deities, too, are not come from somewhere else: they exist from eternity within the faculties of thine own intellect.[1] Know them to be of that nature.
O nobly-born, the size of all these deities is not large, not small, [but] proportionate. [They have] their ornaments, their colours, their sitting postures, their thrones, and the emblems that each holds.
These deities are formed into groups of five pairs, each group of five being surrounded by a fivefold circle of radiances, the male Bodhisattvas partaking of the nature of the Divine Fathers, and the female Bodhisattvas partaking of the nature of the Divine Mothers. All these divine conclaves will come to shine upon thee in one complete conclave.[2] They are thine own tutelary deities.[3] Know them to be such.
O nobly-born, from the hearts of the Divine Fathers and Mothers of the Five Orders, the rays of light of the Four Wisdoms united, extremely clear and fine, like the rays of the sun spun into threads, will come and shine upon thee and strike against thy heart.
On that path of radiance there will come to shine glorious orbs of light, blue in colour, emitting rays, the Dharma-Dhātu Wisdom [itself], each appearing like an inverted turquoise cup, surrounded by similar orbs, smaller in size, glorious and dazzling, radiant and transparent, each made more glorious with five yet smaller [satellite] orbs dotted round about with five starry spots of light of the same nature, leaving neither the centre nor the borders [of the blue light-path] unglorified by the orbs and the smaller [satellite] orbs.
- ↑ According to the esotericism of Northern Buddhism, man is, in the sense implied by the mystical philosophies of ancient Egypt and Greece, the microcosm of the macrocosm
- ↑ Text: dkyil-hkhor (pron. kyil-khor): Skt. maṇḍala, i.e. conclave of deities.
- ↑ The Tutelary Deities, too, in the last analysis, are the visualizations of the person believing in them. The Demchok Tantra says that the 'Devatās are but symbols representing the various things which occur on the Path, such as the helpful impulses and the stages attained by their means'; and that 'should doubts arise as to the divinity of these Devatās, one should say "The Ḍākinī is only the recollection of the body" and remember that the deities constitute the Path' (cf. A. Avalon, Tantrik Texts, London, 1919, vii. 41).
