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

Randolph proclaimed the preeminence of Volancia in his system of sex
magic with the grandiloquent formula "Will reigns Omnipotent; Love lieth at
the Foundation." The similarity of this phrase to Aleister Crowley's much
later magical formula "Love is the Law, Love under Will" is surely more than
coincidence.
Indeed, it is hard to believe that the dominance of the will in
Crowley's religion of Thelema is not derived directly from Randolph's earlier
philosophy of Volancia. As we shall see, Crowley had a habit of presenting
ideas appropriated from others as his own, without ever acknowledging his
sources. Keep in mind that Crowley, a wealthy child of the Victorian Empire,
shared many of the racial attitudes common to his class and era. It is unlikely
that he would have credited the genesis of some of his most important ideas
to Randolph, a man he would almost surely have designated as a "nigger."
Randolph also pioneered another practice now commonly ascribed to
Crowley; long before the Englishman's descent into narcotized disarray, his
American predecessor wrote publicly of his magical experiments with
hashish and ether.
Once the sex magician has mastered his or her will during the sexual
act, Randolph advises the cultivation of "decretism." This is the capacity to
give one's self commands that will be followed without hesitation, in a state
of confidence that these commands will transpire as formulated. "Posism" is
a prescribed system of sexual positions resembling the Tantric asanas, which
allow for different modes of electromagnetic force to be exchanged during
the "spasm of love." Randolph characterizes the penis as the conveyor of a
positive charge, while the vagina emits a negative force – a theory which
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concurs with the left-hand path model of bipolar energy transmission. Unique
to Randolph is the notion that on the mental plane, these gender polarities are
reversed.
He explained that "while the phallus of the man is positively
polarized and the kteis of the woman is negatively polarized, the head of the
man, the organ of his mental manifestations is, to the contrary, negative and
magnetic for rapport with the head of the woman which is positive and
electric." Randolph's use of the Greek word kteis (vagina) foreshadows
Crowley's later explanation that his spelling of "magick" with a "k" is a
reference to the centrality of the kteis to his initiatory practice.
Finally, the couple is directed to develop "tiroclerism" which seems
to be a form of yogic visualization, permitting the adept to create clear mental
images that become reality at the moment of mutual orgasm. "If," Randolph
writes, "a man ardently wishes a force or power into being and guards this
wish from the instant that he penetrates into the woman until the instant that
he withdraws from her, his wish is necessarily fulfilled." As a beginning
exercise in developing the inner fundamentals necessary to any erotic sorcery
– the willed transmission of the adept's imagination into the daemonic realm,
charged with sexual ecstasy – Randolph's system is an effective one.
Although Randolph's formula for "nuptive prayer" was adopted,
using different terminology, by such later sex magicians as O.T.O. founder
Theodor Reuss and Crowley, their practice differed sharply from Randolph's
in several important aspects. The most obvious of these distinctions is that
Reuss and Crowley, both confirmed despisers of womankind, essentially
used the female sex partner as a sort of necessary evil in their rites, poking
their magic wands into her to bring about their own orgasm, but hardly
viewing her as a coequal collaborator in the working. Randolph, however,
insisted that the female partner's orgasm was a crucial factor in the
culmination of the rite: "It is best for both man and wife to act together for
the attainment of the mysterious objects sought." The female partner must
possess "perfect sexive and orgasmal ability; for it requires a double crisis to
succeed." Randolph's veneration of the female is partially in harmony with