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

Viparit Karani – "backward doing" or doing the opposite – is a central tenet
of the left-hand path tradition. This is not only expressed physically by
willfully causing the energy flow of the body to be reversed, as we
mentioned above – the sinister current magician is constantly working with
the paradoxical union of opposites.
In every way, the left-hand path initiate makes sacred that which is
customarily considered to be unholy or profane. This sinister current
inversion of normative values includes the sanctification of sexuality, lust
and pleasure which are ordinarily castigated by established religious
orthodoxy but which are used by the Vama Marga initiate as keys to self-
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divinity. However, the practice also extends to adopting ethical stances and
behavior which often evoke stigma, alarm, and even loathing among the
followers of conventional social and religious teachings.
These inversions are not engaged in simply to shock the ignorant –
that's all too easy to do, and would become rapidly tiresome, not to say
reactionary. The practice of Viparit Karani ultimately seeks to recreate the
initiate as an entity outside of known and accepted frontiers, a necessary step
in the process of coming into being and remanifesting as an independent
divinity.
In the traditional Vama Marga, one of the most frequently observed
physical forms of this deliberate embrace of inversion is the Viparit
Maithuna, or opposite ritual intercourse. In this technique, the seated male
adept is entirely immobile, while the female adept energetically rides his
erection. In one sense, this erotic action inverts "normal" sexual activity,
which usually finds the male forcefully thrusting into the passive female.
Particularly in the overwhelmingly anti-female context of Indian society,
this erotic rite tends to symbolize the supremacy of the feminine principle,
Shakti, incarnated in the female initiate. However, above and beyond this
symbolic inversion, there is a much more pragmatic and universal purpose
behind this practice, typical of the multi-tiered character of the sinister
current. The male initiate remains perfectly still the better to control his
breathing and thought processes, so that an altered state of consciousness
can be more easily achieved during the rite. The Viparit Maithuna is also a
human recreation of the divine coitus of the voracious and active Shakti
mounting the immobile, seemingly dead Shiva, who lays in bliss beneath his
consort's ministrations.
Perhaps one of the best-known aspects of left-hand Viparit Karani in
the West is the practice of deliberately causing the semen to flow backwards
through the body at the moment of orgasm when it usually jets forth. This is
not simply a mundane athletic exercise, or a simple means of extending the
duration of the sex act, as is sometimes wrongly assumed. Tantricism
maintains that semen contains the spiritual substance bindu, the very essence
of the male principle Shiva. The loss of bindu in ejaculation is said to weaken
the initiate. Causing it to flow in the opposite direction upwards through
passages in the subtle body to the so-called crown chakra is presumed to
strengthen the center of consciousness, and even foster immortality. A belief
in the spiritual power of semen is widespread throughout the East; one
commonly reported bit of folk wisdom claims that yogis who abstain from
sex altogether, and never ejaculate, would bleed semen rather than blood if
their skin were cut.
Something of this Eastern cult of semen-hoarding was echoed in the
early Western sexology of the last century, which taught young men that
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ejaculation through wet dreams and masturbation was grievously harmful to
the male, depleting his strength and weakening the constitution.
Buddhist Tantra is particularly concerned with not emitting a drop of
semen, which holds the essence of thig-le, Tibetan for bindu. Hindu Tantra