Tantra is one of the most misunderstood of the esoteric disciplines. In order to get a clear idea as to the nature of Tantric ritual and belief it is necessary to go where Tantra is still practiced and from where important Tantric teachings originated a thousand years ago: the island of Java in present-day Indonesia. This book illustrates the history of Tantrism in Java with more than a hundred photographs of temples, statues and iconography dedicated to the system — some rarely seen before, including the recently-excavated "white temple" of Yogyakarta — and accounts of contemporary practices in the shrines, cemeteries and secret schools of Java It is this Tantra — the Tantra of Java — that has influenced secret societies, mystics, alchemists, Kabbalists and magicians for hundreds if not thousands of years. This book tells the story of how human sexuality became a metaphor and a template for both spiritual transformation and the manipulation of reality; of how various sexual acts and psycho-biological states became the basis for a comprehensive cosmology that incorporates every aspect of human experience. Sometimes the secrets are buried where you least expect to find them. Sometimes they are hidden in plain sight. Sometimes … they are both. In the largest Muslim country in the world we will discover a path of Tantra so unique, yet so vibrant and alive, that we will be astonished that no one had heard of it until now.
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