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

magicians, who were inspired to research Indian and Tibetan mysticism, and
eventually came upon Tantra and its sexual left-hand path. (The swastika,
more properly known in Sanskrit as the suvastika, an ancient symbol of Kali,
was introduced into right-wing occult circles at this time.) It was this
characteristic enchantment of the Fatherland with its distant sister, Mother
India, that led directly to the incorporation of Vama Marga techniques into
the Fraternitas Saturni. The left-hand path, utterly rejected as black magic
by the largely Theosophically influenced occultists of colonialist England,
found a receptive sanctuary in the secret operations of the FS.
The FS was the brainchild of the Berlin bookseller Eugen Grosche (I888—
1965), who is better known by his magical name Gregor A. Gregorius, and
whose books include Satanic Magic and the thinly fictionalized
autobiographical novel Exorial: Story Of A Demonic Being. Gregorius led
the lodge through various fractious and schisming mutations until his death
in 1965. This turbulent life's work was interrupted by the National Socialist
ban on magical lodges in the 1930s, which was promptly followed by a postwar
Communist ban on occult activity in the East German state.
Revered by many as one of Germany's few original magical minds
in the twentieth century, second only to the influential Franz Bardon,
Gregorius has also been dismissed by others as little more than a horny
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crackpot. The post-World War II O.T.O.'s nominal Head, Karl Germer, who
maintained a life-long feud with Gregorius, once described him as "a sexmaniac,
[who] dabbled in hypnosis and drugs – one of the lowest types of
occultist I ever met." Considering the great respect in which Germer held
Aleister Crowley, also a "sex-maniac" by any standard, and whose
involvement with drugs went much further than mere dabbling, this opinion
must be viewed with some skepticism.
Originating from a schism with the Pansophical Lodge, one of the larger
German occult bodies, the Fraternitas Saturni was founded in 1928 with a
nucleus of about forty members. The initiates of the FS were not merely the
marginal types customarily attracted to occult Orders; several German
aristocrats and artists from the thriving Berlin film industry were also
inducted. Gregorius created a complex and eclectic doctrine postulating the
coming of a new astrologically determined Age of Saturn, related to the
coining Age of Aquarius that occultists of every stripe had anticipated as the
dawn of a new age. The Saturnian mysteries were communicated to the
lodge through a graded hierarchy of basically Freemasonic degrees.
Within the Saturnian liturgy, we find such seemingly unrelated
Western themes as astrological and planetary magic, the exaltation of
Lucifer, Gnosticism, the sexual evocation of demons, and pendulum magic
mixed with Eastern notions such as the chakras, the doctrine of
reincarnation, and some elements of Tantra. The FS student, who was
referred to by the Sanskrit word chela, was methodically trained in
meditation, visualization, mantric vocalization; Gregorius supervised a
genuine school that actually taught a specific and rigorously conceived
magical technology that expected objective results.
The presiding spiritual entity in Saturnian theurgy was the egregore
GOTOS, a daemonic being that held the same place in the FS as Baphomet
once did among the Knights Templar. (Baphomet also plays a significant
role in FS ritual.) This grab-bag of magical methods was expressed through
a litany of scripted pseudo-Masonic rituals, which were performed by the
formally robed Brothers and Sisters of Saturn in a converted temple located
in the back of Gregorius's bookshop. However, individual work in solitude
was of greater significance, since Gregorius believed that Saturnian
initiation, which was based on "pitiless love", required the chela to be
judged by the harsh spiritual tester Saturn, a merciless teacher who provided