![]() ![]() Non-yoginis consulted yoginis in "visionary, transactional encounters". It is documented in the Brahmayamalatantra scripture. ![]() Ī Shaiva cult of yoginis flourished roughly between 7. The scholar Shaman Hatley writes that the archetypal yogini is "the autonomous Sky-traveller ( khecari)", and that this power is the "ultimate attainment for the siddhi-seeking practitioner". In later Tantric Buddhism, dakini, a female spirit able to fly, is often used synonymously with yogini. They have siddhis, extraordinary powers, including the power of flight many yoginis have the form of birds or have a bird as their vahana or animal vehicle. They both protect and disseminate esoteric tantric knowledge. They are powerful, impure, and dangerous. They are linked with the Bhairava cult, often carrying skulls and other tantric symbols, and practising in cremation grounds and other liminal places. Yoginis are associated with "actual shapeshifting" into female animals, and the ability to transform other people. ![]() Yoginis are often theriomorphic, having the forms of animals, represented in statuary as female figures with animal heads. Yoginis, divine or human, belong to clans in Shaiva, among the most important are the clans of the 8 Mothers (matris or matrikas). ![]() They appear as goddesses, but human female adepts of tantra can emulate "and even embody" these deities, who can appear as mortal women, creating an ambiguous and blurred boundary between the human and the divine. Lost temples, their locations identified from surviving yogini images, are still more widely distributed across the subcontinent, from Delhi in the north and the border of Rajasthan in the west to Greater Bengal in the east and Tamil Nadu in the south.Ī kapala, a cup carved from a human skull, used in tantra, including by yoginisįrom around the 10th century, Yoginis appear in groups, often of 64. The extant temples are either circular or rectangular in plan they are scattered over central and northern India in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Odisha. Even when there are 64 yoginis, these are not always the same. Several of the shrines have niches for 64 yoginis, so are called Chausath Yogini Temples (Chausath Yogini Mandir, from चौसठ, Hindi for 64, also written Chaunsath or Chausathi) others have 42 or 81 niches, implying different sets of goddesses, though they too are often called Chausath yogini temples. They remained largely unknown and unstudied by scholars until late in the 20th century. The Yogini temples of India are 9th to 12th century roofless hypaethral shrines to the yoginis, female masters of yoga in Hindu tantra, broadly equated with goddesses especially Parvati, incarnating the sacred feminine force. ![]()
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