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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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