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

adically holistic vision of Tantra.
Unlike other esoteric schools, Tantrics view the world of inconstant
material appearance (maya) as identical with the eternal core reality that lays
beyond the perception of waking consciousness. Among Shakti's many dual
functions, she hides the nature of reality from the bewitched perceiver in her
spellbinding form of maya while simultaneously serving as the force that
reveals reality to those illuminated through her.
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The epidemic syndrome that compels so many mystics and
magicians to recoil from the physical world as if from a loathsome and
impure contagion is alien to the left-hand path. Rather than condemning the
illusory nature of maya as a destructive delusion that adepts should
assiduously detach themselves from through ascetic purification, maya is
delighted in as an enchanting manifestation of the female power. In fact, the
dream-like but paradoxically real substance of the world is approached with
the previously mentioned attitude of play, or lila, a disposition that
encourages the prevalent practice of magic in Tantric circles. This
understanding transcends the body = bad, consciousness = good duality,
freeing the Tantric of the left-hand path to operate the carnal body as an
agency of illumination.
The stationary male/active female dichotomy of left-hand path
sexual polarities is most dramatically illustrated in depictions of Shakti in
her destructive guise of midnight-black Kali, squatting with necrophiliac lust
to absorb the erection of the dead corpse-white Shiva, prostrate upon a
funeral pyre. Tantrics say that Shiva without Shakti is a corpse; male
consciousness, without female power, is inert. The Kamakalavilasa Tantra
states that "Bodiless Shiva, being of the nature of pure consciousness, must
have Shakti for his body." Her body, which transfixes Shiva during their
blissful coupling, is really Shiva's consciousness made visible.
Kamakalavilasa Tantra means "Tantra about erotic joy in the movements of
love"; the fascinating delight of these magnetic cosmic forces as they come
together. Ultimately, the left-hand path initiate seeks to become this bisexual
twin godhead, activating a state of perpetual sexual ecstasy within his/her
own consciousness. In Western Hermeticism, the idea of the inner
androgyne is a direct correspondent.
In left-hand path metaphysics, the real and secret power of any
male initiate is his shakti as incarnated in his female consort and as a living
force within him. This essential left-hand path concept is not limited to
India; it can be observed clearly in those legends in which a powerful male
magician draws his hidden force from a female companion, or dark muse,
possessed of extreme erotic sex-magical energy. In the modern Western sexmagical
tradition, perhaps the figure of the Scarlet Woman, a human avatara
of the Whore of Babylon, or Ishtar, is the best-known approximation of this
idea.
Christianized Western spirituality has been content to assign womankind a
limited repertoire of a few supposedly antithetical roles: madonna/virgin,
worshipped from afar as a untouchable vision of purity, and
whore/seductress, condemned as the source of all sin and the cause of all of
man's maladies. The left hand of Tantra, the way of woman, views the
feminine principle of Shakti as a infinitely complex living principle; virgin
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and whore at the same time, hideous hag, ravishing beauty, alternately
creative, annihilative, merciful, fickle, cruel, loving, and indifferent – an
endless surge of transformative female energy, a matrix from which all
matter is emanated as well as the mysterious night into which all matter is
consumed.
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In many ancient cultures, even those commonly described as