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

associate, the Typhonian sex magician Kenneth Grant, with whom an alliance
was formed in the 1950s, the Satan-Lucifer complex exalted in the FS was
"ante-Christian" rather than "anti-Christian." In fact, the FS doctrine
regarding Lucifer and Satan was a sophisticated religious concept with deep
roots in pre-Christian Gnosticism, reflective especially of some of the Ophite
Gnostic ideas we have discussed in Chapter Five. Gregorius taught his
Saturnian brethren that the Edenic serpent which orthodox Christianity
knows as Satan, who gave mankind the gift of gnosis, was really the Christ,
while Lucifer was envisioned as a separate entity, a heroic/rebellious bringer
of light in darkness. This Gnostic identity of Christ and Satan is a theme that
curiously recurs throughout the history of the Western sinister current.
The FS, at least in theory, operated along the elitist lines of the true
left-hand path; Gregorius did not simply welcome all applicants to join with
open arms. He wrote that his lodge was based on a deliberate "exclusion of
base humanity" – a concept not unlike the rejection of the pashu from Vama
Marga initiation.
The left-hand path criterion of self-deification as practiced in the
FS is demonstrated most dramatically in the rites aimed at comprehending
the Light from Darkness – Lux e Tenebris – a paradoxical juxtaposition of
opposites Gregorius called the Dark Light. Gregorius later wrote a novel,
Das Dunkle Licht, expanding on this subject. Despite his apparent
acceptance of much Hindu dogma, Gregorius rejected the commonly
accepted notion that the aim of initiatory liberation was dissolution of the
self – rather, he sought to continually perpetuate the human self as a selfdeified
daemon.
Lucifer was presented as the progenitor of humanity; Saturnian
theology attributed the first primordial sexual act to Eve and Lucifer.
Gregorius also recognized the importance of a Feminine Daemonic Shakti
form of Satan, the female Satana, associated with the serpent of Eden. This
not only recalls Gnostic teachings identifying Sophia as the snake in
paradise who granted Eve the forbidden knowledge, but may be a Saturnian
form of the feminine serpent force Kundalini, derived directly from
Gregorius' study of Tantra. In one of the FS's most secretive sex magic rites,
later published by Hemberger, the magician calls on "the power to awaken
the ancient serpent," an obvious reference to the sleeping fire snake of
Kundalini, that also suggests "that old serpent, called the Devil" of
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Revelations. Other expressions of left-hand path Shakti godheads in the
Saturnian worldview included Sophia, Eve, and Lilith, all of them connected
to the primordial myth of Eden, where the first gnosis was won.
From this sexually tinged Luciferian/Satanic daemonology, we turn
to the actual sex magical practices of the Brotherhood of Saturn, some of
which were clearly adapted from the Indian left-hand path. Sexual magic,
although important to the Gregorian system, was only one of the aspects of
initiation that the Saturnian adept was led to master. Saturnian theory was
centered on the willed and disciplined creation of a total man and woman.
Initiation, according to Gregorius, did not encompass only the cerebral and
spiritual centers; the physical body was also cultivated, a process that could
not exclude the essential erotic sphere. Erotic initiation in its physical form
was actually limited only to initiates of the Gradus Pentalphae (the 18°) of
the Brotherhood's highly structured 33 degree system. It is strange that
female chelas were not permitted to claim this particular grade, although
they were certainly encouraged to participate in the sex magical rites
associated with it. It must be said that the FS never entirely came to terms
with the feminine principle. One detects a tinge of negativity associated with
female sexuality in FS doctrine; even if woman's erotic force was considered
to be of undeniable power for magic, it was also considered to be slightly
suspect and dangerous. Thus, the "Daughter of Lilith", as the female sex