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

independent consciousness and the body it inhabits remains an essential lifelong
quest of the sinister current. There are facets of the erotic-magical self
that can only be understood in solitude. This is not to say that the initiatory
benefit of sex magic performed with partners is not equally valid. There has
been, however, a persistent tendency among some sex magicians to maintain
that a reliance on autoerotic techniques is somehow less advanced than
working with partners. It must be stated that while the advantages of partners
– and even groups of magicians – in sex magical rites is important to a
complete erotic initiation, the solitary autoerotic magician should bear no
stigma at all. That such a disclaimer even needs to be made illustrates the
distrust generally felt for the deliberate isolationist in a compulsively social
and collectivist culture.
Just as the left-hand path sorcerer/initiate is determined to maintain
the ferocious independence of his or her autonomous consciousness, so must
the actual physical practice of this form of sex magic begin in that state of
aloneness that is sacred to the left-hand path. By inaugurating your erotic
initiation through acts of self-pleasure, you take sole responsibility as the
magical technician in charge of your own ecstasy. To embark on this quest
through autoeroticism, rather than sex magic with others, serves as a
reminder that the left-hand path initiate can never truly be initiated by
another; he or she is ultimately undergoing a process of self-initiation. Even
in the traditional guru-student relationship of the Tantric Vama Marga, it is
360
361
understood that the guru or initiatrix merely guides the adept until the point
he or she can hear the voice of the inner guru.
According to the cosmogony of ancient Egypt, the first divine
intelligence was Atum. His consciousness existed alone in the entire
universe, rising from the primeval waters of Nou, the first matter, to come
into being as an independent entity. Atum, according to a Pyramid text, "put
his penis in his hand that he might obtain the pleasure of emission thereby."
His masturbatory hand was revered as a goddess, Atum's female partner in
the rite. From this first act of autoerotic magic, Atum was said to have
ejaculated all creation in successive stages, beginning with the incestuous
siblings representing air and moisture, Shu and Tefnut. Similarly, the lefthand
path sex magician, isolated in the universe, creates his or her magic
from self-pleasure, beginning the semi-divine process of self-creation
through an autoerotic deed. A modem understanding of this may be gleaned
in the concept of self-love so central to the sometimes abstruse theories of the
magical artist Austin Osman Spare, who we have already described as using
autoerotic workings to communicate with transhuman entities he described as
"astral."
The awakening of Self-love, as expressed through magical
autoeroticism, can in itself be a rite of passage, separating the initiate from a
culture whose emphasis is overwhelmingly focused on altruism and selfdenial.
Sexuality is often excused, or tolerated, only with the condition that
Eros is directed toward another human being, ideally under the guise of love.
Eros directed toward the self, however, is still condemned as a sterile act of
selfish narcissism. Exploring this expression of sexuality, free from any
connection to others, can he a key to left-hand path consciousness and the
creation of a fully individuated psyche.
Your first physical exercise is simply to experience orgasm in a more
self-aware and focused manner than you have formerly attempted. This will
he your first deliberate attempt to know the orgasm not merely as an intense
physical pleasure familiar from non-magical sexual stimulation, but
apprehending its magical potential as an altered state of consciousness.
During ordinary sex, we are usually so beguiled by pleasure alone that we pay
little or no attention to the subtle psychic changes that orgasm engenders,