Entangled Religions
July 16, 2026
Carine Plancke
Critical scholarship on neo-Tantra has underscored how it has distorted Tantric practice into a consumerist pursuit of so-called sacred sex that bears little resemblance to the South Asian traditions it originates from. However, some scholars caution against simply dismissing neo-Tantra as misappropriation. Instead, they call for a nuanced investigation into its creative synthesis of Western...
Entangled Religions
July 16, 2026
Carola Erika Lorea, Rohit Singh
Informed by ethnographic fieldwork with humans, nonhumans, and the materiality of living traditions, this collection encourages comparative analysis, interdisciplinary collaboration, and cross-pollination among scholars of religion and Tantra across South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Himalayan region, and Europe. With its premodern origins in South Asia, Tantra has emerged as a repertoire of...
Entangled Religions
July 16, 2026
Maciej Karasinski, Fathima Fasleena
The article explores the cultural significance of the sacred groves (kāvus) of Kerala and their relationship to various notions of nature, ecology and indigenous spirituality. We employ a mixed method of research that combines textual sources and oral exegesis as well as anthropological fieldwork to investigate the spaces within the kāvus that are designated for Tantric healing and empowerment....
Entangled Religions
June 18, 2026
Henrik H. Sørensen
This article aims at approaching the topic of non-doing (Chin. wuwei 無為), and the related idea of effortlessness (Chin. wu gongyong 無功用), from the perspective of the Chan Buddhist tradition (禪宗) in late medieval China. This highly practice-oriented form of Chinese Buddhism developed well-defined soteriological strategies for their practitioners to attain the absolute, variously defined as the...
Entangled Religions
June 18, 2026
Dylan Esler
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Entangled Religions
December 2, 2025
Louis Komjathy
The present article explores Daoist effortless meditation with particular attention to its association with the inner cultivation lineages of classical Daoism (ca. 350–ca. 90 BCE). In addition to discussing the technical specifics of the practice, including its intimate connection to wúwéi 無為 (lit., ‘without acting/doing’; non-action/effortlessness), consideration is given to related...
Entangled Religions
June 26, 2025
David Germano
The Seminal Heart (snying thig) is a form of the Tibetan Buddhist Great Perfection (rdzogs chen) tradition, which itself has been marked by a complex array of contemplative practices that have changed dramatically since its inception in the eighth century right up to present times. A highly innovative central principle in these meditations is the shifting roles of volitional effort and loci of...
Entangled Religions
July 3, 2023
Louise Nelstrop
1 citation
This essay explores the dynamic of contemplative action, which I will refer to as ‘social mysticism’, or what from the perspective of comparative mysticism we might also want to term a form of ‘non-doing’. It focuses primarily on the medieval English mystical tradition, illustrating that two forms of action are discussion—ordinary actions and those which flow out of contemplation. It is noted...
Entangled Religions
April 14, 2023
D. Johannsen
Among modern practitioners of magic, the “psychologization of magic” has become a common strategy to adapt practices such as rituals of invocation to naturalistic thought. In this article, I discuss what was probably the most elaborate attempt to bridge the gap between the magic of the past and magic suited for the present that took place within the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn...
Entangled Religions
October 31, 2014
Stuart Ray Sarbacker
8 citations
In viewing physical practice as instrumental, traditions of modern postural yoga contain an implicit spirituality that echoes its historical precursors in the medieval traditions of haṭhayoga. The physicality of modern postural yoga tradition links the practices of premodern haṭhayoga traditions with disciplines of body that are characteristic of modern cosmopolitanism, such as gymnastics and...