Paper short abstract:

Through bodily rituals aimed at identifying with goddess Tripurasundarī, female and male Tantric practitioners transcend gender binaries to experience ultimate femininity and participate in the cosmic renewal of life, questioning dichotomous bodies and an exclusively biological motherhood.

Paper long abstract:

Based on anthropological participatory fieldwork among Tantric Śrīvidyā practitioners in South India, I illustrate emic concepts of gender and motherhood that challenge Eurocentric notions of dichotomous bodies and biological motherhood.

Revolving around the erotic and benevolent goddess Tripurasundarī, this contemporary Śrīvidyā tradition worships the Goddess both, as anthropomorphic sensual female being and as cosmic yoni (womb), origin of everything manifest and pre-manifest.

Of the Goddess’ complex ritual corpus, the practice of kalāvāhana is particularly relevant. Unique to the Śrīvidyā lineage studied, it foresees that male and female practitioners alike identify with the Goddess, thus participating in her divinity, ultimate femininity and cosmic creativity. Sitting on a stone-formation the shape of a yoni, ritual receivers are touched on various body parts where fire, sun, moon and the Goddess’ retinue of deities are invoked at the chant of mantras. The female serpent energy Kuṇḍalinī residing at the bottom of the spinal column is thus aroused and rises from the genital area to the head-crown. Once identification with the Goddess is established, the ritual receiver/Goddess is worshipped as they/she desire. Pleasing the Goddess is paramount, as this nurtures her creative impetus, which manifests as the renewal of auspicious life.

In becoming the Goddess, Śrīvidyā practitioners transcend the manifest, differentiated world of binaries and come to experience a world of pre-manifest, undifferentiated and all-encompassing femininity where maleness and femaleness are solely potentialities. Additionally, by becoming conduits of the Goddess’ creative pleasure, practitioners directly and fundamentally participate in her generative outpour, thus becoming ultimate Mothers.