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

communicate the magician's desire directly and unambiguously. The
magician, like an artist, is constantly shaping chaos into order. This
necessitates disciplining the unruly and unstable stuff of maya into a
temporarily workable medium that can be altered.
To provide a rather uncomplicated example: let us say that you seek
to magically effect some external force in the world. Perhaps it is another
person, perhaps it is an aspect of your own behavior. You already possess a
great deal of information on the subject in question but these details have not
been organized; they are floating around with no particular direction.
Assemble a clearly marked file on the targeted topic in which all relevant data
is gathered and you have begun the task of bringing it under your control. In
fact, even opening the file becomes a magnetic act, attracting new and useful
information that will serve your task.
With no central focusing point, the information would simply
dissipate into the general entropy of distracted and diffuse universal
consciousness. Brought together in one axial and tightly controlled space,
hidden links that would otherwise go unobserved begin to make themselves
evident, which in turn subtly effects your own consciousness. When the time
is right, a factor that only the sorcerer can ascertain, you will take the required
magical action. Often, no obvious action is needed; merely creating a locus in
which relevant information is assembled is sometimes enough to realize your
goal.
The intrinsic discipline and stylized pattern of control achievable in
465
dominant/ submissive magic ideally lends itself to the arrangement of order
out of chaos that the magician always seeks to realize. The dominant who
disciplines the submissive orders the chaos of a living psychic energy into an
obedient magical force. Alternately, a submissive's specific magical goals can
be effectively fulfilled through the discipline of an empathetic dominant. The
magician who understands and applies this essential principle to algolagniac
rites makes full use of the power to construct a magical model of reality that
dominant/submissive workings so forcefully allow
Similarly the magician who experiments with the application of
erotic pain lacking a firm grasp of this principle will never go any further
than the psychodramatic role-playing game that constitutes most profane
S&M activity. Certainly, you may find such practices aphrodisiacal (a worthy
end in itself) but you will no longer be performing magic. Because of the
intensity of pleasure/pain that can be induced in such workings, it is very
easy to lose track of the magical goal that motivates the rite in the first place.
The Dungeon As Temple
For left-hand path magi, the traditional ritual chamber of Western ceremonial
magic is superfluous – his or her own body is the only temple needed. But
just as some magicians prefer to reserve some special area of their living
space in which to activate the sinister current, the adept of algolagniac magic
may wish to construct a special room for the performance of the rites of
dominance and submission. This may be a fully equipped dungeon abundant
with all the necessary implements of pain, arrayed in an atmosphere of
appropriate foreboding. Magicians who are just embarking on an exploration
of pain/lust have found that keeping such a torture chamber at the ready
greatly enhances the mood of their workings. Entering one's dungeon,
radiating an atmosphere charged with previous evocations of pleasurable illtreatment,
may immediately allow the dominant and submissive to shift into
their respective magical roles. Keeping such a room locked at all times,
except when it is to be used for a working, can greatly sharpen the intensity
of the ambiance.
There is a practical consideration recommending the construction of
such a chamber as well. Nothing kills the electric intensity of an algolagniac
working so quickly as unnecessary preliminary fumbling with ropes, chains,