The Cult of Tara

54 MAGIC AND RITUAL IN TIBET
Sect High patron Yamantaka Lord Goddess
of the Tantra
Gelug Guhyasamaja
Sacha Hevajra
Karma
Kajii
Dragon
Nyingma
/ ol/ I'QCQ FT1 T'l P'l 1
VjdKI aadlll \ til ti
Vajrabhairava
Black Master Blackcloaked
Quicksilver
Six-handed
Magic
Lord of the
Tent
Weapon
Army
Fourhanded
Fourheaded
Self-born
Smoke
eater
Ekajata
more a canonical fundamentalism than a reformation. Thus, for
example, the Sacha join the other sects in holding an annual evocation
of the problematically orthodox Doje p'urpa, a practice the
Gelug do not follow.
All these objects of the monastic rituals, Indian or Tibetan—the
high patron deities and their consorts, the mystic dakinis, and the
fierce protectors of the Law—are the powerful deities who symbolize
currents of cosmic force to be tampered with only at one's peril.
They constitute the monastic cult because they are best left to the
ritual experts. It is not that their cult is particularly secret, just as
there is nothing esoteric about the workings of a television set; but in
both instances the forces involved are too potent to be played with
by a layman, and in both instances the same warning applies. The
secret rituals performed only by the yogins, for example, are simply
those aspects of the rituals for these deities proven by experience to be
dangerous to anyone without the proper contemplative training, the
ability to manipulate through one's own body the tremendous power
that is thus unleashed. I told one lama of the tragic and untimely
death, in an automobile accident, of Nebesky-Wojkowitz, author
of a work on the cult of the Tibetan demons and protective deities.
My informant just nodded wisely; he was not a bit surprised.
THE CULT OF TARA
Where, then, among these fierce and potent deities, their weapons
and their sexual embraces, comes the cult of the loving Tara? In