Kapalika

[sect]

The Kapalikas ("bearers of the skull-bowl") were an early Saivite sect (related to the Pashupatas). They venerated Bhairava and believed that magical power could be acquired by emulating Bhairava's kapala vow. Like the Aghori, the Kapalikas tended to be wandering itinerants, practising in the cremation grounds, bathing in the ashes of cremations, and eating and drinking from a skull-bowl.

In the Prabodha Chandrodaya, the following words are attributed to a Kapalin (Kapalika practitioner):

"My necklace and ornaments are of human bones; I dwell among the ashes of the dead and eat my food in human skulls. I look with eyes brightened with the antinomy of Yoga, and believe that the parts of this world are reciprocally different, but that the whole is not different from God. ...After fasting we drink liquor out of the skulls of Brahmans; our sacred fires are fed with the brains and lungs of men mixed up with their flesh, and human beings covered with the fresh blood gushing from the dreadful wound in their throats, are the offerings by which we appease the terrible god (Maha Bhairava)."