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Tantric Knowledge: Philosophy, History, Practice
A Simon & Schuster eBook. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader.
296 pages, Hardcover
Published May 6, 2025
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December 30, 2025
After having read numerous books and essays on Indian culture (philosophy, religions, shamanism, society, caste systems, spirituality, history, psychology…), I realized some time ago that my understanding of Tantra was superficial and misleading. I had also read quite a bit about Tibetan Buddhism, but I lacked an overall perspective — a kind of thread that could offer me an accessible mental diagram.
Gavin Flood provides precisely that in this book. Historical context, theory and branches of Tantrism, its practice and philosophy, and its contemporary relevance. He does all this in a clear and effective manner, making the book accessible to a wide readership. This is probably the reason why I do not give it five stars, despite the fact that it has been extremely helpful in allowing me to better understand Indian culture.
The point is that, in order to understand Tantrism in depth, it is undoubtedly necessary to add a certain phenomenological and psychological translation. I was able to glimpse something of this in El círculo de la sabiduría by Ignacio Gómez de Liaño, when the author relates Tantrism to pagan and Christian Gnosticism (while reading this essay, the similarities become apparent very quickly), or in Shamans, Mystics and Doctors by Sudhir Kakar, which offers a very brief psychological perspective. Even so, it would be necessary to delve much further into the similarities with Western emanationism. Naturally, Gavin Flood does not address any of this, since he is only interested in dissecting, for the Western reader, the basic foundations, without exploring the anthropological or psychological dimensions, and even less so comparative phenomenology.
Gavin Flood provides precisely that in this book. Historical context, theory and branches of Tantrism, its practice and philosophy, and its contemporary relevance. He does all this in a clear and effective manner, making the book accessible to a wide readership. This is probably the reason why I do not give it five stars, despite the fact that it has been extremely helpful in allowing me to better understand Indian culture.
The point is that, in order to understand Tantrism in depth, it is undoubtedly necessary to add a certain phenomenological and psychological translation. I was able to glimpse something of this in El círculo de la sabiduría by Ignacio Gómez de Liaño, when the author relates Tantrism to pagan and Christian Gnosticism (while reading this essay, the similarities become apparent very quickly), or in Shamans, Mystics and Doctors by Sudhir Kakar, which offers a very brief psychological perspective. Even so, it would be necessary to delve much further into the similarities with Western emanationism. Naturally, Gavin Flood does not address any of this, since he is only interested in dissecting, for the Western reader, the basic foundations, without exploring the anthropological or psychological dimensions, and even less so comparative phenomenology.
Displaying 1 of 1 review