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

who react to their lusts and appetites like so many Pavlovian dogs.
And yet, despite these qualifications, this is an amoral vision utterly
transcendent of such dualities as higher and lower, good and bad, body and
soul; the energy of Shakti is viscerally experienced through sexual rites as the
ground of all being. Mastery of sexual energy, understood as the core
constituent of the human lifestream in the carnal vehicle, is regarded as the
hidden passage to liberation. This ceaselessly transforming erotic energy is
manipulated by left-hand path sex magicians in their quest for total, god-like
autonomy in this world. It is taught that harnessing this energy would be
impossible for most human beings, who would only be overwhelmed by an
encounter with the terrifying nature of the principal divine energy who
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presides over the Kali Yuga – the goddess Kali. During this Aeon, the lunar,
sinister current of the Feminine Daemonic is at its zenith, a spiritual
condition which allows for the breaking up of all boundaries and the free play
of creative chaos, unrestricted by the male ordering principle.
Western magicians first approaching the left-hand path frequently
find the Sanskrit terminology and culturally alien form of the Indian Vama
Marga and Kali Yuga to be overly abstruse. However, visionaries in every
culture and in every era have spontaneously recorded revelations
demonstrating the universal and transcultural omnipresence of the left-hand
path, even though they have no awareness of the Tantric teachings. In the
Western world, we have found that the most relevant transmissions of
authentic left-hand path initiation have been conveyed not from occultists but
through the mediumistic abilities of artists. Consider the following passage
from the British poet William Blake's The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell,
written in 1790. Although it is unlikely that Blake knew anything of the
traditional left-hand path concept of shakti energy, he luminously illustrates
the essence of the sinister current all the same, providing us with a genuine
Western Tantra:
"All bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following errors:
1. That man has two real existing principles: viz: a body & a soul.
2. That energy, called evil, is alone from the body: & that reason, called
good, is alone from the soul.
But the following contraries to these are true:
1. Man has no body distinct from his soul; for that called body is a
portion of the soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of
soul in this age.
2. Energy is the only life, and is from the body; and reason is the bound
or outward circumference of energy.
3. Energy is Eternal Delight."
It is interesting that Blake describes the five senses as the "chief inlets of
soul in this age"; Tantra also specifically acknowledges that the senses are
the tools of initiation best suited for the current Kali Yuga. Two Tantric
texts, the Kalivilasa Tantra and the Mahanirvana Tantra, indicate that the
tremendous surge of wild feminine erotic energy that
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is incarnated as Kali can only be openly applied to initiation in her shadowy
Aeon. In previous Aeons, according to these Tantras, the sinister teachings
of illumination and self-deification via the flesh were concealed to prevent
mankind from abusing these potentially dangerous procedures. Now, the veil
can be lifted, for the once secret and forbidden left-hand path is seen to be
the most germane method of awakening in this era of darkness. The ancient
prohibitions have been rendered null and void by the advent of Kali's time of
chaos – what was once considered unholy is now sacred; all prevailing
standards are reversed.
Such is the strictly exoteric meaning of the Kali Yuga. The left-hand