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

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of the normally despised female to a role of initiatory power is viewed as nothing less than sacrilege. This is especially true in a society that most revered religious scriptures allow women only the most subservient of capacities, as meek help-mate and breeding device. Tantric teaching was the first to condemn the rite of Sati, in which widows were religiously obliged to burn themselves upon the death of their husbands, because they had supposedly been "polluted". In opposition to Vedic tradition and Hindu orthodoxy, the Mahanirvana Tantra states that "a wife should not be burnt with her dead husband. Every woman is thy image. Thou residest concealed in the forms of all women in this world. That woman who in her delusion ascends the funeral pyre of her lord (husband) shall go to hell." Also, only the Tantras, of all Indian religious texts, allows for a woman to be a spiritual teacher or guru. As one astonished medieval Islamic author noted of Tantra, the teaching "favors both sexes equally, and makes no distinction between men and women ... this sect calls women shaktis (powers) and to ill-treat a shakti – that is, a woman – is held to be a crime." This authentic left-hand path veneration of the female, though understandably constricted by the overwhelmingly female-negative bias of Eastern culture, stands in direct opposition to the frequent phenomenon of misogyny observed among many male Western sex magicians, even those who call themselves "left-hand path". The Right And Left Sides Of The Body The double meaning of Vama Marga, as both left-hand path and the path of woman is further reinforced in the Tantric understanding that the left side of the human body is inherently feminine. There is a standard explanation offered in most sources for the meaning of the right- and lefthand paths. In right-hand path ritual, a clothed woman symbolically honored as the goddess power Shakti is seated to the right of the male initiate. During left-hand path erotic rites a partially naked woman venerated sexually as Shakti is seated to the left of the male initiate. This is true, as far as it goes, but there is much more to the terminology than this oft-cited detail. Tantra also recognizes the existence of a non-physical subtle body within the physical body, which is said to be driven by the flow of life force through three vertical energy channels, the central Susumna, flanked by Ida, on the left side of the body and Pingala to the right. Ida is also known as the moon channel, just as Pingala is the sun channel, reflecting very ancient traditional associations of the left with the feminine power of the moon and the right with the masculine energy of the sun. The left-sided Ida is red, the 40 right-sided Pingala is white, an important color symbolism in the Indian lefthand path which resurfaces again in the ritual intermixture of white semen and red menstrual blood in Tantric sexual alchemy. There is one significant factor here relevant to the essence of the Vama Marga. Tantric teaching states that the energy enters the body through the lunar left-channel – the feminine, sinister current – and exits the body through the right-solar channel. Traditional left-hand path adepts seek to reverse this natural flow though breath control and the strength of their wills. The sinister current of dark lunar femininity is considered to be the negative polarity (—) while the dexter current of solar masculinity is regarded as the positive polarity (+). The sexual rites of the left-hand path are traditionally performed in accordance with certain phases of the female partner's lunar cycle, based on observation of the relation between menstruation and sexual sensitivity. The right-hand path initiate is content to preserve the harmony of nature. The initiate of the sinister current deliberately causes this river of energy to stream in the opposite direction – a god-like action that takes control of universal laws and bends them to his or her volition. The body is magically understood as the microcosm; by altering the normative course of
somatic energies, the initiate can also exert a similarly profound influence on the macrocosm of the universe itself. By reversing the flow of this subtle energy current from masculine right to feminine left, the male left-hand path initiate is also said to awaken the feminine divinity within him. A Tantric left-hand path understanding of the left side of the body as feminine, and the right as masculine was depicted by the ecstatic Tantric poet Ramprasad Sen: "the inward River Ganges flows through right-hand regions as molten sun, inward River Jumna through left-hand regions as liquid moon". Although attempting to reconcile ancient metaphysics with modern science can lead one down a slippery slope, it is interesting to compare what we currently know of left brain and right brain functions with the Tantric map of the body. The right brain, which effects its opposite left side of the body, seems to be the seat of the traditionally "feminine" attributes of creativity, intuition, ecstasy and magical/poetic thinking – the lunar characteristics most associated with left-hand path consciousness and the energy of Shakti. The left brain, controlling the right side of the body, is apparently the location of reason, logic and analysis – the functions of solar "masculine" consciousness. It is not irrelevant that left-hand path sexual rites are most commonly performed at night by the light of the "feminine" sinister moon, while the right-hand path adept is more likely to attend to his spiritual work by day, reigned over as it is by the "masculine" sun. In the time when left-hand path initiation was a closely guarded secret, some adepts of the Vama Marga 41 would practice traditional, socially acceptable Hindu ceremony during the day, reserving their left-hand path workings for the cover of night. To this day, Vama Marga invocations of the Shakti Kali traditionally take place at midnight in abandoned cremation grounds, as specified by Tantric texts. The erotic rites of the Chinese left-hand path or Yin-tao (hidden way) were always celebrated after midnight. Not surprisingly, the Western Black Arts are typically consigned to the hours of darkness as well. Thus, the cliché of the Western black magician summoning forth demons in a desolate graveyard under a full moon is not out of keeping with the practice of the Eastern lefthand path Tantrika. A thirteenth century kabbalistic text brought to our attention by a colleague makes manifest that the association of leftward-flowing energy with female sexual power is not at all exclusive to Tantric sexual magic. Rather, it is a ubiquitous feature of the timeless, worldwide sinister current. This document, entitled Treatise On The Left Emanation, promises that "I shall now teach you a wonderful innovation. You already know that evil Samael and wicked Lilith are like a sexual pair who, by means of an intermediary, receive an evil and wicked emanation from one and emanate to the other." Beneath the diabolic symbolism of the arch-succubus Lilith and her consort, the angel of death, it's easy to see that this "wonderful innovation" appears to be identical to the transference of left-streaming sexual energy at the center of Vama Marga sexual initiation from "one ... to the other". This text reflects the fact that the Tree of Life that stands at the heart of the Kabbalah is also divided into a right/masculine side and a left/female side. The Path Of The Deliberate Outcast Tantric texts also place emphasis on a third definition of Vama as "contrary". This essential aspect of contrariness clarifies that the left-hand path in its purest form is always characterized by radical opposition. Its method of initiation is based on cultivating estrangement and deliberate alienation from divine, natural and human rule. Through an active and positive sacred glorification of the radically Other, the walker of the Vama Marga steps outside previously secure borders, a self-exiled, self-determined creation of his or her own autonomous will. Although many previous authors have
Page 2 and 3: Foreplay 4 BOOK ONE: The Sinister C
Page 4 and 5: traveler doesn't know which end is
Page 6 and 7: sexual power of woman, he wrote: "S
Page 8 and 9: That sort of thing is useless, not
Page 10 and 11: creates a numinous space in which t
Page 12 and 13: sexual initiation. The best place t
Page 14 and 15: Daemonic, allowing the initiate to
Page 16 and 17: Thelema, all of which claimed to de
Page 18 and 19: transplant the exact practices of t
Page 20 and 21: present in most religions - has led
Page 22 and 23: duality, the contrary complement to
Page 24 and 25: power, even in its most extreme bha
Page 28 and 29: attempted to whitewash or otherwise
Page 30 and 31: has lent this initiatory tradition
Page 32 and 33: Tantrikas in the spirit of moral co
Page 34 and 35: who react to their lusts and appeti
Page 36 and 37: historical actuality is being invok
Page 38 and 39: the universe. Diverting the physiol
Page 40 and 41: that the initiate must recognize th
Page 42 and 43: the factor that grants the mantra i
Page 44 and 45: adically holistic vision of Tantra.
Page 46 and 47: During two-person magical workings,
Page 48 and 49: often allows for its emission, rega
Page 50 and 51: electrical shock. Indeed, a jolt of
Page 52 and 53: notorious for his insatiable sexual
Page 54 and 55: distance until I became entirely un
Page 56 and 57: islands. The same sexual activities
Page 58 and 59: omnipresent Ether, which is symboli
Page 60 and 61: that the right-hand path was a late
Page 62 and 63: with so many aspects of the rite, a
Page 64 and 65: a profoundly awakened state of cons
Page 66 and 67: more intense levels of willed desir
Page 68 and 69: sexual initiatrix, learn a method o
Page 70 and 71: There are numerous interpretations
Page 72 and 73: ecause they are considered valid in
Page 74 and 75: understood as spiritual types. For
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criteria the mere mention of which
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the best consort, since she will be
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scorned in favor of the opposite er
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each divine status. Three of the el
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apparent incongruity is well symbol
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transformed through disciplined tho
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of the Vama Marga that we take exce
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The Sinister Current In The West 14
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and "magician" derive most recently
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implies at least some element of co
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only vaguely tells us how his or he
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156 initiated into a secret society
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path is "without austerity and pain
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external to the conscious self that
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e to slip into merely abstract cons
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Western sex magician of the past ce
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Western psyche truly representative
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is his hidden initiatrix, the femal
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Of course, despite the intriguing s
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power. Within the specifically Gnos
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circumstances for a chosen elite of
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Esau and Jacob. Is this a seemly th
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`Offerimus tibi donum corpus Christ
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a reference, perhaps, to the report
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the male, allowing him to remanifes
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purposes. The Demonization Of The G
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However, the first inklings of the
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simply the path of evil, whereas th
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earlier ideas are illuminating. Wri
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long-lost tradition of erotic-initi
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left-hand path Shakti puja. He stat
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slumber by all possible means, comi
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scandalous, often impossible behavi
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is also the preferred time in which
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sorority may be considered to fulfi
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personality cults, the Golden Arrow
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some aspects of Tantra. His highly
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little comfort for his aspirants. G
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partner is referred to in one FS ri
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The inconsistency of the search for
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Some, like Aleister Crowley, have e
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emphatic in his unqualified denunci
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But Reuss cannot really be consider
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Reuss insisted that he now had conc
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uncensored words in his sex-magical
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crucifixion of a toad symbolizing J
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old in literature, comparing himsel
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more markedly than has been general
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Fourteenth Aire in Dr. John Dee's E
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274 His stylized signature was mark
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iped, both species were regarded eq
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creation, which he once described a
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mechanisms to allow for the more im
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is the outer symbol of a spiritual
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exasperated Crowley slit the goat's
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Those who dismiss Crowley as a mere
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of cruelty and defilement." The gra
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unexpectedly remanifest from Crowle
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seems to presage impending psychic
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sisters of Agape. Crowley installed
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Baron Gilles de Rais, also ended in
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synchronicity, as events will prove
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particularly interested in what you
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this same piece, Parsons affirms hi
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preparation for their departure. He
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"Thought is the subject matter of S
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dangerous. I let him undress me wit
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This choice, as explained by Robert
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found themselves with a public rela
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deity Set and the left-hand path. G
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339 IX. Sex-Magical Self-Initiation
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Teachers, Schools And Sirens You ma
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Sexual Deconditioning And Reprogram
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there" somewhere. Examine your own
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abusive sexual situations, using th
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purposeless. However, some explorer
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human beings who actively seek to f
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high state of stimulation before ac
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except in those cases when accident
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ather than being suddenly relieved
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image has a tendency to change dras
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usually consists of the male adept'
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William S. Burroughs, whose writing
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oth magicians. It also is the sexua
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in almost every imaginable school o
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one's current partner is unsuited o
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work with another sex magician, out
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left-hand path, which as we have ex
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Hmty, or "the effeminate one." Hmty
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left-hand path magical work, orgies
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current. Nothing could be further f
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is a neglected divinity linked to a
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405 406 Rome, the chronicler Livy w
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necessarily be excluded, only that
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412 diabetic who also injects heroi
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would also mount her partner(s) fro
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ite, his or her main goal is always
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according to desire and in accordan
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appropriate to the working is playe
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magicians is usually best dedicated
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through sexual induction into the c
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trembling of her displeasure. His s
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you actually begin to experiment wi
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the powers of a dominant as an abst
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Of course, this exercise in logical
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less familiar term algolagnia, a mo
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unknowable nature of the human mind
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*/*/ are the more likely they will
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magical goals. From this point of v
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fear can generate great initiatory
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painful/pleasurable overstimulus wh
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personal erotic taboo for awakening
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eyehooks, and other tools of the ar
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sufferings on the cross, and the ob
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predilections; and perhaps most com
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submissive sorcery also promise som
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Garrison, Omar V. Tantra: The Yoga
Page 310:
Van Lysebeth, Andre. Tantra, Le Cul
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I. VAMA MARGA Foundations Of The Left-Hand Path - staticfly.net

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