Illness and Healing in Shakta-tantric Traditions

Sudipta Chakraborty deconstructs Eurocentric epistemologies of health and healing from Hindu, Shakta-tantric perspectives.Unlike Eurocentric conceptions of health, Hinduism views religious belief as directly complimentary to medical concerns. This book sheds light on the gradual evolution of Shakta Tantra as a living tradition in South Asia. Believers of this tantric tradition worship Sakti as the ultimate essence of the universe, the abstract theological Absolute who is also the creator, preserver and destroyer of the world. Since Sakta Tantra is an enormously heterogeneous tradition, the Sakta-tantric healing experiences involve a wide range of diverse possibilities. Within this study, Chakraborty collates and analyzes a few of the Sakta-tantric approaches to health across history and within contemporary faith communities.Through an analysis of five texts of Shakta-tantric healing, including three semi-fictionalized accounts and two by Shakta initiates, Chakraborty sheds light on the varied modalities of Shakta-tantric healing cults and experiences. The Shakta-tantric theological tradition highlights the unlimited openness of the body, thereby redefining the body as a unique category, as it is neither matter nor spirit, yet partakes of both. By exploring how Shakta Tantra unfolds in South Asia, from the secret ritual spaces of the Shakta Tantrics to the domains of everyday lived reality, Chakraborty redefines "health" and "sickness" in a radical way, renegotiating the epistemology of Health in the South Asian and even global contexts.