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

power.
Within the specifically Gnostic context of these texts, Mary's
enhanced knowledge is not to be understood as the ignorant blind faith held
so dear in the later distortions of Christianity into a cult for the masses.
Rather, we are led to understand that she has experienced an initiatory
Gnosis, a transcendent perception of reality, akin to the left-hand path state
of Bodhana (awakening). For some of the Gnostic sects, such illumination
was presumed to be due to the awakening of a divine wisdom or knowledge
locked within every human body, a feminine divinity known as Sophia. This
resembles the Buddhist left-hand path's custom of referring to the female
sexual consort as the vidya – the bringer of knowledge.
One of the early apocryphal scriptures relating a conversation
between Christ and Mary Magdalene is entitled Pistis Sophia. This is only
one of many confirmations that the original Christian magical cult was not
dedicated to the monotheistic worship of a monolithic male deity. It actually
granted especial reverence to the left-handed powers of a female divinity. To
understand the magnitude of the Feminine Daemonic in general and Mary
Magdalene in particular to the early Christian Gnostic community, we need
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only consider the titles of some of their lost Gospels: The Gospel Of Eve,
Noria, Birth Of Mary, Great And Little Questions Of Mary, Pistis Sophia IV.
Contrast these female-centered Gospels with the official Gospels
anthologized in the Bible – all of them ostensibly authored by men – and the
full extent of the later Christian expurgation of the feminine becomes clear.
While the Church's transformation of Mary Magdalene from a teacher
commanding center stage to a subservient prostitute on the sidelines is
startling enough, the excommunication of the goddess Sophia from later
Christianity was even more decisive in recreating Christianity as a puritan,
anti-female sect.
The adept's awakening of Sophia in the flesh can also be paralleled
with the Tantric left-hand path arousal of the hidden Goddess Kundalini,
whose full activation also bestows suprahuman wisdom. The Gnostic's
passionate adoration of Sophia was known as philosophia – the love of
Sophia – a mystical communication with a divine female intelligence having
little to do with the strictly intellectual pursuit currently labeled
"philosophy." As we have noted earlier, there is a further connection
between Sophia and the serpentine Kundalini as sinister current
manifestations of the Feminine Daemonic. In the teaching of some Gnostic
Christian sects, Sophia first appeared to the primordial female Eve in the
Garden of Eden as a female serpent instructing humanity in forbidden
knowledge – especially carnal knowledge.
It's unlikely that modern Christians will enthusiastically embrace
the notion that Jesus and his original followers worshipped the being now
despised under the name of "Satan" as a benevolent female snake-deity,
while vilifying the being they currently know as "God" as a malignant
demiurge. Many Christian scholars commenting on the Nag Hammadi
Library have also done their best to studiously ignore or evade the sexmagical
implications to be found in these controversial texts.
The Sacrament Of The Bridal Chamber
Specifically, what was the secret knowledge that made Mary Magdalene
"the woman who understood completely"? Assuming that these texts, like
the Tantras and so many other ancient initiatory writings, do not
communicate directly but in simile and coded language, there must be a
reason why Mary is so consistently singled out in this manner. In part, this
knowledge seems to have been communicated to Mary due to her especially
privileged place among the disciples, a unique closeness to the magus Jesus
that the other disciples frequently allude to in several passages.
In one Gnostic Gospel, set in a time after the death of Jesus, Christ's