Ritual Offerings Connecting Humans and Deities

Tormas, as they are known in Tibetan (bali in Sanskrit), are ritual sculptures made of flour, butter, and decorative materials and are used in Tibetan, Indian, and other Asian religious traditions as conduits to a range of divinities.1 The most common tormas are made of roasted barley flour and butter—two important staples of the Himalayan diet—and are intended as offerings of food to deities (fig. 2).2 In addition, humans can participate in torma functions, for example in the lu ransom torma (ludzong), in ritualized medicine (lutor), projecting or “throwing” a prayer, a request, or a compelling command to a deity, and in return receiving a substantive response from the deity (figs. 3 and 4).3 Tormas are intended to be attractive art objects and appetizing foods for communities of divinities and of humans.4 They are also intended to be effective tools for use in a broad range of functions, including protection, Buddhist insight, tantric rituals, for good luck on auspicious holidays, and for community needs in general.5 Torma rituals vary, from long, detailed liturgies to brief recitations.

Practical Uses of Tormas

Torma offering rituals can be expressions of local identity and used to build bonds between religious communities. For instance, group belief in and worship of a bright blue torma of Vajradhara, a transcendent buddha and source of all elements of existence, can enhance regional community religious identity (fig. 1). Worship of Tibetan Buddhist iconic tormas of the famous eighteenth-century Tibetan Buddhist Gelukpa scholar,  the Second Jamyang Zhepa (1728–1791), can enhance commitments to the regional political and religious institutions, in this case the Gelukpa Labrang Monastery and its branch communities. In this respect the ostensibly religious tormas serve social and political purposes.6 Further, as with other art objects, one can recognize the sources of distinctively sculpted tormas and works of prominent artists from different regions. For example, in Amdo, one can see the differences between artworks made by Labrang artists and by those from nearby Sengge Shong. This recognition likewise generates a sense of community definition. 

Types of Torma

Tormas are often at the center of Tibetan Buddhist ritual practices and used to engage Buddhist and non-Buddhist deities, tantric protectors, bodhisattvas, and historically prominent scholars. Local Tibetan deities include, among others, yul lha (regional deities), zhi dak (local lords), nyen (local tutelary deities), don (local spirits), gek (demons), and lu (nagas, semidivine aquatic creatures). The deities often play specific roles in communities and homelands, and require specialized recognition and offerings, often communicated by tormas (sometimes of very large scale).

Iconic Tormas

There are accordingly many types of tormas, among them iconic tormas with a deity or historical figure carved, painted, or imagined.7 Iconic tormas often depict brightly colored Buddhist divinities or saints, and are used in a wide range of rituals. Works portraying Vajradhara (fig. 1) and the Second Jamyang Zhepa (fig. 5) are examples of iconic tormas.

The iconic torma for Avalokiteshvara (fig. 6) and details of the ritual process for invoking him are described in text excerpts from the “One Hundred Tormas” (Torma gya tsa), a relatively long torma liturgy composed by the Fourth Panchen Lama Lobzang Chokyi Gyeltsen (1570–1662). This document contextualizes tormas with ancient Buddhist teachings on dependent origination and goes on to assert that the fundamental mode of being of all elements of existence is emptiness.8 It includes a statement of the Mahayana commitment to the speedy attainment of Buddhist enlightenment by all living beings. The text provides a description and liturgy of an “offering torma” to Avalokiteshvara, for visualization and recitation (excerpts paraphrased in English as follow):

This torma is offered to appease the leader of demons, to appease spirits that afflict children, and others, nonhumans and powerful beings visible and invisible. It is offered to protectors of the teachings and to those who generate unchanging love, especially to those who eliminate negative and generate positive circumstances, to the one thousand eight hundred classes of demons, the three hundred and sixty devils, the fifteen ghosts above, in between, and below, the demons and elementals. This offering torma will satisfy and counteract disease, epidemic, famine, frost and hail, drought, and will bring mental and physical benefit to all living beings who have been our parents.

This torma purifies all of the retributive causes of rebirth—killing, capturing, beating, stealing, robbing, and all that lead one to bondage. Eliminating causes of rebirth, one will quickly attain the best goal, enlightenment.9

Aniconic Tormas

Aniconic flour-and-butter tormas serve as receptacles and food for ephemeral deities invoked to receive and consume the torma offerings (figs. 7). The deities reciprocate by granting the wishes of the supplicants. In the image below (fig. 8), the topmost torma diagram is designated as white in color, on a white moon disk, both on a green vase, and both of these on a sun disk. The middle aniconic torma is a healing torma with a tantric song.10 The lower torma is a confessional instrument for beings in hell. The top is red in color and the base has four lotus petals.

Iconic and aniconic tormas serve a broad range of purposes. The bright blue transcendent Buddha Vajradhara (fig. 1) identifies the community’s visionary origins, the crowned and richly ornamented Shakyamuni Buddha asserts the historical Buddha’s pedigree (fig. 9),11 the presence of the Palden Lhamo torma signals her protection of the Tibetan Buddhist Gelukpa order (fig. 10), Buddha Amitayus holds promise of longevity (fig. 11), and Manjushri cuts through ignorance (fig. 12). When the tormas are produced according to the standards for construction and invocation, with correct appearance and implementation, they are believed to be effective, functional devices. 

Torma Rituals

The torgyak (gtor rgyag) ritual is shown in a community procession following a cham dance at Labrang Monastery in Amdo (fig. 13). The image shows a vajra and stylized skull on top of the conical zor weapon. The leader carries an aniconic butter-flour torma in front. The dance and torma ritual are performed (figs. 14 and 15). The ritual is intended to absorb and eliminate the negative forces accumulated in the preceding months. After the dance the community proceeds to the outer wall of the monastery, and the event culminates in the burning of the torma and the zor weapon.

Another ritual figure from a New Year festival in about 1932 at Labrang Monastery is a ludzong, the lu ransom torma (fig. 16). This person and his costume express the function of a torma (dzong) and an effigy (lu), which absorbs all of the positive and negative influences on the monastery and community accumulated over the past year. The torma function is embodied here, and the figure is named as a torma. The figure circulates through the monastery and is eventually chased out, taking with him all of the year’s negativity.

Ransom medical therapy (lutor) is another torma function (fig. 17). In Paro, Bhutan, the officiant uses herbs, wool, a live chicken, foods, a bell, and a drum to perform a torma ritual,  invoking and compelling a malignant deity to leave a sick person, for instance a teenage boy with a respiratory disease.

Contacts and communications between humans and deities are important parts of the Tibetan and Indian religious worldview. Tibetans and Indians share a world densely populated by deities of broad description, and the boundaries between human and deity are very porous. Tormas and ritual objects are vehicles for interaction between the two realms. In this vision humans and deities can interact with stylized torma gifts of foods often made of roasted barley flour and butter that compel deities to grant their wishes. Torma gifts can be iconic, with distinctive images of deities and humans who have places of prestige and power in the community legacy. Tormas can also be aniconic, exquisitely crafted with no anthropomorphic or divine shape of any kind. When accompanied by proper invocations, torma foods, and musical performances, deities are compelled to respond to human requests.