I. VAMA MARGA Foundations Of The Left-Hand Path - staticfly.net
I. VAMA MARGA Foundations Of The Left-Hand Path - staticfly.net
I. VAMA MARGA Foundations Of The Left-Hand Path - staticfly.net
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
simultaneously" Describing Spare's younger days, when his dashing good<br />
looks were still capable of attracting real (rather than astral) women, Grant<br />
wrote that "such was [Spare's] hunger that in one night he copulated with<br />
eighteen woman, calling these outbursts: Dionysiac spasms of pansexualism<br />
in which he had visions of all things fornicating all the time," an idea similar<br />
to Crowley's description of Babalon as "constant copulation or samadhi on<br />
334<br />
everything." Spare's recognition of the Feminine Daemonic is a major part of<br />
his work, as illustrated by his claimed magical tutelage as a youth by a<br />
woman he described as a "witch."<br />
It is primarily through Grant's explication of Austin Osman Spares's<br />
magical practice that the sexual utilization of sigils has become such a<br />
commonplace practice among modern magicians, although it is the advocates<br />
of the school of Chaos Magick that have taken credit for this trend.<br />
We are of the opinion that Spare's magic was most effectively<br />
communicated through his often erotic artwork. Thus our sparse coverage of<br />
his oblique theory and practice, which in its extreme subjectivity seems to<br />
have been more of a personal method than a teaching communicable to<br />
others. Nevertheless, the visionary creation of powerful images, in which<br />
Spare excelled, is in itself an act of magic. Spare makes for an instructive<br />
example that the sex magic of the left-hand path need not be communicated<br />
only through the left brain's rational prism; the surreal image-producing<br />
faculties of the right brain may be an even more forceful medium. (Much the<br />
same could be said of the accomplished magical artist Rosaleen Norton,<br />
whose practice of a demonic sexual magic and her erotic esoteric paintings<br />
scandalized her native Australia, but who left behind no specific teaching or<br />
practical written record of her thought.)<br />
Grant, as long ago as the 1950s, was also the first magician to posit<br />
the fictional dark gods of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos as a genuine<br />
pantheon of deities. This line of thought, in its most debased form, has<br />
unfortunately led already delusion-prone magicians to adopt Lovecraft's<br />
horror tales as a form of religious scripture, even inspiring some to perform<br />
erotic rituals to attempt contact with these fictional beings. Lovecraft, himself<br />
a sworn atheist and sexual prude who rejected all forms of magical thought<br />
and recoiled from feminine contact, must truly be spinning in his grave at the<br />
idea of sex magic for Cthulhu. But in his often derided connection of the UFO<br />
phenomenon and Lovecraftian fantasy fiction with sex magic, Grant is also<br />
very much in the otherwordly lineage of Jack Parsons, for whom the<br />
distinction between sci-fi daydreams and sexual sorcery was often blurred.<br />
And yet, even if his scholarship often stands on shaky ground, Grant<br />
must be counted as a force to be reckoned with as the first author to firmly<br />
place Western sex magic and the Babalon current in context with the<br />
authentic left-hand path, which he accurately describes as the Vama Marga.<br />
Rather than rest on Crowley's laurels, he provided modern sex magicians with<br />
untried Eastern keys to erotic enlightenment, propounding a sex-magical<br />
apocalypse that can be seen as a Western emanation of the Kali Yuga. Ile has<br />
been accused by his detractors of humorlessly wallowing in the slime of an<br />
adolescent obsession with naughty sexual depravity for it's own sake. His<br />
admirers just as ardently hail him as a sinister visionary who will be<br />
remembered as the only creative and original sex magician to emerge from<br />
335<br />
the group of young men who were Crowley's final students.<br />
336<br />
337<br />
BOOK THREE:<br />
<strong>The</strong> Sinister Current In Action<br />
338