#MagicMantras: Bhaktamar Mantra Healing Between Jainism and the Spiritual Marketplace

Abstract

This article addresses Bhaktamar Mantra Healing (BMH), a healing practice based on a popular Jain stotra. After a preliminary discussion of Tantra and Tantric elements in Jainism, BMH is introduced as the most recent layer in a complex tradition that grew around the Bhaktāmar Stotra and conceptualized as a “Tantric reconfiguration”: a relatively recent creative blending of Jain devotional and Tantric elements with some new influences resulting in a systematized, democratized, and (to an extent) commodified brand of spiritual healing available on the spiritual marketplace. It then proceeds to examine BMH’s significant digital media presence to demonstrate how information provided on the effectiveness and mechanics of mantra healing reveals a complex interplay of shifting religious, spiritual, and scientific narratives and how functional differences between different digital media forms impact upon the prevalence of these different narratives. Ultimately, the article argues that approaching BMH as a Tantric reconfiguration emerging from an encounter of a Jain practice with consumer culture is helpful to make sense of what sets BMH apart from other uses of Jain mantras and of the importance of the digital space BMH has made for itself.