Tantra is closely linked to the body (tanu) and the act of weaving (tanti). It argued that while an individual thread (sutra) has value, it cannot become cloth

Illustration/Devdutt Pattanaik

In the east, Diwali is linked to the worship of ghosts, ancestors and the goddess Kali. This has its roots in Tantra, which in many ways a counterpoint to India’s masculine Vedic traditions that were gradually turning ascetic and creating the divide between purity and pollution.

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Tantra celebrated the “impure” worlds of unrestrained and unregulated sex and violence and death, and bodily fluids. It saw the material world not as mirage (maya), but as a source of power (shakti). Those who knew the secrets of material reality could easily manipulate it: create magic to help kings win wars, drive rival armies mad, infest enemy territory with disease. Some of these ideas can be........

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