Is Astarte Left Hand Path?

[NewAgePrincess]

I have heard her described as the queen of heaven. But she is a ferocious Goddess of fertility, sex, and war.

She is strongly in opposition to Yaweh, Jesus, even saint Mary from my experience with her

So I think that she is counter demiurgic. Or is there no concept of a thing as demiurge in those old Pantheons and is that a stretch?
Also I know a lot of LHP people grab deities from random Pantheons and religion without full comprehending what they are getting into. I just let deities approach me and my needs.

 

[Wintruz]

I have heard her described as the queen of heaven. But she is a ferocious Goddess of fertility, sex, and war.

She is strongly in opposition to Yaweh, Jesus, even saint Mary from my experience with her

So I think that she is counter demiurgic. Or is there no concept of a thing as demiurge in those old Pantheons and is that a stretch?
Also I know a lot of LHP people grab deities from random Pantheons and religion without full comprehending what they are getting into. I just let deities approach me and my needs.

Yes, and in fact, in some ways, this is the really esoteric, hidden side of the Left Hand Path.

Various manifestations of this spiritual power are honoured by serious initiates. Kali (probably the oldest/darkest manifestation of this presence), Ishtar, Aphrodite, Venus and Crowley's Babalon are all prominent. However, because what She represents is highly personal and individually approached, She isn't as well attested to in the language-based systematisation of the Left Hand Path as the Prince of Darkness. Exceptions are Crowley's emphasis on Babalon (his writing is not able to get beyond his own female-neuroses though so he brings all of that baggage), Jack Parson's obsession with that same principle and the Schrecks' Demons of the Flesh book which shows the pre-figuring of the Babalon archetype in pagan goddesses and their relevance for the Left Hand Path.

One way into an initiated understanding of this is to conceive of the Prince of Darkness as Isolate Intelligence. Astarte (interestingly, the late Hellenic Egyptians conceived of Her as a consort of Set), is then the use of pleasure to expand and transform consciousness. There are many layers to this. Consider the name "Babylon" as "Gateway" and the connection between this and the physical apparatus of women. She is, in a certain sense, ecstasy incarnate. The homoerotic Greeks (and, through them, the Romans) gave this ecstasy role to Dionysus because it was thought that ecstasy was purer when the sex wasn't tied to reproduction - so this aspect isn't as prominent in Aphrodite and Venus as it is in the Levantine manifestations.

 

[OberonFromTheHills]

Spirits are neither that or that. As you mention she has so many aspects. Some of them definitely evolved to become Mary The Queen of Heaven and others not.

You might be in contact with one/many aspects of her that weren't "canon" to Mary's birth. That doesn't mean some other aspects aren't in Mary either.

You can also tell with the demon called "Astaroth." People recorded encounter a succubus like entity similar to the goddess in her queen of prostitutes. Other had a male like figure that represent the lower side of Jupiter.

 

[NewAgePrincess]

kali is my mommy

 

[Xag9]

Absolutely she does.

She is demonised thus demonic derived as independent manifestations of her whole being for example astaroth who is derived from ashtoreth.

Another example is the demon Beleth who acts as an independent manifestation of the title mistress which exactly what the name belet means.

 

[Mars]

Do you even know what left hand (wet) path actually means?

Divine feminine is a statute of the ars regia. Not a pick me from one of its paths.

 

[IllusiveOwl]

(wet)

I am so profoundly curious, can you elaborate on this?

 

[Mars]

Term for the left hand path.

Theres other paths beside the left (wet) and the right (dry). Theres also the direct (radical/ fire/ venus) path. It's what I'm doing.

Then there is the path of breath (pranajama/ air) or path of blood (earth).

Its just different ways for the same. Like how theres different ways to solve a mathematical formula. Or to code a function for a program. As above so below.

 

[Thee Nightfool]

Ave Maria mater Domini nostri Iesus Christi regina cœli domina mundi imperatrix inferni misere mei & totius populi Christiani Amen. –from the Saltair Mhuire

"Hail Mary, mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, Queen of Heaven, Lady of the World, Empress of Hell, have mercy on me and the whole of Christian people."

Yeah, evolution indeed...

 

[Xenophon]

I have heard her described as the queen of heaven. But she is a ferocious Goddess of fertility, sex, and war.

She is strongly in opposition to Yaweh, Jesus, even saint Mary from my experience with her

So I think that she is counter demiurgic. Or is there no concept of a thing as demiurge in those old Pantheons and is that a stretch?
Also I know a lot of LHP people grab deities from random Pantheons and religion without full comprehending what they are getting into. I just let deities approach me and my needs.

I have seen her assimilated into anti-Demiurgic ranks by latter-day gnostics. The female, fierce and forceful after her own fashion, has a definite role to play on the LHP. Wintruz above mentions Dionysius as important because in that figure sex is not tied to reproduction. Maybe for a similar reason, we find Athena Promachos (Athena "Fighter in the Front Rank"), a fierce female deity, but divorced from sexual expression altogether. I suppose the point there is sex transmuted.

 

[AbammonTheGreat]

The Divine Feminine is a paradox, she has many manifestations. She is Left Hand and Right Hand. Life and Death. This is exemplified in Thunder, Perfect Mind. The name of the goddess is inconsequential, she has many faces and many aspects. The dual nature of Her is present in her many manifestations whether it be Astarte, Isis, Kali or Shakti, and even Mary who's initiatory nature as a Matron of Death and Putrefaction was understood and hidden in the Cathedrals by the alchemists of medieval Europe. We can see within the tantric practices and their goddess-forms that images and experience with the yoginis are terrifying and fearsome expressions of the Divine Feminine that are necessary tools of liberation for those seeking to initiate into their spheres of influence.

Where you see Astarte you see Death and Destruction, and within this Death and Destruction you find Life and Creation. Astarte's paradoxical associations are not by mistake, she is not one end of the pole, or one face of the coin. She is both faces of the coin at once providing the form for the manifest experience.