‘South Asians make humans divine, Westerners make Devī [the Goddess] human’: with these words Rajeswaramma, senior priestess in a South Indian Śrīvidyā temple complex centered around the benevolent and erotic goddess Tripurasundarī, summarizes her impressions of the tantric paths followed, on one side, by South Asian practitioners and, on the other, Westerner practitioners. Popularized in the West by Osho in the 1970s, esoteric paths that build on ancient South Asian tantric traditions are increasingly attracting international followers, leading to cross-cultural encounters and adaptations of various kinds. Through a praxis-oriented fieldwork and building on my earlier project on the practice of Śrīvidyā in contemporary India, I explore the continuities and transformations of Śrīvidyā as it is transposed from its South Asian contexts into Western settings.
Combining anthropology, philosophy, and religious studies, this project: a) provides an ethnographic documentation of Śrīvidyā in Western contexts; b) discusses, through a genealogical-archeological lens, what bodies, conceptions of humanness/divinity and existentiality are necessary for ritual efficacy; and c) compares cross-culturally how Śrīvidyā beingness unfolds in South Asia and in Western contexts.
