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

as he came back to consciousness, he would experience what de Naglowska
describes in her The Light Of Sex: Ritual Of Satanic Initiation as "the
explosive penetration of the resplendent woman at the sublime moment of
holy coitus." (Now, kids, don't try this at home.)
This ordeal required that the male not ejaculate, retaining his semen
for the same purposes of spiritual energy containment taught by some
Tantrics. The adept who survived this procedure was transformed, in de
Naglowska's words, into "the sublime madman of the secret doctrines ... a
new man." Exactly which secret doctrines she refers to is not explained,
which unfortunately typifies de Naglowska's often fanciful and deliberately
vague style.
The Trial of Hanging appears to be a sacralization of the fairly common
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sexual fetish of autoerotic asphyxia. The mostly male devotees of this not
infrequently fatal practice masturbate while hanging themselves, aiming to
maximize the intensity of orgasmic bliss by timing climax to occur at the
moment of altered state of consciousness created immediately before
blackout. The Trial of Hanging as practiced by de Naglowska's Satanists
was the enactment of a complex cycle of sex-magical initiation thats
ultimate goal was the recreation of the magician into a "Messiah," an erotic
form of self-deification congruent with left-hand path objectives. Some of
the magical theory informing the Trial of Hanging was explained by
Naglowska in her 1934 booklet The Mystery Of Hanging: Satanic Initiation
According To The Doctrine Of The Third Term Of The Trinity. But the
memoirs of her students make it clear that the true gist of her sexual teaching
was communicated only in private audience.
By all accounts, the Golden Arrow was, at its core, a personality cult
dedicated to personal allegiance to De Naglowska herself, who as High
Priestess of the Temple of the Third Term of the Trinity, was the sole
authority in doctrinal and ritual matters. In one of the oaths taken by her
male initiates, who were ordained as "Knights of the Heart", the novice
swore to be "an adept of Maria de Naglowska" and to "accept her doctrine of
the Third Term of the Trinity" Her knights vowed a sacred oath, sealed by a
drink from a chalice placed on the pubis of their High Priestess, that "I will
research with my companions the erotic act of initiation, which transforms
the heat in light, revealing LUCIFER in the Satanic shadows..."
Naglowska's rather ambiguous understanding of Satan recalls some
Gnostic heresies, which taught that Lucifer or Satanael were not entirely evil
beings but indispensable companion forces which worked in tandem with
Christ and Sophia to bring about gnosis. In one of her rituals, de Naglowska
states that in the new spiritual age that she thought was dawning, "SATAN
(negation), is momentarily reconciled with GOD ... the negative action of
SATAN is absolutely necessary to GOD." Naglowska's theology, with its
reconciliation of God and Satan, also foreshadows the teachings of Robert
and Mary Aim DeGrimston, leaders of the 1960s Process Church of the
Final Judgment, who held that "Soul and Body can be reunited by the Spirit
of the Unity of Christ and Satan, within the Essence."
At the end of 1935, at the age of 52, Naglowska surprised her
followers by announcing that her mission in the world was over. An
emotional farewell ceremony was held at her temple. To her inner circle, she
elaborated further points of her obscure doctrine, encouraging them to carry
on the preparation for the Third Term of the Trinity. She died the next year
in Switzerland, a passage interpreted by her more credulous disciples as a
sign that their High Priestess had the gift of prophecy; others have
speculated that she had been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Although
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some Naglowskan initiates haphazardly attempted to carry on the orgiastic
circles and the acts of sexual regeneration with the Sophiales, like most