Hindu Tantra

Hindu Tantra is a broad family of ritual, meditative and philosophical traditions within Hinduism, attested from roughly the sixth century of the common era onward, that use mantra, visualization and structured ritual to pursue both liberation and worldly power, treating the body and the cosmos as mirror images of one another. It spans Shaiva, Shakta and Vaishnava lineages, with Kashmir Shaivism and Shri Vidya among its most studied schools. Its deities, philosophy and many of its texts, including the Lalita Sahasranama and the wider Shakta hymn literature, are openly taught and described elsewhere in this atlas, and its central emblem, the Sri Chakra, and its central goddess figure, Lalita Tripurasundari, are public objects of worship and scholarship. Within certain Shakta currents, above all Kaula lineages and left hand strands of Shri Vidya, specific ritual procedures, most notably the panchamakara or five Ms rite, are transmitted only through initiation into a particular lineage.