These were personified by sorceresses or priestesses (yoginД«). During discrete ceremonies that took place out of public view, male kaula-practitioners would unite with goddesses or female demons that had a particular significance for their family. One aspect that played a vital role here was the production and exchange of bodily fluids, such as menstruation blood, vaginal excretions and semen. And they made use of a diversity of practices for this: meditative chants, assuming particular physical postures, hand gestures, images, breathing exercises, visualisations, cleansing practices, dietary guidelines and religious and social regulations.Д®ven during the early period of tantric development, some lineages or cults were performing sexual acts.

Their aims were as varied as their approaches: being able to fly, instrumentalising demons for their own purposes, self-perfection, knowledge of the cosmos, the achievement of divine states of consciousness, or mystical experiences. Some had a cult-like, practical approach, others focussed on living ethically, formulating theoretical and speculative interpretations of life, or evoking magical and occult effects. On the other hand, there was a tremendous variety of approaches to be found in the schools and directions which developed in India, Nepal, Tibet and China. Sacrificial offerings formed a significant part of the human interaction with these gods - often goddesses - whose hunger needed to be assuaged. On the one hand it has close connections to a vast abundance of local and regional gods associated with forests, rivers, mountains, trees and deceased ancestors. Nevertheless, it is not possible to find a single common label to describe Indian tantra.

In this sense, tantra is something completely different to the Kama Sutra teachings about love and it is not the same as yoga, ayurveda or massage. As late as 1800, large parts of the Indian population were members of tantric cults - including people associated with the reformed Hinduism popular amongst the educated classes. This вЂњfamily of cultsвЂќ had a much more widespread and more significant formative influence on the development of religious culture in South-East Asia than initially accepted by scholars, both in the West and within the reformed Hinduism community of the 19th and 20th centuries. With regard to India, вЂњtantraвЂќ refers to a large family of widely differing practices, texts, epistemological traditions and cults, whose earliest roots can be traced back to the seventh century CE.

Karma sutra define