ABSTRACT
In the real lives of religious practitioners in Asia, ritual actions modeled after embryogenesis are enacted in public and private ways. Complementing the complex contemplative practices that are formed around embryological theory, there are various popularly accessible religious practices that are modeled after human conception, fetal development and birth. From initiation rites that prescribe “incubation” in womb-like huts, to rejuvenation therapies, to preparations by alchemists, yogis and other contemplatives, Asian religious traditions describe methods for bodily transformation that are expressed in terms of gestation and birth. Such practices are ancient: in Vedic ideas of rebirth through sacrificial initiation, the sacrificer tossed himself, as a seed, into the sacrificial fire, the womb, in the hope of being reborn into a new self-created reality. Internalizing the sacrifice, later yogic practices modeled after human fetal development are a complex extension of these rites, a literal re-enactment of the most primordial of bodily transformations, that of embryogenesis.
