power in Lhasa.¹⁴

The rhetoric was not merely devotional. Lamas and ritual specialists acted as “bodyguards” whose professional task was destructive magic on behalf of patrons.¹⁵ Chroniclers attributed battlefield outcomes to the rites of powerful tantrikas. FitzHerbert highlights Chökyi Drakpa, famed for the Yamantaka cycle known as the “Ultra-Repelling Fiery Razor,” which centered on rites of “protecting, repelling and killing.”¹⁶ In one report, after deploying these rites against a Tümed encampment, “nothing was left behind but a name.”¹⁷

To grasp how such violence could be framed as meritorious, FitzHerbert shows the tantric logic that recasts killing as an enlightened “action” when performed by an empowered adept. The adept receives empowerment, performs extensive propitiation to forge identification with the deity, and then “incite[s]” and “dispatch[es]” oath-bound spirits to defend the dharma. By manipulating the five elements and the “public non-reality” of appearances, the practitioner can pacify, increase, control, or destroy, including against human enemies.¹⁸ The moral frame is clear in the sources he cites and translates. Killing is made licit because it is tantric, ritually purified and redirected as enlightened activity.¹⁹

FitzHerbert also situates Tibetan practices within a longer Indo-Buddhist lineage of war magic. He surveys Indian materials that speak of sainyastambha or army-repelling rites, and notes that the Hevajra states that “black magic for paralyzing armies,” is part of its “manifold purpose” and that the Kālacakra includes descriptions of war machines and siege methods such as “catapults, traps, siege towers, and so on,” alongside esoteric harm and protection.²⁰ He further notes the use of human effigies and effigy destruction in offensive rites against enemies, a hallmark of Tibetan ritual repertoires that drew on wider South Asian and even Indo-European precedents.²¹

Western idealization of Tibetan Buddhism has depended on ignoring this record. The lamas who administered and celebrated these rites were not outliers. They were the architects of a political order that fused charisma, ritual terror, and doctrinal justifications into a program of power. State-sponsored ritual violence was normalized in chronicles and hagiographies as enlightened means. The fact pattern is no longer obscure. It is all in the sources, and FitzHerbert has laid them out.

Although FitzHerbert’s focus is on state-sponsored ritual violence, similar technologies of harm have long been used by individual lamas against perceived enemies including, at times, their own disciples. The anthropologist Geoffrey Samuel has noted that the ritual power claimed by tantric masters can be turned inward, weaponizing spiritual authority to punish dissent or enforce obedience.²² In one well-documented episode from the nineteenth century, the treasure-revealer (tertön) Dorje Lingpa was said to have struck down a rival practitioner through wrathful ritual means, his death interpreted locally as a karmic consequence of opposing the lama’s command.²³ Such stories attest to a cultural logic in which ritual, psychic, or physical violence by enlightened masters could be valorized as the just expression of awakened power. I have personally been a victim of this deluded violent ritual power by Tibetan masters.

If Tibetan Buddhism is to be understood honestly outside Tibet, this history needs to be taught in dharma centers and discussed in scholarship without euphemism. The tradition’s own categories allow for destructive ritual and sanctified killing under certain conditions. Pretending otherwise does not protect the innocent devotees who arrive at dharma centers with open hearts seeking methods for developing compassion and loving kindness in service of enlightenment. Indeed, one must ask what kind of enlightenment tradition could allow, even glorify such violence.

Notes

FitzHerbert, Rituals as War Propaganda, 91. FitzHerbert, Solomon G. “Rituals as War Propaganda in the Establishment of the Tibetan Ganden Phodrang State in the Mid-17th Century.” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 27 (2018): 49–119: https://www.persee.fr/doc/asie_0766-1177_2018_num_27_1_1508. (I first came across FitzHerbert’s article via a post on Adele Tomlin’s website http://www.dakinitranslations.com.)
Ibid., 95–96.
Ibid., 95.
Ibid., 96.
Ibid., 96.
Ibid., 97.
Ibid., 97.
Ibid., 101.
Ibid., 102–103.
Ibid., 94.
Ibid., 95.
Ibid., 96.
Ibid., 97.
Ibid., 98.
Ibid., 93.
Ibid., 100.
Ibid., 101.
Ibid., 71.
Ibid., 72.
Ibid., 98–99.
Ibid., 99.
Geoffrey Samuel, Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), pp. 429–432.
Cathy Cantwell and Robert Mayer, “Representations of wrathful deities in treasure literature,” in Tantric Revisionings: New Understandings of Tibetan Buddhism and Indian Religion (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 131–133.

The “Civilized” Shaman: Geoffrey Samuel and the Tension at the Heart of the Tibetan Religion

October 21, 2025October 21, 2025 mim

In Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies, Geoffrey Samuel offers a sweeping anthropology of Tibetan religion that refuses to take Tibetan Buddhism at face value. He finds a living tradition shaped by older and more unruly forces beneath the polished scholastic surface of the monasteries. What emerges is a civilization of monks and magicians, of disciplined philosophers and ecstatic ritualists. His argument is simple but radical: Tibetan Buddhism is the result of Indian Buddhist ethics and philosophy meeting the shamanic substratum of the high plateau.¹

Two orientations: clerical and shamanic

Samuel organizes Tibetan religion around two poles. The first, the clerical or monastic orientation, descends from Indian Buddhism with its monasteries, ethical codes, and scholastic systems of thought. It values restraint, karmic causality, and the gradual cultivation of enlightenment. The second, the shamanic orientation, grows from indigenous Tibetan practices centered on ritual efficacy, spirit interaction, and the manipulation of unseen forces. This orientation values power (dbang) more than purity and treats ritual specialists not as moral exemplars but as technicians of spiritual power.²

These two strands were never simply reconciled. Tibetan civilization attempted to domesticate the shaman. The ecstatic healer and spirit-fighter was refashioned into a lama, wrapped in robes and scriptures yet still capable of commanding spirits, averting misfortune, or destroying an enemy through ritual means. The civilized shaman is not a metaphor. It is a social type, the institutionalized magician of a literate Buddhist society.³

Dark rituals and the question of subjugation

The most uncomfortable continuity between these worlds lies in the domain of ritual violence, what Tibetan sources call drag-po or wrathful rites. These practices are directed not toward enlightenment but toward control: the binding, subduing, or annihilation of obstructing forces, whether demonic, psychic, or human.⁴

Samuel interprets these rites not as moral aberrations but as necessary expressions of the shamanic orientation within a Buddhist frame. Indian Buddhism had long flirted with magical power but kept it at the margins of monastic life. In Tibet, ritual mastery became central. The same lama who taught compassion might also perform a subjugation rite, using effigies, mantras, and visualizations of wrathful deities to annihilate obstacles, whether spiritual or human. Such practices, found in the Nyingma and Kagyu tantric cycles and institutionalized in monastic ritual manuals, embody a logic foreign to classical Indian soteriology yet native to shamanic cosmology, the idea that power must be met with power.⁵

What makes these rites “civilized” is not their ethical domestication but their integration into a bureaucratic religion. The Tibetan monastery became a regulated arena for managing violence and transforming it into ritual performance. The monastic code that forbade killing also licensed symbolic destruction: paper effigies burned, dough figures pierced, and demons tamed through mantras.⁶ This was how a society of monks could still believe in, and even engage in, acts of ritual aggression.

Power and legitimacy

Samuel’s analysis is more about social structure than theology. The clerical orientation secured legitimacy through moral authority and learning, while the shamanic orientation maintained relevance through immediate and pragmatic results. The former built monasteries; the latter kept communities going amid famine, disease, and invasion. Tibetan Buddhism’s durability, he argues, comes from this uneasy synthesis. The scholar-monk and the ritual adept needed each other: the first to lend doctrine and order, the second to command the spirits that haunted every valley and household.⁷

In this light, the dark rituals of subjugation are not aberrations but instruments of governance. They discipline the chaotic powers of the landscape just as the monastery disciplines the passions of the mind. To them, the wrathful deity is not a contradiction of compassion but its shadow: compassion armed.

Rethinking the “Buddhist” in Tibetan Buddhism

Samuel’s greatest contribution may be to unsettle what we think “Buddhist” means. By treating Tibetan religion as a field of interacting orientations rather than a single orthodoxy, he exposes the limits of modern, idealized Buddhism. The vision of Tibet as a purely pacific, philosophical culture depends on forgetting the tantric rites that promise to destroy human enemies or subjugate spirits.⁸ Samuel does not moralize about this tension; he historicizes it. The so-called civilized shaman is a figure born of necessity, mediating between an imported moral system and an indigenous world of volatile gods.⁹

A note on tantra as the mediating field

Samuel does not treat Hindu tantra as a third, independent strand within Tibetan Buddhism. Rather, he presents tantric practice as the meeting ground of the clerical and shamanic orientations. By the time tantra reached Tibet, Indian Buddhism had already absorbed many Śaiva and Śākta elements. What Tibet inherited, therefore, was a fully developed tantric Buddhism rather than a simple blend of Buddhist and Hindu ideas. In Samuel’s account, tantra provided the channel through which shamanic power could operate within a clerical framework. It was the mechanism that allowed ecstatic and ritual techniques to coexist with the disciplines of monastic scholarship.

He also describes tantric Buddhism in Tibet as a two-way exchange. The imported Indian systems of Hevajra, Guhyasamāja, Cakrasaṃvara, and others were reinterpreted through local cosmologies of mountain gods, territorial spirits, and ancestral deities. The result was what he calls “tantricized shamanism” or “shamanized Buddhism.” While Hindu tantra was one historical source, the Tibetan tantric complex became a hybrid formation that expressed shamanic cosmology through Buddhist doctrine.¹⁰

The afterlife of the civilized shaman

Civilized Shamans was published in 1993, before the wave of globalized Tibetan Buddhism tried to reframe lamas as psychologists or humanitarians. Yet its insight remains vital. Beneath every system of enlightenment lies a system of control. The Tibetan synthesis worked precisely because it did not abolish the shamanic element. It incorporated it, turning ecstatic violence into liturgy and spirit warfare into cosmology.¹¹

For those interested in understanding tantric practice, especially the darker currents of subjugation and protection, Samuel’s anthropology is a cautionary mirror. It reminds us that ritual power is never purely symbolic. Even when intellectualized, it retains the logic of coercion: to bind, to summon, to annihilate. Tibet’s civilization was built on mastering such forces. The tension Samuel describes is not an accident of history but a model of how Tibetan religion evolved. Civilized shamans appear wherever doctrine meets magic, wherever ethics must coexist with power. Tibet made that paradox explicit.¹²

Notes

Geoffrey Samuel, Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), 11–13.
Samuel, Civilized Shamans, 11–12, 134–136.
Ibid., 478–480.
Ibid., 238–240.
Ibid., 259–262.
Ibid., 468–471.
Ibid., 465–469.
Ibid., 244–246, 478.
Ibid., 479–482.
Ibid., 66–74, 242–243, 476–478, 480–481.
Ibid., 476–479.
Ibid., 481–482.

Christianity in Tibet: The Legacy of Jesuit Priest Ippolito Desideri

October 16, 2025October 16, 2025 mim

For centuries, Tibet has been a land that captures the imagination of the West: a high, remote world where spiritual and philosophical traditions intertwine with the stark beauty of the Himalayas. Among the earliest Westerners to truly engage with Tibetan thought was Ippolito Desideri, a Jesuit priest from Tuscany whose intellect, linguistic mastery, and deep curiosity made him one of the most remarkable missionaries of the early modern era. His work in the early 18th century stands as the first sustained encounter between Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism, marked not by confrontation but by a rare spirit of dialogue.

Early life and mission

Born in Pistoia in 1684, Desideri joined the Society of Jesus and quickly established himself as a scholar and teacher. His ambition was missionary work, and in 1712 he left Europe for India under the Jesuit Province of Goa. After years of difficult travel through Delhi, Kashmir, and Ladakh, he entered Lhasa on March 18, 1716. The Mongol ruler Lhasang Khan granted him permission to reside and study, marking the beginning of one of the most extraordinary intellectual encounters in religious history.¹

Tibet and the Capuchin dispute

Unknown to Desideri at the time, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith had already granted the Capuchin order exclusive rights over the Tibetan mission in 1703. This bureaucratic decision set the stage for a long jurisdictional dispute that would eventually cut short his work. In 1718, Propaganda Fide reaffirmed its assignment to the Capuchins and ordered the Jesuits to withdraw. After years of correspondence and litigation in Rome, a final decree in 1732 confirmed the Capuchins’ claim to Tibet.²

Immersion in Tibetan learning

In Lhasa, Desideri did what few missionaries before or since have attempted: he learned Tibetan thoroughly, studied Buddhist philosophy at Sera Monastery, and debated with monks in their own scholastic format. When the Dzungar invasion disrupted the capital in late 1717, he moved to Dakpo, where he continued to write and teach until his departure in 1721.³

Desideri’s approach was remarkable for its intellectual humility and rigor. He sought not to denounce Buddhism from ignorance but to understand it from within. By studying logic, metaphysics, and the Abhidharma, he entered into dialogue with the most sophisticated thinkers of his day in Tibet.

The Tibetan writings

Between 1718 and 1721 Desideri composed several original works in Tibetan. These writings, preserved in manuscripts now held in Rome and elsewhere, represent the earliest sustained Christian philosophical literature written in the Tibetan language.

Tho rangs (“The Dawn”). An introductory dialogue presenting Christianity as the light that dispels ignorance and prepares the reader for deeper argumentation.⁴
Lo snying po (“Essence of the Doctrine”). A concise catechism that sets out the essentials of Christian theology in the format of a Tibetan scholastic summary.⁵
’Byun k’uns (“Origin of Living Beings and of All Things”). A detailed critique of Buddhist cosmology and rebirth, arguing for a First Cause and a created order.⁶
Nes legs (“The Supreme Good and Final End”). A philosophical exploration of the highest good, contrasting Christian teleology with Buddhist conceptions of nirvana.⁷

These works reveal a unique attempt to translate Thomistic metaphysics into the conceptual world of Tibetan Buddhism. Desideri employed debate forms familiar to the Geluk school and structured his reasoning through syllogisms recognizable to monastic scholars.⁸

His arguments against rebirth and emptiness

Desideri’s philosophical engagement centered on two main critiques of Buddhist doctrine: the cycle of rebirth and the concept of emptiness.

He argued that the karmic theory of rebirth fails to explain the origin of the first sentient beings, since it presupposes an infinite regress of prior lives without an initial cause. The moral and causal order of the universe, he wrote, points instead to an intelligent Creator who is both the origin and sustainer of being.⁹

Regarding emptiness (śūnyatā), Desideri contended that the very notion of dependent origination implies the existence of something independent. If everything is contingent and conditioned, reason demands an unconditioned ground. For Desideri, that ground is God, the necessary and self-subsistent cause of all things.¹⁰ He thus turned Tibetan logic toward a Christian conclusion, using the same tools his interlocutors used to defend their own tradition.

Conflict with the Capuchins and departure

While Desideri’s intellectual project flourished, his position within the Catholic hierarchy collapsed. The Capuchins, already active in Lhasa, viewed the Jesuits as intruders and appealed to Rome. After Propaganda Fide confirmed their authority, Desideri was ordered to leave Tibet in 1721. He made his way through India and returned to Europe in 1728, where he spent years defending the Jesuits’ case before ultimately submitting to the Vatican’s ruling.¹¹

The great narrative: Notizie istoriche del Tibet

Back in Rome, Desideri composed Notizie istoriche del Tibet (“Historical Notices of Tibet”), an extraordinary blend of ethnography, travel narrative, and theological reflection. In it, he described Tibetan geography, society, and religion with unprecedented detail and sympathy. Modern readers can access this work in the English translation Mission to Tibet by Michael Sweet and Leonard Zwilling, as well as in Donald Lopez and Thupten Jinpa’s Dispelling the Darkness.¹²

Legacy

Desideri died in 1733, only a year after the final Vatican ruling. His Tibetan manuscripts remained largely unknown until rediscovered in the 19th century. Today, he is recognized not only as a pioneering missionary but as a scholar who took the intellectual and spiritual life of Tibet seriously. His work stands as an early model of interreligious understanding, where dialogue was pursued through reason, language, and genuine respect.

Modern scholars such as Trent Pomplun, Donald Lopez, Thupten Jinpa, and Guido Stucco have shown that Desideri’s project anticipated later comparative philosophy by centuries. His writings remain a testimony to a unique moment when a European Jesuit and Tibetan monks met across the boundaries of faith to ask the same ultimate questions about being, purpose, and salvation.¹³

Footnotes

Wikipedia, “Ippolito Desideri.”
Michael J. Sweet, “Desperately Seeking Capuchins,” Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu.
Donald S. Lopez Jr. and Thupten Jinpa, Dispelling the Darkness: A Jesuit’s Quest for the Soul of Tibet.
Guido Stucco, When Thomas Aquinas Met Nāgārjuna (includes translation of The Dawn).
Elaine M. Robson, “A Christian Catechism in Tibetan,” University of Bristol thesis.
Guido Stucco, When Thomas Aquinas Met Nāgārjuna (translation of The Origin of Living Beings).
Opere tibetane di Ippolito Desideri, S.J., vol. IV (Toscano, ed.).
Trent Pomplun, Jesuit on the Roof of the World: Ippolito Desideri’s Encounter with Tibetan Buddhism.
Guido Stucco, When Thomas Aquinas Met Nāgārjuna, commentary section.
Lopez and Jinpa, Dispelling the Darkness, analysis of Desideri’s argument on emptiness.
Sweet, “Desperately Seeking Capuchins.”
Ippolito Desideri, Mission to Tibet: The Extraordinary Eighteenth-Century Account, trans. Sweet, ed. Zwilling.
Pomplun, Jesuit on the Roof of the World.

A Brief History of Christianity in Tibet

October 16, 2025November 23, 2025 mim

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

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

Tertons, Termas, and the Curious Origins of Hidden Teachings

October 7, 2025October 11, 2025 mim

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:

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).
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).
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).

The Slow Dawning: Rethinking Tibetan Tantric Buddhism

September 14, 2025October 17, 2025 mim

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

September 13, 2025September 28, 2025 mim

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

September 12, 2025November 7, 2025 mim

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

September 7, 2025September 9, 2025 mim

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

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).
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.
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).
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.
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.
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”).
“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.
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).
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

September 4, 2025September 5, 2025 mim

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.