Tantra · तन्त्र · the body as the instrument

The current that stopped treating the body as the obstacle. Where the older renunciant path withdraws from the world, tantra works through it — breath, sound, image, the union of a god and goddess as the pattern of reality, and desire itself repurposed as fuel rather than named as the problem. The word means loom, and the metaphor is deliberate: a weaving-together. The Kabbalah made the same turn and is rarely credited with it. Yichudim unify the divine masculine and feminine and are performed in frankly erotic language; the Sabbath is a wedding and the marital act on it is a mitzvah with cosmic effect; the Shekhinah is a bride to be courted. Two traditions that both decided the way up runs through the body and the world, against ascetic neighbours who thought that was exactly the mistake.