Shaman Hatley is a scholar of Asian religions, specializing in the
goddess cults and
tantric rituals of medieval India, including the
yogini cults and the history of
yoga.[1]
Biography
Hatley contributed to identifying the significance of India's medieval
Yogini temples.
Shaman Hatley was educated in liberal arts at Goddard College, graduating in 1998.[2] He then studied Indology and religious studies at the
University of Pennsylvania, gaining his PhD on the Brahmayāmalatantra and the Early
Saiva Cult of
Yoginīs there in 2007; he began teaching at
Concordia University that same year.[2][3][4] In 2015 he moved to the
University of Massachusetts Boston,[5] becoming the chair of Asian studies there in 2020.[1]
Hatley's work on the
yogini temples of India, starting with his dissertation, brought scholarly attention to their place in translating the
purana literature and ritual
mandalas into the dramatic circular architecture of these temples.[6]
2012: "Tantric Śaivism in Early Medieval India: Recent Research and Future Directions", Religion Compass.
2012: "From Mātṛ to Yoginī: Continuity and Transformation in the South Asian Cults of the Mother Goddesses", Transformations and Transfer of Tantra in Asia and Beyond, ed. by István Keul.
Walter de Gruyter.
2013: "What is a Yoginī? Towards a Polythetic Definition", "Yogini" in South Asia: Interdisciplinary Approaches, ed. by Istvan Keul (
Routledge)
2014: "Kuṇḍalinī", Encyclopedia of Indian Religions,
Springer.
2014: "Goddesses in Text and Stone: Temples of the Yoginīs in Light of Tantric and Purāṇic Literature." Material Culture and Asian Religions: Text, Image, Object, edited by Benjamin Fleming and Richard Mann.
Routledge.
2015: "Śakti in Early Tantric Śaivism: Historical observations on goddesses, cosmology, and ritual in the Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā"
2016: "Converting the Ḍākinī: Goddess Cults and Tantras of the Yoginīs between Buddhism and Śaivism", Tantric Traditions in Transmission and Translation, edited by David Gray and Ryan Richard Overbey (
Oxford University Press).
2018: The Brahmayāmala or Picumata, Volume I: Chapters 1-2, 39-40, & 83. Revelation, Ritual, and Material Culture in an Early Śaiva Tantra.