Items In Tantra
Every question on the site tagged Items In Tantra, each answered from a timestamped source rather than a summary written from memory.
Notes from our sources
What is Loban, and where does it come from?
Loban is the solidified resin of a tree not native to India — found in Sumatra, Java, and Indonesia — used in perfumes and medicine.
Is Loban smoke safe to breathe?
Loban smoke cuts both ways — it can clear certain skin conditions and ease joint pain, but it can equally trigger new joint, lung, and respiratory ailments such as asthma.
How is Raal different from Loban?
Raal is the gum resin of India's own Sal tree, used throughout Sanatana culture for dhuni — unlike Loban, which is foreign in origin.
Why is Loban called Shyama Dhoop, and what is its purpose in Tantra Shastra?
In Tantric texts, Loban is termed 'Shyama Dhoop', and its principal function is to attract negative energies and spirits rather than dispel them — used in advanced sadhanas and specific Tantric temples, not ordinary worship.
How do Tantric practitioners fully cleanse a home of both positive and negative energies?
A specific blend of sulfur, Loban, asafoetida (heeng), and herbs burned over Apamarga wood is used to vacate a space of all energies before positive energies are re-invoked with satvic measures.
Should Loban be burned at home?
No — Loban (Shyama Dhoop) should never be burned inside a home: it feeds whatever negative energy is already present and drives ancestors and satvic deities away.
What should Raal be mixed with for daily household dhuni?
Raal combined with cloves, black sesame, black pepper, camphor, cardamom, and jatamansi — a blend whose fragrance strengthens satvic forces and drives negative ones away.
Does Raal have a use in Tantra?
Yes — under the names Ashvakarna, Kasya, Dhoop Vriksha, Surya Dhoop, and Sarja Dhoop, Raal appears in kavachas and in texts like the Renuka Tantram, where burning it with mantra performs Sthana-bandhan.
What should be carried from home to Prayag?
Gold for donation if affordable, silver otherwise — a piece worth a thousand or two thousand rupees, or a silver sheet — and Akshat from one's own house, gathered the day before departure.
What should not be worn when travelling for sadhana?
Nothing of leather — no leather belt, purse, shoes or sandals — if the journey is genuinely for sadhana. Going barefoot is what a properly qualified practitioner would do, but the speaker declines to encourage it in the cold.
What is done immediately after the Argha offerings?
Japa begins there in the wet clothes — five repetitions, fifty, one mala, ten, whatever the practitioner can manage — without a mala in hand. The Akshat brought from home is then released into the Ganga with flowers.
What should be done with the clothes, asana and mala used at the Kumbh?
Keep them carefully and never give them to anyone else. Use them lifelong, even torn; keep a torn one at the head of the bed; pass them to spiritual heirs — and never trade them away to a utensil-seller.
How should a returning pilgrim be received at the door?
Feet washed with turmeric water and wiped, then Argha and Madhuparka — at least a spoonful of honey. The speaker warns that insulting a returning pilgrim at the threshold invites the family's own misfortune.
What should a practitioner wear during the sadhana period?
Unstitched cloth — women wrapping two cotton saris from below upward, men a dhoti, with no alternative offered to men. Worship clothes are kept separate and never worn while eating, and the asana is fixed: never changed, never washed, never sat on by anyone else.
Should the daily bathing of images continue during the sadhana?
The existing rule does not change — if the practitioner bathed the image daily before, they continue. Consecrated stones (Narmadeshwar, crystal, Swarnamukhi, Shaligram) require daily bathing; an ordinary Shri Vigraha in a household does not.
What rules apply to the vessels used in worship?
Metal rather than clay, one set used throughout, washed clean every day. Offering into a vessel still holding yesterday's Naivedya is called wrong; the incense plate that accumulates years of ash is singled out as something not to keep.
What should the Bali vessel be made of?
Metal. A clay Khappar may be used and need not be replaced, but it cracks when heated — and although the reason is ordinary physics, a cracked vessel is held not to be right for a practitioner.
Should the japa mala be changed for the Kumbh sadhana?
Keep the one already in use. The exception is a mala that is itself wrong — a plastic one, or one taken up unknowingly — which should be corrected before beginning a full Mandala rather than carried into it.
Why should bedding, footwear, clothes and comb not be shared?
Because another person's mental impurity spreads into the aura of what they sit on, and because material from beneath the feet is used in Marana prayogas — so energy issues from there, and the practitioner's own merit must not be dispersed.
How is a Trishul consecrated as Bhairava where no image is available?
Bathe it in Panchagavya and Panchamrita on Makar Sankranti morning, coat it in cow ghee, pour a stream of cow milk over it while reciting the Devi Sukta, then dry, perfume and adorn it, wrap Kalawa, and fix a lemon on each of the three points.
Where should a lamp be lit in the house during Shraddha Paksha?
At the place where drinking water is stored, which is held to be the ancestors' place — a ghee lamp on Kusha, lit in the evening facing south. Water in the body is said to be sustained by ancestral grace, and its lack to indicate displeased ancestors.
Is there a fault in worshipping in a room where meat and alcohol are consumed?
Yes, and the speaker says there is no way around it. Deities accept everything in the form of fragrance, so even a curtain does not help — sattvic worship cannot be performed where meat and alcohol are consumed.
Under which trees should observances for the ancestors be performed?
Bael, Peepal and Banyan. Any auspicious act performed beneath these three during Shraddha Paksha is said to reach the ancestors directly by divine grace, and Bhagavati is said to dwell in the Bael tree itself.
What do the Aparajita and Tulsi plants indicate about a household?
Tulsi is described as the most sensitive plant, drying repeatedly where negativity is being absorbed; the speaker says to keep replanting regardless. Where Aparajita spreads and flowers, he says auspicious power has begun to arrive in that house.
What should be done with the coconut placed on the Kalash?
It must never be broken. That coconut is the Goddess's own form, having received nine days of worship — leave it in the river at Visarjan, or keep it in the worship space and immerse it next year, or plant it if it has sprouted.
Why must consecrated tantric objects like Yantras and a Dattatreya Danda be respected and never discarded?
Self-made or consecrated tantric objects — such as a hand-crafted Peeth Yantra or a Dattatreya Danda received after a Yaag — embody the chanting, penance, and effort invested in them, and are silently absorbing adversity on the practitioner's behalf, so they must be treated with lifelong respect rather than dismissed as ordinary items.
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