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

historical actuality is being invoked.
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II.
AWAKENING THE SERPENT
Initiation In The Left-Hand Path
Playing With Maya – Left-Hand Path Magic
One of the most welcome aspects of the left-hand path philosophy to the
Western sex magician is the bridge it provides between sorcery and initiation.
It seems unlikely that anyone with a gift for sexual sorcery would not
eventually be confronted with the essential existential dilemma of the mystic,
just as a mystic of any profundity cannot but help to awaken a talent for
sorcery as a side-effect of his or her search. Most traditional Eastern spiritual
schools teach that these magical side-effects should be strictly ignored as
unessential to the goal of illuminated apprehension of reality, since they are
dismissed as mere distractionary illusion. Likewise, many Western magicians
prefer to totally disregard any mystical implications raised by their work,
concentrating exclusively on the material results of their sorcery.
The mystical and the magical both have their place in the left-hand
path approach to initiation, since it is a unique aspect of the Tantric
philosophy that there is no real difference between the transient
manifestations of the physical world and the eternal world of absolute reality.
These seemingly different dimensions are understood to be intrinsically
connected, flip sides of the same phenomena, which is why the Vama Marga
teaches liberation through the things of this world, including the pleasures of
the flesh. But Tantra, unlike other initiatory disciplines, is not restricted to the
pursuit of spiritual liberation. The practice of magic, the playful manipulation
of the universe-creating substance known as maya, and the cultivation of
those supernormal mental powers known in Sanskrit as siddhis, are all
accepted as perfectly legitimate initiatory pursuits within the left-hand path
discipline. None of the moral judgments against magic that inhibit other
teachings taint the Tantric approach, which is one of the reasons Tantrikas
are eyed with some suspicion by orthodox Hindus to this day. Tantric magic,
especially sexual left-hand path magic, is condemned as Abichara, which
carries the same connotations that "black magic" suggests to the Westerner.
Magic, through Tantric eyes, is the exclusive domain of the feminine.
Not that only women are capable of magical prowess but that magicians of
both genders draw on a feminine shakti power thought to be especially potent
at night when altering maya through their sorcery. Shakti, when seen as the
physical universe, can also be thought of as maya itself, the uncanny material
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with which all magicians work to create their realities. As creatrix of all the
forms composed of dynamic shifting energy that make up seeming reality,
Shakti is known as Maya-Shakti. The eternal concepts of feminine
enchantment, fascination, and seduction thus play a crucial role in all lefthand
path magic, regardless of the gender of the magician. Maya-Shakti – in
one of those mind-boggling juxtapositions of seeming opposites-in-one that
radiate from the Tantric stream – is both the liberating force that awakens the
initiate to absolute reality and the "all-bewildering" enchantress who veils
that reality with her captivating, seductive, and horrifying dance of infinite
appearances. The worldwide archetype of the witch casting her enchantments
at midnight is a universal symbol reflecting the Tantric left-hand path
connection between nocturnal sorcery and shakti – midnight finds the sinister
feminine power at its height of intensity.
Adepts of the Vama Marga claim that sustaining and "riding the
tiger" of bliss created through the repeated performance of sacred sexual
union in the Panchatattva rite – which we will explain in detail in the next