Dakini Series 5: Teaches How to Use Tamas

This is the fifth in our series of articles on the Dakini, drawn from the Dakini video series on the Siddha Tantra Arts YouTube channel. The previous article addressed the human Dakini and what we celebrate on Dakini Jayanti. This article takes up the question that remains for any sincere practitioner alive today: in an age that seems designed to obstruct sādhana, how does the Dakini path actually work? The full video is embedded below. And if something in this piece shifts something in you, or raises a question, we would genuinely like to hear from you. Leave a comment at the bottom.

Teaches How to Use Tamas

Here is something I want to say very carefully, because I think it is the most practically important thing in this entire series.

Remember the mixed nature of the Ḍākinī class addressed in the earlier articles. Deva Ḍākinīs and Nikṛṣṭha Ḍākinīs. Sattvic forms and fierce forms. The complete spectrum. A scholar might see this mixed nature as a problem, a theological inconsistency to resolve. But from the perspective of sādhana, this mixed nature is precisely what makes Ḍākinī interesting. She is not your goodie-two-shoes deity. She holds the full range.

Now think about what this means for ritual purity and practice.

The Conditions That No Longer Exist

The ritual requirements for Ucchiṣṭa Ḍākinī sādhana are fundamentally different from the ritual purity demanded by, say, Gāyatrī sādhana. Everyone who has attempted traditional sattvic sādhana knows what it demands. Pure vegetarian food, not just vegetarian, but prepared in specific conditions with specific materials. A righteous king ruling the land. Honest livelihood, untainted by compromise. A deśa, a region, where dharmic governance prevails. Complete renunciation, or at least conditions of life that approximate renunciation.

Now look around you. Where is this deśa? Where is this righteous ruler without corruption? Where can you earn that honest livelihood without engaging with some form of the adulterated expressions of Kali Yuga? Where can you maintain a hundred percent sattvic lifestyle and expression in an age of microplastics in your blood, endocrine disruptors in your water, processed food in your children's school, and algorithmic manipulation in your pocket? Where can you renounce the world fully when Starlink satellites cover every square meter of the Himalayas and border patrol drones monitor the most remote caves?

The conditions for classical sattvic sādhana have not merely declined. They have become structurally impossible for almost everyone alive today.

And this is not a pessimistic observation. This is a recognition of Kāla, the movement of time, and every tradition that understands Yuga theory knows this.

So, does that mean sādhana is closed? Does that mean the gates of practice are shut until Satya Yuga returns?

No.

Because there is Ḍākinī sādhana.

All Shaktis Are One

The key, the critical doctrinal key, is contained in a verse that Siddha Dharma holds at its very foundation: striyāṃ samastā sakalā jagatsu. All śaktis across the entire universe are inherently the same. Gāyatrī, Kālī, Tārā, Tripurasundarī, and Ḍākinī are all expressions of the one primordial feminine. They are not different energies. They are different frequencies of the same energy, different modes of the same Shakti expressing herself through different conditions.

Ḍākinī is the expression of Kālī. Ḍākinī is the expression of Tārā. Ḍākinī is even the expression of Gāyatrī. But with a twist.

The twist is that Ḍākinī's mode of operation, raw, unfiltered, independent, undomesticated, is compatible with the conditions of Kali Yuga. Her sādhana does not require conditions that no longer exist. Her ritual framework does not demand a purity that the age itself makes impossible. She does not ask you to pretend that the world is still sattvic when every molecule around you testifies otherwise.

This does not mean Ḍākinī sādhana is impure. It means Ḍākinī sādhana is honest. It meets you where you actually are, not where a textbook written in Satya Yuga conditions says you should be. And because striyāṃ samastā sakalā jagatsu, because all śaktis are one, the Ḍākinī path leads to the same ultimate realization as the most refined sattvic practice. The destination is identical. The route is adapted to the terrain.

This is why the mixed nature of the Ḍākinī class is not a problem. It is a feature. A deity who exists only in perfect conditions is useless to people living in imperfect ones. A practice that only works when everything is pure cannot help a world where nothing is. The Ḍākinī's range, from Nikṛṣṭha to Deva, from fierce to sattvic, from cremation ground to flower offering, means she has a mode for every condition. Including this one. Especially this one.

The Power to Resist

There is something else, something nobody in the spiritual world wants to talk about.

Sāttvic practitioners, people who do beautiful, pure, devotional sādhana, often cannot resist the tāmasic world. They are overwhelmed by it. Taken advantage of. Pushed around by ideologies, by systems, by people who operate with force. They have inner peace, but they do not have the power to respond.

The Ḍākinī gives that power. The power to resist an oppressive force befittingly. The power to give the counterargument. To stand firm when everything around you is designed to make you submit. In this tāmasic world, if you want to survive, thrive, and progress spiritually, you need more than inner stillness. You need the ability to respond with force when force is needed. Most sāttvic practitioners do not have this, and that is why they are always in trouble.

And the Ḍākinī gives something else. She makes you fearless. Her practitioners become experimental in nature. They try new things, approach the unknown without flinching, innovate, learn skills they never thought possible. In a world designed to keep you afraid, afraid of failure, of judgment, of being wrong, there is a practice that dissolves fear at its root. Not by numbing you. By burning through every layer of conditioning that tells you to stay small.

And she does not discriminate about who can approach her. Most spiritual traditions have a gate. You need to be pure enough, worthy enough, the right caste, the right gender, the right lineage. The Ḍākinī does not do this. Whether you think you are sinful or full of good virtues, she accepts all. She can purify all negativity and burn all sins, clean your slate completely. This is why even the most divine and the most demonic all do Ḍākinī practices. She accepts. She removes your flaws. She celebrates your virtues.

Where the Practice Begins

Let me be specific about what this means. Not metaphysically, but practically. In your actual life.

If you feel stuck, creatively, professionally, spiritually, the Ḍākinī tradition addresses this directly. Hākinī Ḍākinī, who resides at the Ājñā cakra, removes sadness and stagnation. She is the source of creativity, not as an abstract concept but as a lived capacity. She inspires you to think in new ways, to manifest your thoughts, to break patterns that have held you for years.

If you feel overwhelmed by the world, by information, by noise, by the sheer weight of what Kali Yuga throws at you every day, the Ḍākinī tradition has practices that do not retreat from that world but give you the capacity to move through it without being consumed. Remember: she is hidden in every vibration, in every sensation. The practice is not to escape the world but to recognize the śakti already present in every moment of your engagement with it.

If you feel that your spiritual life and your actual life are two different things, that you meditate in the morning and then spend the day in an environment that contradicts everything you practiced, the Ḍākinī tradition does not see this as a problem to be solved by more renunciation. It sees it as the actual terrain of practice. She operates inside impurity. She does not need you to purify your world before you can begin. She begins where you are.

And if you have felt that other spiritual traditions did not quite have room for you, for your actual nature, your actual desires, your actual contradictions, then understand this: the Ḍākinī path is not 100% vāmamārga, not 100% anything. It is open to all kinds. The tradition explicitly says this. There is Ḍākinī sādhana through bhakti and devotion. There is Ḍākinī sādhana through yoga and meditation. There is Ḍākinī sādhana through fierce tantric practice. The path adapts to the practitioner, not the other way around.

The Guru Calibrates

This is why the guru is essential. Not as a gatekeeper, not as a controller of access, but as the one who identifies which mode, which frequency of Ḍākinī sādhana is appropriate for this practitioner in these conditions. The guru is the one who prepares your system to receive what the Ḍākinī offers without being destroyed by it. In a world that is already overwhelming your nervous system with information, the Ḍākinī's unfiltered transmission requires more preparation than ever. Not less.

The women in Timirantakari's lineage, those elderly practitioners who had spent decades mastering the Kula mantras, were not performing a cultural ritual. They were maintaining a living chain of unfiltered transmission in a world that has always tried to domesticate feminine power. The condition set by Timirantakari herself, you must pass this on, was not arbitrary. It was the recognition that this shakti survives only through active transmission. Hoard it and it withdraws. Filter it and it distorts. Transmit it and it multiplies.

Haraṇa. The flame passing from wick to wick.

If, over the course of these articles, something has shifted in how you hear the word "Ḍākinī," if the fear has softened, if the confusion has clarified, if something deeper than intellectual understanding has stirred, then perhaps the teaching has done its work.

But I leave you with this: the teaching is not the transmission. The article is not the flame. For the actual awakening of Ḍākinī shakti, the path leads, as it always has, as it always will, through the guru and through the living tradition.

In the final article of this series, I take up the questions you may actually be sitting with: is she real or symbolic, is this safe, what about men, is this compatible with your life, and what the modern world is really afraid of.

All teachings in this series are drawn from the authoritative knowledge corpus of Kaulantak Peeth, and the Siddha Dharma tradition as revealed by Kaulantak Peethadhishwara Mahasiddha Ishaputra.

If you wish to reference this article:

APA: Nath, A. (2026). Teaches How to Use Tamas. Siddha Tantra Arts. https://www.siddhatantraarts.com/articles/dakini-teaches-how-to-use-tamas

Chicago: Mahayogi Ashutosh Nath. "Teaches How to Use Tamas." Siddha Tantra Arts, 2026. https://www.siddhatantraarts.com/articles/dakini-teaches-how-to-use-tamas