Mahakala

The Great Black One

The Black Sun

Saturn

Dharmapala

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Mahakala: History, Mantra & Practice

Source: https://handicraftsinnepal.com/mahakala/

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Mahakala is a significant deity in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism. Mahakal is an integral part of all forms of Buddhism. According to Vajrayana Buddhism, Mahakala is a protector deity known as “Dharmapala” and a form of “Avalokiteshvara”. The deity is generally considered a manifestation of Lord Shiva and the consort of Goddess Mahakali in Hinduism. 

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Mahakala is generally depicted as black in color. Since, all the colors get dissolved into black color, all the names and forms melt into the deity as well. This symbolizes the embracing and encompassing nature of the deity. The color black also represents the absolute or ultimate reality and the nature of Mahakala.

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In Sanskrit, this principle is also known as “nirguna”, which means beyond all quality and form. It gets depicted in various forms with five skull crowns. This symbolizes the transmutation of five negative afflictions into the five wisdoms. The depiction of the number of arms in the deity varies in various cultures among other details. 

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Moreover, some cultures have Mahakalas in white color and without genitals. They have multiple heads, hold various implements, and stand on various things. There are many depictions of the deity in various art forms like paintings, thankas, masks, sculptures and statues. Read further for the detailed description of the Mahakala, its history, mantra, and practice.

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History

According to mythologies, the compassionate Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara took a vow to delay his enlightenment until all sufferings of the people vanquished. Avalokiteshvara took the form with eleven heads and a thousand arms. However, he was still not able to help all beings of the world.

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Hence, he determined that it was necessary to assume a wrathful form to save the degenerate beings from the Age of Darkness. Moreover, the poor in the Dark Age were only suffering and a wrathful form could provide an antidote to that suffering by protecting them and providing them with their needs. 

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Therefore, a dark blue “Hung” syllable emerged from the heart of Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara who became Mahakala, the Protector of Wisdom.

Mantra

“Om Shri Mahakala hum hum Phat Svaha”

Mahakala is an integral part of Tibetan Buddhism and gets depicted in aspects, qualities, variations. One of the most common mantras associated with the Mahakal is as follows:

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Black Mahakala Mantra

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Mahakala is generally black in color and has Six-Armed figures. All forms and names get absolved in the Black Mahakala. This symbolizes the all-embracing nature of the deity. 

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Moreover, the Black also signifies the Sanskrit principle “nirguna” and portrays the deity as an ultimate or absolute reality. The mantra associated with the black Mahakala is as follows:

“Om Benza Mahakala Kin Kinta Binay BinayYaka Hum Hum Phat Svaha”

White Mahakala Mantra

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White Mahakala is generally considered a wrathful variation of Avalokitesvara or Chenrezig. It takes away material and spiritual poverty in beings and brings abundance through compassion. The mantra associated with the white Mahakala is as follows:

“Om Benza Mahakala Hari Ni Sa Siddhi Dza”

Practice

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Mahakala is a significant part of all forms of Buddhism. According to Vajrayana Buddhism, Mahakala is a protector deity known as “Dharmapala”. The deity is of significant importance in most Tibetan traditions, in Shingon (Japanese Esoteric Buddhism), and in Tangmi (Chinese Esoteric Buddhism). The deity is popularly known as “Daikokuten” in Japanese and “Daheitian” in Chinese. 

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Mahakala is generally associated as a form of Lord Shiva in Hinduism. Lord Shiva is the God of Kaal (Time) and all three of the formats of “Kaal” including past, present, and future get merged in Lord Shiva. Kaal also means death in Sanskrit and Lord Shiva is also the god of destruction, or god of end or death. Hence, the deity is also considered as a form of Lord Shiva. 

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Moreover, there are many temples in India and Nepal dedicated to Mahakala Bhairava. You can find devotees flocking the temples of Mahakala Bhairava and Kaal Bhairava in and around Kathmandu. Mahakala is also the name of Nandi, Shiva’s principal attendants, and mount (vahana). Hence, you can find them in the doorway of Shiva temples. 

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Furthermore, Mahakaal gets associated with “Hukam” (The Supreme Command) in Sikhism. You can find the mention of the deity in Dasam Granth, by Guru Gobind Singh. Sikhs also consider Mahakala as “Kaal”, the governor of Maya. The deity also appears in the Kalikula sect of Shaktism. Overall, Mahakala is a deity of great importance across multiple religions and cultures.

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The true meaning of the Black Sun

Source: https://mythoughtsbornfromfire.wordpress.com/2021/04/17/the-true-meaning-of-the-black-sun/ 

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In alchemy, we see a symbol that is referred to in Latin as Sol Niger, literally meaning “Black Sun”. It is a symbol of the process of nigredo, the first stage of the alchemical process denoting a putrefaction or dissolution that constitutes the first stage of a process of purification of matter that leads to the creation of the philosopher’s stone.

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In a more symbolic sense, the process of nigredo can represent something like the dark night of the soul, a sort of depressive distillation of the soul/psyche that is part of the journey to spiritual awakening or the realization of faith. In general, Sol Niger tends to be a symbol somewhat associated with death, albeit a death that precedes rebirth and renewal, far from the Aryanist fantasies about it being a power source for the “master race”. It is perhaps the association with death and decay that leads some to link the symbol of Sol Niger to Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture and the planet of the same name, and it is here where things get really interesting.

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Saturn, or Saturnus, was also considered a god of dissolution, renewal, as well as liberation. In Rome he was even sometimes identified with Dis Pater, the god of the underworld. It is thus only natural that he might be associated with death and decay, to the extent that he probably ended up having some influences on the Grim Reaper, the popular personification of death, with his scythe or sickle (though the proper Hellenic personification of death was Thanatos, known as Mors in Rome). Some modern commentators of myth also link Saturn with Mahakala, a wrathful manifestation of the Hindu god Shiva and one of the main wrathful deities of esoteric Buddhism.

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Saturn and Mahakala do have some things in common; both are associated with the colour black, both have some association with time (denoted by Mahakala’s namesake), both can be thought of as chthonic deities to a certain extent (see Bernard Faure’s Protector’s and Predators on the broad chthonic character of Daikokuten, the Japanese transmission of Mahakala), and both have a fairly clear association with death, with Mahakala sometimes being identified with/as death itself (though the name Mahakala is sometimes interpreted as meaning “Beyond Death”).

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The planet Saturn was also, in some contexts, associated with the underworld in the specific sense that it was seen as the “sun of night”. In ancient Mesopotamian astronomy, Saturn was strangely associated with the Sun, but was also believed to be black in colour, hence in a way it was to them a black sun. This idea was also linked to a myth concerning Shamash, the Babylonian sun god known elsewhere as Utu, who somtimes travelled beneath the earth to the realm of Arallu, the kingdom of the underworld abundant with gold, to fulfill his function as the supreme judge of the dead.

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Saturn also seems to have been linked to the sun elsewhere as well. In India, there are apparently numerous Sanskrit words recurring in the writings of Varaha-mihira that point to Saturn as “son of the Sun”. Ptolemy said that the people living throughout southern Asia revered the planet Venus as Isis and Saturn as Mithras Helios. In Egypt, Saturn is referred to as “Horus the Bull, that is the Star of the Sun”. The idea of the sun god descending to the underworld is also familiar to Egypt, with Ra journeying there every night on his barge, donning the appearance of a ram as he does so.

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The Mayans also believed that the Sun descended and journeyed through the underworld, taking the form of the “Night Sun”, in the form of the Jaguar God of the Underworld. The idea of a “night sun” or “dark sun” can also be found in the religious mythos of antiquity. In Egypt, the “night sun” is Osiris, the fertility god of the underworld. In Greece, it is Dionysus, the chthonic mystery god usually remembered as a god of wine, who was apparently described as the “Night Sun” by Plutarch.

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Dionysus was not usually a solar deity by almost any stretch, but was sometimes associated with the Sun by Orpheus (who said that the Sun is also called Dionysus). The Vedic Indian god Varuna was sometimes seen as a sort of solar deity, and in the 19th century it was said he was like a “night sun”, which suits his role in that he presided over the evening and sometimes was a god of the underworld.

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As Nika Lavrentyeva and Ekaterina Alexandrova discuss in Liminal Sources of Dangerous Powers: A Case of the Black Ram (2020), there is also a “black sun” featured in ancient Egyptian texts and iconography, with multiple meanings. In the tomb of Irunefer at Deir el-Medina, the deceased is shown to be illuminated by the sun, shadows who want to harm him are captured in the Netherworld, and “the darkness” in the form of a black sun aborbs all the evil which is arrayed against the deceased, thus the black sun here functions as almost a kind a sin-eater.

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The papyrus of Ani made for his burial depicts supernatural villains threatening the deceased and being covered with the darkness of a shining black sun, which is meant to refer to a place for the sinful dead; it seems that Christianity was not the only religion to believe in a place of punishment after death. Similar to the context of the sun god Utu, the black sun appears in connection to judgement in the Netherworld, and in monuments it appears as a devourer of the sin and evil of the damned souls, thus protecting the cosmic order and the beatified dead.

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All told, the nocturnal sun in the ancient world seems to have been a cipher for the power of the underworld, and for the unity of light with darkness, the hidden aspect of the former within the latter. It is perhaps not for nothing that Sol Niger symbolized putrefaction, dissolution, and in a certain sense death. Nor indeed is it for nothing that the cycle of the Sun itself is part of a network of myths concerning journeys to the underworld, the discovery of the dark underbelly of life itself.

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We may even hark back to the fall of Lucifer in a certain sense, in that, however much Wiccans prefer to shy away from Luciferian mythology and pathos in their neopagan enterprise, Doreen Valiente herself relates the fall of Lucifer to the cycle of the Sun, this fall being re-enacted every year by, after rising to its heights in the midsummer, falling from said heights to hide in the realms below. Incidentally, Valiente even admitted in private correspondences to the Luciferian Michael Howard that she believed Lucifer to be the true name for the “god of the Old Religion”, presumably referring to the Horned God of Wicca.

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Of course, this is not to say that the Black Sun is necessarily a symbol of Lucifer, though the nocturnal sun motif can be connected to certain views about Lucifer (Fallen Angels) and his fall, even though strictly speaking Lucifer is the spirit of the morning star. The Black Sun or Sol Niger in alchemy is a sign that points to the light that awaits those who dive into darkness, into the underworld, in pursuit of spiritual enlightenment. I fail to see what the Sonnenrad used by the Nazis has to do with any of that.

Read More Fallen Angels 1st Book of Enoch The Nephilim Watchers click

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The last thing to know about all of this is that the Nazi sun wheel symbol that is called the Black Sun, or Schwarze Sonne, seems to have never actually been called a Black Sun by the Nazis. The term “Black Sun” in reference to the Wewelsburg sun wheel symbol is a more contemporary appellation. Apparently it only started being called “Black Sun” during the 1990s, but the Nazis never actually called it that (why would they have, considering the symbol in the Wewelsburg mosaic was not actually black, more like a kind of dark green), and apparently we don’t know what they actually called it instead.

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I suppose we might assume they simply called it a Sonnenrad, since it was, after all, a sun wheel, but it was not called a Black Sun, and their sun wheel has nothing to do with the Black Sun. In other words, it’s just a sun wheel that was designed specifically by and for the Nazis.

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So, in summary, the Nazi symbol that is commonly referred to as “the Black Sun” is not actually the Black Sun, and not even the Nazis themselves referred to it as such, and the real Black Sun is not a symbol of Nazism. The symbol falsely called the Black Sun is nothing more than a stylized Germanic sun wheel that may just have been a generic sun symbol but with added Aryanist mysticism attached to it. Stop using Nazi symbolism to denote an old symbol of darkness that never belonged to the Nazis, and stop letting neo-Nazis recuperate and bastardize old symbols that don’t necessarily belong to them in order to lend some kind of mystic credence to their genocidal politics.

Read More Dharmapalas Protectors of The Dharma Wrathful Deities click