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

addiction, and poverty. In our view, one need only read through the
monotony of his journals, with their ceaseless accounts of misery, ennui and
mindless spite to learn that for all of his claims to having reached
superhuman states of initiation, Crowley remained an unenlightened person,
a slave of his compulsions, flailing from one hopeless scheme to another. If
Liberation is the end goal of left-hand path erotic initiation, then all of the
Beast's arduous pansexual exertions seem to have missed the mark.
The Beast And His Scarlet Women – A Harem Of Victims
This significant 1909 sex magic working with Victor Neuberg, which
Crowley interpreted as the demarcation point between existence as a human
magician and life as a partially divine being, also underscores another way in
which Crowleyan sex magick differs radically from traditional left-hand path
practice as we have described it thus far. Crowley's most illuminating
religioerotic transformations seem to have been realized as the result of his
homosexual relations, while he clearly placed his magical couplings with
females on a lesser level of importance.
Certainly, the basic physical mechanism of orgasm and somatic bliss
is the same regardless of which genders are involved with the process. But
the different spiritual and subtle component operant in initiatory sex between
same-sex (monopolar) and opposite-sex (bipolar) partners cannot be ignored
as a factor in the left-hand path. In Crowley's case, his unique interpretation
of the differences between male and female sexuality must also be placed in
context with his unbridled loathing of the feminine principle in general and
his contempt for women in particular that are such major themes in his life.
Rather than being motivated by a conscious and positive desire to interact
with same-sex psychosexual energy – which could potentially be useful for
sex-magical initiation – Crowley's homosexual leanings often seem generated
by a phobia in regards to female sexuality. This is spelled out, among other
places, in his The Esoteric Record, an account of a later homosexual
evocation of theurgic forms, also celebrated with Victor Neuburg. Crowley
states that the use of women sexually "is more dangerous to the career of the
magician" than sex-magic between male partners. (According to a Palestinian
magician of our acquaintance, this belief is still held to among the secretive
circles of mostly male sex magicians currently practicing in the Islamic
world.) In his old age, Crowley wrote in his diary that contemplation of the
vulva filled him with revulsion – an attitude inconceivable to the left-hand
path adept.
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All this is not to say that Crowley wasn't profoundly attracted to
women – at least as physical specimens useful for his purposes – but that
attraction was convoluted by as pathological an expression of love/hate as
can be imagined. Despite the countless female consorts he used as magical
tools in his life, Crowley's deep-seated antipathy for womankind seems to
have prevented him from ever understanding or accepting the Shakti principle
intrinsic to the left-hand path, the way of woman. "Women," he mused,
"should be brought to the back door like milk when needed." Not exactly the
Goddess sexually revered in human form that we have seen is the base of the
left-hand path experience. A telling quote from Crowley's own autobiography
speaks volumes: "man is the guardian of the Life of God; woman but a
temporary expedient; a shrine indeed for the God, but not the God."
The divine force, for Crowley, could only be imagined as the phallus.
His total identification with the lingam as the true creative power was as
constitutional to him as was his disregard for the yoni as a mere accessory.
He compared the shape of the human brain to the glans of the penis,
obscurely theorizing that the similarity in shape indicated a parallel in
function between the two organs. All visible creation flowed from the penis
in the form of semen, he surmised, just as the brain created all thought.
Crowley described the single tuft of hair on his shaved head as a phallic lock.