Despite such’ setting-face-to-face, being still led backwards by evil propensities, terror and awe arising, it may be that one recognize not and flee. Thereupon, on the Twelfth Day, the blood-drinking deities of the Karmic Order, accompanied by the Kerima, Htamenma, and Wang-chugma,! will come to receive one. Not recognizing, terror may be produced. Whereupon, the setting-face-to-face is, calling the deceased by name, thus:
O nobly-born, on the Twelfth Day, the blood-drinking deity of the Karmic Order, named Karma-Heruka, dark green of
green; majestic [of appearance]; in the first of the right of the six hands, holding a sword, in the middle [one], a trident- staff, in the last, a club; in the first of the left [hands], a bell,
share; his body embraced by the Mother Karma-Kroti-
* These three orders of deities are goddesses, Indian and Tibetan in origin, the Kevima having human shape, the Htamenma and the Wang-chugma, like Egyptian deities (more or less totemistic), having human-like bodies and animal heads ; and each deity symbolizes some particular karmic impulse or propensity appearing as a hallucination in the Bardo consciousness of the deceased. Kerima seems to be a hybrid Sanskrit-Tibetan word (from Skt. Key#iirt), which, having become current in Tibet—like so many similar words—was incorporated into our text unchanged. Htamenma (as pronounced from Tib. Phra-men-ma) is probably the name of an order of pre-Buddhistic deities belonging to the ancient Bon religion of Tibet. Wang-chugma (as pronounced from Tib, Duvang-phyug- ma) is the Tibetan rendering of the Sanskrit /shvarvi, meaning ‘Mighty Goddesses’.
offering to his mouth a red shell; the Father and Mother in union, issuing from the northern quarter of thy brain, will come to shine upon thee. Fear that not. Be not terrified. Be not awed. Recognize them to be the embodiment of thine
afraid. In reality they are the Father-Mother Bhagavan Amogha-Siddhi. Believe; and be humble; and be fond [of them]. Concomitantly with recognition, liberation will come. Through such acknowledging, recognizing them to be tutelary deities, in at-one-ment thou wilt merge [into them], and obtain Buddhahood. Through the gurw’s select teaching, one cometh to recognize them to be the thought-forms issuing from one’s own intellectual faculties. For instance,a person, upon recog- nizing a lion-skin [to be a lion-skin], is freed [from fear]; for though it be only a stuffed lion-skin, if one do not know it to be so actually, fear ariseth, but, upon being told by some person that it is a lion-skin only, one is freed from fear. Similarly here, too, when the bands of blood-drinking deities, huge of proportions, with very thick-set limbs, dawn as big as the skies, awe and terror are naturally produced in one. [But]
them to be one’s own tutelary deities and one’s own thought- forms. Then, when upon the Mother Clear-Light—which one had been accustomed to formerly—a secondary Clear-Light, the Offspring Clear-Light, is produced, and the Mother and Offspring Clear-Light, coming together like two intimate
cipating radiance dawneth upon one, through self-enlighten- ment and self-knowledge one is liberated.