Adventures in the Tea Trade

Why not consecrate ourselves to the queen of the Camelias, and revel in the warm stream of sympathy that flows from her altar? In the liquid amber within the ivory-porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius, the piquancy of Lao Tse, and the ethereal aroma of Sakyamuni himself.

Tenshin

* * * * 

Coffee, as a friend of this blogger has pointed out most unhelpfully, is not without its spirituality. Its use was largely pioneered and promoted among the Soofi orders of the Mohametans and even to this day there are Soofi groups among whom the 'coffee maker' is an esteemed officer. We will concede this, but otherwise the blogger will have none of it. He recalls a conversation on exactly this subject with the late Lithuanian scholar, Dr. Algis Uzdavynys, himself a ten-coffee-a-day man, who explained that the Soofis used the stuff as a means of staying awake during all night vigils. The night vigil, especially during the sacred month of Ramadan, is meritorious in Mohametan piety, and there are Soofis among whom it is a preferred practice. They discovered that coffee, good and strong, will waylay sleep and thereby facilitate extended prayer and recitation through to the dawn salat. They employed it, that is, as a crude stimulant. 

This is most unsubtle, of course. Two lines of cocaine will do the same, and it hardly amounts to a spiritual adjunct in itself. It is more true to say, therefore, that coffee has been used in a spiritual context, yes, but it is stretching a point to ascribe to it any particular spiritual powers beyond keeping one awake. Tea, on the other hand - so this present writers insists - is much more than a mere analeptic. Far beyond just stimulating and refreshing, its energies are inherently internalising and meditative. It is, in and of itself, a spiritual drink. Coffee is incidental to a few Soofi outfits; tea is integral to entire traditions, most notably Taoism, Zen and the Japanese Boodhists.

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Around the Darjeeling hills there is no shortage of tea experts and aficionados who are ready and willing to impart their knowledge and enthusiasm to novices, such as the present author confesses to be. They will explain the history and the processes of quality tea growing to anyone interested. There are, moreover, many tea gardens that offer guided tours that are informative and instructive. The young lady at Happy Valley Tea Gardens, a small concern just out of Darjeeling proper, is - it must be said - deeply knowledgable, articulate, terribly pleasant and gives a thorough account of every aspect of the entire growing, drying and fermentation operation, and is therefore to be recommended. She offers, furthermore, an excellent tea tasting session, explaining all the subtleties and mysteries of flavour. One comes away feeling that the whole business is not so complex after all. There are those who would love to mystify it, but in essence it is simple.

Regarding processes, it goes in stages as follows:

1.Picking

2. Withering

3. Rolling

4. Fermentation

5. Drying

6. Sorting

The leaves are picked. Then they are left to "wither" (i.e. wilt) which reduces their liquid content. Then they are rolled, which is to say slightly bruised. Then the bruised leaves are left in the open air to oxidise ("fermentation")- that is, they go black upon exposure to air. Then, at a crucial point, they are dried to stop further fermentation. Finally, they are sorted and graded. 

So, it is not really very complicated in itself, although tweaking of each stage in the process produces different results, and this is where the experts and egg-heads come in. Picking at different times in the plant's growing cycle will yield radically different flavours. Withering can be longer or shorter. And so on. In particular, the oxidisation stage is all-important. The amount of caffeine and such qualities as anti-oxidents are largely determined by how long and in what conditions the rolled (bruised) leaves are allowed to ferment. 

As far as the finished product is concerned there are really three main types: black, green and white. Green teas have had less processing - especially oxidation - than black teas, and so-called white teas are altogether virgin, having had very little processing at all. Black teas are the most common but have more caffeine and less antioxidants than green or white due to longer oxidation.

Teas are typically graded according to degrees of physical intactness as follows:

1. Whole leaf

2. Brokens

3. Fannings

4. Dust

Whole leaf grades produce a more subtle cup of tea. The broken grades - in which the leaves are broken into smaller portions - typically produce stronger and fuller cups of tea, with tea dust producing the strongest brew of all. 

Then there are seasonal variations. These are:

1. First flush
2. Second Flush
3. Autumnal

First flush - spring teas - are finer and more subtle. The second flush - which is to say the second picking - produces a more full-bodied tea. Autumn teas are more full-bodied again. 

Beyond these grades, teas are then classified according to a quite esoteric system of codifications. The very best grade is coded by the letters FTGFOP which stands for Fine Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe - although the standard joke in the tea trade is that it really stands for Far Too Good For Ordinary People. Sometimes, to these letters the numeral 1. will be added, thus: FTGFOP1. This is your highest quality tea. Lesser teas are graded: TGFOP, GFOP, FOP, and so on. 

If readers aspire to become a professional tea snob then these are the codes to learn. 

None of this, however, counts nearly as much in practice as the garden from which the tea comes. Location, soil, climate, slope, season - these are the key determinants. 

* * * * 

Every year, they say, some 50,000 tonnes of Darjeeling tea is sold and consumed throughout the world. This is a most curious fact because, in actuality, the tea gardens of Darjeeling only produce about 10,000 tonnes of tea per year. Thus, some 40,000 tonnes is spurious. The lesson from this then is beware of imitations. Genuine Darjeeling tea now carries a government-enforced stamp of authenticity, thus:

When purchasing what you believe to be genuine Darjeeling tea look for this label. It will no doubt add to the price of the product but you can at least be sure that the product is the real thing. Darjeeling tea is prized for its special characteristics: its depth and complexity of flavour, its floral and fruity tones and especially its "muscatel" qualities. The tea you buy should reward you with exactly these qualities. This is the true test, above and beyond the label. The question is: Does it taste like a genuine Darjeeling tea, or is it just an ordinary brew like any other with an expensive label?

* * * * 

Muscatel flavours are characteristic of Darjeeling teas and are most pronounced in the more full bodied second flush, summer and autumn teas. These, at least, are the preferred teas of the present author, in his shamefully limited experience. Here is a sample of those he has tried at Darjeeling tea houses and would not hesitate to recommend:

Red Thunder

From Gopaldhara Garden, a full-bodied muscatel, 6000 rupees a kilo. 

Castleton Muscatel

From the Castleton Gardens, a second flush summer muscatel, 7000 rupees a kilo.

Thurbo Second Flush

From the Thurbo estate. Described as a Tippy Clonal FTGFOP1, only 10,000 rupees per kilo. 

Giddaphar Muscatel

From the Giddaphar garden. A FTGFOP1, second flush muscatel. 2400 rupees per kilo. 

An Orange Pekoe with Red Thunder

* * * * 

For an excellent blog from one of the world's foremost and expert tea travellers, see

http://www.discoveringtea.com

* * * * 

Everyone has to build anew his sky of hope and peace… Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things.

- Tenshin

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

A Nyingma Monastery at Aloobari

What is one to make of the Dalai Lama these days? His Holiness, spiritual leader of the Tibetan Boodhists, has reduced his fourteenth incarnation to the unabashed spouting of puerile New Age cliches. It is a tragedy. His smile is so sweet and confected it would put an honest man into a diabetic coma. The night before last the present author had the misfortune of watching His Holiness speaking during an hour-length documentary, ostensibly on the origins of Boodhism in ancient India, and was simply appalled at the manner the fourteenth Bodhisattva of Compassion blatantly trivialised his entire tradition in order to pander to the lowest soft-brained prejudices of mushy Western liberals. It was an hour of sugar-coated pop psychology, pseudo-science and the cheesiest of liberal nonsense. One could not help but retire from it thinking that the great wisdom of Tibet has, like other traditions – alas! - lost all its integrity and been mutilated by modernity into a vapid travesty of itself.

Thankfully, though, this is not to be a lasting impression. Today, rising early, the author set out from Darjeeling, where he currently resides, and trekked along the ridge three or four miles towards Ghoom and – after getting lost in forests of rhododendron - encountered on his travels the beautiful little monastery at Aloobari, officially the Mak-Dhog monastery of the Tantric Nyingma sect. The encounter was a suitable antidote to any suggestion that the Tibetan tradition is devoid of a living spirit. 

Recently renovated following earthquake damage in 2011, this monastery is a jewel set among the forests and tea gardens and against the mighty backdrop of the eastern corner of the Himalayas. The young monks in attendance, who had trained in caves in Nepal, they said, gave an excellent account of the Dharma, and a knowledgeable layman who fetched the keys to the gompa offered a tour of the building with its icons and majestic decorations. It is perfectly clear that the tradition lives on and that, the Dalai Lama’s rhetorical patter for Westerners notwithstanding, the arcane and esoteric, not to say occult and magickal, practices of Lamaism still prevails. 

Aloobari is the name of the village on the ridge. It means “The Potato Field”, and it is usually as “Aloobari Monastery” that the location is known. The name “Mak-Dhog” means “warding off war” (or similar) and alludes to the fact that the monastery was first built in 1914 at the outbreak of the Great War and so was, from the outset, dedicated to peace. It is perhaps not widely appreciated that an earlier incarnation of the Bodhissatva of Compassion, just like the well-known Mr. Fourteenth, had fled to India following troubles with the Chinese, and in 1910 took up refuge in Darjeeling. The Tibetans who came with him needed places of worship. The Aloobari Monastery was made for that purpose, namely to service the Tibetan enclave. 

The authoritative text on gompas such as this is Himalayan Architecture by Ronald M. Bernier, which text includes an extensive account of Aloobari. “It is one of the most unusual monuments to be treated here,” he writes, “largely because it is a hybrid that mixes several styles.” He explains that, “It is not an early building, and it is likely that European/Chinese contact inspired its inclusion of open balconies with metal grillwork for railings.” It is, he says, “a most unusual building, at least on the outside,” – which even I ncludes some Islamic elements - although the iconographical program of the interior, including the ceiling mandalas, are more or less traditional. 

Wall painting, lower chamber. 

Bernier’s account, however, is of the building prior to its renovation. As older tourist reports relate and photographs show, the building had been in some disrepair. The earthquake then caused an entire wall of the lower floor to collapse. The building has now been reconstructed, reinforced and repainted and so it looks perfectly new, although the upper level’s interior remains as before. This upper chamber is old and somewhat dank, but quite mysterious for that, and the wall paintings - said to have been done with primitive grass brushes in a unique manner – are faded with water damage. The lower chamber, in contrast, is spectacularly fresh and clean and clear with glowing colours of celestial scenery. It has the same iconographical program described by Bernier, but now redone. “The walls are covered with hundreds of painted images of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas as enlightened Buddhas-to-be, teachers and saints,” he writes. “They make up a kind of family album or family tree of those imbued with the pure truth of the Buddhist way.” 

A view of the old monastery, prior to renovation. 

Its Chinese elements are especially evident.

The statues, too, are the same as Bernier describes, but have been replaced since the main altar in particular was crushed in the earthquake. The central figure on the main altar is Avalokitesvara who Bernier describes as “the most compassionate of the Buddhas-to-be and ‘he who looks down’ with compassion on the world.” He is many-armed and many-headed, the many signifying the symbolic number one thousand. “The elaborate form is quite usual in the hills [around Darjeeling]” Bernier explains, “where multiple arms indicate omnipotence and multiple heads show omniscience.” This is just how it was described to the present author who saw its new rendering.

Lower (renovated) Chamber.

Upper (unrenovated) Chamber.

Despite its peculiarities, the whole building, as Bernier further explains, “is one of thousands of constructed mandala forms.” He gives a useful general account of its function that conforms exactly with what this author was fortunate enough to see. “Its interior is spacious and high-ceilinged as it provides halls with rooms for assembled monks to gather for prayer, chanting, reading from the sacred books and instruction from high Lamas.” What Bernier does not detail, since it does not pertain to his interest in architecture and decoration, is that Aloobari contains an impressive collection of very old or even ancient sacred Boodhist texts. These are held in glass cabinets on the upper floor and were thankfully not damaged by the earthquake. Regrettably, the kind gentleman who gave the tour of the upper chamber was unable to give an account of just what texts were in the collection, but he did relate that some are rare and early. 

Sacred texts in glass cases, Upper Chamber. 

All of this – beauty, solemnity, tradition, form, ritual – is a testament to the great and continuing wealth of Lama Boodhism. It is encouraging to learn that it has not, after all, succumbed to the driveling sentimentality that the Dalai Lama feels the need to put on whenever he is in front of a camera.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Darjeeling versus the Sunderban

It is surely true to say that Calcutta is not a premiere tourist destination. The city is better known for her poverty than for her spectacles and attractions. The sights and charms of Calcutta are underestimated, though: it is a wonderful city, especially in regards to its extensive colonial heritage. But that, in part, is the problem nowadays. Grand colonial architecture – either well-preserved or, more likely, in various stages of decay – is not relished by the progressive one-world post-colonial tourist. An English lady whom the author met there complained, for example, that the Victoria Monument – one of the most grand and best preserved instances of colonial architecture in the city, and a testament in marble to Queen Victoria, Empress of India - was “a bit Anglo-centric.” Well, indeed! If the contemporary tourist is squeamish about colonialism then Calcutta is bound to be a disappointment. As it happens, this writer has no such post-colonial sensitivities. Much of the best of modern India is British. And, to be frank, post-independence India is a rambling mess. Wonderful, but a rambling mess all the same. It is actually not hard to find Indians who feel the same, although they only say so quietly and have no place in the nation’s political or cultural discourse.

Similarly, the contemporary tourist does not care much for the achievements of man. In progressive Western ideologies today humanity is simply a blight upon the earth. It is a strangely self-loathing ideology. The contemporary progressive is not only ashamed of the history of their civilisation, they are ashamed of the entire species. Over the past generation humanist values have been displaced by a humanity-hating environmentalism that ends, finally, in nihilism. It is not hard to find so-called progressives today who will tell you in all earnestness that the earth would be better off without mankind and that mass annihilation by disease or war might not be such a bad thing. 

Tourists of this mind go in search of those remote corners of the globe that are untouched by human hands. Their assumption is that whatever man has touched is thereby polluted. Man is vermin. Only what is untouched is unspoilt. There is the tourist paradox that they themselves, by searching out such places, render them ruined, but this hardly occurs to them. People of this mind that one meets in Calcutta are busily organising treks into the Sunderban. This is the place where the many-fingered Ganges spreads across a wide plane and slowly empties into the Bay of Bengal. It is the world's biggest and densest mangrove swamp. Trips into the Sunderban are now big business. Post-humanist Westerners head there in search of that rare commodity, true wilderness. 

The Indians, for their part, find this curious. They tend to roll their eyes and smile to each other as if to say, "Stupid Western people, paying good money to look at a swamp!" Because, other than your post-humanist eco-tourist no one in their right mind would venture into the Sunderban. Certainly, traditional people - like the Hindoos - would not venture there unless they had to, and they would do so with fear. For them the Sunderban is not a place of wonders (to be valued because no human being has touched it) but to be feared (precisely because no human being has touched it.) Wilderness is feared by traditional man. It is only the commercial prospects of exploiting cashed-up Westerners that has persuaded Indian tour operators to offer tours there. 

The present author is reminded here of the PhD work of an acquaintance, Dr Brian Coman, who wrote at length about this issue. He describes the traditional attitude to nature and contrasts it with that of the new ideologies of ecology which are, as he says, profoundly anti-traditional in all their values and assumptions. The traditional doctrine is summed up in the adage: Where man is not, nature is barren. Traditional values seek a nature that is tamed and guided by human hands. Eden, after all, was a garden, not a jungle. There is a type of neo-primitivism that has taken hold of the post-industrial West, at least amongst its progressive elites, that reveres the jungle and despises the garden. This is what leads middle-class, well-fed, well-educated do-gooders to pay thousands of dollars to spend their holidays floating around in a swamp at the mouth of the Ganges. 

And in this context the present author is reminded of the degree to which he himself is pathetically traditional. His options after Calcutta were to travel on to the Suderban or to head into the highlands to Darjeeling. The choice was (a) a swamp or (b) tea plantations. As readers will be aware, he chose the latter. And he has to report - or confess - that Himalayan foothills crafted with tea gardens are a sight of unparalleled beauty to him. You can keep your smelly mangroves! Darjeeling is beautiful, and precisely because it has been shaped and nurtured and made lovely by human hands. There is a background of wild nature, namely the forests and especially the snow-capped mountains, but these are sacred, ethereal places full of spirits and demons and not a proper abode for man. Darjeeling abounds in natural beauty, to be sure, but it is enhanced by the tea gardens and the charming habitations of human beings. 

Darjeeling

The Sunderban

There are some eighty-seven tea gardens around Darjeeling. (They are called "gardens" rather than "plantations".) There are thousands of hectares of cultivation under camellia sinensis and lesser areas under the broader leafed camelia assamica. There are, no doubt, those who lament the fact that these gardens have replaced what were once native forests, since all that man touches is ruined, but this is not a sentiment the present author shares. There are those who think that wherever an Englishman trod in India is somehow defiled, and that colonialism was a relentless travesty and crime, but this too is not the view of this author. 

Overall, the British - and here we might distinguish them from other colonialists such as the far more rapacious Dutch and French and Portuguese - enhanced rather than defiled India. It was the English who brought tea to hills around Darjeeling and adopted Darjeeling as their favourite hill station. It is no tragedy that they did so. Certainly, this author does not feel any post-colonial shame nor, by extension, any post-industrial cringe about the way human hands have shaped the environment here. In any case, as indicated in previous posts, (see here) the author is a partisan for tea and tea culture (Teaism as Tanshin called it). He is taking this sojourn in Darjeeling to learn about tea cultivation and preparation and the finer points of tea culture. Let the coffee guzzling progressive class enjoy their untrammelled mangrove swamp. He is happy sipping tea in the colonial hotels of Darjeeling. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Colours of Darjeeling

Many posts and half a world away, (see here), it was pointed out that, contrary to staid classical expectations, the traditional art of the gothic cathedral, like that of the ancient Greeks, was bright and garish with an emphasis on primary colours. We might value the hewn beauty of gothic stone, but medieval man did not. He had no hesitation covering cathedrals and statues with bright colours in a garishly unsubtle array. The author is reminded of this once again because the good people of the Himalayan hills, where he is currently situated, display exactly the same love of bright colour. 

That previous post made reference to the shock of colours found in a typical Hindoo temple. This is certainly true, and there are many instances of it all about, but it extends further to the domestic and other architecture of these quite traditional people. Darjeeling, queen of the hill stations, is festooned with colour. The houses, doors, windows, lintels, panes – everything – is typically painted in bright enamels, a splash of copious colours against the sober green of the tea gardens and the forests of the region. Certain colours are favoured, certain shades of blue and green, but the over-all effect is of a patchwork. There is a festival of colours here, usually applied by amateur painters as required, with little thought for the surrounds. Certain combinations are favoured, and even what might loosely be called ‘colour schemes’, but it is clear that personal preference prevails along with, most probably, the demands of whatever paints might be available. 

The patchwork is part of the great charm of the hill station, but it is not by any means peculiar to Darjeeling. The simple fact is that traditional people like bright colours. They paint their houses bright, and if something is sacred – a temple, an idol – then they paint it even brighter. Here are some samples of the colours on domestic architecture, some of it the domestic architecture of very poor people, found around the sloping streets of the town.

A point worth noting, is that the people here – like traditional people everywhere, in fact – have no particular affinity for nature, as such. It is a total fallacy to suppose that these people – sturdy, poor hill dwellers – are “close to nature”. Not at all. They are not hippies who try to make their houses blend into the forest. Earthy as they are, they have no particular “earth consciousness”. If, out of necessity, they have to construct their homes of crude natural materials, they will quickly slap a coat of bright blue enamel paint over it, with glowing orange trims, as soon as they can. Their connection to the earth and “nature” is nothing like what romantic fantasies of Western ecologists imagine. If anything, they have a very traditional fear of nature, if we may describe it so, and want to distinguish their homes from the works of nature as much as they can. If a stone is sacred, they will not leave it “natural” – they will paint it blood red, as primal and as “unnatural” as possible. They have no respect for "natural". This is not New Age “biotecture” and is not related to it in any sense. 

The one important exception to this, let us admit, is found in Japan, for the Japanese do have a love of natural materials and will let the colours and textures of nature prevail. Western sophisticates have inherited this Nipponese aesthetic, but it is in fact part of modernity’s debt to Japan – the Japanese set out to be authors of modernity, and we see it in preferences for simplicity and naturalness in modern tastes. But it is not the norm elsewhere, neither in the traditional (medieval) West nor in the East today or yesterday. Primal man loves primal colours.

Below are some further samples of the many colours of Darjeeling:

Readers might be aware that the author maintains a photography website, Seance in Grey, with his photography being rigorously monochrome. Do not be deceived. The love of monochrome is a metaphysical yin and yang gesture more than anything - along with a hopelessly nostalgic worldview. But in fact the author loves colour as much as anyone, and in fact shares with these erstwhile "traditional" folk a love of primal colours. He has dabbled with painting a few times in his life. In part, his explorations of the multi-coloured orient are a preparation - a field-trip - for new painting ventures in the future. He is building up a palette.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Place of the Thunderbolt

Called the ‘Queen of the Hill Stations’, Darjeeling, where the writer resides at present, is a town developed around the precincts of an ancient Boodhist monastery that once stood upon the site now called Observation Hill. The hill, just off the town’s central square and marketplace, is called thus because it is the highest vantage on this particular ridge and so affords direct observation of the mighty Kangchenjunga, which mountain stands snow-capped at over 28,000 feet and is barely fifty miles away. The site was once heavily forested, but from the hill one can obtain an unimpeded view of the sacred mountain. The monastery, it is said, was called ‘Dorje Ling’, a Tibetan name signifying ‘The Place of the Thunderbolt’, and it is from this, it is said, that the name Darjeeling has been derived. The ‘Queen of the Hill Stations’ known to the British, therefore - and most famous for her exceptional tea gardens - was, or is, ‘The Place of the Thunderbolt’ according, that is, to its original Boodhist inhabitants.

Suprisingly, though, this signification has continued under subsequent Hindoo occupation in a remarkable way; it has done so to the extent that it is here in Darjeeling that one finds a particularly unique synthesis of Hindoo and Boodhist sanctity. Where in other places the two creeds are parted, in Darjeeling they not only exist side by side but actually share sacred places with Brahmins and Boodhist Lamas working in concert as if theirs is a single religion. This is most notably the case in the splendid temple, the Mahakal Mandir, which is now found on Observation Hill. The Boodhist monastery that was supposedly once on the site in ancient times has now been relocated further down the slope, and where it was once supposed to stand there is a temple of Shiva, only this temple fully accommodates Boodhist devotions as well. Indeed, the central temple on the site is a combined Hindoo/Boodhist affair featuring the iconography and devotional supports of both religions in undivided combination. At the entrance one finds Tibetan lions along with the Hindoo bull Nandi. The Shiva temple is decorated with Boodhist dragons. Around the outside one find icons of Hindoo deities, Shiva and Ganesh and co. along with Boodhist prayer wheels inscribed with Tibetan mantras. 

The present writer has been assured that this syncretism is very unusual, and he has certainly not encountered it elsewhere. To be frank, it is quite odd. In the inner sanctum sit Lamas on the right and Brahmins on the left. The Lamas chant Boodhist scriptures and at the very same time the Brahmins recite Vedic mantras. In the outer courts are small temples to Kali and other Hindoo gods right next to Boodhist reliquaries and stupas. The entire thing is smothered in a wild array of Boodhist prayer flags. Devotees from both faiths make their way there and revere it as a place of special sanctity. 

So what, one wonders, is going on here? How did this unique synthesis come about? What historical development led to it and, more importantly, by what symbolism and what doctrine are the two religions united in this particular location? It is a very special place, certainly. It is both stunningly picturesque and palpably holy. Evidently, it was a sacred site since earliest times, both the hill (with its view of Kangchenjunga) and – let readers note here – a cave that is found beneath it. Why, when, in the course of its history, it changed hands from Boodhist occupation to Hindoo, was there such a degree of assimilation? This writer has marched up the steep hill several times now and spent hours there, exploring, watching and pondering. Very slowly, the secrets and the meaning of the place have become apparent.

* * * 

The first key to this place is to be found in the story of the Shiva temple that is now central to it. While there is really no historical evidence that there was ever a Boodhist monastery on Observation Hill, or that the current monastery lower down the slope was ever on Observation Hill, the Shiva temple’s origins are historically exact and revealing. In 1782, it is said, three Shiva lingams miraculously manifested on the site of the current Temple. This is the date at which the Boodhist occupation gave way to the Hindoo, and in effect the date of the founding of the Mahakal Mandir as it is. It is the date at which the name Mahakal was given to the site, the date at which it became a Hindoo holy place with Shiva claiming it over its pre-existing Boodhist associations. The three lingams are now at the very core of the complex. The stones themselves, though, are not visible, since they are encased in an alloy of eight metals called astdhatu. They represent, respectively, the triunity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, and in that, therefore, the three prongs of Shiva’s trident. The devotions of both Boodhists and Hindoos at Mahakal are focused upon these lingams. 

To understand the transition from and the synthesis of Boodhist symbolism to Hindoo/Shaivite in this case, it is simply necessary to appreciate that the trident of Shiva is here a substitute, or rather a parallel to, the vajra of Tibetan symbology. The weapons are interchangeable, and that is what has happened here. The Tibetan vajra is the Boodhist thunderbolt. Vajra is a cognate term for darje = thunderbolt. But in 1782, this Boodist order of symbolism was replaced, or subsumed, by a parallel symbolism from Hindooism, namely the trident of Shiva. When it is said that three Shiva lingams suddenly manifested on Observational Hill in 1782, we are to understand that it was, so to speak, struck by the trident of Shiva in the form of a thunderbolt, real or symbolic. The Temple marks the place where Shiva’s trident – his thunderbolt – struck and marked the ground. Thus, Dar + jeeling = the place of the thunderbolt – was now the place of Shiva’s thunderbolt, Shiva’s trident being to Hindooism what the vajra is to Lamaism. Ordinarily, the parallel made in Hindoo mythology is to Indra’s thunderbolt, but here the assimilation has been done through Shiva’s trident, the trishula. It is a parallel noted by Mr. A. K. Coomaraswamy in his commendable work The Elements of Buddhist Iconography. The town of Darjeeling has a Boodhist name, but the temple is devoted to the equivalent and corresponding cultus in Hindooism. The only odd thing is that the Boodhist elements were retained. 

As for the name Mahakal, it means “the Great Death” or the “Great Time” with the “Great Death” implied. This signifies the particular spirituality of vajraism, if we may put it thus. Namely, the notion of “thunderbolt” here refers to that form of spiritual awakening which is sudden and complete. One may think of St. Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. There is a particular mode of enlightenment which is like a thunderbolt. Boodhists speak of the sudden falling away of the ‘self ‘ – or the illusion of ‘self’ – and the Tibetans specifically call it the “Great Death” as distinct from the lesser death that occurs at the end of a mortal life. This is to what the temple’s name refers. The “mahakal” – the Great Death – is the annihilation of the illusion of self. In the spirituality typical of this temple, devotees seek the “thunderbolt” of conversion, the sudden rupture of illumination, the death of the ego in a blast of enlightenment. Just as Shiva’s trident struck Observation Hill like a thunderbolt in 1782, so adherents hope to be struck with sudden transformation. 

The second key to understanding this remarkable place is to appreciate that the Shiva Temple – complete with its Boodhist iconography – is oriented very deliberately to the sacred mountain of Kangchenjunga. It is perhaps not so obvious today because of extra buildings and the profusion of prayer flags, but it is a certain fact that the temple points directly to the mountain, as can be checked on any clear day. The association is made explicit by a folkish wall painting in enamel paints on the back of the temple wall which shows the mountain with the trident and cobra of Lord Shiva. The mountain is what is really sacred here. The temple on Observation Hill is only sacred by extension, as it were. This is a key because it reveals the actual operations of the temple from a geomantic point of view and thus the full significance of the site. The entire symbolism, we realise, is axial in the primordial sense. The sacred mountain is the universal axis. The viewpoint from Observation Hill has been made a temple (a platform for seeing in the Latin sense) and acquires this axial significance. Thus do devotees to Mahakal Mandir circumambulate the Shiva Temple thrice. In fact, they are circumambulating the mountain. The temple represents the mountain and the whole iconography of the temple draws out the axial symbolism and significance of the mountain. 

This extends to the cave below, or rather inside, the hill. According to legend there is a ‘Lost Valley of Immortality’ on the slopes of Kangchenjunga. The mountain has its secrets. The secrets of the mountain – also the “esoteric” path to enlightenment – is symbolized by the cave, the inner dimension, the heart. It is, like any cave, a mysterious thing. One must crawl into the narrow opening. The present author did so but was reluctant to go too far into the darkness, lit as it was by only one or two votive candles. It is said, besides, that those who go too far into the cave never return. There is no telling how deep it goes. It clearly extends directly under the temple. There is an interesting local story about a British couple, a man and woman, who ventured into the cave one day and were never seen again. Can it be a coincidence that this story has a direct parallel in the Upanishads with the story of “two who entered the cave”? The two, as Mr Rene Guenon notes, are paramatman and atman, the universal and the individual self. Monsieur Guenon's exposition of the relevant symbolism in his essay The Heart and the Cave is, as usual, profound. It is worth quoting in this context:

..What resides in the heart is both from the standpoint of individual manifestation, and unconditioned Atma or Paramatma from the principial point of view; the distinction between individual and principle is no more than an illusory one; it only exists with regard to manifestation, but they are one in absolute reality. These are the 'two who have entered into the cave' and who at the same time are also said to 'dwell on the highest summit', so that the two symbolisms of the cave and the mountain are here united.


The symbolism of cave and summit are, in a sense, interchangeable. The cave and the temple are assuredly connected. The story illustrates the actual process of the steps to enlightenment. The exoteric adherents pray for the thunderbolt of enlightenment – in this life or in some other – in the temple on top of the hill, leaving their offerings of rice and incense and rupees, but the esoteric process (undertaken by only a few) is illustrated in the symbology of the cave below.

* * * 

There is, of course, much more that might be said about this. The symbolism of mountain and cave is extensive and rich, and this location gives an almost textbook case of its application. It would be possible to write an entire exposition on the symbolism and meaning of Mahakal Mandir in Darjeeling. The present sketch, however, is enough to set out the main lines such an exposition would need to explore. The first thing is to explain the unusual synthesis of Hindoo and Boodhist systems in this place. The second is to show the relation of the place to the sacred mountain that looms on the horizon only forty or so miles from Darjeeling and that can be seen with particular clarity from Observation Hill.


Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Beast of Kanchenjunga

When men loose their heads on mountains they lose them very completely. 

- Aleister Crowley, Confessions

For a man who devoted much of his life to the pursuit of vice, degradation and depravity, along with black magic, it is surprising that a single incident in the history of mountaineering is so often cited as evidence of the moral decrepitude of Mr. Aleister Crowley. Although better known as an occultist, he was in fact one of the most highly talented mountaineers of his generation, a student and protégé of the pioneering climber Oscar Eckenstein. In 1905 he led an ambitious expedition to climb the Himalayan peak Mount Kangchenjunga, the third tallest mountain in the world. The expedition ended in disaster with a climber named Pache, along with several coolies, losing their lives. Subsequently, Crowley was excoriated by the British Alpine Club and disowned by the British mountaineering establishment who accused him of fatal cowardice. Crowley never climbed again but defended himself in writing, most notably in his Confessions, as well as conducting a life-long campaign of vitriol against the hostile dignitaries of the Alpine Club. In most biographies of the man, even where his other aberrations are excused, the failed attempt on Kangchenjunga is cited as the one occasion where his true colours were revealed. 

A painting of Kangchenjunga by Hermann von Schlagintweit, 1855

This infamous incident comes to mind to the present writer because he is temporarily situated in Darjeeling, only fifty or so miles from Kangchenjunga, and the place from where the Crowley expedition set out, and he can see the imposing snow-capped outline of the mountain on the horizon. The Crowley expedition almost made it to the summit before disaster struck. They set up a camp (Camp 5) at over 21,000 feet, which established a world record until the late 1930s. But Crowley and the second leader of the expedition, a Swiss doctor named Jacob Guillarmod, whom Crowley referred to by the name Tartarin, quarrelled and actually came to blows after Tartarin attempted to usurp Crowley’s leadership. Tartarin then led a group of mutineers back to a lower camp but they were struck by an avalanche. When they called for help Crowley failed to respond. Thereafter, the expedition was abandoned and they all made their way back to Darjeeling where they squabbled over money. 

Crowley the mountaineer. 

Crowley is the seated figure in the centre.

According to the standard accounts of the incident, Crowley was at fault. He provided poor leadership, it is said, and – most dastardly – refused to assist fellow climbers in an emergency. As Tartarin and the others called for help Crowley ignored them, cuddled up in his sleeping bag and callously slept until the next morning. This made Crowley’s name anathema to the British mountaineering community. His biographers, such as Kenneth Grant, cite it as an occasion where his moral fibre failed. He was, they say, either paralysed by fear or else his actions were simply evil. There are those who deem Crowley psychopathic, and they note his profound lack of empathy for other human beings: his behaviour on the Kangchenjunga expedition is given as a prime example of this.

There are, however, new and more objective assessments of the incident, and they present a far more sympathetic account of Crowley’s actions. In retrospect, his conduct was not altogether blameworthy, and the attacks he suffered afterwards from the Alpine Club probably had more to do with his acidic writing than his behaviour on Kangchenjunga. It must be said that Crowley invoked attacks upon his own reputation. Often he delighted in them. He wore the label, “The Great Beast 666”, with pride, after all. Who was going to believe that the man who identified himself as the Anti-Christ was innocent of misdeeds on an ill-fated mountaineering expedition? Mountaineers today are somewhat more inclined to trust his version of events, rather than that of the Alpine Club. It is, of course, difficult to establish the whole truth at this distance, but the expedition was fully recorded in proper reports at every step and it can be compared in all its details to modern mountaineering practice. 

This present writer has been reading Crowley’s account in the Confessions – his prose writing, let it be said, is always very entertaining! - along with articles by contemporary mountaineers in an attempt to make sense of what happened. What really occurred? The following conclusions can be drawn:

* The expedition was poorly manned. Only Crowley had the requisite expertise. The other climbers were inexperienced or else had no experience whatsoever. This was no doubt Crowley’s fault. He should not have agreed to climb with such a team. In part, this can be put down to his own perversity. He thought Tartarin was an amusing fool and enjoyed his company – but that is a different matter than climbing a mountain with him. Crowley admits this in his Confessions. One of the party, de Righi, was nothing more than a hotel manager Crowley met in Darjeeling. It was completely inappropriate for him to be on the climb. In this sense, the expedition was doomed from the start.

* Always a pompous boor, Crowley strode ahead and demanded the others followed. This was contrary to common practice whereby an expedition leader was expected to play more of a planning role. Crowley was a hands-on leader, leading from the front. This is more in keeping with modern mountaineering, and in fact it was climbers such as Crowley and Eckenstein who pioneered this style of “guideless”, adventurous (as opposed to “gentlemanly”) climbing. In retrospect, criticism of Crowley for this by the Alpine Club and others was unwarranted. But his leadership style did create friction within his team. Tartarin soon resented it. They clashed.

* Crowley was criticized for his cruel treatment of the coolies on the expedition. This is because he demanded they march in the early mornings. Accordingly, they suffered from the cold. This was the main argument Tartarin made for proposing a mutiny against Crowley’s leadership. But, in fact, Crowley was correct. His reason for marching in the mornings was for safety. The chance of avalanche was much greater later in the day after the sun had been on the ice. To wait until the sun was up and conditions were warmer was flirting with danger. In the end, this is exactly what happened – avalanche.

* The incident: Crowley and another climber, Reymond, climbed to Camp 5 and were waiting for supplies from below. Tartarin, de Righi and Pache arrived without supplies and instead Tartarin demanded that he assume leadership of the expedition. There was an altercation. The Tartarin party then went back down to the lower camp but encountered an avalanche. Tartarin and de Righi rode the avalanche. Pache and several coolies were buried alive.

* Fact: Crowley strongly advised Tartarin and co. from descending at that time and warned them of the danger of avalanche. It was late afternoon. The ice had softened. As Crowley notes, the area was stable earlier in the day, but at that time of the day there was the danger of avalanche, which was precisely why he made the coolies march in the early morning, cold or not. Tartarin ignored this warning. Crowley notes in his Confessions: "I should have broken his leg with an axe..."

* Fact: Crowley did not ignore calls for help. He had taken off his boots and retired when he and Reymond heard calls from below. As Crowley notes, Tartarin and the others were forever calling out, and so there was nothing unusual in that. All the same, since Reymond still had his boots on, Crowley instructed him to go and see what had happened and to return if Crowley was needed. Reymond descended but since Tartarin and de Righi were safe and the others dead, there was nothing to be done. He did not go back for Crowley. Quite properly, Crowley settled down for the night and went back in the morning. It is not true to say that Crowley turned his back on his fellow climbers. What is true is that he wrote some injudicious things about the incident afterwards, to the effect that he had no sympathy for people who died in such preventable mountaineering "accidents" and thus to the effect that they deserved their fate. This was interpreted as a callous disregard for his fellow climbers.

A map of Kangchenjunga, 1903. The map used by the Crowley expedition. In his Confessions Crowley complains of its inaccuracies. 

***

 
The present writer is very enamoured of Darjeeling and its views of Kangchenjunga. It is a beautiful, charming place, and a great relief from the heat and bustle of the cities and towns of the Indian plain. The skies are clear, apart from rolling mists, and the people - Hindoos, Nepalese, Ghorkas - are friendly. Mr. Crowley was considerably less impressed in 1905. Here, from the Confessions, is his account of the hill station:

CROWLEY ON DARJEELING

Darjeeling is a standing or rather steaming example of official ineptitude. Sir Joseph Hooker, one of the few men of brains who have explored these parts, made an extended survey of the district and recommended Chumbi as a hill station. "Oh well," they say, "Darjeeling is forty miles nearer than Chumbi. It will do rather better." So Darjeeling it was. The difference happens to be that Chumbi has a rainfall of some forty inches a year; Darjeeling some two hundred odd. The town is perched on so steep a ridge that there is practically no level road anywhere and one gets from one house to another by staircases as steep as ladders.

The whole town stinks of mildew. One's room is covered with mildew afresh every morning. India being the last hope of the unmarriageable shabby-genteel, Darjeeling is lousy with young ladies whose only idea of getting a husband is to practise the piano. In such a climate it is of course impossible to keep a piano in tune for five minutes, even if one could get it into that condition. The food itself is as mildewed as the maidens. The hotels extort outrageous rates which they attempt to justify by describing the meals in bad French. To be reminded of Paillard is adding insult to injury, for what the dishes are made of I never did discover. Almost the whole time I was there I was suffering from sore throat, arthritis, every plague that pertains to chronic soddenness. Do I like Darjeeling? I do not!

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black