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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y desire "unit[ing] in explosive rapture" in an "explosive holocaust". But<br />
Crowley also instructed his disciples to unite these forces within themselves,<br />
through workings of esoteric Hermaphroditism.<br />
<strong>The</strong> name hermaphrodite blends the names of the love goddess<br />
Aphrodite and Hermes, messenger of the gods. An Hellenic legend tells us<br />
that the son of these deities, Hermaphroditos, inspired such fervent passion in<br />
the nymph Salmacis that she desired total union with him, a longing which<br />
fused their bodies into one being. Crowley, product of a classical education,<br />
would have been well aware of this myth.<br />
As much as the Beast admired the virile, rational, athletic type, as he<br />
described himself, he acknowledged that even he would be imperfect without<br />
cultivating the contrary feminine traits. He was of course less convinced that<br />
women were capable of acquiring the characteristics he understood as<br />
masculine, such as intelligence, logic, and force of will, but he encouraged<br />
them to try anyway. <strong>The</strong> importance of a Kundalini-like hermaphroditism in<br />
Crowleyan thought is also indicated by his strong identification with the<br />
bisexual god/dess of the Templars, Baphomet, who he described as "the<br />
androgyne who is the hieroglyph of arcane perfection." He sometimes<br />
speculated that his prophesied Aeon of Horus would contrast with the<br />
previous Aeons of Isis, the mother, and Osiris, the father, in that Horus<br />
293<br />
represented a Dionysian androgynous child of both sexes. In this aspect of his<br />
teaching, the Beast reflected his immersion in the alchemical and Rosicrucian<br />
notion of the inner androgyne, a doctrine thats similarity to the left-hand path<br />
has already been discussed.<br />
This reconciliation of opposites, as manifested in his own spirit,<br />
Crowley once described as "Male-female, quintessential, one, Man-being<br />
veiled in Woman-form." On the physical plane, he made note of a<br />
"hermaphroditism in my physical structure," which he sometimes ascribed to<br />
his many prior reincarnations as women. Among the reincarnations Crowley<br />
claimed to have remembered through the visionary results of sex magic was<br />
his ancient existence as a sacred prostitute, named Astarte or Artemis, slave<br />
of the goddess in an ancient Sicilian Temple. (<strong>The</strong> origins of the Whore of<br />
Babylon in the goddess Astarte may well have played a part in the details of<br />
this past life.) Like so many of the tragic previous selves Crowley recalled,<br />
this sacred courtesan died a violent death. Whether Crowley actually believed<br />
this tale or not is actually irrelevant to our purposes. <strong>The</strong> psychological value<br />
of his putative recollection lays in its revelation of a key element of<br />
Crowley's understanding of his own anima. Invariably, he envisioned the<br />
female side of his soul as a whore deserving of punishment and even death.<br />
Indeed, Crowley's awakening of his interior Feminine Daemonic<br />
seemed almost entirely dedicated to subjecting "her" to his masochistic desire<br />
for sexual chastisement. We will outline in full the practical application of<br />
consensual erotically charged pain and submission to left-hand path selftransformation<br />
in a later chapter. But a brief consideration of Crowley's<br />
experiments in this neglected area of sex magic makes for a useful<br />
introduction to these methods.<br />
Among Crowley's many magical identities, ranging from Frater<br />
Perdurabo, the Master <strong>The</strong>rion, and Baphomet, not the least important to him<br />
was the feminine alter ego he transformed himself into during these<br />
sadomasochistic rites of androgyny. He personalized his inner feminine<br />
shadow with the name Alys. Alys, according to Crowley, was not only the<br />
quintessence of the prostitute, she was also a "tribade", an archaic word for a<br />
lesbian derived from the Greek tribein, to rub. In <strong>The</strong> Magical Record of<br />
1920, Crowley carefully reported a cocaine-fueled all-night working, in<br />
which Alys/Aleister assumed the submissive "femme" role in a rite<br />
performed with Leah Hirsig at the Abbey of <strong>The</strong>lema. He describes how his<br />
Scarlet Woman "tore from me the last rag of manhood" in a "frightful ordeal