This flight is a well-understood feature of traditional shamanism around the world. In soul flight, the invisible spirit body detaches from the physical in order to ascend to upper worlds or descend to the underworld for healing or soul-retrieval. Since earliest times, supernatural, shamanistic females in the ecstasies of soul flight have been depicted as able to “move through space” like birds. Tibetan scholar John Vincent Bellezza calls our attention to certain “extinct” Tibetan sisterhoods that provide “evidence suggesting the existence of a matriarchal culture and the supremacy of female deities in prehistory.” (Bellezza, 308) There he met and collaborated with a local princess and incarnate dakini, Yeshe Tsogyal.Īlthough historically dated to 8th-century Tibet, dakinis actually descend from far more ancient female supernatural beings from the time of our earliest human cultural origins. It is from that legendary realm that the famous yogi, Padmasambhava, originally flew into Tibet with a “retinue” of Dakinis (his spiritual team) to “subdue the demons” and anchor Tantric (Vajrayana) Buddhism there for good. The place was called Odiyana or Uddiyana, which translates as “vehicle of flying.” Imagine an entire country of women who fly - gifted shaman women and magical priestesses - and the powerful yogis and magicians who companion them. Tibetan historical and tantric texts refer to the famous “Land of the Dakinis,” a matriarchal place west of Tibet, where spiritual leaders were women. Miranda Shaw’s exuberant descriptions of dakinis emphasize “flights of spiritual insight, ecstasy, and freedom from worldliness granted by the realization of emptiness.” (Shaw, 38) Shaw learned Sanskrit so that she could read texts herself, translating “dakinis” as “women who revel in the freedom of emptiness.” (19) An initiated tantric practitioner, Shaw explains: “A wild, playful, unpredictable quality erupts when experience is released from its predetermined patterns.” (95)
These encounters often have a quality of sharp, incisive challenge to the fixed conceptions of the practitioner.” (Allione, 114) Tsultrim Allione wrote in her book, Women of Wisdom, “The dakini appears at crucial moments. Dakinis are often connected to the phenomena of synchronicity and inexplicable coincidences of fate. Like a trickster or the Fool in a Tarot deck, the dakini releases blockages in the energy field and melts frozen patterns, so that the door of the mind is suddenly ajar and something new can enter. By Vicki Noble: The Tibetan Buddhist Dakini is a compelling icon of untamed female freedom.
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