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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had more personal magical motivations.<br />
Just as Crowley attributed distinct magical powers to semen, as a<br />
vivifying force of astral intelligences, he also seemed to believe that the<br />
alchemical mingling of sperm, excrement, and the not infrequent bleeding of<br />
the ruptured rectum during anal intercourse created a material essence in<br />
which daemonic and elemental entities could take shape. (We would be<br />
remiss were we not to point out that the incorporeal organism this mixture is<br />
most likely to conjure today is called. AIDS.)<br />
Crowley's statement that he had "driven [himself] to delight in dirt<br />
and disgusting debauches, and to devour human excrements and human<br />
flesh" would suggest that, like the Aghori initiate, he had to force himself to<br />
break his own natural inclinations to perform this act so repugnant to the<br />
majority of mankind. However, Crowley evidenced such a palpable<br />
enthusiasm for excrement from a fairly early age that this often ignored<br />
aspect of his religious teaching may have just as well have been simply one<br />
of his many personal fetishes. A fascination with the erotic potential of<br />
human waste emerges in his work as early as 1898, when the twenty-two year<br />
old Crowley published his first book of poetry. In that volume, he was<br />
already celebrating feces in these self-deprecatory lines:<br />
All degradation, all sheer infamy;<br />
Thou shalt endure. Thy head beneath the mire<br />
and dung of worthless women shall desire<br />
As in some hateful dream, at last to lie;<br />
Woman must trample thee till thou respire<br />
That deadliest fume;<br />
This may seem at first like poetic posing in the decadent style of the time, but<br />
Crowley practiced what he preached. His magical experiments with the<br />
"dung of worthless women" are well-documented, especially during his<br />
attempt to institute a "Collegium ad Spiritual Sanctum," the Abbey of<br />
<strong>The</strong>lema, on the island of Cefalu, Sicily. During one rite of subservience to<br />
his Scarlet Woman of the time, Leah Hirsig, Crowley obeyed her request to<br />
eat her shit from a silver platter as a sign of his devotion to the Whore of<br />
Babalon incarnate. To seal the rite, she burnt her Beast's breast with a<br />
smoldering cigarette. Crowley exulted that "'tis joy to be splashed with the<br />
mire of her Triumph." Golden showers were also incorporated into the<br />
couple's sadomasochistic sex-magical operations, as this Crowley-penned<br />
paean to his Scarlet Woman illustrates: "Straddle your Beast, My Masterful<br />
Bitch ... Now from your wide Raw cunt, the abyss / Send spouting the tide /<br />
<strong>Of</strong> your sizzling piss / In my mouth; oh my whore / Let it pour, let it pour!"<br />
288<br />
We have described how and why Eastern Vama Marga adepts, in<br />
their attempt to make sacred even those aspects of physical existence that are<br />
generally shunned, consider all rejected matter, including excrement, urine,<br />
menstrual blood and the contemplation of corpses in the burning ground as<br />
possible tools of liberation. Although Crowley seemed unaware of this<br />
element of Tantric teaching, the similarities to his own fascination with<br />
coprophilia and urolagnia bear comparison.<br />
When one of Crowley's students, Mary Butts – a name eminently<br />
suited for the Beast's singular approach to initiation – arrived for tutelage at<br />
the Abbey of <strong>The</strong>lema, her Master welcomed her with the offering of a goat's<br />
turd on a plate. Whether Crowley presented her with this repast as a genuine<br />
test of her commitment to the Great Work or simply as an indulgence of his<br />
prankish schoolboy humor cannot be said with certainty. Butts was soon a<br />
witness to one of Crowley's less successful rituals, an attempt to induce a hegoat<br />
symbolizing the fabled Goat of Mendes to copulate with the haggard<br />
body of his much-abused Scarlet Woman, Leah Hirsig. Despite all efforts to<br />
coax the goat to perform his sacred function, the animal remained indifferent<br />
to Babalon's allure. Falling into one of his frequent fits of rage, an