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

difficult to proceed without resorting to dogma, doctrine or partisan
perspective.
Academics, observing magical practices from the supposedly
objective perspective of dispassionate research, have never provided a
totally satisfying definition of what magic actually is. Magicians, perceiving
the same phenomenon from the entirely subjective angle of the practitioner,
have done little better, The left-hand initiate can move away from the
archaic esoteric language altogether, gladly leaving the dusty baggage of
occultism behind for less confining models. What occultists refer to as
magic can just as easily be called the breaking of conditioning and
reprogramming; the replacing of one reality with another. The central notion
informing magic, by whatever name, is that what is commonly accepted as
reality is far more pliant than we have been led to believe. The magician is
essentially a reality engineer, shaping the malleable parts of his or her own
mind, and consequently bringing about desired reality alteration in the
substance of the world.
Truth to tell, most magicians live in a reality every bit as inflexible
as their non-magically oriented fellows, with only the most superficial
differences. Typically, during the time in which their rituals are performed,
magicians may attempt to exercise their wills and imaginations to shape a
few specific details of the phenomenal world to their liking. But once their
ritual is over they basically return to the safe, orderly definition of reality
they started from. What's worse, that reality is very often one in which the
parameters and rules were decided upon by others.
Magic, understood as the manipulation of maya, is present in every
aspect of human interaction, not simply within rarefied occult circles.
Advertisers and political spin doctors, whose carefully orchestrated spells
cause the reality of millions to dance to their tunes, demonstrate a more
sound grasp of magical principles than the majority of occultists, although
they might never recognize their activities as partaking of magic. Whenever
we respond automatically to symbolic systems, we are enmeshed in
another's magical ritual. One of the most potent world-wide magical
workings is locked into our acceptance of certain pieces of government
issued paper as being of intrinsic value. When everyone in a crowded
courtroom stands because a man in a black robe enters the room, an ancient
hex is operating.
A truly effective magical act will not only effect the desired goal in
the universe. It will radically transform a magician's very self, shocking him
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or her awake, allowing a revelatory understanding of how accepted reality is
based on obedient agreement with ideas, authorities and conditioning that
blinds us to our own cherished illusions. The reader is wise to not accept any
definition of so broad and complex an activity as the ultimate word on the
subject. Magic is one of those words, like love or art, that must finally be
determined by the individual undergoing the phenomenon and not by any
external authority. The magician, like the artist or the lover, must constantly
create new and revised definitions of magic as new understanding accrues
through experience. Just as no two art critics will ever entirely agree on a
definition of what constitutes art, so it is with magic. One serviceable
definition from a non-occult perspective, was offered by Andre Breton and
Antonio Artaud, describing their surrealist revolution in 1925: "A means of
totally transforming the mind and everything which resembles it".
Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh provide another viable approach
to magic in their history of alchemy, The Elixir And The Stone:
"In its broadest sense, magic is the "art of making things happen'. In its
broadest sense, therefore, magic can he defined as a metaphor for the
dynamic relationship between human consciousness or will and everything
that lies beyond it – events, circumstances, objects, other people, Magic