The Cult of Tara

242
MAGIC AND RITUAL IN TIBET
he heard inside his head the disgusted snort of a woman ("Hm I"
—demonstration by informant), so he had compassion on them and
did not kill them.
CONTEMPLATION, EFFECTUATION, APPLICATION
As we review these stories we note again that the mantra has a constant
tendency to detach itself from the personality of the goddess
and to assume a life and, more important, a power of its own.
Once again we see the operation of the paradox of power: Tara's
protection is not only an expression of the benevolence extolled in
folklore, but it is also an independent power in the cosmos, set in
motion by her primordial vow, which can be tapped and directed
by a practitioner who has the capacity to do so. The power of
protection can be controlled magically through visualization and
recitation, its visual and sonic simulacra.
I was told one protection against what is called being "drenched
with defilement"—the demonically inspired half-waking paralysis
that accompanies a nightmare, the inability to move or cry out even
when one is awake enough to see the objects or people in one's room;
or the feeling, when half awake, that something is seated upon one's
chest, rendering one incapable of speech or movement—which was
originally conceived by the great 15th-century saint and religious
innovator T'angton jepo: one ties a knot in one's sash, reciting the
short Tara mantra twenty-one times and visualizing that the goddess
is thus "tied" into the cloth; if the sash, thus empowered, is then laid
over one's body while one sleeps, one is completely protected. This
protection is an example of the "application" of the mantra, the directing
of its protective power into an object that then becomes in itself
a protection, just as the power of the goddess can take up residence
within a miraculous image. Indeed, we might say that this application
of the mantra is the conscious creation of a miraculous object.
All the types and subtypes of protective and aggressive ritual we
shall consider in the pages that follow are the frames upon which the
practitioner hangs his manipulation of power; grasping the divine
appearance and ego, he can effectuate or apply the mantra—the
divine power—toward any end he wishes. Visualization and recitation
go hand in hand as the basic components of this magic; they
are the simulacra, the magical tools of protection, whether applied
to public nonreality or to the deity herself.