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
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sexual power of woman, he wrote: "Sexually awakened women, affirmed and<br />
recognized as such, would mean the complete collapse of the authoritarian<br />
ideology." George Orwell, in his dystopic novel 1984, which remains an<br />
acute diagnosis for the modern cult of control, also understood that the<br />
limitation of sexual power was one of the most insidious weapons of<br />
autocracy. Orwell has Julia, the heroine of 1984, realize the secret of Eros:<br />
"Unlike Winston, [she] had grasped the inner meaning of the Party's sexual<br />
puritanism. It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own<br />
which was outside the Party's control and which therefore had to be<br />
destroyed if possible. What was more important was that sexual privation<br />
induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into<br />
war-fever and leader-worship."<br />
<strong>The</strong> adept of the left-hand path, radically individuated and separated<br />
from the delusions of the crowd through systematic transgression of taboo<br />
and transcendent sexuality's "world of its own" is unlikely to be swept up in<br />
the unthinking passions of the masses. In the first historical manifestation of<br />
the sinister current that we will investigate, the Vama Marga of India, this<br />
element of social defiance becomes evident. <strong>The</strong> Indian left-hand path<br />
initiate's refusal to follow his or her society's religious restrictions against sex<br />
between the castes, the drinking of wine, the consumption of certain<br />
"impure" foods, is the foundation upon which he or she eventually<br />
transgresses the human state and becomes divine. In more extreme left-hand<br />
path sects, such as the Aghori, the transcendence of deeply seated internal<br />
taboos goes much further. Although this critical factor of societal subversion<br />
has been either ignored or whitewashed by more temperate interpreters of the<br />
left-hand path than ourselves, you will find that this refusal to play by the<br />
rules dictated by others is one of the universally definitive factors separating<br />
the left-hand path from milder, less antagonistic forms of sex magic.<br />
It would be easy to misinterpret this defiance of social and religious<br />
custom as a purely political statement. However, once freed from one set of<br />
psychic blinkers, the left-hand path magician does not simply trade them in<br />
7<br />
for a new set. He or she strives to reach a state of mind in which all forms of<br />
orthodoxy must be questioned and rejected.<br />
Even at this early stage, the perceptive reader will have realized that<br />
when we speak of left-hand sex magic, we are not concerned solely with the<br />
workings of the genitalia for some sorcerous purpose. Yes, its central tool of<br />
illumination is awakened sexuality. But the left-hand path tradition actually<br />
provides an approach to every aspect of existence, a philosophy – or "love of<br />
Sophia" – that set into action can transform the entirety of the human<br />
psychobiological structure, not just his or her penis or vagina.<br />
One might say that left-hand path sex magic is a form of initiation<br />
consciously designed for a hopelessly fucked up world. <strong>The</strong> left-hand path<br />
philosophy posits that it is the method best suited for the apocalyptic and out<br />
of kilter times in which mankind currently exists, an era the traditional Indian<br />
left-hand path discipline recognizes as the Kali Yuga. Exceptional measures<br />
are needed to awaken to full consciousness under such inauspicious<br />
conditions. Step one is to reject the sorrow and despair such times may<br />
inspire and joyfully embrace the chaos of the disintegrating world, this<br />
shimmering and illusory spectacle that emanates from the vulva of dark Kali.<br />
And one of the great tools of transformation over which Kali presides is the<br />
flesh, especially as it is subjected to the flame of desire.<br />
Outside of the left-hand path tradition proper, pre-Christian<br />
antiquity clearly acknowledged that the transformative and uncanny states of<br />
mind attainable through sexuality partake of the realm of the Gods. In fact,<br />
many common terms denoting sexuality in modern language still bear the<br />
indelible traces of that ancient appreciation of the magical – even religious –<br />
nature of human sexuality. <strong>The</strong> erotic hearkens back to the god Eros,