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

predilections; and perhaps most commonly, the natural human desire to
belong, even if only to a club of other self-exiled social outcasts.
Unfortunately, even these unconventional social needs decrease the essential
aloneness that the true left-hand path magician actively cultivates as a
deliberate aspect of his or her separation from psyche-tranquilizing social
comfort. Being an outsider of any kind is a positive advantage for the initiate
of the sinister current. Giving into the temptation of joining the crowd – any
crowd – is to lessen the radical development of the self required for mastery
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of the sinister current.
Therefore the magician with a penchant for algolagniac pleasures or
bondage and discipline, to zero in on only one minority sexual taste, should
strive to apply these erotic energies to magical development outside of the
cozy and unchallenging limitations of the organized S&M sub-culture. For
the left-hand path erotic sorcerer, who must work overtime to avoid sinking
into collectivism of all kinds, it should be fairly obvious that the environment
of the S&M scene, with its buzzwords and jargon, accepted rules and
regulations, and. de rigeur uniforms of master and slave, is merely a mirror
of the carefully controlled larger world of offices, corporations, and politics.
The initiatory value of erotic pain most certainly has a place in the methods
of the sex magician. However, one must develop one's own personal
application of these powerful initiatory tools, not merely adopt the stale
symbolism and rhetoric chartered by what can only be characterized as the
S&M "establishment".
Personae Of Power
Although the boundaries determining such roles as dominant and submissive
are bound to blur somewhat during any effective algolagniac working, these
basic differentials of master/mistress and slave in a magical context can be
applied to any number of circumstances and needs. Each role provides the
initiate with a useful perspective on the human equation and its relation to the
objective and subjective multiverse not always immediately apparent to the
superficial observer. The majority of sex magicians are instinctively drawn to
exclusively assume either the dominant or submissive role when
experimenting with this type of erotic energy. There's nothing wrong with
that, so long as these roles are adopted through exercise of free will and not
simply according to an unthinking acting out of conditioned societal
expectations.
Despite this natural tendency to favor the persona of master or slave
according to one's personality type or psychological disposition, there is
something to be said for occasionally trading places. The dominant magician
can invariably become a more accomplished master or mistress if he or she
intermittently chooses to undergo the abasement of the slave, and the
submissive can also understand both sides of the power continuum more
clearly by taking on the task of master every once in a while. In the
traditional and rigidly defined S&M world such role reversal is relatively less
common but the left-hand path magician, as always, can afford to break the
self-appointed rules that constrict other social contracts.
We have noticed that many sex magicians who have never
considered the use of erotic pain as a tool of initiation may well have avoided
it because of an understandable aversion to the standard cartoonish
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iconography of the S&M subculture or typical S&M pornography, with its
tiresome formulaic imagery. When viewed from outside these limited lenses,
algolagniac techniques can be understood as simply an effective means of
altering the magician's consciousness under controlled ritual circumstances.
Although the mechanism used by each are different, both the master
and the slave aim to reach exactly the same objective though magical
lust/pain; the goal of all left-hand path operations – liberation in this lifetime