The Cult of Tara

110 MAGIC AND RITUAL IN TIBET
And Jigme chochi wangpo glosses:
This sets forth the terminology of the four realizations. "Emptiness
is the thought of enlightenment": one possesses the intermediate
state between death and rebirth. "The seed is arisen": the
awareness of the gandharva [the being seeking rebirth] takes its
place in the middle of the semen and blood. "The body is perfected":
the body is gradually produced by the ten winds. "The
syllables are arrayed": having been born, the senses discriminate
their objects.
These three- and fourfold tables of correspondences set forth
patterns not of mere symbolism but of actual magical powers; the
Process of Generation is a reenactment and simulacrum not only
for the macrocosmic creation of public nonreality, but also for the
microcosmic experience of death, the intermediate state of the
bardo, and birth in the world. On one level the yogin is gaining
simple practice in dying into Emptiness and being reborn in contemplative
reality, a rehearsal for the death and rebirth he will experience
when his life is over, but on a deeper level this practice means
mastery, and this control means power; he "owns" these processes,
and they are set forth in these commentaries as the objects of his
contemplative image, as the events over which he gains magical
control.
Thus when these states are cleansed by their ritual reenactment,
they may be ripened into bliss and understanding, and perfected
into the knowledges and bodies of Buddhahood; once the yogin has
become the deity, he may use the sequence of his own creation as a
magical basis for mastering the deity's enlightenment in the Process
of Perfection. 165
To the Tibetans a symbol is no abstract counter in
an intellectual game, but a key to magical power. Even the symbolic
potency of the recollection of purity is a reminder of the power
the practitioner wields in the body of the god.
"To tame a rutting elephant drunk on wine," says Jigme ch'ochi
wangpo, "one may use a plain elephant hook or a fancy one :
the Process of Generation may be more or less elaborated, and its
magical correspondences more or less extended, to the limits of
numerical analogy. And even in the simplest evocation of the
goddess, these correspondences are implicit motifs in the ballet of
unfolding images, giving meaning to the bare and unelaborated
bones of the recitation.