Tantric ritual can be understood as a disciplined way of engaging body, speech, and mind with sacred presence, using offerings, mantra, gesture, and visualization to transform ordinary perception. A central example is deity pūjā, in which an altar is prepared with an image or yantra, incense, lamps, flowers, water, and food. The practitioner purifies the space, invokes the deity into the image or yantra, and then offers water, flowers, incense, light, and food while reciting mantras and performing mudrās. Acts such as circumambulation and prostration are often included, and the deity is finally dissolved back into the heart, emphasizing that the divine is not separate from consciousness itself. Similar devotional structures appear in guru pūjā, where the spiritual teacher is honored with offerings, recitation of lineage prayers, and prescribed gestures, and the guru is contemplated as an awakened presence.

Another important family of practices centers on mantra and the sacralization of the body. Nyāsa involves touching specific parts of the body while reciting mantras or seed syllables, “installing” divine energy in the head, heart, throat, limbs, and other loci so that the body itself becomes a consecrated field of practice. This is often combined with mantra japa, the rhythmic repetition of a deity’s mantra, frequently using a rosary and coordinating sound, breath, and attention. In many systems, chakra pūjā or chakra sādhana extends this inwardly by visualizing lotuses along the central axis of the body, associating each with particular colors, deities, or geometric forms, and reciting corresponding bīja mantras. Such inner rituals aim at awakening and refining subtle energies so that they can be recognized as expressions of a deeper, unified consciousness.

Tantric symbolism is also expressed through the use of sacred diagrams and fire. Yantra worship involves drawing or installing a geometric pattern that represents a deity or the cosmos, consecrating it with mantras and offerings, and then meditating upon it, often by focusing on its center while internally visualizing the deity. Fire rituals (homa or havan) employ a specially prepared altar, a consecrated flame, and offerings such as ghee, grains, and herbs. Through mantra recitation and the act of casting offerings into the fire, practitioners contemplate the transformation of limitations and obscurations, using the visible process of combustion as a mirror for inner transmutation. These rites may be brief daily observances or more elaborate ceremonies, but in each case they weave together outer action and inner contemplation.

Within certain left-hand (vāmacāra) lineages, ritual takes a more transgressive form, though still framed by strict initiation and discipline. Here one finds practices such as maithuna, a ritualized sexual union, and the pañca makāra, the “five Ms”: wine, meat, fish, grain, and sexual union, used either symbolically or literally. These elements are not intended as mere indulgence but as a means of confronting and transforming powerful currents of desire and aversion. By ritually engaging what is ordinarily rejected or clung to, the practitioner seeks to recognize the same sacred energy at work in all experiences. Across these diverse forms—devotional worship, mantra and nyāsa, yantra and fire rites, and even taboo-challenging observances—the unifying thread is the deliberate use of ritual structure to reveal the inherently sacred nature of body, mind, and world.