Tag: tormas

Sacrifice, Favor, Repeat

mim

Before the modern age romanticized pagan religions into New Age panaceas, ancient worship was known to be raw and brutally pragmatic. In our modern spiritual-industrial complex, it is often sugarcoated into some kind of warm, earth-loving ceremony filled with personal empowerment and divine intimacy. But if you’re reading this, you’re probably already suspicious of that narrative.

In fact ancient religion, pagan religion, was highly transactional. The gods didn’t love you. They didn’t weep over your suffering or aspire to protect you.

A passage from Behold the Christ: Proclaiming the Gospel of Matthew by Leroy A. Huizenga makes this brutally clear. Pagan worship, he writes, operated on the ancient principle of do ut des: “I give so that you give back.”(1) In other words, the gods and humans used each other. You offered sacrifices, incense, food, or praise not out of adoration, but because you wanted something in return: good crops, protection in war, fertility, rain, wealth, healing, vengeance, and victory. And the gods? They wanted to be fed, praised, and kept relevant. It was mutual exploitation dressed up in sacred costume.

“That is, the worshipper provides a sacrifice to a god that pleases and empowers the god, who then turns around and does the worshipper favors. Because the gods are often indifferent to humans, worshippers engage in repeated ritual to reach out and get a god’s attention.”

This paragraph says more about ancient spirituality than most modern New Age books on “manifesting” or “connecting with the divine.” The ancients weren’t confused. They understood that the gods were powerful, unpredictable, and not especially interested in human wellbeing unless there was something in it for them.

And this wasn’t limited to Rome or Greece. Versions of do ut des appear in Vedic sacrifice, Mesopotamian temple economies, and also Tantric Buddhist practice where offerings are made to wrathful deities to invoke, control, or appease.

Nowhere is this transactional logic more systematized and ritualized to the point of industrial precision than in Tibetan Buddhism. While cloaked in the language of enlightenment and compassion, the tradition is saturated with mechanisms that mirror the ancient do ut des economy: elaborate offerings, incense, butter lamps, mandalas, and tormas (sacrificial cakes that replaced blood offerings when the Buddhist principle of ahimsa “non-harming” took root). These were given not out of unconditional reverence, but to elicit specific outcomes from specific deities. Monastic liturgies are not just meditative recitations, but are negotiations with a pantheon of wrathful and peaceful beings, each with their own preferences, powers, and temperaments. Moreover, the non-harming sentiment in Tibetan Buddhism only extends so far. While Buddhist tantra forbids blood sacrifice, its subjugation rituals, aimed at both spiritual and human enemies, can involve some of the most brutal punishments found in any ritual religion.

Drupchöd ceremonies, held in large monasteries, exemplify this beautifully. These are days- or weeks-long ritual marathons involving collective chanting, visualization, music, mudras, and vast offerings, all designed to propitiate deities into bestowing protection, wisdom, and worldly benefits like health and prosperity. Whether invoking Mahakala to remove obstacles or Tara for swift blessings, the assumption is clear: the deity acts when properly fed, praised, and invoked. The gods (or enlightened beings, depending on your doctrinal parsing) are not passively watching; they’re participants in a cosmic economy, and Tibetan Buddhism, more than almost any other tradition, has mastered the bureaucratic apparatus needed to transact with them. It’s not just about personal devotion. It’s about correct performance, correct offerings, and the correct “exchange rate” of ritual. The love of the gods is not assumed. Their attention must be earned over and over again.

Modern Takeaways and a Warning

This transactional pattern isn’t limited to ancient paganism or esoteric Tibetan ritualism. You’ll find the same spiritual economy alive and well in the darker corners of contemporary occultism. Take it from someone like Riaan Swiegelaar who’s lived on the other side: former Satanists and occult practitioners routinely speak of offering sacrifices, especially blood, to demons in order to negotiate outcomes.(2)

He described it well: “A lot of people ask me, ‘Why are there so many sacrifices in Satanism? Why is there blood?’ The answer is simple: blood has currency in the spirit world. If I want to negotiate with demons, I need to bring an [animal] sacrifice because that blood holds value. It functions as spiritual capital.

“But here’s the contrast: the blood of Jesus is the highest currency in the spirit world. It covers everything. That’s the authority we stand on. And every ex-Satanist or ex-occultist who’s encountered Christ will tell you the same thing. I might be the only one talking about it openly, but this is real: we engaged in negotiations with demons, offered animal sacrifices, and got results. That’s how the system worked. Then we experienced the blood and love of Christ and there’s no comparison. It’s not even close. His blood is infinitely more powerful. In spiritual warfare, people need to grasp that reality. The blood of Christ is free, but it is not cheap, is it? It came at the highest cost. And what happened on the cross? That wasn’t a one-time transaction in history: it remains as valid, active, and potent today as it was then, and always will be.”

This is so important that it bears repeating: no spiritual currency, no ritual offering, no demonic pact compares to the raw, unmatched power of the blood of Christ. This is the rupture at the heart of Christianity: the economy of sacrifice is over, not because gods stopped demanding payment, but because one sacrifice bankrupted the system.

From blood-soaked altars in Babylon to ritual offering tormas in Himalayan monasteries, humanity has always traded devotion for power and offerings for favor. But the cross flipped the script. There is no more need for bartering, manipulation, and performance to win divine attention. What Christ offered wasn’t another payment into the cosmic vending machine but a final act that rendered the machine obsolete. And if that’s true, then every attempt to re-enter the old system, whether through pagan ritual, tantric bureaucracy, or occult negotiation, isn’t just a return to tradition. It’s a rejection of victory.

(1) Leroy A. Huizenga, Behold the Christ: Proclaiming the Gospel of Matthew (Emmaus Road Publishing, Steubenville, Ohio).

(2) Riaan Swiegelaar, former co-founder of the South African Satanic Church, in various public testimonies including interviews and livestreams (e.g., “Riaan Swiegelaar Testimony,” YouTube, 2022), has spoken openly about blood sacrifice as spiritual currency and his eventual conversion after experiencing the love of Christ.

The Darker Side of Tormas: Ritual Implements of Subjugation and Harm in Tibetan Tantric Practice

mim

Tormas, those colorful, often conical sculptures made of barley flour, butter, and symbolic color, are widely recognized in Tibetan Buddhism as ritual offerings to deities. They are often seen as objects of devotion, used to accumulate merit and cultivate compassion. But there is another seldom discussed dimension of torma practice: their use in rituals of subjugation. These are aimed at destroying enemies, silencing dissenters, and even killing.

This article isn’t written for shock value or out of cultural disrespect. It comes from a deep need for transparency. I practiced within Tibetan Buddhism for decades, and what I discovered about the weaponization of these ritual objects came not from hearsay or internet rumors, but from firsthand experience, insider teachings, and years of quiet observation that finally crystallized into understanding.

What Are Tormas?

Tormas are empowered physical representations of deities as well as their palaces and mandalas. They also serve as offerings to the deities. Some types of tormas are used for offerings to spirits, and as weapons against obstructive spirits or humans. Other types of tormas known as “effigies” serve as targets. They are not merely symbolic. In Vajrayana practice, the effigies serve as “substitute bodies” for the consciousness of beings, meaning that a torma can become the ritual stand-in for an actual person. When a torma is offered, burned, stabbed, buried, or fed to spirits, it is not just a prop. It is, ritually speaking, a direct vessel for action.

In general, use of tormas can be for peaceful or wrathful purposes.

Categories of Harmful Tormas

While Western practitioners are often taught the “peaceful” or “blissful” uses of tormas (such as offering to bodhisattvas or for pacifying illnesses), most Tibetan tantric lineages include  the “four activities” of pacifying, enriching, magnetizing, and subjugating. These last two, magnetizing and subjugating, can lead to dangerous territory.

Here are some of the more occult, wrathful uses of tormas:

1. Subjugation of Enemies

Tormas are used to summon wrathful deities, who are then directed to “crush” or “bind” an enemy’s consciousness. This includes ritual domination of the enemy’s will, health, and spiritual power.

2. “Black Torma” Killings

Some lineages include advanced practices where a torma is empowered as the life force of a person. The torma is ritually destroyed: stabbed, burned, or fed to spirits. The goal is to destroy the target’s body, mind, or soul. In some cases, the practitioner prays explicitly for the target’s death.

3. “Torma of Speech Destruction”

These are used to silence critics or opposing religious figures. The practitioner invokes wrathful deities to sever the “enemy’s” speech, discredit them, or even cause them to go mad.

4. Sending Spirits via Tormas

Tormas can serve as carriers or offerings to nefarious spirits, binding the target’s consciousness to entities tasked with tormenting them. This can result in psychic invasion, night terrors, loss of mental clarity, or obsession.

Why This Needs to Be Talked About

These rituals are rarely, if ever, disclosed to outsiders. In fact, many lamas downplay them entirely until a student is “ripe” for higher teachings. But many practitioners have felt the effects of these rituals without knowing what they are. Unexplained breakdowns, spiritual confusion, sudden illness, and relational collapse often follow a break with the guru or a breach of samaya. We are told it is just our karma, but sometimes, it’s a ritual backlash.

If this sounds unbelievable, I understand. It sounded unbelievable to me, too, until I experienced it firsthand.

These practices are not just theoretical. They are happening now, in retreat centers and monasteries in India, Nepal and the West, in ritual rooms, behind closed doors. And their effects are very real.

Who Is Most at Risk?

  • Former students who break samaya or speak out
  • Critics of the guru or institution
  • Those perceived as spiritual “competitors”
  • Women who reject inappropriate advances
  • Outsiders who get too close to the truth

Reclaiming Truth

This article is not an indictment of all Tibetan teachers or practitioners. There are sincere people within the tradition who reject the use of harmful rites. But silence around these rituals has enabled a culture of fear, manipulation, and unchecked spiritual abuse.

It’s time to talk about it. The torma is not always what it seems. What looks like a simple offering on the altar may, in some cases, be a vessel of vengeance. We must not look away. If we really care deeply about the benefit of “all sentient beings” we must expose the truth about the dark side of tormas and their harmful uses in tantric Tibetan Buddhism.