Brothers of the Shadow

Dugpas

H. P. Blavatsky and the Mahatmas used many times the word dugpa (Tib. ’brug pa) as a synonym of a black magician:

Dugpas (Tib.). Lit., “Red Caps,” a sect in Tibet. Before the advent of Tsong-ka-pa in the fourteenth century, the Tibetans, whose Buddhism had deteriorated and been dreadfully adulterated with the tenets of the old Bhon religion,—were all Dugpas. From that century, however, and after the rigid laws imposed upon the Gelukpas (yellow caps) and the general reform and purification of Buddhism (or Lamaism), the Dugpas have given themselves over more than ever to sorcery, immorality, and drunkenness. Since then the word Dugpas has become a synonym of “sorcerer”, “adept of black magic” and everything vile. There are few, if any, Dugpas in Eastern Tibet, but they congregate in Bhutan, Sikkim, and the borderlands generally. Europeans not being permitted to penetrate further than those borders, the Orientalists never having studied Buddho-Lamaism in Tibet proper, but judging of it on hearsay and from what Cosmo di Köros, Schlagintweit, and a few others have learnt of it from Dugpas, confuse both religions and bring them under one head. They thus give out to the public pure Dugpaism instead of Buddho-Lamaism. In short Northern Buddhism in its purified, metaphysical form is almost entirely unknown.

As we can see, the word "dugpa" is used in the context of the different schools of Tibetan Buddhism. It is applied in a generic sense to all "red-caps" sects, that is the Nyigmapas, Kagyupas, Sakyapas, and the pre-Buddhist natives Bhons. These are the non-reformed sects that did not follow Tsongkhapa’s new order, the Gelugpas. David Reigle showed that the use of word of "dugpa" as a general term for all red-capped sects was prevalent at the time of Blavatsky's writings. This mistake was corrected by L. Austine Waddell’s 1895 book, The Buddhism of Tibet, or Lamaism where he states that the Dug-pa are a sub-sect of one of the red-cap sects, the Kagyupas.

However, even Mme. Blavatsky when talking about the “Brothers of the Shadow” admitted that the word "dugpa" was not applied top all those who belonged to that particular sect:

In Sikkim and Tibet they are called Dug-pas (red-caps), in contra-distinction to the Geluk-pas (yellow-caps), to which latter most of the adepts belong. And here we must beg the reader not to misunderstand us. For though the whole of Bhûtan and Sikkim belongs to the old religion of the Bhons, now known generally as the Dug-pas, we do not mean to have it understood that the whole of the population is possessed, en masse, or that they are all sorcerers. Among them are found as good men as anywhere else, and we speak above only of the élite of their Lamaseries, of a nucleus of priests, "devil-dancers," and fetish worshippers, whose dreadful and mysterious rites are utterly unknown to the greater part of the population.

Further reading

• Triad at Theosopedia

• Who Are the Dugpas in Theosophical Writings? by David Reigle at Katinkahesselink.net