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

the best consort, since she will be the most likely to awaken the powerful
current of desire needed for the rite. But this is certainly not always the case.
Much older women who have experienced decades as a shakti are equally
valued. The traditional Indian respect for the wisdom of age explains this to
a certain extent but it is also thought that the older shakti's more seasoned
sagacity confers a deeper initiation upon their partners. Although the beauty
of youth and the physical body are honored – even revered – in the left-hand
path, at a certain level of initiation, ritual sex transcends all outer
manifestations of ordinary physical attractiveness. Tantra cherishes the
Feminine Daemonic in all of its guises and life-phases, from horrid Kali, the
cruel bringer of death, to alluring Parvati, the sweet-smelling spirit of
seduction. The shakti frequently fulfills her sacred function for her entire
lifetime, often initiating several generations of adepts into the left-hand path.
She also plays an important role in secretly teaching younger women the
physical and mental skills required by the mudra.
Many Indian Tantric sects are adamant that one should only perform
erotic rites with a woman married to another man, and never with one of
one's own wives. The underlying theory informing this concept, sometimes
known as the parakiya, or "illicit love" was that the female partner should
ideally be inaccessible as a romantic mate, and only available for initiatory
sexual purposes. The different quality of passion released in an adulterous
union was often compared to the ardor of a divine adulterous pair like
Krishna and Radha and thought to be better suited to initiatory sex than
married relations. It was assumed that the male adept would not know his
shakti partner in a mundane sense, conditions making it easier for him to
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exalt her as the living embodiment of Shakti. There is some similarity
between this concept and the medieval Western cult of the knight and his
lady, a divinized female who was almost always the unattainable wife of
another, admired from afar. On a sexually sublimated level, the chivalric
Lady is the true inspirer and motivator of the knight's deeds of valor –
another form of the shakti principle.
The vast differences between the rigidity of Indian marriage
customs and the relative fluidity of Western matrimony would tend to negate
the purpose of this custom today. However, it can be magically useful to
choose as one's sex-magical partner a person who is not your customary
sexual partner or spouse. Whether he or she is the partner of another or not,
this can focus your efforts on the initiatory meaning of your erotic
interaction, divorced from the distractions of a familiar domestic or romantic
arrangement. Naturally, this would apply to both male and female
magicians.
It must be stressed, in contradiction to some popularized recent
distortions of Tantric sexual mysticism in the West, that left-hand path
sexual rites have almost nothing to do with romantic love as is commonly
understood. Also, the left-hand path sacralization of Eros was never intended
to serve as a profane therapy method to improve ordinary sexual relations
between couples – its utilization of the sexual energy is directed to aims that
transcend the human personality altogether.
Another frequently recommended practice by the Tantric Kaulas of
Northern India, one of the most radically left-hand path Indian lineages, was
to select a young woman of a lower caste as a magical consort. In the strict,
caste-bound society of India, we can see how this infraction of a powerful
social taboo might add strength to a left-hand path rite, providing the sexual
initiation with a technically illicit, liberating character. However, in the
disordered social environment of the modern West, where caste is largely
based on economic class, and such boundaries are crossed routinely, it
would be difficult to imagine a sexual liaison that would provide an