From
Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left-Hand Path Sex Magic, by Nikolas Schreck and Zeena Schreck
Essential Principles Of The Left-Hand Path
1) The transformation of human consciousness to
divine consciousness via the manipulation of the sexual currents of the
physical and subtle bodies through erotic rites.
For the male initiate, this sexual gnosis is traditionally
attained with the collaboration of a female consort-initiatrix. The
female sexual initiatrix is the presiding source of the
left-hand path; the motive energy of the sinister current flows directly
from her. During the ritualized sexual act, something more than
ordinary intercourse occurs – a magical exchange takes place, a
transference of power transmitted through the subtle vehicles of desire,
attraction and erotic fusion.
Together, the couple celebrates a cult of ecstasy which
has no less an aim than their own self-deification. Something of the
crucial importance of sexuality to the left-hand path can be gleaned
from the fact that the defining difference between the left-hand path
and the far more commonly practiced right-hand path is primarily the
emphasis on physical sexuality found in the former, and the absence of
same in the latter.
Although the left-hand path focuses much of its attention
on the physical interplay of erotic polarities embodied in male and
female sexuality, it is concerned with the ecstatic transcendence of all
seeming opposites, including good and evil, death and life, darkness
and light, flesh and spirit, the beautiful and the hideous, ad infinitum.
2) A sexual exaltation of the female principle of power in the universe, known in Sanskrit as Shakti.
This universal feminine mystique, which we will sometimes
refer to in its transcultural aspect as the Feminine Daemonic, is the
driving factor for both male and female initiates of the left-hand path.
For male magicians, left-hand path initiation includes the attainment
of this feminine power within themselves through a complex system of
bodily disciplines, including sexual congress. The female initiate
strives to more fully become the vehicle of the Feminine Daemonic. In
effect, she is at once the priestess of shakti, the
intermediary between this sacred power and the world of visible
appearances, as well as an incarnation of the multiformed Goddess Shakti
herself.
It is important to point out early in our survey that this feminine principle exalted in the left-hand path is not the social
role of woman as self- sacrificing passive wife and fertile mother
figure honored by conventional religions. But neither does the Vama Marga
comply with a contemporary feminist model of reality that considers all
women to be victimized saints and all men to be lecherous demons.
Although shakti harkens back to the now suppressed archaic
understanding of essential woman as holy warrioress, divine huntress,
and sacred whore or hierodule, the feminine principle sought by
left-hand path initiates ultimately transcends woman as a natural
phenomenon altogether, venturing into the non-natural shadow side of her
power.
3) Initiation through the deliberate violation of
deep-seated external social and internal personal taboos, the individual
separation from tribal normative values, and the radical inversion of
convention and orthodoxy of every kind.
A traditional proverb of the Tantric Vama Marga sums this principle up succinctly: “Through the very deed through which humans for hundreds of millions of kalpas burn in hell, through exactly that deed is the Yogi liberated.” This left-hand path method of deliberate inversion is known as viparit karani, or opposite-doing.
As George Orwell wrote in his 1984, “Orthodoxy
means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is
unconsciousness.” In this sense, the left-hand path represents
deliberate heresy against the dominant culture of the practitioner
(whatever that culture maybe), a breaking of sleepwalking orthodoxy in
favor of a fully conscious state of wide awake being. Left-hand path
initiation, however, cannot be limited to a merely intellectual break
with the herd-animal man. As the proverb above makes clear, these
transgressions must be deeds, physical actions, taken in the real world
to truly effect self- transformation. It is not only what the left-hand
path initiate thinks that situates him or her in the sinister current; it is what he or she does. The left- hand path is a way of action, not intellectual contemplation, or worse yet, reading about action.
4) Essentially elitist, in that it must be chosen,
is not suited for all dispositions and does not come naturally. It is
directed to the individual consciousness, unrelated to collective
identity as a social creature or a being subject to divine or natural
law. Although the modern world is based on democratic notions of full
disclosure to all, the sinister current, wherever it has manifested, is
based on the proposition that some things can only be communicated to
certain individuals, at the right time, and under the right
circumstances.
The left-hand path is closed to the common man and woman, who is regarded as little more than a herd-animal (Sanskrit pashu). The sinister current is considered fit only for the temperament of the heroic warrior (Sanskrit vira) or divine (Sanskrit divya)
individual. Initiation on the left- hand path always begins with an
understanding that all human beings are born into nature as
herd-animals. The ultimate left-hand path goal of Awakening (Sanskrit Bodhana) occurs through exerting a rigorous effort against the innate low level of consciousness, (Supta, or sleep) which is regarded as the natural condition of the human animal.
This awakening is realized through a discipline of mental
and physical control, sexual rites, taboo-breaking and exaltation of the
Feminine Daemonic, allowing the initiate to sunder the fetters binding
the beast. Through this process the Vama Marga adept becomes
heroic, that is to say, freed from the conditioning that binds the
common human being and experiences reality directly. However, this
sought-for coming into being as a “hero” does not mean that the
left-hand path initiate seeks the approval or validation of the society
he or she lives within. On the contrary, by the time the hero or heroine
has crossed all boundaries binding his or her consciousness, it is very
likely that those still bound by conventional morality may regard the
left-hand path adept as an ignominious villain.
5) A method of initiation that actively embraces
this life, this world, this physical realm, this body as the means to
illumination and Awakening. The left-hand path is not a route of
escapism from reality, but a confrontation with the full totality of
physical and psychic existence, encompassing pleasure and joy as well as
horror and mortality.
The left-hand path explicitly rejects the practice of
abstinence, asceticism, self-denial and the traditional contempt for
matter that typifies the majority of spiritual methods in West and East.
The exclusively “otherworldly” concerns of the typical swami or maharishi
known to the West in recent decades is alien to the sinister current.
Although the left-handed gnosis expands human consciousness to divine
states of being outside the constraints of time and nature, this is not a
path that leads to some nebulous elsewhere in the great beyond.
One of the mysteries of the left-hand path is that
“elsewhere” is right here in your own body. So, the sinister way aims
for liberation in this lifetime and in the initiate’s current physical
body, rather than in an afterlife state or via reincarnation. This sense
of urgency is in marked contrast to the almost infinite time accorded
and recommended by most Eastern methods of initiation.
