While Shiva and Shakti are the highest deities in Hindu Tantra, in Buddhist Tantra the Five Wisdom Buddhas are the main deities.
They symbolize the five main qualities of the Buddha himself. We looked at these Buddhas in a previous class.
Vairocana is the central Buddha in this configuration, and the four others occupy each of the four directions.
Amitabha is on the West; he is particularly known in East Asia for presiding over the Sukhavati Pure Land, where the Buddhist faithful can go after death and subsist in a heaven-like environment devoid of sin while they wait to be reborn.
These deities have the same placement in Mahayana, showing us that Vajrayana (Tantric Buddhism) and Mahayana share the same underlying cosmic structure.