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

the Tantric practices, which include the drawing of magical symbols
(yantras) and the previously described uttering of invocatory words of power
(mantras) are similar to the ritual procedures of the traditional Western Black
Arts, providing a link between the magicians of both cultures.
The sheer volume and diversity of the Tantric teachings makes it
impossible to speak of one authoritative Tantric way – instead, the Tantric
tradition offers a multiplicity of often contradictory teachings united by
certain overriding themes. The variegated and decentralized nature of
Tantra's magical and mystical teachings has had the advantageous effect of
discouraging orthodoxy in its practice, which is why even the most extreme
and heretical forms of Tantra's left-hand path have survived without too
much persecution.
Some of the Tantras were slowly adopted into the established
practice of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism, while the more subversive
teachings were scorned as dangerous lessons only worthy of the practitioners
of the left-hand path. Although many of the Tantric teachings are in written
form, it must be emphasized that sinister Tantra is primarily a way of
dynamic action manifest in an initiate's vital existence. It is not a passive
form of knowledge accessible simply through scholarly study. The left-hand
path is a physical discipline that must be personally taught by a male or
female guru from a lineage of teachers competent to instruct the initiate. The
aspiring student of the left-hand path often spends many years in the quest for
the teacher most suited to personally initiate him into the lineage of adepts.
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Indeed, Tantra is adamant that initiation can never be learned from books,
and that second hand knowledge can never lead to direct realization of the
self. The Tantric left-hand path mistrust of book learning, or pustake likita,
goes so far as to warn that the goddess Shakti, the informing divine power
presiding over the practice, curses all who try to take a short-cut to initiation
through the written medium. For all of the value placed on the Tantric texts,
the left-hand path initiate rejects the great importance placed on reading and
strictly intellectual pursuits favored by many Western magicians. The lefthand
path is defined by its manifestation in worldly deeds, and as such is
better understood as a way of life rather than a faith or an abstract belief
system.
This threat of divine malediction has not stopped any number of doityourself
Tantra manuals from being published in the West. We cannot
enthusiastically recommend any of these. While we provide a certain
amount of historical perspective on the left-hand path of Tantra in these
pages, we agree with the traditional approach stating that the actual work of
self-transformation is best conducted under the face-to-face guidance of a
qualified instructor. This may seem like the height of inconvenience to most
Westerners, who have learned to expect all information to be delivered in
handy bite-sized chunks, especially from such questionable sources as
popular media and perhaps worst of all, surfing the so-called information
highway for instant illumination. The folly of assuming that any tradition
can truly be learned by merely reading about it, rather than experiencing it,
seems obvious.
The Universe As Divine Copulation
Returning to the sexual basis of the left-hand path, Tantra revolves around
the axis of the ecstatic union of the god and goddess Shiva/Shakti, exalted as
the sacred copulation of the cosmic male principle in its purest form as
Consciousness, and the cosmic female principle, that primordial Power or
sheer Energy that both drives and devours the material universe. Shakti, the
feminine essence, is always perceived as an active all-creating force in the
universe. Shiva, the masculine essence that penetrates her, is portrayed in a
state of immutable stillness. This sexual resolution of the opposite poles of
invisible male consciousness and visible female power also reflects the