The sanscrit term Aghora is the combination among two words and has various meanings: A is a negation; Ghora is the obscurity of the ignorance, but it also means intense, deep; Aghora therefore means Light, absence of obscurity, awareness, but it also symbolizes a style of life where a person of the Aghori tradition doesn't have intense or deep feelings, it doesn't make difference among the various feelings, seems to be indifferent to the various stories of the life.
It is said that Aghoris drink liqueurs, smoke ganja, eat meat (in some rites also human meat); they use a human skull as a bowl, they wander among the funeral pyres, meditate at night and don't have any sex inhibition. This path seems to be detached completely from hinduist philosophies and it deceives the true nature of this little known reality in the indian sadhus (ascetics) panorama.
They are also known for their knowledge of magic arts; many people believe they owns magic powers and it is not difficult to hear histories of miraculous recoveries. Among the people, the word Aghori always arouses a mixture between respect and suspect; anyway they also have many devotees among the various religion present in India. Together with an Aghori you can easily found hindus, sicks, muslims, jains, Christians or other.
In reality when we are together with these sadhus seems to be in front of a mystical crazy person, The Fool of the tarots, all the rational thoughts seem to fade away for leaving place to an intense spiritual experience, over every duality.
The death's theme, so recurrent among the Aghoris, constantly remembers us our mortality but it is also a challenge to transcend the duality between life and death. Breaking every mental scheme, going over every taboo makes aware of the illusion of this world and becomes a path toward the liberation (moksha), the realization of the itself with the absolute one. Also the conventional Hindu distinction among pure and impure for the Aghoris is an illusion.
The site proposes to spread and to let know the Aghori culture too often misunderstood and stigmatized as one dark "sect". It doesn't absolutely want to make proselytism in accord with the conviction that any religion is pure illusion, fruit of mental conjectures and that in sum it estranges the man from the native spiritual message. The Aghoris are one of the principal Indian traditions and the most extreme and fascinating form of the Tantra. Dattatreya, a divinity that includes the Trimurti Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, are considered to be the founder of this school.
The sanscrit term Aghora is the combination among two words and has various meanings: A is a negation; Ghora is the obscurity of the ignorance, but it also means intense, deep; Aghora therefore means Light, absence of obscurity, awareness, but it also symbolizes a style of life where a person of the Aghori tradition doesn't have intense or deep feelings, it doesn't make difference among the various feelings, seems to be indifferent to the various stories of the life.
It is said that Aghoris drink liqueurs, smoke ganja, eat meat (in some rites also human meat); they use a human skull as a bowl, they wander among the funeral pyres, meditate at night and don't have any sex inhibition. This path seems to be detached completely from hinduist philosophies and it deceives the true nature of this little known reality in the indian sadhus (ascetics) panorama.
They are also known for their knowledge of magic arts; many people believe they owns magic powers and it is not difficult to hear histories of miraculous recoveries. Among the people, the word Aghori always arouses a mixture between respect and suspect; anyway they also have many devotees among the various religion present in India. Together with an Aghori you can easily found hindus, sicks, muslims, jains, Christians or other.
In reality when we are together with these sadhus seems to be in front of a mystical crazy person, The Fool of the tarots, all the rational thoughts seem to fade away for leaving place to an intense spiritual experience, over every duality.
The death's theme, so recurrent among the Aghoris, constantly remembers us our mortality but it is also a challenge to transcend the duality between life and death. Breaking every mental scheme, going over every taboo makes aware of the illusion of this world and becomes a path toward the liberation (moksha), the realization of the itself with the absolute one. Also the conventional Hindu distinction among pure and impure for the Aghoris is an illusion.
The site proposes to spread and to let know the Aghori culture too often misunderstood and stigmatized as one dark "sect".
Drinking out of a human skull is only one of the striking peculiarities that differentiates Gauri Shankar Mishra from the average ascetic. He drinks liquor (forbidden to caste Hindus and certainly ascetics), eats the flesh of dead animals found in the street and abuses people with foul obscenities.
Holiness cannot only be macho, but even 'crazy', god-possessed, as it is shown by the members of a rather obscure and small sect, the Aghoris.
They emulate the most extreme characteristics of Lord Shiva as the Conqueror of Death: his favourite haunt is the cremation-grounds; he bathes in cremation-ashes; he wears a garland of skulls and bones; he keeps spirits and ghosts for company; he is continuously intoxicated; and he acts like a madman.
The Aghoris willingly transgress all ascetic (and Hindu) taboos, convinced as they are that by 'reversing all values' they will speed up enlightenment. While all sadhus are supposed to be vegetarian and teetotallers (like all ordinary Hindus for that matter), Aghoris eat meat and drink alcohol.
Even more horrid habits are attributed to Aghoris: they eat the putrid flesh of corpses; they eat excrement and drink urine, even of a dog; they have ritual intercourse with menstruating prostitutes on the cremation-grounds, where they usually hang out; and they meditate while sitting on a corpse.
It is questionable whether all this is regularly done, but it seems quite certain that at least occasionally, and then in a ritual context, as a kind of 'eucharist', these cannibalistic and other 'inhuman' acts are still taking place.Aghoris preferably live on cremationgrounds and surround themselves with artifacts of death, like human skulls out of which they drink and with which they perform magical rituals.
Nonetheless, the Aghoris represent a tradition that is thousands of years old, and there have been times that the sect was quite numerous.
