Customer Reviews

Great Book Of Tantra

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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!

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.

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.

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.