Greetings,

Coming late to this discussion...
Gerald Yorke was the Dalai Lama's emmissary in the West.  I don't know 
which years, however.
Yorke wrote an essay titled "Tantric Theory" which his family has not 
made publicly available.
I have published about 30% of the essay in a series of posts to my 
blog, placing the text
in no particular order, if anyone is interested.  The essay is, 
unfortunately, undated.
We already know Aleister Crowley  referred Gerald Gardner to Gerald 
Yorke for tutelage.
It is possible that Yorke provided Gardner with a copy of the essay or 
instructed Gardner
regarding Tibetan Tantrism.  However, AFAIK the essay was not among the 
items in the Gardner
witchcraft museum collection.  Otherwise, I have no doubt it would have 
been published all
over the web, by now.

Fwiw, I don't see evidence of *any* tantric influence within wicca.  
Wicca does not focus on the
states of samadhi leading to asamprajnata-nirvikalpa-samadhi whereas 
tantrism does.  Imnsho,
only in the superficial understanding of sex as related to spirituality 
and sex as "goddess worship"
which is primary to Western Neo-Tantrism does one see any parallel to 
Wicca.

Felicia Swayne-Heidrick




On Feb 10, 2008, at 10:49 AM, kaligrafr wrote:

> Aloha,
>
> To rough out the likelihood of Tibetan Tantric influences on Neo-
> Pagan Craft during the early years, I poked around a little on the
> web.
>
> Contact between Tibet and the USA and England were quite limited
> pre-WWII. Tibetan exile and immigration picked up following the
> Chinese invasion. Even so, relatively few Tibetans have re-located
> in either country. The Government of Tibet in Exile website estimates
> 7000 Tibetans in the USA and Canada and only 640 for all of Europe
> excluding Switzerland.
>
> Most of these probably arrived from the 1970s on, and more likely
> the 1980s. So while some important contact with Tibetan materials or
> informants is possible for the Craft founders, it strikes me as 
> unlikely.
>
> Tibetan immigrants settled in a few centers that probably had lively
> Neo-Pagan communities. This accounts for cross influences once
> curious Pagans and sharing Tibetans found each other. (Berkeley, CA
> is one such Tibetan center in the USA, and I know that local Pagans
> were Tibet minded. Because of local Tibetan shops, for instance, many
> acquired Tibetan working tools, statues, and altar items.)
>
> Vipassana meditation was taught in the US and UK by a number of 
> Buddhist
> teachers and popularized by some of them through books, workshops, etc.
> Some Pagans took up the meditation. But again, several decades after
> Neo-Pagan Craft came on the popular spirituality scene.
>
> Let me add that, since I resided in the SF Bay Area then, I was 
> familiar
> with the Tibetan community. But I didn't realize how few the overall
> numbers of immigrants were. They have had a considerable influence
> for such a small number, and not all of that number religious 
> specialists.
>
> Musing Tibet In Exile! Rose,
>
> Pitch
>