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To: alt.magick.tantra From: sandymac@sandymac.demon.co.uk (Alexander Maclennan) Subject: Re: eunuchs who worship Kali Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1999 20:18:24 GMT "Nakula"wrote: > Cole Anderson wrote in message > <7rf8cc$2khc$1@newssvr03-int.news.prodigy.com>... >> I have heard that in India, a sect of male eunuchs dress as women and >> are trained to worship Kali.....does anyone have any info on this? The sect youhave in mind is the Hijras. Their goddess is not Kali but Bahuchara Mata. a version of the mother goddess. They are completely castrated, both penis and scrotum and dress and behave as women. They love in houses presided over by a senior hijra who is the guru. Their main activity is dancing and singing at weddings or after a new birth in a household aand are disliked but feared because they are reputed to bring bad luck like infertility if not rewarded. Many of them function as male prostitutes. Neither Man nor Woman, Serena Nanda, Wadsworth 1990 is a scholarly account of the sect. There is also the Sakhibhava sect which is devoted to Krishna but worship Radha and imitate her Gopi attandants. These men dress as women, observe periods of menstrual uncleanness and some have sexual relations with men as an act of devotion. -- Alexander MacLennan sandymac@sandymac.demon.co.uk Path: ultra.sonic.net!uunet!pao.uu.net!lax.uu.net!ffx.uu.net!hermes.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!newshub.northeast.verio.net!newspeer.monmouth.com!newsfeed.icl.net!newspeer.clara.net!news.clara.net!remarQ-uK!rQdQ!supernews.com!remarQ.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: catherine yronwode Newsgroups: alt.magick.tantra Subject: Re: eunuchs who worship Kali Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 11:43:39 -0700 Organization: Lucky Mojo Curio Co. Lines: 43 Message-ID: <37DE975C.83E@luckymojo.com> References: <7rf8cc$2khc$1@newssvr03-int.news.prodigy.com> <7rgb6u$2dmq$1@nnrp9.crl.com> X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (Macintosh; I; 68K) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Xref: ultra.sonic.net alt.magick.tantra:10341 Alexander Maclennan wrote: > > "Nakula" wrote: > > > > Cole Anderson wrote in message > > <7rf8cc$2khc$1@newssvr03-int.news.prodigy.com>... > > >> I have heard that in India, a sect of male eunuchs dress as women > >> and are trained to worship Kali.....does anyone have any info on > >> this? > > The sect you have in mind is the Hijras. Their goddess is not Kali > but Bahuchara Mata. a version of the mother goddess. They are > completely castrated, both penis and scrotum and dress and behave as > women. They love in houses presided over by a senior hijra who is > the guru. Their main activity is dancing and singing at weddings or > after a new birth in a household aand are disliked but feared because > they are reputed to bring bad luck like infertility if not rewarded. > Many of them function as male prostitutes. > > Neither Man nor Woman, Serena Nanda, Wadsworth 1990 is a scholarly > account of the sect. > Alexander MacLennan sandymac@sandymac.demon.co.uk A shorter account of the Hijra, including an interview with one member of the sect, is given in "The Great Book of Tantra," with citations from the Serena Nanda book. "The Great Book of Tantra," a modern picture book, also contains reproductions of a number of 18th and 19th century ritual paintings centered on Kali and/or other female deities, in which male devotees are either castrating themselves and offering their genitals (penis and scrotum) to the Goddess or She is attended by men who have already been thus castrated. These ritual images are not unusual in Indian tantric art, but it *is* unusual to find them in contemporary Western collections of tantric art, because in the West, a major emphasis is placed on reproducing tantric paintings that depict young heterosexual couples engaged in intercourse. cat Lucky W Amulet Archive --------- http://www.luckymojo.com/luckyw.html Karezza and Sacred Sex ------ http://www.luckymojo.com/sacredsex.html The Sacred Landscape ------- http://www.luckymojo.com/sacredland.html news:alt.lucky.w --- discussions on folk magic, luck, amulets, charms
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