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

sexual initiation. The best place to begin this inquiry into defining the lefthand
path is by examining its historical beginnings, and isolating its essential
principles. It is to the left-hand path fountainhead in India that we must first
turn to truly comprehend the sinister way of carnal self-transformation.
The roots of the left-hand path are very ancient indeed, grounded in
dark goddess oriented sexual cults extant in the highly advanced Indus Valley
civilization long before the Aryan conquest of that region occurred. After
being suppressed by the Aryan occupying force sweeping into India by way
of Afghanistan, the methods of left-hand path sexual initiation enjoyed a
reawakening within heretical sects in the India of approximately one
thousand years ago. Although left-hand path sexual practices are alluded to in
some of India's eldest sacred literature, they seem not to have been explicitly
shaped into a codified, written teaching until the coming of Tantra. The lefthand
path took on more exact form in the secret doctrine of medieval Tantric
sects, but by the nineteenth century, another occupying force – this time the
sexually repressed paladins of the British Empire – attempted to wipe out the
cult again.
So to speak of the Indian left-hand tradition is then to refer to a
doctrine of erotic illumination dating back at least 2500 years, to the still
relatively uncharted pre-Aryan history of the sub-continent. And to
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comprehend one of the causes of the Vama Marga's secretive nature, the
modern magician must understand that this is a liberating force that has
consistently fought to survive the hostility of repressive authorities made
uneasy by a sexual approach to spiritual awakening.
It is possible to narrow our definition of the left-hand path down to a
few core elements. These principles are applicable to both Western lefthanded
sex magic and its ancient Eastern source. A left-hand path approach
to initiation, no matter where it is practiced, or by whom, or under what
cultural conditions, will be seen to include certain key factors.
In essence, the left-hand path is:
1.) The transformation of human consciousness to divine consciousness
via the manipulation of the sexual currents of the physical and subtle
bodies through erotic rites.
For the male initiate, this sexual gnosis is traditionally attained with the
collaboration of a female consort-initiatrix. The female sexual initiatrix is the
presiding source of the left-hand path; the motive energy of the sinister
current flows directly from her. During the ritualized sexual act, something
more than ordinary intercourse occurs – a magical exchange takes place, a
transference of power transmitted through the subtle vehicles of desire,
attraction and erotic fusion.
Together, the couple celebrates a cult of ecstasy which has no less an
aim than their own self-deification. Something of the crucial importance of
sexuality to the left-hand path can be gleaned from the fact that the defining
difference between the left-hand path and the far more commonly practiced
right-hand path is primarily the emphasis on physical sexuality found in the
former, and the absence of same in the latter.
Although the left-hand path focuses much of its attention on the
physical interplay of erotic polarities embodied in male and female sexuality,
it is concerned with the ecstatic transcendence of all seeming opposites,
including good and evil, death and life, darkness and light, flesh and spirit,
the beautiful and the hideous, ad infinitum.
2.) A sexual exaltation of the female principle of power in the universe,
known in Sanskrit as Shakti.
This universal feminine mystique, which we will sometimes refer to in its
transcultural aspect as the Feminine Daemonic, is the driving factor for both
male and female initiates of the left-hand path. For male magicians, left-hand
path initiation includes the attainment of this feminine power within