The Remnants of Desire: Sacrificial Violence and Sexual Transgression in the Cult of the Kāpālikas and in the Writings of Georges Bataille

Abstract

Notorious for its transgressive sexual and sacrificial practices, the Śaivite sect of the Kāpālikas, or skull bearers, has long been misunderstood by historians of religions. This essay suggests a new way of approaching the Kāpālikas by using some of the insights of the controversial French thinker, Georges Bataille. By examining the symbolism of sacrifice and sexuality, beheading and castration, and the dialectic between taboo and transgression, this paper argues against many past interpretations, like that of Mircea Eliade. The Kāpālikas, it is argued, were not simply attempting to escape the world of history and death by transcending the duality of purity and impurity and achieving a state of other worldly detachment. Rather, they were deliberately playing upon and exploiting the dangerous, transgressive power on the margins of the social order, as a source of this-worldly power and liberation.