Language of Images: Visualization and Meaning in Tantras

by Sthaneshwar Timalsina

While Indian visual culture and Tantric images have drawn wide attention, the culture of images, particularly that of the divine images, is broadly misunderstood. This book is the first to systematically address the hermeneutic and philosophical aspects of visualizing images in Tantric practices. While examining the issues of embodiment and emotion, this volume initiates a discourse on image-consciousness, imagination, memory, and recall. The main objective of this book is to explore the meaning of the opaque Tantric forms, and with this, the text aims to introduce visual language to discourse. Language of Images is the result of a long and sustained engagement with Tantric practitioners and philosophical and exegetical texts. Due to its synthetic approach of utilizing multiple ways to read cultural artifacts, this work stands alone in its attempt to unravel the esoteric domains of Tantric practice by means of addressing the culture of visualization.

175 pages, Hardcover

First published May 22, 2015

Reviews

[Johnny Allison]

Anyone considering entering the realms of authentic tantra should definitely treat this material as a prerequisite. It most assuredly ends all of the nonsensical notions surrounding the approach to the practices that have been generated of late by the neo-tantra crowd. The author is Nepalese and was born into the very culture of which he expounds upon from a more or less ancestral as well as academic perspective.