Rather than a single coherent system, Tantra is an accumulation of practices and ideas which has among its characteristics the use of ritual, the use of the mundane to access the supramundane and the identification of the microcosm with the macrocosm. The Tantric practitioner seeks to use the prana (divine power) that flows through the universe (including one's own body) to attain purposeful goals. These goals may be spiritual, material or both. A practitioner of tantra considers mystical experience or the guidance of a guru imperative.
In the process of working with energy, the Tantric has various tools at hand. These include yoga, to actuate processes that will "yoke" the practitioner to the divine. Also important are the use of visualizations of the deity and verbalisation or evocation through mantras, which may be construed as seeing and singing the power into being. Identification and internalisation of the divine is enacted, often through a total identification with a deity, such that the aspirant "becomes" the Ishta-deva or meditational deity.
Tantrism was a quest for spiritual perfection and magical power. Its purpose was to achieve complete control of oneself and all the forces of nature, so as to attain union with the cosmos and the divine. Long training was required to master Tantric methods, into which the pupil had to be initiated by a guru. The methods of Yoga, including breathing techniques and postures, were employed to subject the body to the control of the will. Mudras or gestures, mantras or syllables, words and phrases, and mandalas and yantras, symbolic diagrams of the forces at work in the universe, were used as aids to meditation and the achievement of spiritual and magical power. In meditation the initiate identified himself with various gods and goddesses representing cosmic forces. He visualized them and took them into his mind so that he became one with them, a process likened to sexual courtship and consummation.
In the modern world
Following these first presentations of Tantra, other more popular authors such as Joseph Campbell helped to bring Tantra into the imagination of the peoples of the West. Tantra came to be viewed by some as a "cult of ecstasy", combining sexuality and spirituality in such a way as to act as a corrective force to Western repressive attitudes about sex.
As Tantra has become more popular in the West it has undergone a major transformation. For many modern readers, "Tantra" has become a synonym for "spiritual sex" or "sacred sexuality", a belief that sex in itself ought to be recognized as a sacred act which is capable of elevating its participants to a more sublime spiritual plane.
Though pop-tantra may adopt many of the concepts and terminology of Indian Tantra, it often omits one or more of the following: the traditional reliance on guruparampara (the guidance of a guru), extensive meditative practice, and traditional rules of conduct - both moral and ritualistic.
