Okay... maybe the question doesn't work because I see your views it's such a manifold complicated subject to trace. However if we think about different types of Left Hand Path teachings instead of traditions or groups... what can one find then? I know antinomian ideas, self-deification etc, but how many agree on all those points and what type of different LHP teachings can one find? There must be some general trends, some larger points of view on it. It's just carbon copy of each other if not, is it not? I hope this gets closer to what I mean by question I posed.
The two points you mention, self-deification and antinomianism, are essential to
all iterations and they are interlinked. The first step in self-deification is to reject what you have already been told you are, usually your social roles and the internalised pressure that comes with them ("My mother might be an abusive drunk but as her son it would be wrong to hold her to a higher standard", "My boss takes advantage of me but it's OK because God will fix it all in the end if I'm just a good worker", etc., etc.). Although these things are complex (for example, a devout Christian, Muslim or Buddhist might reject the thoughts I've set out above every bit as much as a LHPer might) and highly individual, and although it's a bit immature to go around categorising life under Left Hand Path vs Right Hand Path, I would say that if those two points are not there it would be very difficult to recognise it as the Left Hand Path, whatever else it might be.
In one of his books, Christopher Wallis considers the tantric approach to be two-fold. First and foremost, it is a path to liberation. Secondly, it is a path to enhance pleasure in Life. This could equally apply to the Western Left Hand Path. It is about discovering the True Self and then creating a world in which the Will of that Self is perfect and, in a sense, absolute. It is, then, a Path to creating self-aware monarchs. This can, of course, be done with varying degress of wisdom: from a Anton LaVey/Norma Desmond-type who has become a god but who rules her kingdom through denial of reality (and thus finds it collapsing on her) or it could be done with profound wisdom and insight and openness to new impulses as is seen with Odin or the vampires of Michael Talbot's
The Delicate Dependency.
In addition to the two points you mention, I would say the Western Left Hand Path has some other features but not everyone would agree with me:
- Magic. And a very pragmatic approach to magic at that. The LHP, like chaos magic, usually focuses on results. Many on the Left Hand Path call their results magic as "sorcery" and longer-term psychological change as "initiatory magic" but it would be a very, very odd LHPer who denounced using sorcery when the occasion called for it. This can include destructive magic, though mature magicians use that sparingly and only after other options have been exhausted.
- or Initiation. Another way of saying this could be self-discovery and self-transformation in the process of that self-discovery.
- Self-strengthening. The most profound secrets of the LHP come after creating a kind of strengthening-energy-feedback-loop, where you send your Will out and it manifests in ways that perpetually make you stronger, in an ever upwards rising spiral, giving you greater capacity to act upon the world (better results from magic, greater self-discipline, making you "lucky", etc.).
- "Dark" imagery. This is not universally agreed upon. Much like our Buddhist siblings in the East, there are some who use the symbols of Light in Left Hand Path ways. I once met a highly intelligent and successful LHP adept who used, of all things, the Virgin Mary as his primary initiatory model (don't ask me to explain it!). This might be a way of working through some psychological baggage or bringing balance to a life that's overdone it in some areas but it carries a very real problem. Major symbols are not just personal repositories but collective ones too. If you invoke the Virgin Mary, you invoke two-thousand years worth of energy that everyone in the world associates with her, almost all of it intrinsically opposed to self-deification and antinomianism. Imagery that is also antinomian gets us around this problem. If you invoke Satan, you invoke two thousand years of outsider energy and energy that is conducive to self-deification.
Different symbols do different things for different people. In the West today we can choose currents in accordance with what is most resonant with our needs or even what might most
challenge those needs. This has led to different expressions of the Left Hand Path, each one having different emphases and drawing from different cultural contexts. Here are some that have the most acolytes:
- Satanism. Not everyone uses Satanism in an initiatory way. For some, it's self-conscious dress up (Church of Satan post-LaVey, Satanic Temple, etc.) and for others it's essentially inverted Christianity. There are groups though who use it as a powerful expression of the Left Hand Path ideas outlined above. Usually these are categorised under "Traditional Satanism" (the original ONA is a good example of this).
- Setian/Temple of Set.
- Thelema. I would unhesitatingly argue that the core tenants of Thelema as expressed by Crowley meet the definitions laid out above.
- The Fourth Way. This is usually, bizarrely, called Right Hand Path. It's principles are deeply Left Hand Path and, actually, often quite Socially Darwinist.
- Tantra, Sufism and Zoroastrianism. Again, often characterisied as monolithically Right Hand Path, there are some currents within these traditions that meet the above definition of Left Hand Path.
- Odinism.
- Neo-Nazism. This gets thorny: most people in this political subculture are far from Left Hand Path adepts but it has been used by some very advanced LHP magi as a way of doing Work. The principles of National Socialism, especially early on, in the Völkisch movement and the SS, do have strong parallels with Left Hand Path but it's not a perfect fit.
- Vampyrism.
- Chaos magic. This is especially the case when the personal "undoing" aspects are tied to the Fourth Way (as in peripheral Chaos figures like Christopher Hyatt, RAW, etc.).
