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Rating: 
Summary: Tantra or Erotica?
Review: For the reader who would enjoy a book which contains an overall treatment containing history of tantra, some tantric scripture and descriptions of tantric worship, this is quite possibly the best choice. I was delighted with the series of colorful ritual paintings loaded with hidden tantric meaning. The other blatantly erotic paintings did not detract but seemed to be simply a publisher's attempt to sell the book to a larger market. (The author asked the publisher not to include any erotic pictures.) These more erotic illustrations were perfect examples of works done by skilled painters and craftsman and could be enjoyed as such. The most fascinating aspect of this book is the manner in which tantra is not only compared with other religions and mythology, but how the author has shown that tantra has evolved from these sources. This book is written simply enough for the novice but also contains more specific information of interest to an advanced reader.
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Summary: In answer to D. Kostas's questions about the book
Review: Kostas, you read my comments here, so I don't need to repeat them. In answer to your questions 1) I have not read "Magie des Sexus". The answers to your questions 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 are given in the book and it would take another book to repeat them here... Very briefly, tantra draws on many different traditions, but is fundamentally rooted in prehistoric mother goddess worship, especially as practised in India. Tantra, as such, was not started by Dionysos. There is a very strong connection between ancient Indian and ancient Greek gods, as there is between old Sanskrit and ancient Greek. In India there are hundreds of sacred texts, called tantras. For example Mahanirvanatantra, Kalitantra, Guhyasamajatantra. The difference between Tantra and Yoga is that the latter is a system of body and mind control, whereas the former is a melange of beliefs and practises with no very clear definition. I hope this helps. PS: I ought to point out that you are infected with the Happy99 email worm. This tells me that you are foolish enough to be using a PC and running Windows :). Check your \windows\system directory for a file named wsock32.ska. A good place to for help is http://www.datafellows.com. Whether you are deliberately passing on Happy99 or merely innocently relaying it, you might be interested in the strange encounters with virus authoring folk described in my book The Cybergypsies, details available on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. Cybergypsies also contains some stuff about the Kama Sutra which I had originally intended to include in Tantra. With best wishes, Indra
Rating: 
Summary: Great introduction to & history of tantra, beautiful artwork
Review: The author of this book has written a fascinating study of tantric ideas and practices, focusing on their relation to gnosis, ie., mystical knowledge of god acquired via the winding left-hand path. Apparently the author was upset when her book was published - it has been marred (gasp!) by the inclusion of dozens and dozens of beautiful, full color illustrations of hindu religious and erotic artwork. I hope I'm not out of line in suggesting that, from the standpoint of the reader, the artwork is a GOOD THING. Actually, this is the best single source of information conmnection tantra with gnosticism I have have ever seen AND the best single collection of indian erotica I have ever seen. TWO BOOKS IN ONE! YEAH!
Rating: 
Summary: Buy this book only for pictures!
Review: The best thing about this book is its good collection of tantric ritual pictures. Other than that the book has proved very disappointing. The author does present good ideas on the history of Tantra, however in this he often strays form the actual line of thought to greek and roman civilizations. He does not seem to be satisfied by making his point once. It sometimes seems that the author does not know what he is talking about. To further worsen the problem, he talks in spectacular english english, so you have to reach out for the dictionary atleast once every page! I would have liked this book better if the author used plain english.
Rating:
Summary: Publishers should listen to authors.
Review: This book is really two books.
The first, an eclectic (and hopefully reasonably academic) collection of thoughts and writings from around the world, more than that I cannot yet say, having recieved the book this morning.
The second, a collection of asian pornography, -some of which is 'tantric', little or none of which from classical Indian texts' gathered by the publisher to 'spice' up the text. The footnotes under most of the pictures look pretty much made up, seem to be unresearched or ill-researched, and bear little or no relevance to the copy.
Had I seen that the publisher decided to promote the subject heading as'Sexuality/Art', I would have not bought the book.
I will not buy books published by Destiny again.
For those of you who think that Tantra to do with sex, I recommend you look at the world around you, and ask yourself "What is? What is not?" Why? Because you are grasping at something that isn't there.
I sincerely hope that the copy is considered and provocative. If so, I shall revise my rating.
Rating:
Summary: Great introduction to & history of tantra, beautiful artwork
Review: This is NOT a book of sexual Eastern imports. It deals with the spiritual discipline known as tantra, illustrating its explanations with images and excerpts from the sacred texts. Invaluable.
Rating:
Summary: simply excellent
Review: This is NOT a book of sexual Eastern imports. It deals with the spiritual discipline known as tantra, illustrating its explanations with images and excerpts from the sacred texts. Invaluable.
Rating:
Summary: ==================== Caveat emptor! ===================
Review: Warning! As the author (not editor) of this book, I can tell you that the title of the US edition is misleading. It is emphatically not an anthology of translated tantra texts, although it contains many translated passages. The book is an exploration of the melange of beliefs and practices that have collectively become known in the West as 'tantra'. Its original title was 'Tantra: the Search for Ecstasy'. The publisher clearly thought (well just look at the pictures) that tantra means one thing and one thing only. But I - commissioned to write the text because IÕd translated the Kama Sutra - wanted to say that tantra is not just sex. It is much more, and much more interesting, than that. Sex is only one of the sacraments used by a small section of just one sect among the vast body of people in India whose worship might be described as tantric. Tantra's tap root is the old pre-Hindu mother goddess worship. Some of its roots are outside India, in Tibetan Buddhism, and, tantalisingly, among the gnostics who lived in the Alexandrian deserts of the first and second centuries AD. (Even the purely sexual thought of India owes something to the west. Some ideas in Kama Sutra were current in Rome three hundred years earlier.) Tantra is a complex, fascinating subject, utterly undeserving of a leering pornographic treatment. The text was written in a six week period over Christmas 1993, and is the fruit of twenty years of reading and thinking. The publisher, who had got together a large collection of pictures 'of a certain sort', was probably anticipating a do-it-yourself guide to tantric sex. I was determined to disappoint him. The text became a journey in search of the origin and meaning of sacraments. There is a lot of obscure research here, many original ideas. IÕm proud of some of them. If you are looking for erotica, you will be disappointed. (I suspect the publisher was horrified, but since the manuscript was late, he had little choice but to print it.) I know of only two people in the world, one in San Francisco and the other in Bhopal, who have actually read the text. The first is a practising tantric who was kind enough to say he thought I'd 'got most things right'. The other is a social worker, living and working among Bhopal's still-suffering gas victims, who praised the book for its 'political subversiveness'. I appreciate the former comment, but cherish the latter. Most people just look at the pictures. There are lots of these. Some of them even have some relevance to the subject of Tantra, but most are just Indian erotica of the sort produced en masse in princely courts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I did not choose them and do not particularly like them.
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