Love and the Left Hand Path

[Wintruz]

One of the major contentions against the Left Hand Path is that it is a path without love. Given the persistence of unintelligent, destructive types who excuse their dysfunction by wrapping it in the traditional imagery of the Left Hand Path (ie; Satanism or Vampyrism), it's easy to understand why many harbour this misconception. Well, my wicked, unstaked Heart might be woozy with advocaat and befuddled with myrrh-scented candles but this misconception is a misconception.

A path which consciously seeks mastery over what the Buddhists call "attachments" through immersion in attachments, which sees in those attachments a reflection of the Self, the Left Hand Path is the only spiritual path which advocates Love from the vantage point of separation, a pre-requisite for loving a thing as it is, in itself. While conventional religions teach permanent union, so that the love of the divine and the love of the acolyte are obliterated in each other, the Left Hand Path initiate seeks not to obliterate their love but to immortalise it. They know that love is a sacred emanation from their deepest Self, a pulsation from their beating Heart/Coeur.

In ecstasy, initiates will temporarily unite with their love but this experience always enhances the state of separateness. On the romantic level, an initiate gives themselves fully to their beloved but this state reinforces their individual experience of Life rather than acts as an escape from it. The true Black Magician takes joy in knowing that after an early morning together, her/his beloved will go about her/his day with a sense of contentment and satisfaction, open to the endless health and life-enhancing benefits of shared, sacramental pleasure. Most importantly, the Black Magician knows that the virtues they glimpse in their beloved represent the Graal to which s/he endlessly strives.

Elsewhere, because the Left Hand Path is free of the disgraceful Abrahamic biases against non-human animals (excepting Francis of Assisi), its initiates are free to indulge in guiltless attachment to their animal friends, so often far more virtuous, far more deserving of love than hideous human parasites, demanding energy in one form or another. The initiate does not see in his/her relationship with animals that old adage of "serving others is serving God" but instead accepts animals as an end unto themselves, as individual, unique wonders. Because the Left Hand Path sees spirit and matter as totally immersed and inseparable, I know that in giving my cat something he enjoys, I am giving it to his whole being, not merely "feeding the flesh". I know too that when he brings me a leaf he has chosen, it's a sacred signal from his essence to mine. The flip side of this love is the burning hatred and unapologetic violence I would take pleasure in bringing upon those "ugly, degenerate human bastards" who would harm such manifestations of Life.

The Left Hand Path initiate loves other humans enough to hold them to a far higher standard than they are used to. Against a creed which says "forgive him seventy times seven", the Black Magician says "No! There are ways which will strengthen the best within you and those around you. Act the fool and violate those ways once and you will get a warning. Violate them again and again and evolution will correct your path, possibly through me!". We love, with the deepest love, what many other human beings are capable of Becoming. I celebrate and raise my glass to them when they reach checkpoints on the way to Becoming. To mollycoddle weakness, to cry in mawkishness, is to betray the depths of this love.

This is applied to ourselves as well as our neighbour. For, most importantly, the Black Magician loves his/her Self. Not with the poisonous "Perfect as I am" mantra (beloved of those who are so often below-average, much less perfect), but instead in a way which lives out that statement by one of the most beautiful minds:

The noble soul has reverence for itself ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

 

[KjEno186]

'In Girard's view this fate is the fate of all nineteenth- (and twentieth-) century men in the wake of Nietzsche's announcement of the "death of God." After His demise, humans have presumed to replace him, to achieve a degree of spiritual autonomy and self fulfillment worthy of a deity. When humans' god-like aspirations end in disappointment and frustration, they look around themselves and imagine that others have not experienced a similar failure. They seek to appropriate their fullness of being, their divinity in desiring them, in coveting what they covet. Brought on by a sense of spiritual inadequacy, desire is itself "metaphysical," according to Girard, in that it is less a desire to possess a real object than a desire to absorb, to become another. It can never be satisfied, of course, because even in possessing the object, individuals can only be disappointed. Others are not divinities after all, and possessing them or the objects they desire can never truly transform the being of desiring individuals.' - Rene Girard and Myth: An Introdution, p.12, by Richard J. Golsan​

​

"[Girard:] ... He was not a bad man, but a madman, he was moving into madness and his honesty results from this. His was not chit-chat in a cafe, he literally became mad. Nietzsche's greatness is that he perceived the abyss that lies beyond humanism, and that he did his best to get lost in it. He succeeded, and his success should be a lesson to us." - ibid., p.136​

The above quotes seem to describe the modern LHP, based as it is on Nietzschean philosophy. There are some cultural 'norms' against which I have rebelled. I've spend a significant portion of my life believing that God is a major dick, and that many religions are just cons, so I'm not advocating in favor of "Abrahamic religion." Instead I would say that any religion that exists primarily to economically benefit a small body of humans is merely a corrupt tool of the system. I won't blame God for that. The system was founded upon murder, and the state claims a monopoly on deadly force. The State will persecute and prosecute any religion out of existence if it does not bow before the secular authority. Thus the religions we are left with are those useful to the State at any given time.

We conflate worldly authority and acceptance of dogma with the RHP, and we believe the freedom to choose or even rebel must be the LHP. If only life were that easy. Nietzsche discovered his own truth, though it led him to madness. What a tangled web we weave. The second "greatest commandment" is said to be, "love your neighbor as yourself." This would imply that the first-and-a-half "greatest commandment" is "love thyself."

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"The more we cling to things, people, and experiences, the more we suffer when they inevitably change or disappear."

 

[Roma]

By one account, there are rules set for this solar system that limit the LHP inner plane initiates to control of the lower mind, while the RHP initiates are permitted to control the Neshama (higher mind that is used by the HGA) and eventually the Yechida

That is consistent with my own observations. For example, I have seen perhaps 15 RHP initiates that could control their soul body (Neshama) but never seen a LHP initiate that could do that. Perhaps I have moved in the wrong circles. I worked in the public service.

Post automatically merged: Dec 6, 2023

The soul body almost always must be controlled before the heart can be controlled. This has implications for heart relationships

 

[Ziran]

the Left Hand Path is the only spiritual path which advocates Love from the vantage point of separation

Well...... not quite the only one.

 

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

Love? LHP have love?
Kidding.
But many more LHP mages I've seen seemed to be mostly about money, power, and building empires. Sure there is love.
But it's not only one type of love.
For example, agape (godlike) love, sensual love (Eros), brotherly love and so on.

 

[Wintruz]

The above quotes seem to describe the modern LHP, based as it is on Nietzschean philosophy.

it is less a desire to possess a real object than a desire to absorb, to become another.

No. There are some fundamentally wrong presumptions here about the Left Hand Path (and Nietzsche too I would argue). Desire is understood as a metaphysical property but the objects of desire are used as a guide to self-knowledge, not a means of salvation. It doesn't emerge from imaging that others have what one doesn't; more often it's about rejecting what others have in favour of something which reflects unique, personal desire. At later stages, this isn't merely about satisfying instincts ("I want it, I got it") but a question of using desire to understand what is missing, finding ways to fulfil that desire (which, unfulfilled, tends to lead to obsession) and through that fulfilment of desire, of moving closer towards independence and individuation. This late state is less about desire for external things (bluntly, if they're doing this properly, they'll have tasted and expanded their experience through material things enough to not need them anymore - for a developed mind, novelty sex and material luxury become boring quickly) and more about pure desire as a kind of converted fuel for self-existence.

RE: the second quotation; I am unsure if Girard is being characterised as suggesting that post-Nietzscheans wish to become another person or whether they wish to belong to another ontological category. If the former, that is the anti-thesis of the Left Hand Path (but better describes Right Hand Path religions which encourage imitation of Christ, saints, etc.). If the latter, then, in a sense, yes, though it is attainable only through first fulfilling what's there. Before becoming a god, an initiate must become fully human and most people are far from that.

We conflate worldly authority and acceptance of dogma with the RHP, and we believe the freedom to choose or even rebel must be the LHP.

I do not.

Many of us live in cultures historically influenced by Christianity but I would not characterise any present Western country as a "culture of the Right Hand Path". In part this is because, in many Western nations, Christianity itself hasn't been any kind of path for the vast majority of people in centuries (there are outlying individuals of course and this is not true for Christianity in other parts of the world). Religiosity is performed as a cultural rite, maybe with some vague hopes attached and faith as an intellectual position. But the overwhelming majority of people have not been striving for union with God (the only definition of the Right Hand Path which has any value). Now that even the performance of religiosity is withering away, there's a clearer picture; most humans are a sleepy collection of confused motives, unaware of what they are or why they are doing it and utterly addicted to group approval.

If I were going to conflate a "worldly authority and acceptance of dogma" with anything, it wouldn't be the Right Hand Path (probably more marginalised than the Left at this point!) but advertising and, increasingly, liberal and "social justice" politics.

"The more we cling to things, people, and experiences, the more we suffer when they inevitably change or disappear."

Yes and that suffering is a measure of love. I have lost many people dear to me across the course of my life. Too many for my age. Yet I would not trade the pain of losing them for one scintilla less of my ability to love them. Make no mistake, self-annihilation brings an inability to love virtue as much as does detachment from the pain of vice.

What if pleasure and displeasure were so tied together that whoever wanted to have as much as possible of one must also have as much as possible of the other—that whoever wanted to learn to ‘jubilate up to the heavens’ would also have to be prepared for ‘depression unto death’? And that is how things may well be ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

 

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

So this is then why the tantric or Buddhist approach is commonly found more in the LHP circles?

 

[Wintruz]

So this is then why the tantric or Buddhist approach is commonly found more in the LHP circles?

Yes. There are many common metaphysical presumptions ("being precedes desire", etc.) shared between those systems and the Western LHP.

 

[Roma]

There is a transition occurring between the previous version of this solar system where learning energies and intelligence was the key objective for human souls.

In this solar system the key objective is learning and establishing right relationship.

There are various transitionary practices - mainly for those that cling to their old familiar ways

 

[pixel_fortune]

the Left Hand Path is the only spiritual path which advocates Love from the vantage point of separation

On the romantic level, [...] the true Black Magician takes joy in knowing that after an early morning together, her/his beloved will go about her/his day with a sense of contentment and satisfaction, open to the endless health and life-enhancing benefits of shared, sacramental pleasure.

The Left Hand Path initiate loves other humans enough to hold them to a far higher standard than they are used to.

I think this is a reasonable observation when it comes to love of god (because it's true that unity with the divine is the purpose of the RHP)

but when the bring it to romantic love between humans, it's wildly off-base and falling into almost a mage-itis trap, of thinking no one else knows what you(r path) knows, etc. It's just not the case that only LHP practitioners are capable of romantic love that allows the beloved to be independent, etc

I mean at the most base level, polyamory / relationship anarchy is common among occultists (and non-occultists) of all stripes, you can't throw a rock these days without hitting a poly couple/throuple/polycule. Pushing each other to grow and speaking up when we think they're on the wrong path is also standard practice for healthy couples.

I'm not an RA but my husband and I don't live together because we both value our independence and alone time/space so much. Not claiming we're perfect paragons of how to love, it's just a tangible example of separateness - my point is that I'm not special, that a non-engulfing love is easily found in people from all paths, and conversely there are plenty of LHP people who are demonically jealous

It was interesting and valuable to read your philosophy of how you see the LHP and what living by its principles looks like to you. I might even have gone "oh cool, it's nice to see that the LHP leads to an approach to romantic love that I really support"

But as soon as you say "we're the ONLY people that are capable of healthy relationships" I mean... It's kind of an arrogant worldview. It seems to be theoretical rather than based on actually meeting people from different paths

Post automatically merged: Jan 4, 2024

(just a quick clarification: it maybe sounds like I'm saying only poly couples are in healthy relationships and capable of supporting each other's separateness and independence - I'm not, and am not poly. It's just that it's an example of separateness that is clearly but exclusive to LHP)

Post automatically merged: Jan 4, 2024

*NOT exclusive

 

[Wintruz]

But as soon as you say "we're the ONLY people that are capable of healthy relationships" I mean... It's kind of an arrogant worldview. It seems to be theoretical rather than based on actually meeting people from different paths

It's interesting that this is what you perceived in these words. Because it's not in the words I wrote.

Considering the enormous amounts of time and energy wasted, it gives me no pleasure to say that I have personally known many people "from different paths". Given how small our numbers are, I'd certainly hazard I've known far more of them than you have of people further down the Left Hand Path than the shallow end.

You would be making a mistake in supposing that a complex understanding is somehow not rooted in living, breathing reality. However, in a certain sense, what I wrote is "theoretical"; many people who claim to be RHP deal with romantic love in a way closer to what I described in the above post than they do in accordance with their tradition. Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and, before it gave up, Christianity, all advocate avoidance of immersion in passionate love. Still, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and Christians do it anyway. Often their creed will create an unconscious tumult that they'll end up bringing to their relationships.

All of that is a long way removed from a genuine LHP initiate who knows how to use their love and desire to regenerate themselves and, through that, to increase the power of their love and desire. That part is not so theoretical but deeply personal and deeply rooted in Living.

I might even have gone "oh cool, it's nice to see that the LHP leads to an approach to romantic love that I really support"

I shall have to learn to live with your disappointment.

 

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

One of the major contentions against the Left Hand Path is that it is a path without love. Given the persistence of unintelligent, destructive types who excuse their dysfunction by wrapping it in the traditional imagery of the Left Hand Path (ie; Satanism or Vampyrism), it's easy to understand why many harbour this misconception. Well, my wicked, unstaked Heart might be woozy with advocaat and befuddled with myrrh-scented candles but this misconception is a misconception.

A path which consciously seeks mastery over what the Buddhists call "attachments" through immersion in attachments, which sees in those attachments a reflection of the Self, the Left Hand Path is the only spiritual path which advocates Love from the vantage point of separation, a pre-requisite for loving a thing as it is, in itself. While conventional religions teach permanent union, so that the love of the divine and the love of the acolyte are obliterated in each other, the Left Hand Path initiate seeks not to obliterate their love but to immortalise it. They know that love is a sacred emanation from their deepest Self, a pulsation from their beating Heart/Coeur.

In ecstasy, initiates will temporarily unite with their love but this experience always enhances the state of separateness. On the romantic level, an initiate gives themselves fully to their beloved but this state reinforces their individual experience of Life rather than acts as an escape from it. The true Black Magician takes joy in knowing that after an early morning together, her/his beloved will go about her/his day with a sense of contentment and satisfaction, open to the endless health and life-enhancing benefits of shared, sacramental pleasure. Most importantly, the Black Magician knows that the virtues they glimpse in their beloved represent the Graal to which s/he endlessly strives.

Elsewhere, because the Left Hand Path is free of the disgraceful Abrahamic biases against non-human animals (excepting Francis of Assisi), its initiates are free to indulge in guiltless attachment to their animal friends, so often far more virtuous, far more deserving of love than hideous human parasites, demanding energy in one form or another. The initiate does not see in his/her relationship with animals that old adage of "serving others is serving God" but instead accepts animals as an end unto themselves, as individual, unique wonders. Because the Left Hand Path sees spirit and matter as totally immersed and inseparable, I know that in giving my cat something he enjoys, I am giving it to his whole being, not merely "feeding the flesh". I know too that when he brings me a leaf he has chosen, it's a sacred signal from his essence to mine. The flip side of this love is the burning hatred and unapologetic violence I would take pleasure in bringing upon those "ugly, degenerate human bastards" who would harm such manifestations of Life.

The Left Hand Path initiate loves other humans enough to hold them to a far higher standard than they are used to. Against a creed which says "forgive him seventy times seven", the Black Magician says "No! There are ways which will strengthen the best within you and those around you. Act the fool and violate those ways once and you will get a warning. Violate them again and again and evolution will correct your path, possibly through me!". We love, with the deepest love, what many other human beings are capable of Becoming. I celebrate and raise my glass to them when they reach checkpoints on the way to Becoming. To mollycoddle weakness, to cry in mawkishness, is to betray the depths of this love.

This is applied to ourselves as well as our neighbour. For, most importantly, the Black Magician loves his/her Self. Not with the poisonous "Perfect as I am" mantra (beloved of those who are so often below-average, much less perfect), but instead in a way which lives out that statement by one of the most beautiful minds:

Question ... if there was no Abrahamic God, nor its religions, how would the LHP be held in higher esteem, particularly with sexual, healthy relationships? It seems to me, demonized or not ... Many LHP entities are inherently toxic.

 

[Wintruz]

Question ... if there was no Abrahamic God, nor its religions, how would the LHP be held in higher esteem, particularly with sexual, healthy relationships? It seems to me, demonized or not ... Many LHP entities are inherently toxic.

The Left Hand Path is a path of radical individuation. There are some practices which belong to it which are there because they are powerful ways of generating individuation (especially in the early days). An intelligent Satanist doesn't engage in a Black Mass because they think it hurts YHVH but because it represents a rejection of the limitations that have been placed on them by an external authority (say, a Catholic education). In pursuit of individuation, LHP initiates are led to extreme experiences, explore their shadow, deal with unusual states of consciousness and so on. All of this either destroys the initiate by sending them mad or else leads them to total self-mastery at a relatively fast rate. That is why the LHP is dangerous.

In a world without Abrahamism, the LHP would probably be called by a different name but it would still exist (as it did in the ancient world and as it does outside of Abrahamic influences). It's not dependent on rebelling against the Abrahamic God and there are no "LHP entities". There may be patterns in myths but how they are worked with, if at all, is up to the individual. Clever people use those patterns to give themselves more energy/power so that they can further their journey to individuation.

The benefits to personal relationships are the same as any kind of individuation. A person who is fully realised empowers self-realisation in those they love and, ironically, they tend to be much kinder people to those who are trying. Domestic abuse, lying, etc. are carried out by people who are damaged. Not Masters.

 

[Voidking]

Traditionally, the LHP if we take it as it originates in the Hindu Tantra as Vamachara, Individuation has in my opinion nothing to do with real LHP.
Real LHP practitioners in the Hindu and Buddhist sense are the Virya and Divya, that is to say "Heroes" and "Gods". The heroes are people with an extreme sense of self-discpline and asceticism, and hence they can RESPONSIBLY use the five forbidden things to cultivate their kundalini and consort with Shiva and Shakti (and their different manifestations). Morever, eastern LHP is an attempt to find the sacred in the profane, their philosophies are based on NON-DUALITY, GOOD and EVIL are both LOVE.

Now talking about love, there can be no real unconditional love as long the sense of "self" or a "poor little me" exists in a kind of "toxic sense". All type of human love is conditional and transactional, I love you because I like you, or because you are my type, or because you are my friend, "I" "my" and "mine", how selfish.

For people who operate from a state of emptiness, or spaciousness, these people are a fountain of unconditional love, they do no chose to love, they ARE love, love is not an emotion but a state of being. Remember, everything existing in empty space, empty space cannot reject anything.

Therefore all "love" is conditioned as long as the sense of "self" exists.

Now yes, western LHP is full of traumatized people.

 

[Wintruz]

Here, I was writing from a Western Left Hand Path perspective, which doesn't originate in Hindu Tantra but is an emergent, Western tradition rooted in the Decadents, Nietzsche, Guido von List, Gurdjieff, codified in Thelema and refined by Aquino, Hine, Myatt and all who sincerely start the Work.

That's not to say that the Eastern Left Hand Path doesn't resonate with me but it's the older, medieval understanding of vāmamārga as a method of uniting with individual divinity (jivatman) that interests me. Not so much the modern attempts to sanitise/domesticate Tantra into yet another form of self-annihilation. The Bodhisattva, one who has fully realised themselves but refused annihilation, is close to the goals of the Western LHP and has undergone a process of individuation by whatever other name it's called.

 

[Mars]

Traditionally, the LHP if we take it as it originates in the Hindu Tantra as Vamachara, Individuation has in my opinion nothing to do with real LHP.
Real LHP practitioners in the Hindu and Buddhist sense are the Virya and Divya, that is to say "Heroes" and "Gods". The heroes are people with an extreme sense of self-discpline and asceticism, and hence they can RESPONSIBLY use the five forbidden things to cultivate their kundalini and consort with Shiva and Shakti (and their different manifestations). Morever, eastern LHP is an attempt to find the sacred in the profane, their philosophies are based on NON-DUALITY, GOOD and EVIL are both LOVE.

Now talking about love, there can be no real unconditional love as long the sense of "self" or a "poor little me" exists in a kind of "toxic sense". All type of human love is conditional and transactional, I love you because I like you, or because you are my type, or because you are my friend, "I" "my" and "mine", how selfish.

For people who operate from a state of emptiness, or spaciousness, these people are a fountain of unconditional love, they do no chose to love, they ARE love, love is not an emotion but a state of being. Remember, everything existing in empty space, empty space cannot reject anything.

Therefore all "love" is conditioned as long as the sense of "self" exists.

Now yes, western LHP is full of traumatized people.

This.

Although the sacred Veda do not mention any of the sorts, it can be derived out of them. (And most likely was done so)

Krsna suggested Humans should take the "left hand" path in the Kali Yuga, since the right hand path is almost impossible to take in this age. And if even this is not possible, then Bhakti-Yoga or specifically sarva-dharman. Which could be interpreted as being a "left hand" path discipline.

Bhagavad-Gita Ch.18. Verse 66.

 

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

I humbly disagree.

 

[Vandheer]

I humbly disagree.

Why though?

 

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

From the second part of The Practical Kabbalah":

"
THE PRACTICAL KABBALAH - Part II



It is to this Work of Universal Redemption and Communion, which makes Man an auxiliary to GOD, that Theurgy invites the Adept.

Perhaps he will not achieve visible miracles, and perhaps he will be forever ignorant of the Good, which he will have realized. But in this very ignorance, his work will be one hundred times greater than that of the black magician, even if the latter accomplishes the most astonishing spells.

For these latter types will only express the reality of archetypal Evil and collaborate with it. Nobody can doubt the reality of this Evil, and collaboration with it is truly of no use...

Magic shows us that nothing is lost, and that all comes back to take its place once more. “Each shall sow that which he shall reap, and reap that which he sows”, Scripture tells us.

The Black magician, at heart, is an ignorant man who plays the game of the fool!

His desires or his hates poison his days, and represent lost time for true Knowledge. In the twilight of his life, he will get the point. Neither Love nor Fortune nor Youth nor Beauty will be at his bedside to justify his wasted Hours. There will only remain one thing: a debt to pay, in this life or in another, and no creature on God’s earth will be able to pay it for him.

For, in desiring to mold such powerful and unknown “Forces”, as mysterious as they are redoubtable, to his fleeting fantasies, he will perhaps become their unconscious slave, but never their master! ... Without knowing it, he will have become their servant ...

“When we lie and defraud”, said Mephistopheles, “we give what is ours!” In the voice of Goethe, it is that anonymous crowd of Initiates through all ages which warns us!
"

Post automatically merged: Feb 14, 2024

Even though I had love for others, I cursed two organizations (which backfired on me since I used my name tags rather than just logos as the sympathetic link), and two individuals. One I dont hear more of, and the other got hit by a car.

I hadnt grown up then, but Im growing now. Up or down is the question, hopefully up. Regret and remorse I feel daily for all acts Ive done in my life that have hurt others.

Post automatically merged: Feb 14, 2024

My point it, we can Love, whether LHP or RHP, but the motives should continually be questioned.

 

[Vandheer]

Left Hand Path doesn't neccesarily equate to doing black magick all the time, being a teenager drama queen, doing pacts with Goetia 24/7. The above posts are making it clear. Left Hand Path, at the very least the proper version of it. The power is in self mastery.

Which doesn't equal to narcisism but its more of a "master thyself" work. Gurdjieff seems to be an excellent source. I am looking at some of my actions for example and honestly the dude is completely right, I am more machine than man, many of my choices are simply ruled by unconcious.

Let me switch the compass to yours truly for a second. You just can't help yourself but react anytime LHP is mentioned despite you have been repeatedly told LHP is not all about black magick, if at all about, can you?

So yeah whats that Mathers quote good for? I don't see how its relevant at all.