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

path is "without austerity and pain." But very few can confront the
unexpected self-insights revealed in the process without a fair degree of pain
and disillusionment. However, on the Vama Marga, each disillusionment is
experienced as the heroic delight of enlightenment, and with each new
disillusionment, another notch is added to the initiate's belt, another fetter
removed from the bondage of the pashu.
Obviously, this very book can easily be misused as another means of
escaping from your self, were you to slavishly and uncritically follow its
recommendations without careful self-analysis and personal weighing of
your own desires. The disconsolate or frustrated human may despair of ever
liberating his or her self from the discomfort of too much self-awareness.
The sharp awareness of self in all of its dimensions sought by the left-hand
path initiate is exactly what most human beings desperately seek to avoid.
Submitting to the control of some other power – any other power – can seem
like an attractive escape route to this unhappy lot.
Of the many powers one can submit to in the world, the dark and
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often mysterious influence of one's own sexuality can exert a lethal
attraction. The person whose interest in sex magic is motivated by this drive
to escape from the self will most likely only find disappointment and
further despair. In fact, sex magic very often provides the magician with a
clear and unshrinking mirror of the self that forces self-change of the most
radical kind. This is one of its great advantages for the initiate, and one of
its greatest dangers for the ordinary man and woman.
Magic of the theurgic, thaumaturgic or sorcerous kind can, and
usually is, confined to a limited area of one's existence, and can be nothing
more than a tool allowing one to achieve certain fixed and finite goals.
Initiation, however, once embarked upon, informs one's entire being, and
entails a long-term commitment not necessarily required for the practice of
magic alone. In the Greek mystery religions, an initiate was a mystes – "one
who is initiated" – a word which gave rise to the English word mystic. In a
certain sense, then, sorcery is strictly magical – the manipulation of maya –
but initiation must enter into mysticism.
Workings
Drawing again on the definition of an ancient Greek word, ergon = work,
we will refer to most of the magical operations referred to in this book as
workings. The implications of performing a magical work or ergon is most
appropriate for sex magical practice, since ergon is directly related to the ta
orgia, or "secret rites" of the Dionysian Bacchanal, and thus to the English
words orgy and organ, two words of especial relevance to sex magicians.
Some confusion has arisen in regard to the word orgasm, which is actually
not related to ergon or orgia but derives from the Greek orge = impulse, and
possibly the Sanskrit urja = vigor.
The operations encompassed in the phrase magical working
transcend those proscribed and often repetitive actions usually referred to by
magicians as rituals. It's instructive to note that the root word rit in ritual can
also he found in the Greek arithmos, or number, which provides a clue to the
rigid, unchanging and number-like quality of most ritualizing. Indeed, many
non-magicians often describe the compulsive repetitious behaviors of their
lives as "ritualistic", as in the ritual of patronizing the same restaurant every
Friday night, always wearing a favorite blue dress on a first date, or always
buying the morning newspaper from the same newsstand on the way to
work. The sinister initiate actively struggles to avoid such reassuring, mindnumbing
rituals, in his or her everyday life or when performing magic. Any
ritual activity that deadens or soothes is a deterrent to the charged
wakefulness we seek to engender in ourselves.
The magic of any genuine left hand path working, particularly the
sex magical working, is best formed along more spontaneous and organic