Yoginīs, Revelation, and Hidden Knowledge in Tantric Śaivism

This paper examines the roles of goddesses in Śaiva Tantric revelation, focusing on the figure of the yoginī, a category bridging the divine (goddesses) and the human (divinized female tantric initiates).

Mantramārga (aka “Tantric”) Śaivism envisions the supreme deity, Śiva, as the ultimate source of tantric scriptural revelation, whose essence is mantra. Scripture’s descent into the world (avataraṇa) mirrors the creation of the universe: revelation is a process of emanation that begins with the undifferentiated sonic essence of scripture, and culminates in linguistic form: the tantras, in all their profusion and cultic diversity. In fact not only the tantras but all revelation has Śiva as its source, including the Vedas, and in some accounts even Buddhist and Jain scripture. The prototype for this model of revelation is found first in the Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā, the oldest of what came to be called the Siddhāntatantras, that is, scriptures of the Śaiva Siddhānta. In its ‘classical’ form, this model has the five faces of Sadāśiva reveal five streams of the Śaiva revelation: the Śaivasiddhānta, from the upper face, and four subsidiary streams: the Vāmatantras, focused on Tumburu-Bhairava and the Four Sisters; Bhūtatantras, and Gāruḍatantras, two branches of Tantric Medicine; and the more ritually transgressive Bhairavatantras.

The Bhairavatantras include tantras of the vidyāpīṭha  (c. 7th–9th centuries). These are, at least in cultic terms, Śākta or goddess-centered: the supreme deity is a Goddess such as Kālī or a divine couple, forms of Bhairava and Bhairavī, with a predominantly female entourage. These Śākta tantric sources inherited a model of revelation centered upon Sadāśiva and also a cosmology emphasizing male deities—various Mantreśvaras and Rudras who preside over the hierarchy of ontic principles (tattvas) and worlds that constitute the creation. Vidyāpīṭha tantras reconceptualized this Śaiva cosmological vision and model of revelation along Śākta lines. This involved giving goddesses new roles in revelation and, eventually, positing the Goddess as the ultimate source of revelation, especially in its most esoteric forms. 

The Vidyāpīṭha tantras and the Kaula traditions that followed both place emphasis upon the figure of the yoginī of yogeśvarī. This is a goddess typology shared with Vajrayāna Buddhism, though with somewhat different terminology (in Buddhist sources, ḍākinī is frequently used as a synonym of yoginī). This paper develops a categorization of the various roles attributed to yoginīs in relation to revelation. In the Vidyāpīṭha Bhairavatantras, yoginīs are deities of great power and potential danger, characterized by qualities such as having animal faces, the power of flight, appearance in groups, and organization into clans (kulas); these are usually headed by goddesses known as the Eight Mātṛs (“Mother Goddesses”). Integral to the category yoginī is its blurring of boundaries between the divine and human, for this category of goddess represents a state of being female initiates could attain through ritual perfection. The tantric practitioner, the sādhaka, usually represented as male, saught visionary, power-bestowing encounters with yoginīs, called melaka or melāpa. Such encounters are arguably the principal aim of ritual in vidyāpīṭha systems, leading to extraordinary powers (siddhi), and even apotheosis as Bhairava. Most relevant to this paper is that such encounters may entail yoginīs imparting esoteric knowledge.

Yoginīs are frequently presented as guardians of tantric revelation. In this role, they are powerful and potentially dangerous guardians of esoteric tantric teachings, enforcers of initiatory secrecy. They play a different kind of guardian role in the revelation narrative of the Brahmayāmala, one of the oldest surviving vidyāpīṭha tantras, perhaps of the late seventh or early-eighth century. This narrates the ‘descent’ of scripture into the world and follows its vissicitudes over multiple cosmic cycles, culminating with transmission of the Brahmayāmala itself. Here yoginīs feature in the final stage of revelation (1.102cd–103): at the end of the Kaliyuga, impelled by the supreme Śakti, they snatch away whatever vestiges of scripture remain in the world and withdraw these into their original source, the śaktitattva at the apex of the cosmos. 

Yoginīs are also attributed positive roles in revelation. In the Siddhayogeśvarīmata, for example, the Alphabet, the Mātṛkā, is identified as a goddess, Raudrī or Rudraśakti, and as the primordial matrix of mantras and tantric revelation. The alphabetical matrix is also called yoginīmukha, “the mouth of the Yoginī.” Later sources, including works of the Kashmirian nondualist exegetes, came to posit that the Kaula revelation emerged from a sixth face of Sadāśiva identified with his Śakti—either a transcendent upper face, or a hidden lower face called, among other names, the “netherworld face” (pātālavaktra) or “mouth of the yoginī.” Here ‘yoginī’ refers to Śiva’s ultimate power, the Goddess of many names, the source of myriad śaktis who pervade the cosmos, enacting Śiva’s volition. In other words, the most esoteric Śaiva revelation, which is Śākta in cultic orientation and tends toward nondualism, derives from the Goddess.

A focus of this paper will be analysis of the category sampradāya (“lineage” or “lineage teachings”). Yoginīs’ transmission of tantric teachings is frequently framed as the bestowal of sampradāya, which I argue refers, in context, to teachings of specific goddess-clans (kula) to sādhakas who have ‘entered into’ these clans through initiation. Acquisition of knowledge from yoginīs is likewise framed as “discovery,” as in the recurring phrase, “And he [the sādhaka] discovers the lineage teachings” (sampradāyaṃ ca vindati, etc.). In this essay I explore a range of evidence to unpack this idea, first reviewing passages which shed light on the kind of teachings and mode of instruction sampradāya suggests, and afterwards examining instances that specify the precise content of sampradāya. Key features of sampradāya emerging from this analysis are emphasis on secrecy and oral transmission; while sharing with scripture a divine origin, sampradāya is representing as transcending textual form or taking the form of coded communication, whether cryptic sūtras or mysterious vernacular verse. Some of the discourse surrounding sampradāya is suggestive of the tradition of “treasure texts” (gter ma) in Tibet, which are likewise often linked to yoginīs/ḍākinīs.