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

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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

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