One can easily imagine that the modern politicalimportance of the Nāth sampradāya (community) in Gorakhpur, inpresent-day Uttar Pradesh, India, would haveastounded many people in early modern Hindustan.Settled in the Terai of the Himalayas, the NāthYogīs at Gorakhpur had little influence outside oftheir region prior to the twentieth century. Yettoday Gorakhpur is home to the most significanttheocratic center for the contemporary sampradāya and the nucleusof this current power is the Gorakhnāth maṭh (temple complex) andthe mahan s(monastics) who lead it. Gorakhpur, named incommemoratation of the preceptor of the Nāth Yogīs,Guru Gorakhnāth – an ascetic who taughttranscendence over worldly concerns, sectariandivisions, and even nature itself – is today farmore recognized for Hindu fundamentalism than forthe yogic sādhana(bodily discipline) or siddhis (supernatural powers)traditionally associated with this order. While theimmense political stature associated with the modernmaṭh may appearunprecedented to some observers, the relationshipbetween Nāth Yogīs and temporal power is not.Gorakhpur's Gorakhnāth maṭh displays only a novel variation ofthe Nāth Yogīs longstanding pursuit of both divineand worldly powers. As twentieth- andtwenty-first-century leaders of the maṭh have employed modifiedtechniques to garner political power in modernIndia, they also continue to invoke the legendarysiddhi s that havelong been associated with the sampradāya.