bhasma
भस्म bhasma'Ash' - in rasa-shastra, a fine calcined powder of a metal or mineral (e.g. abhraka/mica, loha/iron) rendered non-toxic and bioavailable through repeated incineration (puta). Also the sacred ash worn by Shaiva devotees, marking the reduction of all things to their ground.
Where this term appears
- Tantric Alchemy: The Quest for the Immortal Body Lineages
Its characteristic products are bhasmas , metals and minerals repeatedly purified and calcined into fine "ashes" and given as potent medicines.
- What is Ayurveda? Essentials
Herbo-metallic bhasma is a medieval graft, a thousand years younger than Charaka.
- Bhuta Shuddhi: The Rite That Burns the Body to Ash Lineages
Bhuta shuddhi ('purification of the elements') is the preliminary tantric rite in which the worshipper mentally dissolves their own body, element by element, back…
- What is Shaivism? Lineages
Bhasma or vibhuti , smeared in three horizontal lines across the brow, the mark called tripundra .
- The Twelve Jyotirlingas Temples
The temple's most famous rite is the bhasma-arati , the dawn worship in which the deity is honoured with sacred ash, bhasma , a daily reminder of what time reduces everything to.
- Who is Shiva? Deities
The ash , vibhūti or bhasma , smeared on the body, and the tiger skin , vyāghracarma , he sits and stands on, are both prescribed in the meditation-verses.
- Why do Hindus cremate their dead? Essentials
…ee of Shiva wears on the forehead, the horizontal lines of vibhuti or bhasma , is meant to recall exactly this: that every body, however loved or powerful, ends as a handful of ash, and that what remains when a…