The MagicalLanguage of Mantra PDF

The Magical Language
of Mantra
Patton E. Burchett
Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at University of Toronto Library on September 2, 2010

This paper aims to illuminate the phenomenon of mantras and to
critique the category of magic through an examination of mantra as
magical language. Mantras have often been referred to as magic for-
mulas or spells, yet one searches the scholarly literature in vain for
a worthy explanation of precisely why mantra should or should not be
considered magical. This essay addresses this lack, (a) explaining how
mantras conflict with modern Western understandings of language
has led scholars to conceive of mantra as magic and (b) showing just
what is at stake in such characterizations. This examination of mantra
will demonstrate how magic and related terms have consistently been
used not so much to describe as to marginalize and de-authorize that
to which they refer. While the issue is partly about flawed terms and
categories, the question of mantra as magic ultimately leads to an
unsettling confrontation with the limits of our own modern rationalist
perspective.
A PERSISTENT THEME IN ACADEMIC DESCRIPTIONS OF

MAGIC is the claim that the power of magic is based in words. More
specifically, scholars have often argued that magic derives primarily
from a belief in the inherent efficacy of mere words and an identifi-
cation, often taken as mistaken, of signs with the things and the
Patton E. Burchett, Columbia University, Department of Religion, 80 Claremont Ave, New York,
NY 10027, USA. E-mail: pb2257@columbia.edu. I am greatly indebted to Robert Campany, Rachel
McDermott, Gary Tubb, Bernard Faure, and John Stratton Hawley for their valuable comments and
suggestions on earlier drafts of this essay.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, December 2008, Vol. 76, No. 4, pp. 807843
doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfn089
The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the American Academy of
Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
808 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
qualities and powers of the things to which they refer. In the Hindu
tradition, mantras are verbal formulas whose sounds, when properly
vocalized, are believed to possess an innate powerthe power of the
deity with which they are identifiedto affect reality. Does this make
mantra a form of magic?
Scholarly discourse has traditionally discussed magic as a phenom-
enon defined in opposition to religion.1 The dichotomy of magic and
religion has typically been articulated in the following ways: (a) magic is

considered heterodox, illicit, and, often, immoral, while religion is
orthodox and socially approved; (b) magic is private and oriented to
individual desires while religion is public, community-focused, and
social-service-oriented; (c) magic is pragmatic and concerned with
worldly needs while religion is transcendent and addressed to the big
questions of existence; and (d) magic utilizes control, coercion, and
manipulation (viewing the human being as the source of power) while
religion utilizes invocation, supplication, and submission (viewing the
divine as the source of power).
Recent scholarship has criticized each of the features of this tra-
ditional dichotomy and shown that in practice religion and magic
often blur into one another to the point of being indistinguishable.
Furthermore, the work of scholars such as Dale Martin (2004) has
demonstrated how the meaning and usage of terms such as magic
and superstition is not static, but often changes significantly over time
due to historical shifts in social and political contexts and correspond-
ing differences in the ideology and cosmology of the dominant social
authority.2 Perhaps the only consistently accepted characteristic of
magic to emerge from recent scholarly writing is that the word magic
is almost always used as a term of opprobrium, to marginalize and
condemn individuals or groups whose religious practices [are], by the
1
Science is, of course, the other key concept/category commonly contrasted with both religion
and magic. Classic works articulating the fundamental distinctions, even oppositions, between
religion, magic, and science include: E. B. Tylors Religion in Primitive Culture (1871); James
Frazers The Golden Bough (1890); Marcel Mausss A General Theory of Magic (1902); Bronislaw
Malinowskis Magic, Science and Religion (1925); E. E. Evans-Pritchards Theories of Primitive
Religion (1965), and Keith Thomass Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971). A more recent
attempt to carefully contrast magic, religion, and science is Rodney Starks Reconceptualizing
Religion, Magic, and Science in Review of Religious Research 43:2 (December 2001). Two excellent
sources which review the key ideas and authors in the history of the religion/magic debate are
Stanley Tambiahs Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality (1990) and Murray Wax
and Rosalie Waxs dated but still useful essay The Notion of Magic (1963).
2
Martin (2004) traces the changing understandings of the notion of superstition and the very
different beliefs and practices the term served to critique and marginalize over eight centuries, from
classical Greece (fourth century BCE) to the Christianized Roman Empire (fourth century CE).
Burchett: The Magical Language of Mantra 809
standards of the accusers, abnormal, (Johnston 2004: 51). Throughout

history, these accusersbe they kings, priests, or scholarshave often
been those in positions of power, who have used the term magic as a
rhetorical weapon to de-authorize that which was not in accord with
their own beliefs, models, or economic and political interests.3
Consequently, scholars have debated whether the category of magic
is so biased and inaccurate that it should be abandoned altogether.4
Jonathan Z. Smith (2004) writes, I see little merit in continuing the

use of the substantive term magic in second-order, theoretical, aca-
demic discourse. We have better and more precise scholarly taxa for
each of the phenomena commonly denotated by magic which, among
other benefits, create more useful categories for comparison (218).5
But other scholars disagree with Smith; H. S. Versnel, for example,
admits that magic and religion are two opposites on the extreme
ends of a spectrum, and tend to lose their distinctive force as one
approaches the middle ground of this spectrum. However, he argues
that This does notimply that we need to abandon altogether the use
of these terms. On the contrary, it should provoke our interest and
encourage us to document and explain the conditions and the circum-
stances that foster the blurring of the boundaries (1991a: 93).
In this essay, I intend to consider both of these perspectives in
examining the phenomena of Hindu mantras within the context of aca-
demic discussions of magic, and more specifically, magical language.
We will see that the traditional understanding of the term magic is, as
J. Z. Smith suggests, actually of little or no use in describing and
explaining mantras. But by demonstrating how and why mantras do
not fit the category of magicin other words, as Versnel suggests, by
3
See, e.g., Geertz (1975): 75.
4
In fact, as early as 1952 A. R. Radcliffe-Brown was challenging the utility of the terms magic
and religion; however, he was more concerned with lack of agreement and accuracy regarding
what they meant (1952: 138). Notable attempts to question the common distinction between
religion and magic also came from anthropologists in the 1960s and 1970s; however, these
critiques did not seem to make any significant impact on the field. See especially Murray Wax and
Rosalie Wax, The Notion of Magic (1963); Dorothy Hammond, Magic: A Problem in
Semantics (1970); and Hildred Geertz, Anthropology of Religion and Magic, I (1975). Only in
Geertzs piece is there the clear awareness, which has been further elaborated in recent studies, that
the term magic is one deeply implicated in power, one used to marginalize and de-authorize that
to which it refers.
5
Along the same lines, D. F. Pocock writes, If categorical distinctions of the Western mind are
found upon examination to impose distinctions upon (and so falsify) the intellectual universes of
other cultures then they must be discarded or, as I have put it, dissolved. I believe magic to be
one such category See Pococks Foreword to Marcel Mauss [trans. Robert Brain], A General
Theory of Magic [London, 1972].
showing how and why mantras blur the boundaries of this category
we will come to understand them more deeply and precisely.6
In what follows, I argue that the predominance in the West of what is
perceived to be a modern, scientific, rational understanding of the
relationship between language, the divine, and the world can skewand
has in fact skeweddominant understandings of mantra such that it
emerges as being a magical phenomenon. My central intention in this
essay is three-fold: (1) to shed some light on the nature and function of

mantras, with particular emphasis on the mantras of Hindu Tantra; (2) to
demonstrate how and why mantras should not be considered forms of
magic, thereby critiquing the category of magic itself; and (3) to illustrate
the biases and question the limits of the scientific-rational perspective that
informs most scholarship in the human sciences.7
MAGIC AND LANGUAGE

In the eyes of many scholars, magic is closely associated with the
notion of a natural language, a language in which words have a causal
relation to reality and are believed to possess a dynamic force through
inherent correspondence with their referents. The second volume of
Ernst Cassirers Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1925 [1955]) is a classic
instance of this understanding. Cassirer remarks that [E]very magical
view of the world is permeated by this belief in the objective character
and objective force of the sign (24). He asserts that the basic presuppo-
sition of magical belief is that word and name do not merely have a
function of describing or portraying but contain within them the object
and its real powers. Word and name do not designate and signify, they
are and act (40). In Cassirers eyes, humans progress beyond magic
only when they come to realize that the shadow realm of words,
images, and signs is actually that which is most unreal and lifeless
(24).8 The influential anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (1884
1942) also took it as given that magic is founded on a delusional belief
6
In other words, my essay is guided by the assumption that it is in seeing and explaining how
phenomena do or (especially) do not fit certain categories, as well as in the vital accompanying
work of creating new and better-fitting categories, that we come to more deeply and precisely
understand the historical and cultural phenomena that are the objects of our study.
7
Unavoidably, some of what follows will traverse familiar terrain for those well-versed on magic
while other sections will do the same for those well-read on mantra. I have tried to mark out the
various sections clearly and discretely to facilitate skimming when appropriate.
8
See Michel Foucault (1970), who tries to locate the origin of this distinctly modern attitude
towards language in a major epistemological shift that took place in the West during the
Reformation and Enlightenment periods, stating that from the seventeenth century, one began to
ask how a sign could be linked to what it signified.[T]he peculiar existence and ancient solidity
in the potency of words. He wrote that magical language is based on

the creative metaphor of magic, or the belief that the repetitive state-
ment of certain words is believed to produce the reality stated (1965:
238). For Malinowski, this sort of verbal magic is clearly irrational in
nature, for its essence is a statement which is untrue, which stands in
direct opposition to the context of reality (235).
More recently, Thomas Greene (1997) has argued that in attributing
such substance and energy to words, magic threatens the axioms of

conventional disjunctive linguistics and, for this reason, polemics
against witchcraft and magic often involve affirmations of the artificial-
ity and inertness of language. Brian Vickers elaborates on this perceived
gap between disjunctive (modern/scientific/rational) and conjunctive
(magical) understandings of language: In the scientific traditiona
clear distinction is made between words and things and between literal
and metaphorical language. The occult tradition does not recognize this
distinction: words are treated as if they are equivalent to things and can
be substituted for them. Manipulate the one and you manipulate the
other (Greene 1997: 25758). According to Randall Styers (2004), the
work of Vickersthe above statement includedis a chief example of
how modern scholars have used the concept of magic (and the occult)
as a foil, an oppositionary tool with which to more clearly define and
advocate modern rational conceptions of identity, science, religion, and
social order (15462). As a key part of this project, modern scholars of
magic have repeatedly affirmed the view that language is inert and
powerless. Styers explains the implications of this dismissal of the
magical power of words:
First, [the scholarly disavowal of the magical power of words] configures

a sharp and impermeable boundary between nature and culture, a
natural world subject to nonhuman causality and the artificial, transitory
world of human language, meaning, desire, and value.Further, in this
scheme language is seen as functioning only as a medium of passive rep-
resentation, a neutral, transparentand powerlessreflection of natural
processes (processes that are fundamentally more real than language).
Mere mimesis, mere representation, bare significationthe construc-
tion of meaning and assertion of desire are portrayed as lacking all
causal efficacy.The potency of representationeither in serving to
constitute the phenomena represented or in exerting other causal effects
is aggressively disclaimed. (221)
of language as a thing inscribed in the fabric of the world were dissolved in the functioning of
representation; all language had value only as discourse (43).
Styers argument is well taken, but we must recognize that not all recent
scholarship has viewed magical language as inert and irrational.
Speechact theory, developed by J. L. Austin (1962) and his student
John Searle, has been very influential in drawing attention to the active
nature of language, claiming that the most fruitful way to approach lin-
guistic phenomena is to see them as actions; that is, rule-governed
behavior of intelligent agents for the achievement of certain ends
(Taber 1989: 145).9 Austin (1975) identifies certain kinds of statements

as performative utterances, or words that, when spoken, themselves
constitute the performance of some action (for example, I now pro-
nounce you man and wife, or I christen this ship the Moby Dick).
A number of scholars have applied speechact theory to various forms
of sacred and magical language, including mantras, in order to better
understand their performative nature.10
In an important article entitled The Magical Power of Words,
Stanley Tambiah (1968) goes further, arguing for the rationality of
magical language. He emphatically rejects the claim that magical
language involves a confused and irrational belief that words have direct
relationships with and effects on the things to which they refer.
Critiquing the interpretations of Malinowki, he re-analyzes Trobriand
magic and states that Trobriand magical language is intelligible
language, not mumbo-jumbo shot through with mystical ideas not
amenable to rational examination. It is not qualitatively different from
ordinary language, but is a heightened use of it. The same laws of
association that apply to ordinary language apply to magical language
(188). Similarly, in a section on Sinhalese mantra, Tambiah notes that
while magical language may often be unintelligible even to its users,
this does not make it nonsensical or irrational, for [mantras] literal
intelligibility to humans is not the critical factor in understanding their
logic (1778). If a practitioner believes that the structure and content
of a mantra make it capable of communicating with the gods or effect-
ing change in the world, then the use of that mantra, regardless of its
semantic intelligibility, is entirely sensible.
Whether or not they are actually rational or irrational, inert or per-
formative, mantras have often been described and long been understood
9
Taber (1989) goes on to explain that To ask, therefore, whether a particular linguistic event is
a speech act is tantamount to asking whether anyone means anything by it; that is, whether it was
produced with an intention to bring about some reaction or response in reader or hearer, to
establish awareness of some state of affairs, or even to bring a state of affairs into existence (145).
10
For applications of speechact theories to mantra, see the essays by Harvey Alper, Ellison
Banks Findly, and John Taber in Alpers edited volume Mantra (1989b).
as forms of magic. Before we can determine why this is the case and
whether or not it is justified, we must get a better sense of just what
mantras are.
WHAT ARE MANTRAS?

Mantras permeate the religious life of India and from Vedic times

to the present have constituted a vital element in Indian culture;
however, due to the great variation in their form, content, and use, they
have proven extremely difficult to define. As we will see in more detail,
mantras may be used for either soteriological, transcendent goals or for
practical, this-worldly needs and desires (be they good or evil); they
may constitute a single syllable or an entire hymn; they may convey a
clear semantic meaning or they may appear entirely nonsensical.
Despite such significant differences, it is possible to sketch out the
general features of mantra and even to offer approximate definitions.
The word mantra consists of the Sanskrit root man, to think,
and the ending tra, indicating instrumentality; thus a mantra can be
understood as an instrument of thought (or the mind) or an instru-
ment for producing (a special kind of ) thought. Gonda (1963) notes
that Tantric literature utilized popular etymology to (inaccurately)
associate man to think and tr(i) to rescue, liberate, thereby
suggest[ing] that [a mantra] is that which liberates when properly
meditated upon and ritually pronounced (277, n. 1).
Harvey Alper (1989a) states that The uttering of mantras may well
be the most characteristic Hindu ritual gesture, (262) and Sanjukta
Gupta (1987) confirms their central place in ritual, writing that, All
Hindu rituals are accompanied by mantras, whether or not they are
uttered (176). Mantras sanctify ritual actions and make them effective.
Furthermore, the recitation of mantras is itself a ritual act, and one
that, if performed properly, is believed to be inherently efficacious. In
each of the three general categories of mantrasVedic, Tantric11, and
invented12this innate effective power of the mantra is believed to
derive from its intimate connection with God or ultimate reality.
11
For the purposes of this essay, mantras given and utilized in the context of bhakti religious
practicemuch of which, in fact, follows the tantric Vaisnava tradition of the Pcartracan be

considered part of the general category of Tantric mantras.
12
Outside of Vedic mantras, which are typically reserved for particular sacred events and recited
only by Brahmin priests, and Tantric mantras, which should be passed down from guru to disciple
and never shared with non-initiates, there exists this third category of invented mantras, which
scholarly works rarely discuss, if they even consider them mantras at all. This term, borrowed from
Chapter 15 of Ariel Glucklichs The End of Magic (1997), refers to mantras with no basis in
The original mantras of Hinduism are the verses of the four Vedas.
As Agehananda Bharati (1965) has noted, The use of mantra as a
Vedic verseany passage in the samhit portion, that isis the oldest
and hence most hallowed in India. When a Brahmin speaks of a
mantra without any qualification of the term, he always means a Vedic
passage (103). Regarding the origin of Vedic mantras, the Mmms
school of philosophy posited that the sound produced in pronouncing a
word is actually the sonic representative of some aspect of the eternal

cosmic order. The mantras of the Vedas, therefore, are not words
coined by humans. They are the sounds or vibrations of the eternal
principles of the cosmic order itself (Coward and Goa 2004: 35). In
this view, mantras are uncreated and eternal, elements of the fabric of
the universe preceding even the gods. Not only Vedic mantras, but the
sacred sounds of all mantras, are, in Jan Gondas words, not products
of discursive thought, human wisdom or poetic fantasy, but flash-lights
of the eternal truth, seen by those eminent men who have come into
supersensuous contact with the Unseen (247). Gonda, in a classic and
highly-esteemed article, defines the mantra as:
word(s) believed to be of superhuman origin, received, fashioned and

spoken by the inspired seers, poets and reciters in order to evoke
divine power(s) and especially conceived as a means of creating, con-
veying, concentrating and realizing intentional and efficient thought,
and of coming into touch or identifying oneself with the essence of the
divinity which is present in the mantra. (1963: 255)
As this definition indicates, mantra is especially conceived of as a

means for connecting oneself with the essence of divinity present in the
mantra; however, once this connection is made, the way in which the
power of mantra is utilized varies widely.
As a general rule, mantras are spoken, not written.13 Their
efficaciousnessregardless of whether they are spoken aloud, whispered,
or mentally (silently) repeatedis believed to lie in their sound-vibrations.
tradition that are used by magicians who claim to have had the mantras revealed to them directly
by a god during a dream or meditative state and who readily share the mantras with others. Thus,
while these mantras are used as such, they do not conform to many of the standard features of
mantra. For an instance of this type of mantra collected during his fieldwork researching the
magicians of Banaras, see Glucklich (1997).
13
Anyone familiar with mantras in Hinduism and Buddhism knows that many mantras are, in
fact, written; however, most traditional textual authorities stress that they should not be (and are
deadened when) written and all understand the basic nature of mantra to be its spoken-ness, its
sound.
As Andr Padoux (1989) states, Mantra is sound (abda) or word

(vc); it is never, at least in its nature, written (297). Not only this, if
the mantra is to be effective, its constituent sounds must be recited
properly, with correct pronunciation and in accordance with fixed and
strict rules regarding pace, rhythm, and intonation.14
In addition to properly reciting the mantra, a practitioner must be
in the proper mental state in order for his/her mantra to work. The
mind must be calm, pure, and steady (without fatigue), as well as (and

this is most crucial) intensely concentrated on the mantra and the deity
associated with it. Ultimately, it is the union of the practitioners con-
sciousness with the mantramore accurately, with the pure conscious-
ness of the divinity manifested in the mantrathat makes a mantra
efficacious.15
Another fundamental feature of mantras, especially Tantric
mantras, is that they should be passed down from guru to disciple in
the course of a ritual initiation.16 It is the enlightened consciousness of
the guru (having merged with the pure consciousness of the divine)
that is believed to empower the mantra and make it efficacious. As
Bharati remarks, [A] syllable or a collection of syllables constituting a
mantra is no mantra at all, because a mantra is something imparted
personally by a guru to a disciple (106) in a prescribed initiation ritual.
Gudrun Bhnemann (1991) adds that, A mantra heard accidentally or
taken from a book is not only believed to be useless, but also harmful
to the practitioner (293). Furthermore, mantras are often treated with
secrecy, for once ritually acquired from ones master, a mantra is
thought to lose its power if revealed to a non-initiate. Not all mantras
are suitable for all people, thus the guru must determine the appropriate
mantra for each disciple.17
The characteristics of mantra listed above generally hold true;
however, they are most accurate in the South Asian and Hindu contexts.
14
We should note here Bharatis comment that The instructions on correct pronunciation or
intonation pertain only to the ritualistic use of mantra (1965: 122). In other words, proper
recitation is not so important in the more spontaneous, daily use of mantras in non-ritual settings
in India.
15
See Gonda (1963: 276).
16
However, sometimes the guru is taken in an abstract sense. For example, in the Kashmiri
aiva tradition, the guru initiating a disciple may be a human guru or it may be iva himself.
Muller-Ortega (1989) writes that there are occurrences of a kind of spontaneous initiation by the
inner guru of the Heart [iva] who may appear to the sdhaka in a vision or a dream and initiate
him into the use of the appropriate mantra (164).
17
According to the Kulrnavatantra (c. 10001400), this is often done by comparing the
of the individuals name through the use of six rather elaborate
syllables of the mantra with those
diagrams. Bhnemann describes this procedure in detail (1991: 2937).
For instance, while mantras in East Asian Buddhism generally also

share these features, one finds far more exceptions to the rules that
mantras are spoken (not written) and private/secret, not public.18
Western scholarship on mantra has focused to a great extent on the
redemptive use of mantras. While the use of a mantra for spiritual lib-
eration is, according to tradition, indeed its central and most authentic
purpose, it is important to understand that in practice most mantras
are used for far more mundane purposes. As Padoux (1989) comments,

[I]nteresting, fundamental even, as the redemptive aspect of mantras
may be, we should not forget that only a minority of mantras are
redemptive (308). All over India ordinary people chant mantras each
day to sanctify routine acts such as bathing, preparing and eating meals,
activities at work, etc. Bathers in the Ganges River recite mantras to the
sun at dawn each morning; healers chant mantras to cure illness; a
worker may mutter a mantra as he lifts a heavy load; others may speak
mantras in order to attain success in business or love, to protect them-
selves from evil spirits and enemies, or to ensure conception or safe
childbirth.19 While some of these mantras are utilized in rather infor-
mal settings, mantra usage often occurs in a more formal ritual context
and may involve elaborate preparations and the consideration of a
number of factors designed to make the mantra effective.
The Mantramahodadhi (Great Ocean of Mantras), a sixteenth-
century mantra manual attributed to Mahdhara that has enjoyed great
popularity in all areas of India up to the present day,20 provides some
examples of common purposes that mantras are used for and the
accompanying ritual actions and considerations involved. Chapter 13 of
this text (hereafter referred to as the MMD) describes the use of mantra
in ritual practices to the monkey god Hanumn and states that the
mantra becomes effective only after the practitioner purifies it through
a great number of repetitions, concentrates his/her thoughts on
Hanumn (especially his outward features), and performs various offer-
ings and acts of worship ( pj).21 Once the mantra has been perfected
in this way, the MMD states that it can be usedwith various numbers
18
See, for instance, Lopez (1990). In this article, Lopez demonstrates how the widely repeated
Buddhist mantra concluding the Heart Stra is not spoken but read (or at least taken) from a
written text, is not passed down from master to disciple, and is not part of an initiation ritual or
meditation practice.
19
Glucklich (2005) notes that healing (of humans, animals, and even machinery) is the most
common area of magical concern in India and that the single most pervasive fear that magical
practices address is failure to conceive and/or safely give birth to a child.
20
See Buhnemann (2000: 447).
21
See Goudriaan (1978: 8490).
of recitations and under different specified conditionsfor different

purposes such as: to destroy poison; to protect oneself from enemies
and rulers; to heal sickness, fever, and wounds; to make one invulner-
able in battle; to make enemies quarrel amongst themselves; to render a
person ones slave; to ward off calamities; and even to kill enemies.
Chapter 25, the final chapter of the MMD, deals with an infamous
set of rites known as the Six Acts (sat karmni). These six rites are
(1) appeasement (anti)the curing of illness (the only one of the

six rites not considered abhicra, or black magic); (2) subjugation
(vaya)bringing a person under ones control (esp. seduction of a
woman); (3) immobilization (stambha)stopping/obstructing an
activity; (4) enmity (dvesa)creating dissension or dislike between two
people; (5) eradication (uccta)depriving a person of an object or
removing them from a location; and (6) liquidation (mrana)taking a
persons life. In practicing any one of these rites, one must have knowl-
edge of nineteen different items which affect the efficaciousness of the
rite. These include: the color of the specific goddess presiding over the
rite (flowers of this color must be offered prior to the rite), the time of
day during which one should perform the rite and the proper direction
one should face, the appropriate days of the lunar month and of the
week that the rite should be performed on, the proper posture one
should sit in and type of animal hide one should sit on for the rite,
the specific ritual hand gestures (mudrs) corresponding to the rite, the
material and number of beads of the rosary proper to the rite, and
the appropriate closing word for the mantra connected with the rite.
At the end of this chapter, the text states that the Six Acts are desire-
oriented rites for those who are attached to sense objects, that they can
only obtain limited results, and that it is far preferable for the prac-
titioner to worship deities without any desire for personal gain and to
strive for spiritual liberation.22
In addition to the uses of mantra specified above, we have already
noted that mantras are popularly used to heal disease, ensure con-
ception and safe delivery of children, and achieve desires for success in
business and love. All of these are worldly goals which seem to confirm
Padouxs statement that Mantras, in India, are clearly used much more
often to gain powers or to produce effects than for redemptive
purposes (1989: 310).
Clearly, mantra matches several common characterizations of magic
in that it is typically employed to achieve concrete, mostly individual
22
See Buhnemann (2000: 44861).
goals,is characterized by the attention paid to the technical side of

the manipulation, precision of formula and modus operandi, and
(especially in reference to the MMDs Six Acts) may involve the
immoral, anti-social, [and] deviant (Versnel 1991b: 17879). Does all
of this mean that we should identify mantras as primarily a form of
magic?

MANTRA, MAGIC, AND RELIGION
According to the traditional magic/religion dichotomies reviewed
earlier, mantras are quite problematic. With the exception of those uti-
lized to harm others (abhicra, black magic), mantras are socially
approved. They are far from marginalized; in fact, as we have noted,
mantras are orthodox to the extent that they play a part in all Hindu
rituals. Mantras may use the language of manipulation or that of sup-
plication, if not using both at the same time. Furthermore, many
mantras cannot be defined as either coercive or supplicative, for they
consist of nonsense syllables with no clear semantic meaning. While
mantras are predominantly used privately and for individual goals, they
may also be chanted as part of public ceremonies and may be recited to
benefit the community at large. As we have seen, on the ground in
India mantras are most often used for practical, worldly motives;
however, they are also used to honor deities and to realize higher states
of consciousness, and the texts of Hinduism almost universally claim
that the highest and most proper use of mantras is for redemptive pur-
poses. As a whole, then, mantras clearly cannot be defined as a form of
either magic or religion since they correspond to features of both of
these ideal categories.
Perhaps, then, we have to take a less global view. Can we identify
certain individual mantras as magical and others as religious? In fact,
this does not work either. A single mantra is often able to serve both
magical and religious interests, for in India the goals of personal
enjoyment and spiritual liberation are not necessarily considered discor-
dant. The magic/religion dichotomy tends to draw a sharp line between
worldly, pragmatic concerns and transcendent, soteriological goals, but
in the case of mantra this boundary is blurred and these different pur-
poses are often fused together. As Padoux (1990) states, [A] mantra
can be used to different endsends that, though different, are not
necessarily incompatible. A characteristic of Hinduism is precisely that
one passes easily from one plane to another, that liberation, super-
natural powers, and even destructive magical abilities can not only be
taught in the same text, but even be bestowed to an adept through the
performance of one ritual only (381). From the Hindu perspective, the
mantrawhen used properlyenables one to come into touch with the
power of divinity, but the purpose for which one uses this potent
mantric connection with the divine is entirely an individual matter.
Ideally, the mantra is used selflessly and redemptively, but this is not
alwaysor even usuallythe case.
The essential point is that even a mantra which is (a) performed to
satisfy worldly individual desires, (b) used in private, and (c) considered

illicit, cannot be termed magical as opposed to religious, for the
very distinction is false. As mentioned earlier, many practices identified
as religious, including certain rituals and prayers of Western monotheis-
tic faiths, are performed privately and for mundane individual desires.
Whether such practices are considered licit or illicit depends more on
the viewpoint of the dominant social authority than on any particular
characteristic of the actual practices. These considerations make it
impossible to classify mantra as either magic or religion because the
categories themselves are faulty.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that mantras have long been con-
ceived of and labeled as magic or as spells in deliberate contrast to
both religious language and ordinary speech (i.e., that in accord with
the principles of modern rationalist linguistics). As Donald Lopez
(1990) notes, it is indeed the case that in the study of Asian religions
in the west from the last century until the present, the term mantra is
commonly translated as spell (361).23 In particular, the mantras of
the Tantric tradition have been seen as magic or as spells. For instance,
while the Sanskritist M. Monier-Williams described the Vedic mantra
as a prayer or invocation, he referred to the Tantric mantra as a
mere collection of magical letters and sounds and a spell (1891:
197).24
Let us now, then, turn our attention more specifically to the
mantras of Hindu Tantra. This brief examination of Tantric mantras
and sonic theology will prepare the way for an inquiry into the
23
As if this words popular associations with the realm of magic and witchcraft were not clear
enough, the dictionary definition of spell is a word or formula believed to have magic power
[italics mine]. Defining a mantra as a spell is, then, essentially no different than defining it as a
form of magical language. See entry for spell in The American Heritage Dictionary of the
English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Interestingly, this same
dictionary includes magic spell among its definitions for mantra.
24
Monier-Williams (1891) also writes that A Mantra, as most persons know, is properly a
divinely inspired Vedic text, but with the ktas [i.e., the Tntrikas], and indeed with the great
mass of the Hinds in the present day, it loses this character and becomes a mere spell or charm
(197).
historical and cultural reasons why, despite the clear inaccuracy of the
terms, mantras have so persistently been characterized in the West as
magic and as spells.
MANTRAS IN TANTRIC HINDUISM

Due to the vital role of mantras within the tradition, Hindu
Tantra25 is often referred to as mantrastra, the science of mantras.
Tantric mantras differ from Vedic mantras in several key ways. In
Vedic times, mantras were used in the context of ritual sacrifices in
which their primary role was to actualize and make explicit the corre-
spondences believed to exist between powerful divine forces and various
objects in the human world. In the ritual context of the sacrifice, these
homologies with the divineonce actualized by the chanting of various
mantrascould be controlled to the benefit of the ritual performers.26
In contrast, in Tantric ritual a single mantra is concentrated on and
repeated numerous times to realize the identity of the practitioner and
the divine. The Tantric seed (bja) mantra, then, does not actualize a
link (bandhu) between the world and the divine, but itself represents
the essence of the divine. In fact, as Mircea Eliade (1969) writes, these
Tantric mantras are (or at least, if correctly recited, can become) the
objects they represent (215).27 While the Vedic mantra is a com-
ponent necessary to the proper performance of a larger ritual action
which is the means to an end (i.e., worldly prosperity) outside of the
ritual setting, the Tantric mantra is both the means and the end, the
goal of the [Tantric] ritual being realized when the consciousness of
25
Some scholars have asserted that the phenomenon of Tantra does not exist, but is an
invented category of Western scholars. The body of religious practice referred to as Tantra is
certainly not easy to define and this paper does not purport to address these difficulties. For
arguably the best discussion of the origins, genealogy, and usages of the term Tantra, see Urban
(2003). For a briefer overview of the issues involved in discussing Tantra, I refer the reader to
White (2000). As far as this paper is concerned, Whites general working definition of Tantra will
suffice: Tantra is that Asian body of beliefs and practices which, working from the principle that
the universe we experience is nothing other than the concrete manifestation of the divine energy of
the godhead that creates and maintains that universe, seeks to ritually appropriate and channel that
energy, within the human microcosm, in creative and emancipatory ways (2000: 9).
26
While in early Vedic religion the gods played a crucial role in granting the wishes of their
supplicants for health, prosperity, power, and pleasure, with the passage of time, Vedic brahmins
came to believe that it was the ritual itself, the causal efficacy of the properly executed sacrifice
independent of the god(s) in whose honor it was performedthat produced the desired results.
27
We should remember here that modern scholars have long considered this conviction of a
direct relation between symbol and referent to be the defining feature of what they have labeled
magical language.
the worshipper blends with the thought-power represented by the

mantra (Wheelock 1989: 119).28
The bja mantra is the characteristic Tantric mantra. Bja-mantras
are semantically meaningless monosyllabic sounds, many of which cor-
respond to particular deities. Common examples include: om, phat,
hrm, krm (Kl), ram (Agni), rm (Laksm), gam (Ganea), dum

(Durg), and aim (Sarasvati). These bjas are considered sonic manifes-
fundamental cosmic powers and constitute the most
tation, seeds, of

essential and potent element in the mantras of which they are a com-
ponent part.29
David Gordon White argues that the important place of bja
mantras in Tantric traditions is actually due to a semanticization and
sublimation of the vital role played by sexual fluids in the earliest forms
of Tantra (2003: 21957). He claims that the language of mantras, par-
ticularly seed mantras, made it possible to discuss and practice in
abstract, asexual terms, what was and remains, at bottom, a sexual body
of practice. In making this argument, he provides evidence that the con-
sumption of female sexual fluids (which were believed to contain in
essential form the creative power of akti, the Goddess), often in con-
junction with the sexual fluids of the male guru (the seed of none
other than iva himself ), in early Kaula initiation rituals was the basis
for the initiates transformation from an ignorant, inert being ( pau) in
spiritual bondage to a virile hero or perfected being (siddha) and a
member of the clan.30 According to White, as Tantra develops, we see
the complete sublimation of the sexual drop (bindu) or seed into a seed
mantra, along with the relegation of the role of the feminine to merely
the akti (creative power) of the male guru. The physical fluid manifes-
tations of the divinein the form of the sexual emissions of enligh-
tened gurus and divinized female consortsbecome transformed in
thought and practice into acoustic, phonetic manifestations of the
divine, in the form of mantras. White writes, In the context of these
semanticized renderings, it is mantras that render ones practice
28
Wheelock (1989) also argues that Vedic mantras tend to be more semantically meaningful
articulating clear desires, praises, etc.while Tantric mantras are often vocalizations of seemingly
absurd and nonsensical sounds. While most scholars generally agree with Wheelock, Frits Staal
firmly disagrees with his distinctions between Vedic and Tantric mantras. Staal argues, for
instance, that Vedic mantras are also ends in themselves and are in their nature no more linguistic
or semantically meaningful than Tantric mantras (1989: 5960).
29
See Gonda (1963: 28) and Wheelock (1989: 103). For an excellent and much more detailed
discussion of Tantric bja mantras, see Bharati (1965: 11950).
30
On why and how the sexual fluids came to be viewed as having such transformative power,
see White (2003: 6793).
effective, containing in their very sound structure a mystic gnosis, that

in a gnoseological system, is liberating. In every Tantric tradition,
mantras are phonematic embodiments of deities and their energies,
such that to know the mantra, and to be able to pronounce and
wield it correctly, becomes the sine qua non of Tantric practice (2003:
24243).
Whites work demonstrates that the origin and role of bja mantras
in Tantric ritual is, in part, to be found in early Tantric sexual practices.

However, in connecting mantras to sexual fluids, his argument at times
borders on reductionism.31 Most significantly, White does not fully take
into account the vital role of traditional Indian conceptions of vc, the
Word, in Tantric mantra practice. These notions date back to the
Vedic period and developed into prominent theories of language such
as that articulated in Bhartrharis Vkyapadya (c. 350500 CE)a text
predating what most scholars believe to be the origins of Tantric move-
mentswhich heavily influenced Tantric cosmology and understand-
ings of language. To understand the context of Tantric mantra practice
it is essential to understand the concept of vc. Gerald Larson remarks
that:
Already in the Rig Veda (for example, X.125), but especially in the
Brhmanas, [various] female creative forces appear to be gradually
broughttogether in one unifying conception of Vk or speechVk
is the personified female principle of energy, the sovereign queen,
the great sustaining priniciple (RV. X.125).In the Brhmanas, Vk
is the consort of Prajpati [the personified masculine element of ulti-
mate reality], and by their sacred union all things are created. Vk is
the mother of all mantras. Brahman or Prajpati creates by means of
Vk, that is, by means of an act of speaking. (1974: 47)
Vk (vc) is akti, the feminine power of the divine to convey meaning

and thus to create the manifest world. Vc, or akti, is the active com-
ponent, the energy, of the pure consciousness that is ultimate reality.
According to the Grammarian school, represented most notably by
the great philosopher Bhartrhari (c. fourth to fifth century CE),

mantras are the diverse manifestations of the one unitary Brahman, the
undifferentiated pure consciousness. Ultimate reality is represented as
word-consciousness or abda-brahman, from which the whole universe
31
To be fair, the purpose of Whites argument is not to make any definitive claims about
mantra. He is only indirectly concerned with mantras in so far as they are relevant to his larger
project of identifying the original sexual practices and context of Tantra.
proceeds in the form of sound (abda) and the objects (artha) denoted
by sounds or words (Gonda 1963: 27374). In this system, language
and consciousness are inextricably intertwined: words (mantras), mean-
ings, and consciousness are eternally connected and necessarily
synonymous.32
The crucial point here is that mantras (as emissions of vc) are an
aspect of, and are ultimately inseparable from, the pure consciousness
of the divine. Nevertheless, as components of the manifest world,

mantras represent much cruder forms of this divine energy that are in
some sense not identical with it. To explain this paradoxhow the
mantra both is and is not equivalent to the supreme Wordwe must
look at understandings of the process by which the Absolute manifests
itself in the world.
Bhartrhari described the unfolding of the Word and world in four
stages: (1) Par Vcthe supreme Word, the unmanifest divine33;
(2) Payantthe initial desire within pure, undifferentiated, divine con-
sciousness to see manifestation and the first direct, super-sensuous
seeing of the world/Word (the divine blueprint for creation and
language);34 (3) Madhyamthe intermediate level in which differen-
tiation has begun, but objects/words are not fully manifest; and
(4) Vaikharthe corporeal level of objects and articulated sounds
(as perceived by the senses), to include mantras.35 As Guy Beck (1993)
has pointed out, whatever objections they may have had to Bhartrharis

philosophy, in practice nearly every Hindu sectarian tradition adopted
this theory of the linguistic/sonic articulation of the Absolute in levels
in order to explain the vital link between mantra and spiritual liberation
(2067).
Implicit in Bhartrharis theory is the understanding that the

Divines self-manifestation in language and form not only reveals the
pure consciousness of the Absolute, but simultaneously conceals it.
The purity, absolute freedom, and uninhibited power of the divine
gradually diminish and are obscured as the divine manifests itself in
the gross forms of the world. In terms of language, the manifestation of
the supreme Word ends in the fragmented, conventional level of every-
day expression. Conventional words and language disguise and limit the
32
See Coward and Goa (2004: 37).
33
There is some debate over whether Bhartrhri implied this first and highest level (Par) or
whether it was added on by later commentators and philosophers.
34
Gonda (1963) describes payant as the stage in which the word and the concept for which it
stands lie inseparable as a potency like the seed of a tree before sprouting (273, n. 1).
35
For more detailed information on this elaborate theory of four-fold divine self-manifestation,
see Padoux (1990: 166222).
true nature of reality and are thus largely the source of human spiritual
bondage. Muller-Ortega (1989) states that, By inviting us to see and
identify only small portions and artificially isolated pieces of the total
reality, language creates the very condition of error, of incomplete per-
ception, that binds us in ignorance and suffering (172). However, the
mantra, a uniquely pure utilization of the human capacity for speech
uninhibited by the normal constraints of language, allows us to trans-
cend ordinary language, to reverse the process of creation and return to

the source of the supreme Word, the Divine. That is the grand claim,
but how does this process work? From the perspective of the Tantric
tradition, how does the mantra function as a vehicle of liberation? To
answer this question, we will look to the influential Tantric traditions of
the Pcartra36 and Kashmiri aivism.37
In the ancient Vaisnava tradition of the Pcartra the power of
mantra (mantraakti) is the expression or embodiment of gods saving
grace (anugrahamrti) (Gupta 1989: 224). For the Pcartra, one
attains salvation by surrendering fully to God and actively serving Him
(Visnu/Vsudeva), a process that is facilitated by meditating with devo-
tion on his mantras. These mantras are considered sonic forms of
Visnu/Vsudevas salvific grace created for the benefit of devotees, to
the Divine available to them in an approachable form. By medi-
make
tating on various mantras, the devotee identifies him/herself with the
corresponding levels of God, realizing progressively more subtle levels
36
Beck (1993) explains that [I]t is the Pcartra tradition that provides the most authoritative
foundation for Vaisnavism in IndiaAll the Vaisnava schools recognize the authority of the
Pcartra. Indeed, the unique value of the Pcartra literature, in terms of its breadth and scope
for the study of Vaisnavism, has already been established by H. Daniel Smith: The injunctions
found in this Pcartra literatureaccount for and give textual authority for the bulk of the
activities undertaken in temples, in public and in the home by most Visnu-worshippers today
(173).
37
Kashmiri aivism, or Trika aivism, refers to the nondualistic form of aivism born in
mid-ninth century Kashmir which developed and flourished there through the thirteenth century
and found its primary exponents in Abhinavagupta and his disciple Ksemaraja. While Kashmiri
aivism does not speak to the entire Tantric or aiva tradition, it serves as an especially
informative topic of study, for, as Alexis Sanderson (1995) has written, Kashmiri aiva sources
encompass all the major strata of tantric aivism at the most vigorous and articulate phase of
their development (16). Furthermore, Kashmiri aiva perspectives were not of merely local
importance, but actually became the standard of tantric orthodoxy in southern India from the
eleventh century and were widely disseminated from this base during the centuries of Kashmirs
decline from its position as a major center of brahminical learning (16). Though aivism in
Kashmir declined significantly under Muslim rule beginning in the fourteenth century,38 Kashmiri
aiva doctrine and liturgical prescription became the standard in the Tamil-speaking south, where
Tantric communities, through their many and outstanding contributions to tantric literature,
guaranteed it a pan-Indian influence down to modern times (1988: 663).
of consciousness until ultimately reaching the direct experience of the

divine presence (23133).
From the perspective of the nondualistic Kashmiri aiva tradition,
each human being is fundamentally deluded because he is a linguistic
creature and mantric utterance is the one form of speaking that
[allows] a human being to overcome the evils of linguisticality, because
in its very utterance it [discloses] the roots of language itself (Alper
1989a: 275). According to Abhinavagupta, the brilliant eleventh-century

formulator of the Kashmiri aiva system, the mantra does this by
harnessing the coagulated vibration of individual consciousness (which
he refers to as the heart) and causing it to pulsate faster, to expand
and contract more expansively until it reaches the frequency of univer-
sal iva-consciousness.38 The mantra is considered empowered only
insofar as it possesses Vc/akti, understood by Abhinavagupta as
vimarathe creative, pulsating, and self-aware consciousness of iva.
Furthermore, the mantra is not intrinsically effective, but proves effica-
cious only insofar as the practitioner is able to take hold of its divine
energy by realizing the vimara of his own consciousness and thereby
merging it with the pure iva-consciousness of the mantra.
In the end, the proper utterance of the mantra is itself a realization
of that divine consciousness which the mantra refers to and embodies.
The uttering of the mantra is called uccra, a term that does not neces-
sarily refer to the pronunciation of a sound, but to the fusion of the
cosmic phonic energy of Vc with the vital energy or breath of the
human being (Padoux 1990: 399). Thus, another more yogic way to
conceive the functioning of the mantra is to say that a practitioners
one-pointed concentration on and uttering (uccra) of the mantra, even
when done internally (silently), constitutes a creative awakening and
movement of the vital breath ( prna), often symbolized as
kundalinthe vibratory, liberating energy of the divine in the universe
and in the microcosm of the human beingwhose ascension in the
practitioners subtle body ultimately results in attainment of pure
consciousness.39
38
See Muller-Ortega (1989: 1734).
39
Many traditions of Tantra advocate various breathing practices and the use of mantras to
cause the kundalinrepresented as a serpent sleeping coiled around the mldhra cakra at the
base of spine in the ignorant personto awaken and unfold, rising up the susumn nd (the
central energy channel of the subtle body) until it reaches the uppermost cakra at the crown of
the head, the brahmarandhra, at which the practitioner arrives at the blissful nondual state of pure
consciousness. These cakras, as centers along the central channel of the subtle body, are typically
knots of congealed energy (obstructing the passage of pure spiritual energy) which through various
practices can be loosened and activated to become whirling, vibratory wheels which the kundalin

While small differences abound in the sonic theology of the

various Hindu sects and traditions, the key theoretical features of
mantras and cosmic sound outlined above are generally representative
of the dominant traditional Hindu understandings of the relationship
between language, divinity, and reality.40 Needless to say, these Indian
notions about mantra contrast significantly with modern rationalist per-
spectives on language dominant in the West. How, then, have scholars
of the modern West rationalized mantra?

EFFICACY OF THE MANTRA: SCHOLARLY PERSPECTIVES
From the perspective of practitioners within the tradition as well as
that of scholars outside it, the alinguistic qualities of mantrastheir
movement away from the constraining rules of ordinary language
account for much of their efficacy in bringing about alternate (higher)
states of consciousness.41 As Wheelock explains, The bja mantras do
not point outward to some referent in the objective world and thus, are
meaningless in any ordinary sense of that term. Instead, they point
backwards to the source of language, which is the source of creation
itself (1989: 120). Frits Staal (1989) argues that not only bjas, but all
mantras are alinguistic. He asserts that mantras should not be con-
sidered forms of language at all because language possesses syntactic
and semantic properties that mantras do not necessarily possess and in
mantras (unlike in language), forminner organization and phonetic
structureprevails over meaning.42 Staal argues, rather controversially,
that mantras resemble bird songs, the pre-sleep babblings of babies, and
absorbs as it rises. A fuller explanation of kundalin and its role in Tantric traditions is beyond the
scope of this paper. For a more comprehensive explanation of this multifaceted subject, see Lilian
Silburns Kundalini: The Energy of the Depths (Silburn 1988: 1581). Also, see Beck (1993),
Chapter 3 on the physiology of sound in Yoga traditions and how various levels of cosmic sound
(nd-brahman) became linked to corresponding components of the yogic subtle body.
40
For an excellent explanation of the differences in the understandings of cosmic sound,
language, and mantra within the Hindu traditionfrom the Vedas and the ancient philosophical
schools to the Yoga traditions and the theistic conceptions of aivism, Vaisnavism, and kta-
Tantrasee Guy Becks Sonic Theology: Hinduism and Sacred Sound (1993).
41
In Tantrloka 5.140141, Abhinavagupta states: [The seed mantras,] because they are
independent of the constraints of convention, cause consciousness to vibrate [and] thus constitute
a valid means for the attainment of Consciousness. Because of the nonexistence of meaning to be
expressed, because they vibrate in consciousness in a way that is totally indifferent to the external
reality, because they are self-illuminatingfor these reasons the group of seeds are completely full
and self-sufficient (Muller-Ortega 1989: 173).
42
Staal states that, From the point of view of their ritual use, there is no difference in treatment
between mantras we would regard as meaningful and mantras we would regard as meaningless
(1989: 74). In other words, the semantic intelligibility of mantras is irrelevant to their ritual
function.
glossalia much more than ordinary language (7580). He says that

mantras give access to a pre-linguistic state of mind and exert a hypno-
tic influence that signals a breaking away from the tyranny of language
and a return to the biological domain of the body (84).
Another key assertion made by Staal is that the structure of mantras
corresponds to musical structure and that mantras distinguish them-
selves from language especially by their musicality (65). For Staal, the
meaning of ritually used mantras does not lie in their languagebut

in the sounds, with their themes and variations, repetitions, inversions,
interpolations, and the particular distribution of their elements (58).43
The musical character of mantras has been noted by other scholars as
well. Glucklich (1997) writes that, Even meaningful mantras are
musical, using rhythms, repetitions, inversions, and other devices. The
musical quality, the aesthetic temporal pattern, of mantras induces in
participants a [unique] state of mind and such musical patterns and
prolonged singsong alter the awareness of the practitioner (210).
Studies on music have shown that certain sounds and rhythms, like
those uttered in many mantras, can bring about significant changes in
brain waves.44
In addition to its musical rhythms and sonic vibrations, the power a
mantra exerts on the consciousness of its utterer certainly owes some-
thing to the fact that the mantra is usually repeated over an extended
period of time. As Robert Yelle (2003) remarks, The most obvious fact
about mantras is that they are repeated many, even countless times
(1112). In general, within the Tantric tradition it is believed that the
more repetitions, the more powerful a mantra becomes. In fact, in
mantra manuals such as the Mantramahodadhi (MMD), it is always the
case that the more difficult the task to be accomplished and the more
challenging the goal desired, the more times one is instructed to recite
the mantra.45 As Eliade (1969) has remarked, All indefinite repetition
leads to the destruction of language; in some mystical traditions, this
destruction appears to be the condition for further experiences (216).
43
According to G. U. Thite, the idea that the musicality of mantras is part of their
efficaciousness reaches back to the Vedic period. He explains that in the Vedas, music is
considered a power substance by means of which one can control natural phenomenon and
perform miraculous deeds. Interestingly, he invokes the troubled magic/religion dichotomy,
referring to the power of music in the Vedas as magico-religious, because sometimes it can work
independentlywithout the gods or even upon them(manipulative = magical) while other times
its power requires the help of the gods (supplicative = religious). See Thite, Music in the Vedas
(1997), 6263.
44
See, for instance: Judith Becker (1994), Music and Trance, Leonardo Music Journal 4:
4151.
45
See Goudriaan (1978: 8490).
In the concentrated and extended repetition of a mantra, the mind

becomes mesmerized by the mantras patterned sound-vibrations and
transcends any mental connection (bondage) to the discursive realm of
ordinary language.
In his Explaining Mantras (2003), Robert Yelle articulates the
important insight, largely unrecognized or unexplored by earlier scho-
lars of mantra, that mantras contain formal featurespoetic devices in
their internal structurewhich are self-consciously constructed to

imitate different aspects of cosmic processes of creation and dissolu-
tion.46 He states:
These devices include alliteration, especially of the bjas and other

rhythmic, apparently nonsensical vocables; reduplicated or repeated
words, including imperatives; the repetition of similar phrases with the
progressive addition of intensifiers; and the exhaustive enumeration of
synonyms, some portion of the Sanskrit alphabet, or the phonetic
shape of the mantras, often in the form of palindromes [ phrases that
read the same forwards and backwards]. (2003: 13)
Yelle disagrees with Staals claim that mantra is not language and
asserts instead that mantras effective use of these stylistic devices indi-
cates that it is actually a heightened and intensified use of language. He
argues that the poetic devices mentioned above (especially palindromes)
are used by the tradition to convert mantras into mimetic diagrams of
the general cycle of evolution and involution of the cosmos, the
process of sexual union and reproduction, the cycle of in- and out-
breaths, and the act of speech, which traces a path from inside the
body to the outside world (and back again) (23). In this waythe
employment of poetic devices to form mantras imitating macro- and
micro-cosmic processesthe Tantric tradition creates and exploits the
appearance of a natural connection between signifier and signified and
46
Yelle explains that Although Tantric mantras, like the spells of other cultures, must be
repeated in precisely correct form in order to be effective, little attention has been paid to this
form. This has naturally precluded any serious consideration of the contribution of the form of
mantras to their function. One reason for this omission is the opinion of some, especially earlier
scholars that mantras are meaningless hocus pocus. Even some within the Sanskrit tradition,
including Kautsa in Vedic times and the fifth century Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu, argued
for the meaninglessness of mantras. In modern Bengal as well, the phrase mantra-tantra (or
tantra-mantra) is frequently used in the pejorative or dismissive sense of mumbo jumbo. Such
views for many years discouraged the careful examination of mantras: if they are merely gibberish,
then there is no need to inquire further into their meaning and function (2003: 17).
thus creates the dream of a natural language capable of directly influ-

encing reality (68, 100).47
In the end, it is unimportant whether we agree with Yelle that
mantra is language par excellence or with Staal that mantra is not
language at all. Regardless of whether they are defined as language or
not, from the viewpoint of modern Western scholars, mantras seem to
work because they utilize musical sounds and rhythms, poetic devices,
and extended repetition to transcend the constraints of ordinary

language and discursive consciousness and to thereby produce the illu-
sion of a natural language. From within the Hindu Tantric tradition,
that mantras characteristically break away from (or transcend) the
restrictions of language and dualistic rational thought is indeed part of
their effective power, but more importantly, their alinguistic movement
illustrates their ultimate identity with the freedom and creative energy
of the supreme Word and the vibratory, pure consciousness from which
it originates. This perceived identity with the divine means that, from
within the tradition, mantra is not merely the illusion of a natural
language, but authentically is a natural language.
Returning at last to the larger context of our investigation of
mantrasthe scholarly discourse on magicthe question we must ask
is this: What is the difference, if any, between describing mantra as a
natural language, as we have in the preceding pages, and describing it
as a magical language? As we will see, unlike magical, the term
natural does not form the other pole of a problematic binary with the
term religious and its use does not possess the same history of preju-
dice embodied in the term magic. Nevertheless, in what follows
I argue that our biases against things magical run quite a bit deeper
than a simple change in terminology can solve. To address these issues
more fully we must return to a discussion of magic, this time with
special reference to Hinduism and in the context of fundamental
differences between modern Western and traditional South Asian
worldviews.
MANTRA AS MAGIC: A QUESTION OF PERSPECTIVE

Of the various dichotomies that are held to distinguish magic from
religion, probably the most frequently cited is the idea that magic is
manipulative and coercive, viewing man as the source of power, while
47
Again, here the term natural language refers to a language consisting of words which (a)
have a natural correspondence with their referents and which thus (b) possess an inherent potency
to influence reality.
religion is supplicative and submissive, relying on the divine as the source

of power. The prevalence of this particular distinctionmanipulative
versus supplicativeis likely due to the fact that this was the fundamen-
tal point stressed by those men who first sought to clearly separate
magic and religion: namely, the sixteenth- and seventh-century theolo-
gians of the Protestant Reformation. As Keith Thomas and Stanley
Tambiah have each pointed out, it was Protestant theologians who first
hammered out the distinction between religious acts as primarily inter-

cessionary in character, and magical acts as being coercive rituals ambi-
tiously attempting to manipulate the divineFor these [men] then
there was a fundamental distinction between prayer and spell, the
former belonging to true religion, the latter to false religion (Tambiah
1990: 19).48 Protestant Reformers thus emphasized that genuine super-
natural power lay not in words or in men, but only in the one God
who cannot be coerced by rituals or mechanically manipulated by
spells. Attacking Catholic modes of ritual, they sought to eliminate the
idea that the rituals of the Church had about them a mechanical effi-
cacy, and to abandon the effort to endow physical objects with superna-
tural qualities by special formulae of consecration and exorcism.
(Thomas 1971: 76). As part of this demarcation of magic from reli-
gion, both seventh-century Reformation and eighteenth-century
Enlightenment thinkers stressed the irrationality of magic while defin-
ing religion as a rational system of beliefs in an all-powerful Divine.
Tambiah (1990) posits that this emphasis on religion as a system of
beliefs, and the distinction between prayer and spellwas a Protestant
legacy which was automatically taken over by later Victorian theorists
like Tylor and Frazer, and given a universal significance as both histori-
cal and analytical categories useful in tracing the intellectual develop-
ment of mankind from savagery to civilization (19).49
The contemporary concept of magic, then, as a category opposed to
religion (and science), is a notion with a clear history, a conception
contingent on attitudes and modes of thinking developed in the West
48
Thomas (1975) notes that the Protestant Reformers declared that magic was not simply a false
religionthe way the term had been used in the pastbut was a different sort of activity
altogether; one characterized first and foremost by being manipulative in character (96). Also see
Thomas (1971), 61.
49
If it was especially Tylor and Frazer who took Reformation and Enlightenment notions of
magic as manipulative, coercive, and irrational and established them as universal academic
categories, then it was especially Mauss, Durkheim and Malinowski (among other late-nineteenth/
early-twentieth century sociologists and anthropologists) who further established magic as
characteristically individual and technical in nature and oriented primarily towards immediate and
practical aims. All of these characterizations of magic were essential in carving out the new
modern spheres of religion and science.
during the Reformation and Enlightenment. Hildred Geertz (1975) hits

the nail on the head when she writes:
What the Reformation and Enlightenment added up to in the endto

simplify outrageouslywas the climb in intellectual status of a con-
ception of the nature of religion which stressed the central necessity of
a coherent doctrine and the emptiness of ritual. At the same time, in
other circles, there was an increase in the market value of a view of the

pursuit of knowledge which was empiricist and experimental. The
result was an across-the-board downgrading of alternative views of reli-
gion and knowledge. The concept of magicis a direct descendant
of these controversies, as a term for some of these downgraded
alternatives. (76)
Mantras certainly seem to have been placed in this category of down-

graded alternatives to modern Western views of language and religion.
Conceived as spells and magical formulas, as they are so often trans-
lated, mantras are by implication irrational attempts to manipulate the
Divine, in contrast to the supplicative prayers of authentic religion.
In fact, however, the Tantric mantra seeks neither to coerce nor to
supplicate a divinity. As we have seen, in properly uttering a mantra
one neither forces a deity into action nor does one humbly plead for
divine assistance; rather, one accesses the power of the divine that is
inherently present in the sounds of the mantra and in the correspond-
ing vibrations of the practitioners own consciousness. Both the notions
of coercion and supplication require a separation between humans,
language, and the divine that simply does not exist in the practice of
Tantric Hindu mantra. Thus we see that this common distinction
between magic and religion as manipulative versus supplicative is par-
ticularly revealing of the biases of the post-Reformation, post-
Enlightenment modern Western worldview, a perspective which has
great difficulty understanding common Indian conceptions expressive
of the conviction that humans and the divine interact intimately in the
ordinary sensory experience of the world. As Glucklich puts it:
What is perceived by humans in this world corresponds to elements of

the divine order, creating a bond, a correspondence that is sense-based
and lies at the root of the homological rationality that one sees in
much of Indias traditional thinkingThe principle underlying this
way of sorting out the world is not an expression of magical thinking,
but rather a privileging of sensory experience as the index of Gods
creative energy, and a recognition of its potential to further ones
interests. (2005: 5590)
By and large, then, Indians have traditionally perceived the world as a

vast system of sympathetic vibrations and interconnections infused with
the divine, a divine that pervades the world and can be accessed via the
senses.50 This worldview assumes a continuity between the divine and
mundane realms and often refuses to differentiate between religious and
pragmatic concerns. In India, the practices most closely associated with
spiritual liberationconcentration, austerities, self-control, mantra-
recitation, etc.are also conducive to worldly enjoyment: long life,

health, power, children, and wealth (Glucklich 2005: 5590).
The worldview just described simply does not fit the modern ration-
alist perspective of most Westerners.51 We can see this in the fact that,
since the beginning of modern Indology, Hinduism has been described
as a religion saturated with magic and superstition.52 Under the influ-
ence of post-Reformation and post-Enlightenment ideas about ration-
ality and the nature of religion, modern scholars have tended to view
Hindu devotional (bhakti) forms with slightly more understanding
(when not simply labeled idol worship), but Vedic and Tantric forms
of Hinduism, with their focus on homologies and monistic identities
between worldly and divine, have often been characterized as magical.
Monier-Williams, for instance, wrote that bhakti, which he identified
with Vaisnavism, notwithstanding the gross polytheistic superstitions
idolatry to which it gives rise, is the only Hind system
and hideous
worthy of being called a religion (1891: 96) and stated furthermore
50
For an attempt, from the perspective of psychology and differences in child/ego development,
to explain why Indians so often perceive the world in this wayin contrast to most Westerners
see Sudhir Kakars Shamans, Mystics and Doctors: A Psychological Inquiry into India and its
Healing Traditions (1982) and The Inner World: A Psychoanalytic Study of Childhood and Society
in India (1978).
51
It is important to note that discussions of worldview can easily slide into misleading
statements of homogeneity and overly broad generalizations about cultures. Thus I should be clear
that the Indian worldview I have described (in which the presence and power of the divine is
infused within the sensory world in a vast fabric of interconnections accessible in everyday life) is
not universal in India, but is oneeven if the predominant oneof many in India, including
alternate perspectives that see the sensory world as illusory and unreal or as a physical creation
essentially separate from the purity of the divine. Similarly, to characterize the worldview of the
West (and especially Western scholars) as modern, scientific, and rationalist is a generalization that
does not always hold true, though few would argue that this is not the dominant worldview of
contemporary Western culture. Finally, it is crucial to note that many Indians todaywhether due
to colonial influence, globalization, westernized education, or Indias own post-independence
efforts to be a modern nationpossess the same modern rationalist (science-based) worldview that
I here describe as western. Among these modern Indians, the terms mantra and tantra are
often viewed with doubt and suspicion. As Yelle remarks, In modern Bengalthe phrase mantra-
tantra (or tantra-mantra) is frequently used in the pejorative or dismissive sense of mumbo
jumbo (Yelle 2003: 17).
52
See Glucklich (2005: 5587).
that bhakti alone [among Hindu religious forms] possesses the essential
elements of a genuine religion. For there can be no true religion without
personal devotion to a personal God (1882: 2956).53 When it came to
Tantra, however, Monier-Williams had an entirely different opinion. It
was he who first used the term Tantrism as a singular, monolithic
class (Urban 2003: 51), remarking disparagingly that Tantrism is
Hinduism arrived at its last and worst stage of medieval development
(1890: 123) and asserting that the Tantras are generally mere manuals

of mysticism, magic, and superstition of the worst and most silly kind
(1890: 129).54 Here bhakti, with its more familiar, Protestant-like, devo-
tional approach, is defined as religion, while Tantra, with its unfamiliar
and un-approved perspectives and practicesespecially that of mantra
is labeled as magic and superstition.55
Undoubtedly, such descriptions not only served to justify Britains
civilizing colonial mission in India, but also constituted a part of the
careful demarcation of the modern spheres of religion, magic, and
science. As Styers (2004) has aptly demonstrated, Magic has offered
scholars and social theorists a foil for modern notions of religion and
science and, more broadly, a foil for modernity itself (9). Scholarly
characterizations of magic have assisted in creating a disenchanted
53
As scholars such as Krishna Sharma (1987) have shown, influential late-nineteenth and early-
twentieth century Western scholars like Monier-Williams, H. H. Wilson, Albrecht Weber, Franz
Lorinser, and George Grierson drew on native Christianand especially Protestantconceptions
of religion as monotheistic, personal, and emotion/faith-oriented to identify bhakti first with
Krsna-worship and later with the larger category of Vaisnavism. In the process, they characterized
bhakti religion as a kind of reformed Hinduism (i.e.,
this reformed from earlier less worthy
forms of Hinduism), an Indian instance of Christian-like monotheistic devotion to a personal God.
Grierson (18511941) was particularly important in producing the first integrated historical
account of bhaktithe monotheistic faith of Indiawhich he termed Bhgavatism and
characterized as a revolution, a monotheistic Vaisnava religion of emotion for the poor and
despised social classes, and a gospel preached in the language of the masses.
54
He adds that most [Tantras] are mere hand-books for the use of practisers of a kind of
witchcraft, which to Europeans appears so ineffably absurd that the possibility of any persons
believing in it seems in itself almost incredible. Whole Tantras teach nothing but what may be
called the science of employing unmeaning sounds [i.e. mantras] for acquiring magical power
(1890: 130). Monier-Williams was hardly the only early Indologist to make such comments. For
instance, Mitchell and Muir refer to Tantra as magic, while also describing it as the fullest
development of sorcery in India. See Mitchell and Muir (1891: 5354).
55
Such notions about Tantra are not limited to Western Orientalists and, in fact, seem to have
made their way into much of the mass populace of contemporary India. Hugh Urban comments
that In most vernacular languages [in India] today, the term tantra is typically associated with a
whole range of intense associations, usually relating to the darker realms of the magical, the
immoral (sometimes the illegal), and the occult (2003: 38). Urbans excellent book is, to date,
probably the best available for understanding changing Indian attitudes toward Tantra during and
since colonial rule, but more work needs to be done on precisely how and why Indian conceptions
of Tantra have become what they are today, particularly in regard to the relationships between
Indian nationalist rhetoric, Tantra, and the notion of a pan-Indian bhakti movement.
world that functions fully according to rational scientific laws and in

which religion is cordoned off as transcendent and otherworldly.
Clearly, a worldview in which the divine is infused within and pervades
the world, and in which mysterious (and often scientifically unverifi-
able) interconnections abound in all aspects of life, is nonsensical and
even threatening to the modern Western worldview from which the
dominant scholarly conceptions of magic have come.

MANTRA AS MAGIC: WHATS AT STAKE?
I noted at the outset that recent scholarship has blurred definitions
of magic to such an extent that virtually the only characteristic that
scholars agree upon is that magic is a term of marginalization and
condemnation applied to the Other, that is, to practices and beliefs
deemed incomprehensible, unauthorized, and/or abnormal by the accu-
sers. It is no wonder, then, that Western scholars have invoked this
term (and related words like spell) for mantra.56 The problem is that
magic and magical are loaded terms; as soon as they are used to
label any given phenomenon, a value judgment is made.
I propose that it is better to term mantra a natural language rather
than to term it a magical language. A natural language is one that posits
a natural connection between symbol and symbolized and thus allows for
words to have direct effects on reality. Unlike the term magical language,
the notion of a natural language does not imply condemnation,
56
As we have seen, early Indologists like Monier-Williams often referred to mantras, especially
Tantric mantras, as magical, but scholars have been considerably more careful in their use of the
term since the extensive critiques leveled against E. B. Tylor, James Frazer, and Bronislaw
Malinowskis work on magic. Nevertheless, mantras conflict with modern Western understandings
of language has led even recent scholars to characterize the mantra as a spell or as magic.
Margaret Stutley (1985) describes mantras as magic formulas (21) and as sounds having
magical efficacy (126); Hinnells and Sharpe (1972) refer to mantra-yoga as the Yoga of Spells
which emphasizes the repetition of magical syllables or words (68); and Graham Dwyer (2003)
defines mantra as a magical formula, a sacred verse or mystical sound, a hymn or bhajanan
incantation, a charm or a spell (144); Yelle (2003), whose use of the term natural language in
reference to mantras I have here advocated, at one point describes Tantric bja mantras as magic
words signaling the boundaries of the ritual formula or spell [italics mine] (17). Even Andr
Padoux, whose excellent work on Hindu Tantra and mantrastra I have often relied on in this
paper, writes that, [Mantras] use of the linguistic or acoustic resources of language or of sounds
may be called magical, especially if we consider that sounds or words used in this way are deemed
to have an innate efficiency (303), stating further that mantras reflect the ceaseless, irrational
wish to act efficaciously through words or sounds; all cases where, through words or sound, wish
or will becomes action or produces effects (310). Clearly, here mantra is judged as irrational and
magical because of its disharmony with modern Western assumptions about language,
i.e., because it rejects the view that language is an artificial construction that is separate from the
natural world and has no innate power to affect reality.
disapproval, or lack of understanding; it does not marginalize mantras

into a separate sphere in opposition to the approved and authorized realm
of religious language.
Nonetheless, while I advocate the use of natural language as a
better alternative, unfortunately, whether or not we avoid the use of the
terms magic and magical to describe mantraor any other
phenomenaa larger problem persists. No matter how sensitive the
terminology we employ, in the end the biases of our perspective still

expose themselves. Yelles argument that mantras present the illusion
of a natural language makes it clear that, in his judgment, mantras do
not actually function in the way the tradition believes they do. Whats
in a name, then? That which we call magical, by any other name would
be just as irrational. In a sense, to think otherwise would be to grant
language the very magical power that modern rationality has long
refused it. So while natural language is, for all the reasons I have
cited, a more appropriate descriptive term for mantra than magical
language, if this natural language is deemed an illusion and a
dream, is it not still negatively stigmatized as being opposed to all
that science and modern rationalism stand for?
This brings us to the core of the problem: as objective or cultu-
rally neutral as we may try to be, by and large, we simply do not
believe the traditions claims about mantra; they do not fit the criteria
of empirical rationalism. As Alper states outright: Most of us who
study mantras criticallyhistorians, philosophers, Sanskritiststake the
Enlightenment consensus for granted. We do not believe in magic (3).
What magic means here is not so much something in opposition to
religion as something in opposition to the modern rational perspective,
most especially that of science.
Modern science tends to completely separate the world of material
causality from that of subjectivity and desire. Born in the
Enlightenment, the master discourse of this modern science is
Cartesian epistemology, whose posit of subject and object as two quite
separate entities drains the subject of nature and the object of culture.
They face each other as antagonists; nature is constructed as Other,
devoid of any of the presumed qualities of the subject, especially
agency (Aronowitz 2000: 714). Those practices and perspectives
labeled as magical stress the interconnections between man and uni-
verse, subject and object, and encourage an active and mimetic yielding
into the Other. For Glucklich (2005), in fact, the defining feature of the
magical is a recognition, based on sensory perception and performed
symbolically, that life is constituted by interrelated phenomenathat
are both meaningful and controllable when properly understood
(5591). In contrast, in modern science, these multitudinous affinities

between existents are suppressed by the single relation between the
subject who bestows meaning and the meaningless object (Horkheimer
and Adorno 1972: 10).
Horkheimer and Adorno point out that, Like science, magic
pursues aims, but seeks to achieve them by mimesisnot by progres-
sively distancing itself from the object [italics mine] (11). It is
especially in this vital mimetic dimension of magic that we can see the

great value of perspectives and practices too often marginalized by
modern rationalism. As Michael Taussig (1993) explains, The wonder
of mimesis lies in the copy drawing on the character and power of the
original, to the point whereby the representation may even assume that
character and that power. Taussig considers the mimetic faculty an
essential human ability to copy, imitate, make models, explore differ-
ence, yield into and become the Other (xiii). Earlier we saw Robert
Yelles emphasis on the mimetic character of mantras, how the formal
features of mantra are self-consciously designed to imitate cosmic pro-
cesses. In more ways than one, the practice of mantra is mimetic in
nature, involving a yielding into the Other, a mirroring of the subject
(the practitioner) in the object (in this case, the divine signified in
sound) via the potency of creative imitation and representation.
Taussig writes that mimesis involves a copying or imitation and a
palpable, sensuous, connection between the very body of the perceiver
and the perceived (21). While he stresses the visual image, mantric
practice shows us that mimesis is sonic as well. In this context, the
mantra is a creative representation and, when uttered, a sonic copy of a
cosmic/divine original. Furthermore, the perception of this copy
unites the utterer with the uttered. In other words, to utter the mantra
is to mimic the cosmos/divine in sound, and to perceive the mantras
sound vibrations is to make sensuous contact with that divine via the
tactility of the ears and mind. This is the magic of mantric mimesis.
Yet as we have seen, in the modern rationalist view, the magic of
mimesisthe very real potency of representation, the power of active
yielding into (as opposed to progressive distancing away from) the Other,
and the causal efficacy of constructing meaning and asserting desire and
intentionis firmly disclaimed. Magic, then, represents that which
opposes the Enlightenment consensus, which eschews the instrumental
rationality that characterizes science, capitalism, and modernity, in
general, in favor of an emphasis on the mysteriously interconnected
nature of reality and interrelations among all phenomena. This is both
magics biggest weakness and its greatest strength, for while at times it cer-
tainly may be wrong or unverifiable in the empirical sense, its mimetic
logic provides a vitally necessary alternative to the scientific-rationalist

perspective, one that emphasizes our connections with the world around
us and incorporates, illuminates, and appreciates dimensions of reality
and human experience to which the modern perspective is blind.57
CONCLUSIONS

We have seen how the modern rationalist worldview dominant
among Western scholars and laypeople can tend to distort understand-
ings of mantras by mislabeling them as spells or instances of
magical language. Our investigation has shown that the terms
magic and magical lack any productive value as scholarly terms of
description and should generally be avoided. They are not only inaccur-
ate, but tend to marginalize the magical phenomenon into an illegiti-
mate realm falsely contrasted with that of the religious and the rational,
and also have a history of being used as rhetorical weapons in the inter-
ests of power. Nevertheless, our terms and categories are always provi-
sional (lest we ourselves come to believe in something akin to a natural
language) and this essay has, in part, sought to demonstrate the very
productivity of such faulty terminology, the instrumental value of even
problematic scholarly categories, especially when one demonstrates just
how and why they do not fit the phenomena they are applied to. Here
I follow Jacques Derrida (1978), who suggests a strategy of
conserving all these old concepts within the domain of empirical dis-
covery while here and there denouncing their limits, treating them as
tools which can still be used. No longer is any truth value attributed to
them; there is a readiness to abandon them, if necessary, should other
instruments appear more useful. In the meantime, their relative efficacy
is exploited, and they are employed to destroy the old machinery to
which they belong and of which they themselves are pieces. This is
how the language of the social sciences criticizes itself. (284)
And criticize itself it should. For if the term magic has been used by
scholars to carve out and protect the modern notions of religion and
science, and to de-authorize the value of certain non-Western practices
and viewpoints, then I hope this examination of mantra as magical
language helps us in destroying the old machinery, challenges us to
57
See Michael Pollans The Omnivores Dilemma (2006: 1478) for a fascinating example of the
limits of the modern rationalist perspective in regard to agriculture and approaches to the natural
environment.
look beyond modern rationalist perspectives, and reminds us to be

constantly aware of the inaccurate and prejudicial categories that can so
easily emerge in the study of foreign cultures.
It may be impossible to free ourselves of the modern rationalist per-
spective we have inherited from Western culture and history; and we
likely would not even wish it. Yet a heightened awareness of how this
perspective informs our research and opinionshow it tends to mar-
ginalize alternative views, how it ignores and overlooks important

dimensions of reality, and how it subtly contributes to the domination
and exploitation of nature and our fellow human beingssuch an
awareness, coupled with genuine attempts to re-value terms like
magic and magical, can only be a step in the right direction.
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The Magical Language

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A PERSISTENT THEME IN ACADEMIC DESCRIPTIONS OF

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standards of the accusers, abnormal, (Johnston 2004: 51). Throughout

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MAGIC AND LANGUAGE

in the potency of words. He wrote that magical language is based on

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First, [the scholarly disavowal of the magical power of words] configures

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WHAT ARE MANTRAS?

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word(s) believed to be of superhuman origin, received, fashioned and

As this definition indicates, mantra is especially conceived of as a

As Andr Padoux (1989) states, Mantra is sound (abda) or word

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For instance, while mantras in East Asian Buddhism generally also

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of recitations and under different specified conditionsfor different

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goals,is characterized by the attention paid to the technical side of

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MANTRAS IN TANTRIC HINDUISM

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the worshipper blends with the thought-power represented by the

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effective, containing in their very sound structure a mystic gnosis, that

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Vk (vc) is akti, the feminine power of the divine to convey meaning

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of consciousness until ultimately reaching the direct experience of the

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While small differences abound in the sonic theology of the

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glossalia much more than ordinary language (7580). He says that

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In the concentrated and extended repetition of a mantra, the mind

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These devices include alliteration, especially of the bjas and other

thus creates the dream of a natural language capable of directly influ-

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MANTRA AS MAGIC: A QUESTION OF PERSPECTIVE

religion is supplicative and submissive, relying on the divine as the source

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during the Reformation and Enlightenment. Hildred Geertz (1975) hits

What the Reformation and Enlightenment added up to in the endto

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Mantras certainly seem to have been placed in this category of down-

What is perceived by humans in this world corresponds to elements of

By and large, then, Indians have traditionally perceived the world as a

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world that functions fully according to rational scientific laws and in

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disapproval, or lack of understanding; it does not marginalize mantras

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(5591). In contrast, in modern science, these multitudinous affinities

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