The Origin of Planetary Tantra
Original banner and index for Planetary Tantra on metahistory.org (2009)
Planetary Tantra came into the world through an event that occurred in August 8, 2008 in Gaucin in the Serrania de Ronda, Andalucia, Spain. That event (“the inception”) can be described as a download of densely encoded information, a flash of inspiration, a rush of insight, a spiritual revelation, a sudden illumination, an incident of samadhi (“cosmic consciousness”), or a terma, a wisdom treasure. The event generated a vast amount of written material originally released under the heading “Foundations of Planetary Tantra.” This material emerged in aftermath of the event lasting for about eight months. The state of mind induced by that event can be described as a rush of manic illumination full of emotional intensity, loaded with cognitive content, and saturated with the realization of beauty and elegance.
Certain composers describe how they received the composition of an entire concerto or symphony in a split-second flash. All that remained was to write down the musical notation on paper so that others could receive it and play it. The inception of Planetary Tantra was exactly like that, a complex orchestration registered in a few seconds. In Cosmic Consciousness, Maurice Bucke gives many examples of writers who received similar shock-waves of creative inspiration. Honore de Balzac, for instance, realized the entire plan of his long serial novel, La Comedie Humaine, consisting of 90 instalments and hundreds of characters, in a single, instantaneous flash. In Tibetan tradition, such a revelation is called the reception or discovery of a terma, a wisdom treasure. 8/8/08 was the moment of inception for the terma.
That One-Liner
It is impossible to introduce PT without stating out front the outrageous claim that comes with it. JLL, “the Maine terton,” has restated it many times in different contexts, and included it in the new introduction, “The Once and Future Heresy,” to Not in His Image, 15th anniversary edition:
At the winter solstice of that year, I was in Gaucín, Spain, a spectacular white village with a view (elevation: 1,800 feet) across the Straits of Gibraltar to the mountains of Africa, where I had been staying on and off for some years. There, at a remote spot I called Infinity Ridge, something had happened in 2003 that set me on course to write this book. Later, I jokingly described the event by analogy to a telephone switchboard. A call came in from humanity asking to talk to the mother planet. The switchboard operator (yours truly) replied: “Stay on the line and I’ll put you through to her.” I leave it to you, noble reader, to investigate how that one-liner has played out.
View of the Sierra de Libar seen looking north-west from Infinity Ridge
Indigenous traditions around the world affirm that mystical illuminations and transcendental experiences in states of heightened awareness occur at sacred locations. The Terma of Gaia Awakening is no exception, but in fact proves that rule. The Terma derives from a specific moment in a specific place in the mountains of Andalucia, Spain — the motherland of Planetary Tantra. in the Mysteries, initiates routinely encountered the plasmic-telluric radiance of the mother planet (organic Light) at night, in darkness.
It is rare to see it in the daylight, but this can occur. What the sane human witness saw on that spring day in 2003 was an eruption of the Organic Light over the flanks of the Sierra de Libar. It manifested like a surging tsunami of soft porous cream coming out of the ground. The land moved and the contours of the mountain rolled and rippled like a serpent. The dome of the atmosphere rang like a massive bell, but the ringing was a long jolt of silence that converted into a feeling of buoyant ecstasy as the Wisdom Goddess “creamed” with the bliss of revealing her Pleromic nakedness in broad daylight.
At the moment of beholding it, the witness to this event underwent what is called in Vedic mysticism sambija samadhi, “bliss with cognitive content.” This is a moment when you know nothing by knowing everything at once, contrasted to nirbija samadhi when you know everything by knowing nothing at all. The cognitive content of the vision was precise. It came in two crystal-clear realizations at once. First, the witness was beholding the terrestrial radiance of the Aeonic Mother. Second, the act of beholding enabled a breakthrough in communication with the living intelligence of the earth. It was clear at that moment that the Aeonic Mother had broken through a boundary and made contact with a sane human witness who was also autistic. From that moment, the terton like a telephone operator had her attention “on the line.” His intention from that moment on was to get humanity on the other end of the line.
Such is the outrageous claim at the origin of Planetary Tantra. No one has to believe that it happened that way, or ever happened at all. The act of two-way communication between the human animal and the planetary entelechy, Gaia-Sophia, is not a matter of belief. It is something to be tested and proven, one animal at a time. PT is “interactive magic with Gaia,” but not in the sense of pretending or new age make-belief. Magic in this syntax means magnification. The practice of PT amplifies, enhances, and intensifies the innate intelligence of the human animal. It magnifies the sensorial awareness given by nature in the first place.
The Terma of Gaia Awakening
The follow-up to March 2003 came in August 2008. During that interval, the witness returned many times to Infinity Ridge to commune and converse with the mind of the planet. He discovered that questions formed by the human witness act as a prompt to the super-organism of Gaia. To his amazement, he realized that an agency of intelligence of a magnitude that far exceeds human comprehension can nevertheless make itself accessible to human attention. Each time this interaction occurs, it seems miraculous, but in reality it is merely the natural result of human sanity grounded in the source of life. The breakthrough from the Aeon’s autistic isolation elicited an immeasurable flood of knowledge about her earthbound condition and the designs and purposes she held for her designer species, the Anthropos. Each meeting entailed a download from the mother source so abundant that only about 15% of it could be retained and converted into language. Over the course of time, the terton learned that the seemingly unretained content was not lost. It persisted in the deep recesses of memory and could eventually be retrieved for communication to the world.
Fast forward six years. Various conditions played into the 8/8/08 event which, unfortunately, can make PT appear more complicated than it actually is. In Tibetan Buddhism, terton is name for someone who discovers a wisdom treasure stored in the living matrix of the mother planet. The source of the treasure is the earth mother, terra-ma. It can be said to be transmitted from the living intelligence of Earth to a receptive individual. Gnostics recognized this source of intelligence in the presence of the Wisdom Goddess, Sophia. The August 8th event occurred about 22 months after the publication of Not in His Image in November 2006. In that book, the author revealed in great detail how the Gnostic initiates accessed and interacted with the Wisdom Goddess. In their way, in their time and setting, the teachers of the Mysteries practiced “interactive magic with Gaia.”
The Ten Mahavidyas of Shri Yantra Tantricism of Southern India, translated as the system of “auspicious wisdom.”
However, there was a significant challenge in establishing the framework and method of Planetary Tantra for our time. The Gnostic source materials were insufficient for a clear and complete exposition of Gaian Tantra (as it also may be called) that could be instructive and actionable in the world today. The Greek/Coptic texts were two clumsy and fragmentary to support such a program of initiation. The language was inadequate to the task. That being so, the construction of PT required “The Tantric Conversion” (members only material). The exact equivalent of the Greek name Sophia in Sanskrit is Vidya, “wisdom.” The Sophia-Vidya equivalence made it possible to frame the dynamics of Planetary Tantra in a wide range of Sanskrit and Tibetan terms, divinities, and practices. The primary component is this construct was the circle of the Ten Mahavidyas. The southern Indian mystical system of Shri Vidya, “auspicious wisdom,” centers on the mandala of the Ten Mahavidyas that figures in the Shakti Cluster, the operative mandala of PT.
The Three Instructions
You can see the issue here. Adopting Greek, Egyptian, Sanskrit and Tibetan terminology to convert Gnostic instructions into a comprehensive practice threatened to encumber that practice. Most of these names are odd, even alien to Westerners, and they can be off-putting. Viewed in retrospect, almost all of the writings based on the Sophia-Vidya equivalence are complex, cumbersome, and densely encoded in technicalities of Asian mythography and metaphysics. In practice, this material proves to be extraneous, although it does tend to get in the way of newcomers who approach PT. There is no way to avoid this issue.
Traditionally, tertons are required to provide a package of commentaries to support a terma. PT is just that, the delivery package of the Terma, but the wrapping can get in the way of the treasure. In itself, the Terma of Gaia Awakening itself is simple, elegant, and cogent. The Tibetan name for the Terma is Dorje Namkai Khandro Nyingthig, “Seminal Heart of the Diamond-Sky Dakinis.” It consists of three short lines of instruction.
You cannot become anything but more beautiful.
Love and the Supernatural operate on the same frequencies.
Samsara and this enlightenment have the same look.
These instructions do not need to be explained or elaborated. They only need to be remembered exactly as they are stated. You do not work on them, they work on you. You do not explain them: they pervade anything that you might seek to explain about the human condition. They exemplify yeshes (yeh-SHAY), “pristine syntax.” They are like drops of elixir that continually spill into your mind. They induce what the Buddhists call Bodhicitta, “the thought of enlightenment,” also called inceptive Bodhi.
These lines state the three elementary insights to be retained so that you can hold sober and steady in reception to the intelligence of the Wisdom Goddess. They come to you in precise syntax so that you do not have to think about them. Instead, you can regard them as the perfection of what you think without the effort of conscious mentation. You already know these three assertions to be true, and you have never not known that to be so. You do not question them, not because they are doctrinal formulas dictated to you, but because you do not have to question what arises from the deepest innate knowing of your existence in this world. To argue about them or attempt to analyze or refute them results only in nonsensical blather.
The Practices
The course landing page for Planetary Tantra sets out the practices for PT. additional to learning the Fallen Goddess Scenario, they are:
- The Gaian Tantric Vow
- Follow the lunar cycles or Dakini Shifts
- Use the Shakti Cluster app
- Learn applied noetics
Details on these practices can be found in the selected free-access units in the block Portal to Planetary Tantra where you have found this unit. Additional units in preparation — January, 2026.
Selection of Original Text for Planetary Tantra on metahistory.org (January 2009)
What is Planetary Tantra? Rapturous immersion through desire and imagination in the dreaming power of the earth. It is the most intimate way of bonding with the planetary animal mother, Gaia.
Planetary Tantra is a single-impulse continuum: the origin, path, and goal are one. The main requirement for entering this experiment is a profound love of pleasure. Love as such does not determine the course of experience in Gaian Tantricism, but the love of pleasure reveals and engenders the many pleasures of love. This impulse is hedonic and voluptuary, extravagant in moods and desires. The body is its instrument, the setting for it is the energetic field of the living earth.
The love for pleasure is a cosmic impulse so vast and consuming that it would wreak havoc if not balanced by another impulse, the love of handling power. Not the love of power, but of handling it. Tantra is a way of handling power, especially the power of attraction, mood, mania, inspiration, including any emotion, positive or negative. Power in Tantric terms has nothing to do with authority, or exercising control over others, or similar forms of patriarchal domination. Gaian Tantra is the antidote to the male control disease that infects humanity at the close of Kali Yuga. If the genuine love of pleasure guides human morals, the sick pleasure of wielding power over others cannot prevail.
In Hindu traditions of goddess mysticism, the practice of handling power was called Shaktism, after shakti, “power, pure energy, dynamism.” Shakti is understood to be exclusively the power of the Divine Feminine, “the Goddess.” So, Tantra is the practice of handling goddess power. To be precise, it is the playful, experimental dynamic of power-sharing with the goddess whose body is the earth. It is not a power-trip for anyone alone, acting on selfish motives, or the wish to control, or grandiosity.
Bonding with Gaia relies on desire and imagination, faculties the earth goddess implants in human creatures as a divine birthright. Turn those faculties toward Gaia, the source, and you bond with her at the source. Desire and imagination as you experience them right now are direct, immanent extensions of the dreaming power of the planetary mother animal, not faculties confined to you alone. They are two-way energetic tendrils of her life-field vibrating in the human psyche and body.
The human animal is wired to Gaia, literally and spiritually.
Planetary Tantra explores the bioelectromagnetic features of desire in the planetary field, and the reflex of human visionary power in the physical atmosphere. And it explores these dimensions of geophysical reality in exquisite detail, with intimate involvement. This tantra is high ritual enjoyment of human pleasures grounded in the planetary organism. “The practices of the devotees of Earth Goddess are a pleasure to perform” (Mahanirvana Tantra, 12 C. CE). Desire rather than love directs the rituals of Gaian Tantra, Planetary Tantra.
Imagination is the dreaming power of Gaia but does not appear to be so until its actually aligns you to her. Alignment comes through knowing and loving her story, the myth of her life including her self-designated identity. The Terma of Gaia Awakening is a pact for interacting with divine imagination. Planetary Tantra is the elaboration of that pact into manifold expressions of beauty, wonder, and transmutation.
It is next to impossible to transmit Planetary Tantra by exposition and discourse. Transmission happens through direct contact via a spark of delight leaping from one Gaian tantrika to another. This divine experiment is not progressive: it runs in jolts. Rapture and recognition are the weave, the double-stranded Eros of the planetary animal mother. But lacking the opportunity for such contact, the privilege to stand together in that weave, that wave of incomparable bliss, I am venturing to introduce Planetary Tantra in written words on this site.
Tantra for the Planet: Shaktism Reinvented