I. VAMA MARGA Foundations Of The Left-Hand Path - staticfly.net

Of course, despite the intriguing sinister aspects apparent in the
Biblical Christ, the Holy Book cannot be said to indicate in him the most
defining factor of left-hand path initiation – the celebration of sexual magic.
For this, other sources are more illuminating. Roman and Jewish opponents
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of the early Christian sect, for example, routinely characterized the disciples
of Jesus as practitioners of a love cult whose rites included feasts that
culminated in sexual promiscuity. Christ's teaching of unconditional Agape
(Greek for "love"), was often presumed to include a mystical
transubstantiation of sex not dissimilar from that practiced in Tantric group
rituals. The tradition of the agape feast, originally a crucial element of
Christian practice, was finally outlawed by the Church itself in the seventh
century, when reports of orgiastic ritual being held in churches became
commonplace throughout Christendom. By that time, all traces of any
remaining sex-magical component in Christianity had been thoroughly
expunged.
The original talisman of early Christianity was the Ichthys, a stylized
fish, well known as a symbol of the erect phallus in Middle Eastern and
Mediterranean cultures. The faithful, interpreting the gospel as history,
assume that the current Christian talisman, the cross, is merely a reference to
the crucifixion. But the intersecting lines of the cross also form an ancient
symbol for the sexual union of man and woman, the physical gateway of
creation.
A spontaneous eruption of Agape, the suppressed spirit of original
Christianity, resurfaced in a bastardized form in the 1960s, among a popular
youth subculture of disaffected disciples known as "Jesus Freaks." Some
Jesus Freaks attempted to disturb their conservative parents by emulating the
reviled establishment's central religious icon, Jesus, as a role model of antisocial
rebellion. In so doing, they adopted the communal living, celebration
of free love, indiscriminate sexuality, and combative attitudes towards tribal
elders that characterized the less acceptable side of the Christ mythos. In a
sense, one could postulate that this was a very naive expression of a Christian
left-hand path in practice.
Going several steps further in this direction in the same lime period
was Charles Manson, known to many in his prime as "the Wizard". Leaving
aside entirely the sensational crimes of which he has been accused, Manson
illustrates how the hidden left-hand path aspects of the Christ archetype can
take hold of those who identify themselves utterly with it. Upon being
released from a long prison sentence, Manson presented himself to a small
contingent of alienated youths as the Second Coming of Jesus (and the
Devil), orchestrated taboo-breaking orgies to break the bonds of his middleclass
adherents to norms of possessiveness and jealousy, and adopted the
mystical revolutionary rhetoric of Christ's statement to "think not that I am
come to send peace upon the earth: I came not to send peace but a sword.."
The fact that Manson was also – in accordance with at least one
version of the Christ legend – the bastard son of a reputedly loose woman
was surely not lost on him. Manson's duality-transcendent claim that Christ
and Satan were one is a typically left-hand path conjunction of opposites, and
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unconsciously reflects some Gnostic teachings, as does his frequently stated
observation that he has a woman inside of him. However, Manson's selfdeification
of himself as a reborn Christ, which went so far as recreating
Mary Magdalene's anointing of her Master's feet with his disciple Susan
Atkins taking the role of Mary, cannot truly be considered a left-hand path
phenomenon. Manson's well-documented misogyny alone makes it clear that
his "ministry" lacked the exaltation of the Feminine Daemonic that the
sinister current is based on.
Sophia And The Serpent