associated with the role of shaman and exorcist. Iconography In chöd, the adept symbolically offers the flesh of their body in a form of gaṇacakra or tantric feast. Iconographically, the skin of the practitioner's body may represent surface reality or maya. It is cut from bones that represent the true reality of the mindstream. Commentators have pointed out the similarities between the chöd ritual and the prototypical initiation of a shaman, although one writer identifies an essential difference between the two in that the shaman's initiation is involuntary while a chodpa chooses to undertake the ritual death of a chod ceremony. Traditionally, chöd is regarded as challenging, potentially dangerous and inappropriate for some practitioners. Ritual objects Practitioners of the chöd ritual, chödpa, use a kangling or human thighbone trumpet, and a chöd drum, a hand drum similar to but larger than the ḍamaru commonly used in Tibetan ritual. In a version of the chöd sādhanā of Jigme Lingpa from the Longchen Nyingthig, five ritual knives are employed to demarcate the maṇḍala of the offering and to affix the five wisdoms. Key to the iconography of chöd is the (), a half-moon blade knife for skinning an animal and for scraping hides. The practitioner symbolically uses a kartika to separate the bodymind from the mindstream in ritual. Kartika imagery in chöd rituals provides the practitioner with an opportunity to realize Buddhist doctrine: Origins Some sources have described Machig Labdrön as the founder of the practice of chöd. This is accurate in that she is the founder of the Tibetan Buddhist Mahamudrā chöd lineages. Machig Labdrön is credited with providing the name "chöd" and developing unique approaches to the practice. Biographies suggest it was transmitted to her via sources of the mahāsiddha and tantric traditions. She did not found the Dzogchen lineages, although they do recognize her, and she does not appear at all in the Bön chöd lineages. Among the formative influences on Mahamudrā chöd was Dampa Sangye's Pacification of Suffering (). Transmission to Tibet There are several hagiographic accounts of how chöd came to Tibet. One namtar (spiritual biography) asserts that shortly after Kamalaśīla won his famous debate with Moheyan as to whether Tibet should adopt the "sudden" route to enlightenment or his "gradual" route, Kamalaśīla used the technique of phowa to transfer his mindstream to animate a corpse polluted with contagion in order to safely move the hazard it