The founding project of a tradition is usually expressed in its early texts, but not always explicitly. The first steps taken in establishing traditions, and particularly their founding projects, are especially interesting for historical research which does not merely record the facts but also explores their mystification and enquires into its reasons. The Wheel of Time, which spread through Northern India and Tibet around the beginning of the 11th century, is extremely interesting in this regard. It is possible to show that the system’s authoritativeness was established by the early teachers of the Kālacakra and the first Tibetan historiographers by means of a precise intellectual ‘operation’. The lecture presents an attempt to shed light on some of the cultural forms and means through which the Kālacakra authors utilized and shared strategies of semiotic construction to legitimize their lineages and doctrine.
