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

scorned in favor of the opposite erotic qualities of whores, who are
considered to emanate their own unique feminine essence. Among adepts of
the Kaula sect, the deliberate contradiction of opposites so frequently band
in left-hand practice is epitomized by their designation of their partners in
erotic ritual as Vesya Kumarika – virgin whores.
In the ancient India from which Tantricism developed, whoredom
was not regarded as &reputable or criminal. The religious courtesan was
revered as a sacred being, an earthly vessel of the power of female sexuality
at its divine level. The sacred courtesan, or devadasi (literally, the god's
slave) was also understood as the wife of the god, and even secular
prostitution was respected as an art requiring specialized training that went
much further than erotic dexterity and versatility However, it was the temple
prostitute, the devadasi, who was the preferred partner for Tantric rites.
Trained from an early age in the art of sahajoli, the vaginal control needed
for Vama Marga a operations, her experience in the temple would have
provided her with a sacred understanding of erotic exchange inaccessible to
the average woman. The legendary sage King Darikapa was said to have
been brought to illumination by a wealthy South Indian courtesan, now
revered as an emanation of the goddess Vajrayogini.
Until the full-scale arrival of British troops in India unleashed a
mass epidemic of venereal disease among these women, the devadasi were
closely associated with the Tantric cult. Eventually, the ancient cult of the
sacred courtesan in India was outlawed by the British as a moral
abomination, after contact with the West reduced the religioerotic meaning
of the practice into mundane commercial prostitution. By that time, the
formerly respected sacred courtesans were referred to contemptuously by the
British occupying forces that used them for hurried sexual relief as "nautchgirls."
The courtesans used in some left-hand path rites were free to attain a
level of erudition and education far superior to the Hindu wife, whose
opportunities for cultivation of the intellect were severely limited. In this,
the vesya was similar to the courtesan of Ancient Greece, another society
that consigned women strictly to the household. The Vesya of India, like the
Greek hetairae were renowned as much for their wit and intelligence as for
their beauty and sexual expertise. The sacred courtesans of India, like their
sisters in other ancient cultures, were permitted a sophisticated education in
philosophy, literature, music, dance, and painting from a very early age.
They were also well versed in all magical arts, which made them ideal
partners for left-hand path rites. The fact that education for females was
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restricted almost exclusively to courtesans led to some confusion in the early
days of Britain's colonization of India. When pious missionaries first set up
Christian schools for Indian girls, the girls' parents assumed that their
daughters were to be trained for prostitution. Horrified missionaries had to
inform ready customers that their young charges were not for sale.
One of the drawbacks of the traditional teachings that our female
readers will have noticed is their integral assumption that the initiate they
address must certainly be a male – women are almost exclusively accorded
the role of initiatrix, never taking into account the possibility of a female
initiate making use of the sexual energies of her male consort. Modern
female magicians must ignore this bias as an unavoidable historical
circumstance; much of the Western left-hand path's work lies in refashioning
these traditional keys for use by contemporary female initiates.
Disembodied Sexual Initatrixes
The lustful imaginings of men's hearts do indeed produce artificial
elementals and ... these elementals are something more than subjective
images and have an objective etheric existence.
—Dion Fortune, Psychic Self-Defense
The left-hand path initiate is not confined in his choice of consort to the