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

according to desire and in accordance with changing circumstance, there is a
chance for survival. Once the group becomes fixed in an attempt to squeeze
itself into an overly cerebral abstract ideal that may no longer be relevant to
actual conditions, the magical work becomes brittle and rigid. We have often
observed that this is the phase when most groups disperse.
The group dynamics that we have all inherited from our ape cousins
is another problem that will inevitably rear its primordial head. Once any
group is solidified, subtle power plays begin to manifest. The pecking order
of the pack begins to assert itself, even among magicians that have the
highest respect for each other. There can be no denying that some magicians
possess innate or learned leadership capabilities that others lack but any
group of left-hand path magicians must strive to avoid the pyramidal power
structure that shapes profane society. Left-hand path coalitions will function
to the degree that they are based on the free consent of all parties involved.
They will self-destruct or stagnate into orthodoxy to the degree that they
become expressions of pashu government, with its leaders and followers.
Magicians of the sinister current would be foolish to free themselves
from the control mechanisms of the larger societal macrocosm only to
meekly submit to the control mechanism that so easily develops in the
smaller magical group microcosm. Although the comforting fiction that all
human beings are equal is rejected by the sinister current, a group of lefthand
path magicians working together is compelled to avoid falling into the
automatic conformism of profane society. Authority will organically develop
in any gathering of human beings but such leadership must he an extremely
fluid aspect of group mechanics if the work is to continue beyond the novelty
of the initial experiments.
In short, an attitude of spontaneity and wakefulness on the part of all
participants will provide the energy a magical group needs to sustain itself.
That same spontaneity necessitates being able to determine when the group's
activities have outgrown their usefulness, and degenerated into stale
repetition. The left-hand path initiate struggles ceaselessly to resist falling
asleep in the comfort and safety that any group offers. This possibility is
particularly acute when operating within an association of apparently likeminded
magicians.
Western magicians, working outside of the strict guru relationship of
traditional left-hand path initiation, and unaffiliated with the tightly linked
kaulas, or clans in which much Eastern left-hand hand path work takes place,
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have yet to find a suitable alternative. A magician of the left-hand path,
determined to maintain the sanctity of solitary and self-created identity, is
always confronted with a paradox whenever he or she participates in group
magical activity, including the orgy. This is an enigma of left-hand path
praxis that can only be resolved by the individual magician. George Blaine,
in his un-organization Acephale, attempted to come to grips with the
possibility of a leaderless group but only with mixed results.
The Egregore Of The Orgy
Whether sex magic is performed in a temporary group that will disband when
the specific working is completed, or in a more structured group that
regularly conducts orgiastic operations, a curious phenomenon has often been
observed to take place. We refer to the creation of the egregore, a collective
spirit or daemon that is almost always generated by the effective performance
of any intense magical group operation. Perhaps the clearest way to depict
the egregore is as a thought-form generated by the group consciousness that
so often forms during magical work. (In Tantric terms, the Western egregore
may be compared to the Tibetan lulpa, a thought-form brought to visible
appearance by a disciplined yogi or yogini.)
For instance, after one orgiastic rite experimenting with the evocation
of the traditional Goetic demon called Marbas, all six magicians involved