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

period in which Parsons was in steady correspondence with the Beast
concerning the Agape Lodge and the Babalon Working and its consequences.
In 1945, after meeting this promising young initiate, Crowley wrote to his
associate Louis Wilkinson that "I am trying to get him to look after me and
my work," uncharacteristically praising the novice Grant as "a definite gift
from the Gods." Despite Grant's later attempt at developing Crowley's system
of sexual initiation, the subject of sex magick was apparently never
mentioned during his apprenticeship to the old Ipsissimus.
"I wish 1'd been aware at that time of the great importance in his
system of sexual magick," Grant later told the author John Symonds,
"because I would have asked him a lot of questions on that subject ... When I
did bring up the subject he was evasive. I remember on one occasion he
brushed my query aside with the words, 'There'll be time for that later. –
Presumably, the Beast did intend to reveal the sexual magick of the O.T.O. to
Grant, as it would seem that he quickly viewed his student as a potential
leader, commenting in a March 1946 diary entry: "Value of Grant: if I die or
go to U.S.A., there must be a trained man to take care of English O.T.O."
Save for a few sensational journalistic accounts focusing primarily
on the L. Ron Hubbard angle, it was Grant's work, beginning with his first
and perhaps most lucid book, The Magical Revival (1972) which most
forcefully kept memory of Parsons and the Babalon Working alive for many
years. Grant's heir apparent in the Typhonian O.T.O., Michael Staley, has
also contributed a great deal to the arcane field of Babalonogy, especially his
essay Beloved Of Babalon, an objective Parsons biographical essay first
published in the 1980s in the Typhonian O.T.O. magazine Starfire.
Taking off in the "heretical" direction from which Parsons left off,
Grant makes a valiant attempt to move Thelemic sex magick firmly into the
left-hand path tradition, in contradiction to Crowley's own self-identification
as a brother of the right-hand path. The most useful aspect of Grant's books to
the left-hand path sex magician is his learned introduction of authentic Vama
Marga lore and methodology into a Western magical context. Typhonian
O.T.O. rituals replace the Masonic theatrics of Crowley's time with genuine
Tantric techniques. In keeping with both the Vama Marga and the Parsons
innovations in the cult of the Scarlet Woman, Grant recognizes the dark
332
feminine esoteric principle and the physical female body as the Shakti source
of left-hand path initiation, especially as incarnated in the trained devadasis
and suvasinis. Grant's work frequently credits his wife Steffi, a talented
graphic artist in the Spare tradition, as his Scarlet Woman, magical partner
and a frequent illustrator of his books.
Although Grant does acknowledge Crowley's value as a teacher, he
shares none of his mentor's prejudices concerning the inferiority of
womankind. Indeed, Grant's writing suggests that Crowley, in his
phallocentrism, completely failed to understand the essential role of woman
in sex magic. In his Typhonian Trilogy, Grant places special emphasis on the
unique magical properties of the sexual amrita secreted by the Shakti during
the secret rite of Tantra, and the vaginal emanations of the yogini during
Vama Marga operations of ecstasy. In Grant's left-hand path reworking of
Crowley's O.T.O. system of degrees, the XI° consists of copulation with a
menstruating female rather than the homosexual anal sex rite that the Great
Beast considered the summit of sex magical power. This doctrinal divergence
from Crowleyan scripture, which is more in line with the yonicentric Tantric
left-hand path, has led some more traditional Thelemites to accuse Grant of
homophobia.
Along with Grant's creative efforts to replace the anti-yoni energies
of Crowleyan orthodoxy with a Western sex magic that gives pride of place
to the sinister authority of the Feminine Daemonic, his work is also
interesting historically as the first written source to link the ancient Egyptian