Agama
Every question on the site tagged Agama, each answered from a timestamped source rather than a summary written from memory.
A body of Tantric scriptural injunction (such as Shivagama) specifying rules for worship, including where and how sacrifice is sanctioned — violating its rules for mere taste or sensory enjoyment forfeits any higher spiritual attainment.
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Where sacrifice is sanctioned: ancient Siddha and Shakti Peethas, not a newly made shrine
The speaker says the harm of Bali falls in a specific place. At a Siddha Peetha or Shakti Peeth where the practice has come down from Puranic times, is discussed in the Puranas and is laid down with directions in the tantra Agamas, everything runs as it should and there is no issue. But if someone independently sets up a new peetha of his own somewhere else and offers Bali there for Pretas, Pishachs, Brahmarakshases or dakinis, he says that is harmful and will somewhere give him a wrong, opposite result.
Substances the tantra shastras prescribe for liberation must not be used for pleasure
The speaker says that the things the tantra shastras prescribe for becoming free, if used by someone for the satisfaction of his taste or of bhoga, amount somewhere to a violation of the rules and orders laid down in the Agamas and shastras, and with such a violation that person can never attain Sadgati. He says one can be certain of this, and that in the present day people are in fact bringing durgati on themselves this way.
Warning to reformers who would interfere with an ancient sacrificial tradition
The speaker says those who love philosophical doctrine and claim they want to reform people today should first have their mentality examined; they will themselves show up as durbuddhi and malbuddhi, so what will they do for others. One cannot take half a matter from here and half from somewhere else, he says; doing so and stopping these things only earns the wrath of the shaktis of all the peethas of Bharatvarsh, and nothing good comes of it. His comparison: where Shiva is bathed in milk nobody may demand a blood abhisheka, and likewise where a Bali pavilion has stood for a long age, explained in the Puranas, described in the tantra Agamas, with paddhatis and akharas running, no one should interfere, or he must bear the wrath of the shaktis, of his lok devatas and of his kula shaktis.
Proving the permitted alternative wrong as well leaves the next man with no source of energy at all
If that option is not there either, and you are set on proving the alternative that has been given to be wrong as well, then the next man will simply sit down with his hands struck together — ready to be cut, with no source of energy left, no deva swaroop, no divine grace. In the tangle of niyam and nishedh, he says, a mistake of that order should not be made, that a person abandon his own nitya naimittik life. Hence he keeps within rule and maryada and simplifies.
Kashmir sorted the Agamas into Saiva, Rudra and Bhairava — and Shakta Tantra grew out of the Bhairava group
Agamas were authoritative ritual texts, classified in 4th–5th century Kashmir into Saiva (dualistic), Rudra (mixed), and Bhairava (staunchly non-dualistic/advaita) — and it was from the Bhairava Agamas that Shakta Tantra, centered on the Divine Feminine, developed.
Tantric in method, Vedic in alignment, and state religion of the Khmer Empire at Angkor
Saiva Siddhanta was a dualistic, tantric-in-method but Vedic-aligned school whose Agamas covered everything from temple architecture to royal coronation rites — influential enough across India and Southeast Asia that it became the state religion of the Khmer Empire at Angkor.
Authority drawn from the sixty-four Bhairava Agamas, and complete identity with Para Bhairava as the goal
The Non-Siddhantika Mantramarga centered on Bhairava worship, drew authority from the sixty-four Bhairava Agamas, and aimed at the practitioner realizing complete identity with Para Bhairava — the supreme, all-encompassing state of divine consciousness — making it a major source for later Shakta Tantra.
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