The Cult of Tara

WORSHIP 143
But here again, this rehearsal is a ritual reenactment and hence a
magical simulacrum for death: the control of the Clear Light of the
Path grants magical access to the actual Clear Light; the son is the
simulacrum for the mother. The Process of Perfection grants symbolic
power over death and the light that shines through it, and
hence control over enlightenment; it is part of the contemplative
reality wherein all events become symbols, all symbols become images,
and all images become one another.
THE OFFERINGS
We have now traveled some distance through this startling realm
of contemplative reality, and we have examined a few of the correspondences
that link together in patterns of power and magical
control. But in the rituals themselves there is an important subsidary
use of visualization which we have not yet discussed: the creation
of offerings (or of goddesses who bear offerings) which are
presented to the deity. The deity thus worshiped may be in front
of the practitioner, or it may be the practitioner himself, making
offerings to the god he has become.
Here again, as in the generation of an effigy, all offerings (including
the tormas, which are presented separately) are first dissolved
into Emptiness and then contemplatively re-created as "broad
and vast"; the offerings are brought under the magical control of
the yogin, who renders them a "perfect divine substance" fit for
presentation to the god. Various rituals differ in the amount of this
preparation of the offerings, but there are three basic steps in the
process: (1) their material substance is cleansed by the recitation of
a fierce mantra, often OM AMRTA-KUNDALI HANA HANA
HUM PHAT; (2) they are purified into Emptiness with the mantra
OM SVABHAVA-SUDDHAH SARVA-DHARMAH SVABHAVA-
SUDDHO 'HAM. then visualized as born from their seeds into
perfect divine substance: and (3) they are empowered with the mantra
OM AH HUM and the special hand gesture called the "flying bird."
This process is sometimes called "cleansing, increasing, and kindling"
the offerings.
A wide variety of different offerings are visualized in the course
of a ritual, and here more than anywhere else we clearly see the ritual
interplay of the standard triad of body, speech, and mind, for
these contemplative visualizations are inevitably accompanied by