I. VAMA MARGA Foundations Of The Left-Hand Path - staticfly.net
I. VAMA MARGA Foundations Of The Left-Hand Path - staticfly.net
I. VAMA MARGA Foundations Of The Left-Hand Path - staticfly.net
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is the outer symbol of a spiritual alchemy of opposites, designed to seal an<br />
inner transformation; it is not typically a form of divination or sorcery<br />
<strong>The</strong> secret rite of the Vama Marga is a spiritual and physical<br />
exchange of prolonged ecstasy flowing between the bipolar halves of divinity<br />
manifested in the forces of Shiva and Shakti. Crowleyan sex magick is a<br />
much more one-sided action, in which the male ejaculation is really all that<br />
matters.<br />
For all of the emphasis on sperm in the Crowley cult, female<br />
secretions do play a part – even if a far lesser one – in some <strong>The</strong>lemite sex<br />
magick. One of the oracular commandments in <strong>The</strong> Book <strong>Of</strong> <strong>The</strong> Law<br />
proclaims that "the best blood is of the moon, monthly." This fairly<br />
transparent reference to menstrual blood has led Crowleyans to craft holy<br />
wafers made of menstrual blood and sperm; these "cakes of light" are the<br />
eucharist meal consumed by celebrants of some versions of the Crowleyan<br />
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Gnostic Mass. <strong>The</strong> Mass of menstrual blood and semen can be traced to the<br />
Gnostic libertine practices previously described as a juxtaposition of the<br />
right-hand Logos and the left-hand Sophia. <strong>The</strong> "light" consumed in the<br />
cakes of light is that spark of divinity, central to Gnostic soulcraft.<br />
Considering that such a mixture of bodily fluids can conceivably be fatal in<br />
the era of AIDS, some modern-day Crowleyans bake these eucharist cakes at<br />
temperatures high enough to theoretically kill the virus – a safe-sex magick<br />
precaution the Beast never had to consider.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Palace <strong>Of</strong> Shit And <strong>The</strong> Eye <strong>Of</strong> Horus<br />
As unappetizing as these sperm and blood cakes of light may seem to some,<br />
the ingredients required for Crowley's private celebration of <strong>The</strong>lemic<br />
eucharist is even more of an acquired taste. In his Magical Record <strong>Of</strong> <strong>The</strong><br />
Beast, dating from 1920, he writes that "In my Mass the Host is of<br />
excrement, that I can consume in awe and adoration."<br />
Crowley's employment of shit, both human and animal, as a magical<br />
condiment, obviously bears comparison with the practices of the extreme<br />
left-hand path sects of India, who include ritualized coprophagia in their<br />
methodical overcoming of societal taboo and personal disgust. In his 1929<br />
Magick In <strong>The</strong>ory And Practice, Crowley gives advice to the aspirant<br />
magician that would be familiar to the left-hand path adept. He recommends<br />
"training the mind and body to confront things which cause fear, pain,<br />
disgust, shame, and the like. He must learn to endure them, then to become<br />
indifferent to them, then to analyse them until they give pleasure and<br />
instruction, and finally to appreciate them for their own sake, as aspects of<br />
Truth."<br />
"When this has been done," Crowley sensibly suggests, "he should<br />
abandon them if they are really harmful in relation to health or comfort." As<br />
is so often the case, the Beast offered others sage counsel he himself often<br />
ignored to his peril.<br />
Crowley's records make no mention of the use of excrement in<br />
Tantric alchemy, which, in any event, is not connected to the blasphemy of<br />
Catholic ceremony suggested by Crowley His practice of a "Mass... [thats]<br />
...Host is of excrement" also recalls more familiar European accounts of the<br />
Black Sabbath, in which Satanists were described as eating fecal wafers in<br />
mockery of the Catholic Mass. But these accounts of Satanic coprophagia<br />
were most likely fantasies concocted by Christian witch-hunters rather than a<br />
true left-hand path tradition of reversed rites. <strong>The</strong> infamous ni<strong>net</strong>eenth<br />
century French Satanists, the Abbé Boullan and his mistress Adele Chevalier,<br />
a former nun, did offer hosts of excrement to their flock in the Church of<br />
Carmel, as part of their dutiful acting out of medieval Christian nightmares of<br />
diablerie. However, Crowley, for all of his reactionary tirades against<br />
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orthodox Christianity, was not operating from Boullan's Satanic view – he