Unlocking the Strange and Mysterious Life of Aghoris

Unlocking the Strange and Mysterious Life of Aghoris

Does it get weirder than sex with menstruating women on a corpse?

Imagine you are walking through the streets of India at night. The roads are dark, empty, and eerily silent. Out of nowhere, you encounter a man like the one in the above picture.

Would you be scared? Probably yes.

But, should you be scared?

I will get back to this question.

Now, you have bumped into an Aghori- a Hindu spin-off cult shrouded in mystery from tip to toe. They can strike fear into any steely heart with their mere appearance. Moreover, Aghori customs, habits, rituals, and daily practices are as weird as weird can ever be.

This is not a story of the past, it’s a cult that is still very much active.

Welcome to the world of Aghoris.

Who are Aghoris?

Aghoris are saints belonging to a very unorthodox clan in India. They devote themselves to the Hindu God Shiva, who is the chief God of destruction. However, their methods are often considered to be in contradiction with orthodox Hinduism.

Point to be noted: Aghoris are saints.

Suppose you thought saints were bald men with a stoic face, eating vegetarian food, meditating in saffron robes, and occasionally showering pearls of wisdom.

In that case, Aghoris doesn’t belong to that brand.

Aghoris usually don’t wear long robes; in fact, they cover themselves with just enough cloth, barely enough. Forget being bald; aghoris never give themselves a haircut. I mean never. They rarely engage with the public, so receiving pearls of wisdom is out of the question here. They are not necessarily non-vegetarians, but they do drugs.

Some of you might have friends with long hair, a history of drugs, and an attitude that doesn’t give a damn to anybody; you might be wondering how he is different from an Aghori. Well, being an Aghori is not just about appearance.

There is more to an Aghori than meets the eye.

The philosophy of Aghoris

When you have Hindu monks giving long discourses on YouTube, attaining the status of semi-God, why choose to be the dreaded version of a monk?

Aghoris have their logic and philosophies.

The faiths of the Aghori clan are centered around the principle that everything in the world is a manifestation of Lord Shiva.

The good, the bad, the ugly, all that we see is Shiva. And therefore, to deny something or despise something is to disrespect the Lord itself.

To reinforce this idea, they willfully embrace practices that are often considered taboo by the general public. They embrace their God in the seemingly ‘ugly.’

Aghoris also believe that although the Shiva exists in every person, it is covered or tied by some illusory bonds. These bonds are somewhat equivalent to the western version of cardinal sins: greed, anger, fear, obsession, sensual pleasure, etc. They need to be broken.

To free themselves from the tyranny of such connections, the sadhu clan takes extreme steps well beyond our imagination.

The ultimate goal of an Aghori is to sever the bonds that tie you to worldly affairs and attain Shiva, or Moksha(salvation).

In other words, an escape from the cycle of rebirth.

The ‘weird’ practices of Aghoris

The Aghoris’ choice of skimpy outfits is their means of destroying the illusion of shame. The paleness you see in the face of an Aghori is nothing but ashes from the cemetery. That’s what they put all over their body.

Aghoris prefer to stay in places with the harshest of living conditions. Mountain tops, caves, crematoriums, you find them in spots where you least want to be.

They meditate on top of dead bodies. Some reports suggest that they even have sex with menstruating women on top of dead bodies.

The obvious question is, which woman would dare to make out on top of a corpse? But the reality is Aghoris are highly revered to the extent of Gods in many pockets of India.

So it is not entirely implausible that some woman conjured the nerves to pull this off; for her, it might have been a dreaded but divine activity. For the Aghori, it is a transcending experience.

Aghoris are also rumored to have engaged in necrophilia (sex with a dead body). They also take a combination of alcohol and marijuana, which they claim, helps increase their concentration powers.

The mysteries around Aghoris

There is long list of things that curious people attribute to an Aghori without any evidence.

Many subscribe to the theory that the ascetic way of living has equipped these sadhus with supernatural powers. People think Aghoris can perform serious black magic tricks, but they choose not to.

Some say this saint clan has a cure for all diseases. After all, Aghoris seem to live longer and healthier despite a lifestyle that we can only loathe.

No 2,500 calories a day, no workout with an unhealthy dose of drugs, yet they seem to carry themselves better than most of us. Now and then, some news spread about a Sadhu who has lived past 100 years or so. Nobody can verify it, though.

The other weird attribution is cannibalism. If Aghoris can sleep, have sex, and meditate in a crematorium, eating a corpse is only a tiny stretch from there. So despite scanty evidence, there are enough takers for Aghoris being cannibals.

We know for sure that they don’t eat live people.

It is a truth that Aghoris don’t cause any disturbance to everyday civilized life. They choose to marginalize themselves with as little engagement as possible with material concerns.

If one of them lived next to you, you probably wouldn’t even know he is there.

Final thoughts

Back to the question I asked you:

Should you be scared if you encounter an Aghori?

The simple answer is no.

Not even if it’s on an empty street at midnight in pitch black. However, you may not have a choice. The pale white, long-haired, long beard, drowsy-eyed, ash-covered man will surely drive you nuts.

But as weird as their appearances and practices are, they cause no harm to people; at least live people. They simply live their ‘weird’ lives and hope to attain salvation.

I hope they find what they need.