BHAIRAVA

Bhairava is the guardian of the threshold. His function is to refuse passage to the fraudulent and to clear the way for the prepared. He is the watchman of every door in the lineage's interior — between phases of life, between phases of practice, between the practitioner who arrived and the practitioner who is about to walk on. After Bhairava's seal, the practitioner is allowed to cross. Without it, she is sent back to prepare further.

Read in the corridor as the male counterpart of Kali — the same fierce intelligence, in the masculine form. Kashi, Tarapith, and Kalighat are three of his seats in the corridor's geography. The Tri-Nilachal Axis runs through his territory. He is not feared in the way the popular books describe him. He is respected. The two are not the same.

Bhairava's altar is opened before any practice that demands the practitioner cross into a register she has not yet earned. He is consulted before initiation. He is consulted before the move. He is consulted before the work that will reshape the practitioner's life from the door inward.