The Cult of Tara

MAGIC AND RITUAL IN TIBET
deities to be their weapons. Perhaps we may best approach the dark
power of this room by reading of the effect it produced on the
traveler Fosco Maraini, who wrote the following indignant account
of its potent symbolism: 86
... a dark, crypt-chapel such as is to be found in every monastery
... a mysterious recess, where the stink of the rancid butter
of the offerings on the altars is even more sickening than usual.
At the entrance are hung the decomposing bodies of bears, wild
dogs, yaks, and snakes, stuffed with straw, to frighten away the
evil spirits who might desire to pass the threshold. The carcasses
fall to pieces, and the whole place, is as disgusting as a space under
a flight of stairs with us would be if it were full of rubbish covered
with cobwebs, ancient umbrellas that belonged to great-grandfather,
and fragments of bedraggled fur that had been worn by a
dead aunt. On top of all, of course, there is the rancid butter.
Pictures of the gods are painted on the walls. At first sight you
would say they are demons, monsters, infernal beings. They are,
however, good spirits, protectors, who assume these terrifying
shapes to combat the invisible forces of evil. . . .
... a dark, dusty pocket of stale air, stinking of rancid butter,
containing greasy, skinless carcasses, with terrifying gods painted
on the walls, riding monsters, wearing diadems of skulls and
necklaces of human heads, and holding blood-filled skulls in their
hands as cups.
. . . She spoke of bones and dances, the sacred knife, the
thunderbolt, of garlands of skulls, of sceptres of impaled men. In
her was Tibet, the secret and untranslated Tibet; Tibet, land of
exultation, beauty, and horror.
Here the lama of the Lord and his two companions sit twenty hours
a day, echoing the rituals of the assembly hall; the morning evocations
of the high patron deities and the afternoon worship of the
protectors. Upon them falls the responsibility of continually protecting
the monastery, its surrounding districts, and all sentient beings;
theirs is a ritual with which all the monks have been in daily contact
throughout their lives, 1
whose importance they deeply feel and to
whose service they may be appointed.
The most important of these Protectors is the Indian Mahakala
(the "great black one," a designation almost never used except when
quoted from an Indian text), in all his many forms and lineages;
here again the course of time allowed Tibetan sectarian influences
to partition these forms, each sect considering one of Mahakala's
aspects to be its special and traditional guardian. Thus the semiofficial
protecting deity of the Dragon Kajii is the Four-handed Lord,