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The Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Part
II – 8. Magic as a political instrument
© Victor & Victoria Trimondi
8. MAGIC AS A POLITICAL INSTRUMENT
Since his flight from Tibet (in
1959), the Fourteenth Dalai Lama has negotiated
the international political and cultural stage
like a sensitive democrat and enlightened man
of the world. As a matter of course he lays claim
to all the western “virtues” of humanism, freedom
of opinion, rational argument, belief in technical
and scientific progress, etc. One gains the impression
that he is an open-minded and modern president
of a modern nation, who masterfully combines his
cosmopolitanism with an elevated, spiritually
based, ethical system. But this practical, reasoning
facade is deceptive. Behind it is hidden a deeply
rooted belief in supernatural powers and magic
practices which are supposed to exercise a decisive
influence upon social and political events.
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. [1]
For the demons to appear they have
to be offered the appropriate objects of their
lust as a sacrifice, each class of devil having
its own particular taste. René von Nebesky-Wojkowitz
describes a number of culinary specialties from
the Lamaist “demon recipe books”: cakes made of
dark flour and blood; five different sorts of
meat, including human flesh; the skull of the
child of an incestuous relationship filled with
blood and mustard seeds; the skin of a boy; bowls
of blood and brain; a lamp filled with human fat
with a wick made of human hair; and a dough like
mixture of gall, brain, blood and human entrails
(Nebesky-Wojkowitz, 1955, p. 261).
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.
The Chinese claim that 21 individuals
were killed in this enemy ritual so that their
organs could be used to construct the huge torma. Relatives of the victims
are supposed to have testified to this (Grunfeld,
1996, p. 29).Now, one could with good reason doubt
the Chinese accusations because of the political
situation between the “Middle Kingdom” and the
“Roof of the World”, but not because they contradict
the logic of Tibetan rites of war — these have
been recorded in numerous tantric texts.
Likewise in the middle of last
century, the Yellow Hats from the Samye monastery
were commissioned by the Tibetan government with
the task of capturing the army of the red tsan
demons in four huge “cross-hairs” in order to
then send them off against the enemies of the
Land of Snows. This magic instrument, a right-angled
net of many-colored threads, stood upon a multistage
base, each of which was filled with such tantric
substances as soil form charnel fields, human
skulls, murder weapons, the tips of the noses,
hearts, and lips of men who died an unnatural
death, poisonous plants, and similar things. The
repulsive mixture was supposed to attract the
tsan like a moth to a candle,
so that they would become inescapably caught in
the spells said over the spirit trap (Nebesky-Wojkowitz,
1955, p. 258). Following the seven-day deep meditation
of a high lama it was ready and the demons could
be given the command to set out against the enemy.
Such a ritual is also said to have
summoned up a terrible earthquake and great panic
in Nepal in earlier times, when Tibet was at war
with the Nepalese. Experience had shown, however,
that it sometimes takes a long time before the
effects of such harmful rites are felt. It took
two decades after the successful occupation of
Tibet by the English (in 1904) before there was
an earthquake in the Indian province of Bihar
in which a number of British soldiers lost their
lives. The Tibetans also traced this natural disaster
back to magical activities which they had conducted
prior to the invasion.
“Voodoo magic”
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. Even so, sometimes hard-to-find
ingredients are necessary for an effective destructive
ritual, as shown by the following Buddhist ritual:
“Draw a red magic diagram in the form of a half-moon,
then write the name and lineage of the victim
on a piece of cotton which has been used to cover
the corpse of a plague victim. As ink, use the
blood of a dark-skinned Brahmin girl. Call upon
the protective deities and hold the piece of material
in black smoke. Then lay it in the magic diagram.
Swinging a magic dagger made from the bones of
a plague victim, recite the appropriate incantation
a hundred thousand times. Then place the piece
of material there where the victim makes his nightly
camp” (Nebesky-Wojkowitz, 1955, p.260). This induces
the death of the person. [2]
The same ritual text includes a
recipe for the inducement of madness: “draw a
white magic circle on the summit of a mountain
and place the figure of the victim in it which
you have to prepare from the deadly leaves of
a poisonous tree. Then write the name and lineage
of the victims on this figure with white sandalwood
resin. Hold it in the smoke from burnt human fat.
Whilst you recite the appropriate spell, take
a demon dagger made of bone in your right hand
and touch the head of the figure with it. Finally,
leave it behind in a place where mamo demonesses are in the
habit of congregating” (Nebesky-Wojkowitz, 1955,
p. 261).
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. In it there a number
of variations upon the so-called gan tad ritual are also described:
a man or a woman depicting the victim are drawn
in the center of a circle. They are shackled with
heavy chains around their hands and feet. Around
the figures the tantra master has written harmful
sayings like the following. “the life be cut,
the heart be cut, the body be cut, the power be
cut, the descent be cut” (Nebesky-Wojkowitz, 1993,
p. 483). The latter means that the victim’s relatives
should also be destroyed. Now the menstrual blood
of a prostitute must be dripped onto the spells,
the drawings are given hair and nails. According
to some texts a little dirt scraped from a shoe,
or some plaster from the victim’s house are sufficient.
Then the ritual master folds the paper up in a
piece of cloth. The whole thing is stuffed into
a yak’s horn with further horrible ingredients
which we would rather not have to list. Gloves
have to be worn when conducting the ritual, since
the substances can have most harmful effects upon
the magician if he comes into contact with them.
In a cemetery he entreats an army of demons to
descend upon the horn and impregnate it with their
destructive energy. Then it is buried on the land
of the enemy, who dies soon afterwards.
The “Great Fifth” is supposed to
have performed a “voodoo” ritual for the defeat
of the Kagyupa and the Tsang clan in the Ganden
monastery temple. He regarded them, “whose spirit
has been clouded by Mara and their devotion to
the Karmapa”, as enemies of the faith (Ahmad,
1970, p. 103). In the ritual, a likeness of the
Prince of Tsang in the form of a torma (dough cake) was employed.
Incorporated into the dough figure were the blood
of a boy fallen in the battles, human flesh, beer,
poison, and so on. 200 years later, when the Tibetans
went to war with the Nepalese, the lamas had a
substitute made of the commander of the Nepalese
army and conducted a destructive ritual with this.
The commander died soon after and the enemy army’s
plans for invasion had to be abandoned (Nebesky-Wojkowitz,
1993, p. 495).
Among other things, Tibetan magic
is premised upon the existence of a force or energy
possessed by every living creature and which is
known as la. However, this life energy
does not need to be stored within a person, it
can be found completely outside of them, in a
lake, a mountain, a tree, or an animal for instance.
A person can also possess several las. If one of his energy
centers is attacked or destroyed he is able to
regenerate himself out of the others. Among aristocrats
and high lamas we may find the la
in “royal” animals like the snow lion, bears,
tigers, or elephants. For the “middle class” of
society we have animals like the ox, horse, yak,
sheep, or mule, and for the lower classes the
rat, dog, and scorpion. The la can also keep alive a family,
a tribe, or a whole people. For example, Lake
Yamdrok is said to contain the life energy of
the Tibetan nation and there is a saying that
the whole people would die out if it went dry.
There is in fact a rumor among the Tibetans in
exile that the Chinese planned to drain the entire
lake (Tibetan Review, January 1992,
p. 4).
If a tantra master wants to put
an enemy out of action through magic, then he
must find his la and launch a ritual attack
upon it. This is of course also true for political
opponents. If the life energy of an enemy is hidden
in a tree, for instance, then it makes sense to
fell it. The opponent would instantly collapse.
Every lama is supposed on principle to be capable
of locating the la of a person via astrology and
clairvoyance.
Magic wonder weapons
In the armories of the Kalachakra Tantra and of the
“Great Fifth”, we find the “magic wheel with the
sword spokes”, described by a contemporary lama
in the following words: “It is a magic weapon
of fearsome efficacy, a great wheel with eight
razor-edge sharpened swords as spokes. Our magicians
employed it a long time ago in the battle against
foreign intruders. The wheel was charged with
magic forces and then loosed upon the enemy. It
flew spinning through the air at the enemy troops
and its rapidly rotating spikes mowed the soldiers
down in their hundreds. The devastation wrought
by this weapon was so terrible that the government
forbade that it ever be used again. The authorities
even ordered that all plans for its construction
be destroyed” (Nebesky-Wojkowitz, 1955, p. 257).
A further magic appliance, which
was, albeit without success, still put to use
under the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, was to be found
in a Yellow Hat monastery near Lhasa (Kardo Gompa).
It was referred to as the “mill of the death demons”
and consisted of two small round stones resting
upon each other, the upper one of which could
be rotated. René von Nebesky-Wojkowitz reports
how the lamas started up this killing machine
in 1950 at the beginning of the conflict with
China: “The 'Mill of the Death Demons' was employed
by the Tibetan government to kill the leaders
of the opposing party. A priest who was especially
experienced in the arts of black magic was appointed
by the authorities to operate the instrument.
In meditations extending over weeks he had to
try to transfer the life energy (la) of the people he was supposed
to kill into a number of mustard seeds. If he
noticed from curtains indications that he had
succeeded, then he laid the seeds between the
stones and crushed them. .... The exterminating
force which emanated from this magic appliance
is supposed to even have had its effect upon the
magician who operated it. Some of them, it is
said, died after turning the 'Mill of the Death
Demons'" (Nebesky-Wojkowitz, 1955, pp. 257-258).
The “Great Fifth” as magician
and the Fourteenth Dalai Lama
The Fifth Dalai Lama was a enthusiast
and a master of magic ritual politics. A distinction
was drawn in the ceremonies he conducted between
continuous, annually repeated state events, and
special, mostly enemy-combating events. His “rituals
[were] concerned
with power; spiritual and political”, writes Samten
Karmay, “... we stand in the arena of the dawn
of modern Tibetan history” (Karmay, 1988, p. 26).
The god-king was firmly convinced
that he owed his political victories primarily
to “the profound potency of the tantric rites”
and only secondarily to the intervention of the
Mongolians (Ahmad, 1970, p. 134). According to
a Kagyupa document, the Mongolian occupation of
the Land of Snows was the work of nine terror
gods who were freed by the Gelugpas under the
condition that they fetch the Mongolian hordes
into Tibet to protect their order. “But in the
process they brought much suffering on our land”,
we read at the close of the document (Bell, 1994,
p. 98).
The visions and practices of the
magic obsessed Fifth Dalai Lama are -as we have
already mentioned — recorded in two volumes he
wrote: firstly the Sealed and Secret Biography
and then the Golden
Manuscript. This abundantly illustrated book
of rituals, which resembles the notorious grimoires (books of magic)
of the European Middle Ages, was, in the master’s
own words, written “for all those who wish to
do drawings and paintings of the heavens and the
deities” (Karmay, 1988, p. 19). [3]
Magic drawing from the Golden Manuscript of the Fifth Dalai Lama
We have no direct knowledge of
any modern “voodoo practices” performed by the
Fourteenth Dalai Lama, who has chosen the magician
prince from the 17th century, the “Great Fifth”,
as his most important model. Here, the Kundun has just as skillfully
succeeded in laying a veil over the shadowy world
of his occult ritual life as with the sexual magic
initiations of Tantrism. But there are rumors
and insinuations which allow one to suspect that
he too deliberately conducts or has conducted
such tantric killing rites.
In one case this is completely
obvious and he himself has confirmed this. Thus
we may read in the most recent edition of his
autobiography of how he staged a rite connected
to the Kalachakra
Tantra on the day of Mao Zedong’s death. „On the second the
ceremony’s three days, Mao died. And the third
day, it rained all morning. But, in the afternoon,
there appeared one of the most beautiful rainbows
I have ever seen. I was certain that it must be a good omen”
we
hear from the Dalai Lama’s own mouth (Dalai Lama XIV,
1990, 222). The
biographer of His Holiness, Claude B. Levenson,
reports of this ritual that it was a matter of
“an extremely strict practice which demanded complete
seclusion lasting several weeks combined with
a very special teaching of the Fifth Dalai Lama”
(Levenson, 1990, p. 242). Recalling the strange
death of the Empress Dowager Ci Xi and her imperial
adoptive son described above, one may well ask
whether this “strict practice” may not have been
a killing rite recorded in the Golden
Manuscript of the “Great Fifth”. In Buddhist
circles the death of Mao Zedong is also celebrated
as the victory of spiritual/magic forces over
the raw violence of materialism.
In such a context, and from a tantric/magic
viewpoint, the visiting of Deng Xiaoping by Gyalo
Thondup, one of the Dalai Lama’s brothers and
himself a tulku, to may also have a momentous
significance. Thondup negotiated with the Chinese
party head over the question of Tibet. Deng died
a few days after this meeting, on February 12,
1997 (Playboy [German edition],
March 1998, p. 44).
Mandala politics
In contrast, the Fourteenth Dalai
constantly and quite publicly conducts a magic
practice which is less spectacular, but from a
tantric point of view just as significant as the
killing of a political opponent — it is just that
this is not recognized as a act of magic. We are
talking about the construction of mandalas, especially
the Kalachakra sand mandala.
We have already reported in detail
on the homologies between a tantric mandala, the
body of a yogi, the social environment, and the
universe. Consistently thought through, this equivalence
means that the construction of a mandala must
be regarded as a magic political act. Through
a magic diagram, a tantra master can “energetically”
occupy and lay claim to the location of its construction
and the corresponding environs. People within
range of the power of such a magic architectural
construction are influenced by the mandala’s energy
and their consciousness is manipulated by it.
The Kalachakra sand mandala thus
serves not only to initiate adepts but also likewise
as a magic title of possession, with which control
over a particular territory can be legitimated.
Accordingly, the magic power of the diagram gives
its constructors the chance to symbolically conquer
new territories. One builds a magic circle (a
mandala) and “anchors” it in the region to be
claimed. Then one summonses the gods and supplicates
them to take up residence in the “mandala palace”.
(The mandala is so to speak “energized” with divine
forces.) After a particular territory has been
occupied by a mandala (or cosmogram), it is automatically
transformed into a sacred center of Buddhist cosmology.[4]
Every construction of a mandala also implies —
if one takes it seriously — the magic subjugation
of the inhabitants of the region in which the
“magic circle” is constructed.
In the case of the Kalachakra sand mandala the
places in which it has been built are transformed
into domains under the control of the Tibetan
time gods. Accordingly, from a tantric viewpoint,
the Kalachakra
mandala constructed at great expense in New York
in 1991 would be a cosmological demonstration
of power which aimed to say that the city now
stood under the governing authority or at least
spiritual influence of Kalachakra
and Vishvamata.
Since in this case it was the Fourteenth Dalai
Lama who conducted the ritual as the supreme tantra
master, he would have to be regarded as the spiritual/magic
sovereign of the metropolis. Such fantastic speculations
are a product of the ancient logic of his own
magic system, and are incompatible with our ideas.
We are nonetheless convinced that the laws of
magic affect human reality proportional to the
degree to which people believe in them.
Further, there is no doubt that
the magic diagrams evoke an exceptional fascination
in some observers. This is confirmed, for example,
by Malcolm Arth, art director of an American museum
in which Tibetan monks constructed a Kalachakra
sand mandala: “The average museum visitor spends
about ten seconds before a work of art, but for
this exhibit, time is measured in minutes, sometime
hours. Even the youngsters, who come into the
museum and run around as if it were a playground
— these same youngsters walk into this space,
and something happens to them. They're transformed”
(Bryant, 1992, pp. 245-246). The American Buddhist,
Barry Bryant, even talks of an “electric kind
of energy” which pervades the space in which the
Kalachakra
mandala is found (Bryant, 1992, p. 247).
However, what most people from
the West evaluate as a purely artistic pleasure,
is experienced by the lamas and their western
followers as a numinous encounter with supernatural
forces and powers concentrated within a mandala.
This idea can be extended so far that modern exhibitions
of Tibetan artworks can be conceived by their
Buddhist organizers as temples and initiation
paths through which the visitors knowingly or
unknowingly proceed. Mircea Eliade has described
the progression through a holy place (a temple)
in ancient times as follows: “Every ritual procession
is equivalent to a progression to the center,
and the entry into a temple repeats the entry
into a mandala in an initiation or the progress
of the kundalini through the chakras”
(Eliade, 1985, p. 253).
The major Tibet exhibition “Weisheit
und Liebe” (Wisdom and Love), on view in Bonn
in the summer of 1996 as well as at a number locations
around the world, was designed along precisely
these lines by Robert A. F. Thurman and Marylin
M. Rhie. The conception behind this exhibition,
Thurman writes, “is symbolically significant.
It ... draws its guiding principle from the mandala
of the “wheel of time” [Kalachakra], the mystic site
which embodies the perfect history and cosmos
of the Buddha. ... The arrangement of the individual
exhibits reflects the deliberate attempt to simulate
the environment of a Tibetan temple” (Thurman
and Rhie, 1996, pp. 13–14).
At the entrance one passed a Kalachakra sand mandala. The
visitor then entered the various historical phases
of Indian Buddhism arranged into separate rooms,
beginning with the legends from the life of Buddha,
then Hinayana, Mahayana, and Vajrayana. The simulated “initiatory
path” led on to Tibet passing through the four
main schools in the following order: Nyingmapa,
Sakyapa, Kagyupa, and then Gelugpa. After the
“visitor/initiand” had so to speak obtained the
secret teachings of the various sects, he or she
stepped into the final “hall” of the exhibition
temple. This was again, like the start, dedicated
to the Kalachakra Tantra.
Through the construction of this
exhibition the history of Buddhism and of Tibet
was presented as a mystery play played out over
centuries. Every single epoch in the history of
the Buddhist doctrine counted as a kind of initiatory
stage in the evolutionary progression of humanity
which was supposed to culminate in the establishment
of a global Shambhala state. The same
initiatory role was filled by the four Tibetan
schools. They all stood — in the interpretation
of the exhibitor — in a hierarchic relation to
one another. Each step up was based on the one
before it: the Sakyapas on the Nyingmapas, the
Kagyupas on the Sakyapas, and the Gelugpas on
the Kagyupas. The message was that the history
of Buddhism, especially in Tibet, had had to progress
like a initiand through the individual schools
and sects step by step so as to further develop
its awareness and then reach its highest earthly
goal in the person of the Dalai Lama.
The visitor entered the exhibition
through a room which contained a Kalachakra sand mandala (the
“time palace”). This was supposed to proclaim
that from now on he or she was moving through
the dimension of (historical) time. In accordance
with the cyclical world view of Buddhism, however,
the journey through time ended there where it
had begun. Thus at the end of the tour the visitor
left the exhibition via the same room through
which he or she had entered it, and once more
passed by the sand mandala (the “time palace”).
If the Tibet exhibition in Bonn
was in Thurman’s words supposed to have a symbolic
significance, then the final message was catastrophic
for the visitor. The final (!) image in the “temple
exhibition” (before one re-entered the room containing
the Kalachakra
sand mandala) depicted the apocalyptic Shambhala battle, or (as the
catalog literally referred to it) the “Buddhist
Armageddon”.[5] We would like to quote from the
official, enthusiastically written explanatory
text which accompanied the thangka: “The forces
of Good from the kingdom of Shambhala fight against the
powers of Evil who hold the world in their control,
centuries in the future. Phalanxes of soldiers
go into combat, great carts full of soldiers,
as small as Lilliputians are drawn into battle
by huge white elephants, laser-like (!) weapons
loose their fire and fantastic elephant-like animals
mill together and struggle beneath the glowing
sphere of the kingdom” (Thurman and Rhie, 1996,
p. 482). With this doomsday vision before their
eyes the visitors leave the “temple” and return
to the Kalachakra sand mandala.
But who was the ruler of this time
palace, who is the time god (Kalachakra) and the time goddess
(Vishvamata)
in one? None other than the patron of the Tibet
exhibition in Bonn, His Holiness the Fourteenth
Dalai Lama. He destroyed the Kalachakra sand mandala in
Bonn in the ritual we have described above and
then absorbed its energies (the time gods residing
in it). If we pursue this tantric logic further,
then after the absorption of the mandala energies
the Kundun
assumed control over the region which had been
sealed by the magic diagram (the sand mandala).
In brief, he became the spiritual regent of Bonn!
Let us repeat, this is not our idea, it is rather
the ancient logic of the tantric system. That
it however in this instance corresponded with
reality is shown by the enormous success His Holiness
enjoyed in the German Bundestag (House of Representatives)
after visiting his “Kalachakra Temple” in Bonn
(in 1996). The Kohl government had to subsequently
endure its most severe political acid test in
relations with China because of the question of
Tibet.
Scattered about the whole world
in parallel to his Kalachakra initiations, sand
mandalas have been constructed for the Fourteenth
Dalai Lama. What appears to a western observer
to be a valuable traditional work of art, is in
its intentions a seal of power of the Tibetan
gods and a magic foundation for the striven-for
world dominion of the ADI BUDDHA (in the figure
of the Kundun).
Footnotes:
[1] The
discipline is indebted to the Austrian, René de
Nebesky-Wojkowitz, for the most profound insight
into Tibetan demonology, his great work, Oracles
and Demons of Tibet. His early death, and
his wife’s suicide shortly afterwards are seen
by the Tantra researcher, John Blofeld ,as an
act of revenge by the spirits whom he described.
[3] The Golden Manuscript is considered
the precursor of the black thangkas, which otherwise
first emerged in the 18th century.
They were especially developed for the evocation
of tantric terror gods. The background of the
images is always of the darkest color; the illustrations
are sparsely drawn, often in gold ink — hence
the name of the Golden Manuscript. This technique
gives the images a mysterious, dangerous character.
The deities “spring out of the awful darkness
of cosmic night, all aflame” comments Guiseppe
Tucci (Karmay, 1988, p. 22).
[5] The
catalog text did indeed use the Hebrew term armageddon, just as the doomsday
guru Shoko Asahara also spoke of “Armageddon”.
Next Chapter:
9. THE WAR GODS BEHIND THE MASK OF PEACE
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