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

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

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veneration of the Feminine Daemonic. Yes, Kali is the Dark Mother. Yet<br />

what she gives birth to is the maya of the universe itself, not only biological<br />

babies. Kali's creation is principally of a magical nature, a non-natural<br />

generation of the sexual shadow, or khabit, recognised by ancient Egyptian<br />

soulcraft. (Without the strength of sexual energy amassed in the khabit, the<br />

Egyptian dead were not believed to be able to cross beyond mortal existence<br />

– a te<strong>net</strong> that mirrors left-hand path practice.)<br />

<strong>The</strong> female initiatrix of the sinister current incarnates that<br />

otherwordly facet of Woman that Man can never possess, subdue or even<br />

entirely understand. Woman Deified as harlot and virgin, maenad and<br />

38<br />

amazon, Valkyrie and succubus – the many masks of the Feminine<br />

Daemonic. Her sexuality, as unrestrained as it is, is of an ultimately inviolate<br />

and unattainable magical character, rather than the simply biological<br />

carnality of Woman as property, that humble creature of the kitchen and the<br />

nursery. This glorification of the dark side of femininity is so essential to the<br />

left-hand path, that the reader will have noticed that we listed it as one of the<br />

most important criteria of the universal sinister current – without woman,<br />

there can simply be no left-hand path.<br />

Like all truly numinous powers, the raw shakti energy radiated by the<br />

female initiatrix cannot be faced easily by the male adept in the beginning<br />

stages of his initiation. Something of the overwhelming power which shakti<br />

is afforded in the Vama Marga can be found in other mythological systems.<br />

<strong>The</strong> Hellenic Medusa, she of the serpentine head, whose essence is too strong<br />

for even a hero to gaze upon directly, is a pertinent illustration of the most<br />

extreme manifestation of the Feminine Daemonic. For that matter, the<br />

contemporary female initiate in the Western world may well have difficulty<br />

harnessing the dark side of her femininity essential to the sinister current.<br />

Pervasive conditioning inculcating the notion that the ideal woman is a mild,<br />

ladylike, docile creature is not easily reconciled with the fierce power of Kali<br />

unleashed in the left-hand path.<br />

All of this reverence for Shakti may seem somewhat abstract. In<br />

fact, its primary expression is enacted through direct sexual exchange with a<br />

living female embodiment of the sinister force. Traditional left-hand path<br />

initiation is always transmitted to a male initiate via ritual intercourse with a<br />

female preceptor, a link in the chain of an initiated lineage of women<br />

embodying the vital power of the dark goddess. Underlying this method of<br />

genital energy transference is an esoteric science teaching that certain<br />

powerful properties unique only to the aroused female body are secreted in<br />

her sexual fluids. <strong>The</strong> power attributed to this female sexual potion is<br />

comparable to the "medicine of the wise" sought by the European alchemists.<br />

Coupled with this tangible feminine essence absorbed during sacralized<br />

coitus is a more subtle flow of shakti flowing from her ecstatically galvanized<br />

nervous system.<br />

This form of erotic initiation, in which the male adept is commonly<br />

coupled with a woman from another caste than his own, frequently breaks<br />

with India's rigid caste system, increasing the literally "outcast" nature of the<br />

Vama Marga.<br />

Above and beyond this breaking of Hindu socioreligious taboo, the<br />

very centrality of women to left-hand path practice is commonly regarded as<br />

abhorrent in India. Westerners who have idealized the realities of Indian<br />

spiritual life have imagined that because of the proliferation of goddesses in<br />

Indian religion that the feminine principle is more honored in India than in<br />

the Western world. This is not true; misogyny is rampant in all levels of<br />

39<br />

Indian society. In some rural areas, the birth of a girl child is considered to be<br />

a terrible misfortune and ill omen; female infants are routinely killed, as they<br />

are considered a worthless blight on the family. <strong>The</strong> left-hand path's elevation

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