A Question on Left Hand Path Groups

[Kramfort]

Hello, I'm a little curious into how many Left Hand Path groups are out there. I wonder can they all be listed? How many do you know? At least if we first look at the contemporary day, and then we could speculate backward too, but that's a bit trickier to do, isn't it, since we don't find as much historical record of it?

Also what common denominators do we usually find among these Left Hand Path groups? What differences may we find? Some is probably basic, like a focus on self-deification, antinomianism, etc., but maybe there are different teachings and interpretations.

 

[The God-King]

How many are out there? No one knows. Can they all be listed? No. People make up new groups all the time. The only ones we hear about are the ones who get big or happen to have a prominent member or two that wrote a good book (or a few). We never hear about the LHP groups that was started by some freak and his wife and maybe one or two other weirdos in town and they practice in someone's basement.

 

[Kramfort]

True and that's a good thought. Yet maybe I can think about traditions of the LHP, like you have Satanic, Luciferian, etc... There can be many different groups but what about the traditions? So you have hundred different Luciferian or Satanic groups but they're still that.

 

[Wintruz]

True and that's a good thought. Yet maybe I can think about traditions of the LHP, like you have Satanic, Luciferian, etc... There can be many different groups but what about the traditions? So you have hundred different Luciferian or Satanic groups but they're still that.

Even within the designation "Traditional Satanism", there are difficulties with the idea of a monolithic tradition. This is because, by its very nature, Satanism, and the Left Hand Path generally, are deeply personal and highly individualistic. At the most sophisticated level, this is because the desires and inclinations, both of which are heavily used in Satanism, of all individuals are different. A less conscious manifestation of this might be precise interpretations of myths, figures and so on.

In short, categorising here is like herding cats. If you're interested in what a person is thinking, it's better to not presume and to approach considering this might be a highly personalised system (this might also be true of any religion).

If you are writing an academic-type piece, the convention has inclined towards broad categorisations into LaVeyan Satanism, theistic or Traditional Satanism, Setian and Luciferian movements. There are major problems with this but it's a broad-strokes approach. Some Evangelicals of the 1980s/1990s categorised Satanists into "dabblers" (an example would be Richard Ramirez), "religious" (an example would be the Temple of Set), "non-traditional" (an example might be Charles Manson) and "generational" (Michelle Smith's fictions are a literary account of this). These classifications have had some cultural weight but, ultimately, they're designed to serve the weltanschauung of maniacs.