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