Strategic Sorcery and the Left Hand Path

Aaron Leitch the other day stated that “There is no such thing as LHP and RHP. If you’re using those terms, you are playing a fantasy rather than practicing real magick.”  I think I get what he is getting at, but it’s not as simple as that. It did get me thinking and reflecting though, especially since I am booked to speak at a Left Hand Path conference in Montreal this October.

The Vamachara

The western occult world borrowed this left and right hand path distinction from Theosophists who in turn borrowed it from India. The Vamachara ( left-handed attainment) and Vamamarga (left hand path) speak to using things normally thought of as poisons of the mind as the path to enlightenment. Someone practicing a Tantra where they engage in sexual yoga, drinking alcohol, eating unclean meats, living in charnel grounds, and dealing with wrathful spirits can be said to be on the left-hand path. Just as venom can be transmuted to make anti-venom, these heterodox elements that ordinarily would lead one further into delusion, can be used to create enlightenment.

There isn’t room here for a full unpacking of Vamacharya. The important thing to remember here is that we are discussing method, not goal. The goal is the same – the methods for achieving that goal are what determine left and right hand paths.

The Individual Exalted

In the west, ever since the creation of the Church of Satan and probably before, what defines the Left Hand Path is not only the methodology, though certainly there is an embrace of antinomian behavior, but the goal. This philosophy insists that the right hand path is about the dissolving the individual, whereas the left hand path is about exalting and deifying the individual as separate from the universe. How the LHP thinks about the individual differs from group to group: some exalt the ego and the embrace mans most animal instinct, others have an approach of refining and transforming our ego into something greater but still individuated from the rest of the universe.

The biggest problem with this thinking is that the LHP is defining itself against a RHP philosophy that almost no-one has. Christians, Jew, and Muslims don’t believe that their ego dissolves into nothingness, and neither do most Buddhists for that matter, though some do. For the most part though, the RHP as the LHP defines it does not exist, casting the difference that has been outlined into question.

For my money, no-one has ever dissolved their individuality nor crystallized their personal ego into eternity. I believe that Buddha and Christ had HUGE COSMIC BIG GULP sized Ego’s that changed the world. I think expanding ego to that size gives you the freedom to move around in it that will free you from the foibles of people trapped in very small ego cages. I believe that the individual consciousness doesn’t dissolve, but also that it is forever interdependent with the universe – forever being shaped by its experience with things as basic as body, brain, and upbringing to the momentarily fleeting elements of the triple Americano I had this morning.

For me, its all about the freedom. I say, keep the ego, its the most useful tool we have, just don’t allow yourself to be locked inside a small corner of it.

So IS THERE a Left Hand Path?

Well, on the most surface level: yes obviously. In the same way that there is a Necronomicon. It may be filled with some questionable historical falsehoods and spooky looking art- but it’s real. I know, because I have a bunch of copies.

On a slightly deeper level the answer is maybe no. This is not how spirituality or magic ever divided itself historically and you find very few people outside of the Victorian period that defined themselves as “Right Hand Path”, which then kind of makes the distinction of a “Left Hand Path” unnecessary. Certainly the Dark aesthetic that often accompanies LHP material is somewhat new – some of which, but not all, can be dismissed as Darke Fluff, the nightside equivalent of Light Fluff.

But on a deeper level still, I think we have to answer with a RESOUNDING YES! Yes, there is a Left Hand Path because there are people practicing it and finding comfort, empowerment, self-possession, and truth in it.

Also a resounding yes because while the current distinctions between LHP and RHP may not hold up to historical analysis – there is still a dualism that takes place all over the world. There are paths of Sutra and Tantra. Tantra itself has peaceful and wrathful spirits. Vodou has hot and cool nations. Christianity has a spirit world populated with angels and demons. Shaman travel to underworld spheres of darkness and empyrean places of light.

This dividing line of good/evil, night/day, hot/cool, peaceful/wrathful, up/down, individualism/collectivism, etc etc always falls apart if we look at it too closely or too rigidly, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It is recognized in some form all over the world.

Working With Both Hands

As for me, I refuse to cut off my left or right hands. I work with both, and even run a Cyprianic School based on those teachings. Some scenario’s require embracing collective efforts whereas others require boldly standing against the crowd, even if you stand utterly alone.

On a personal note, reading left hand path authors and scrolls has given me a lot of excellent spiritual food that kept me grounded amidst communities where most people had their head and feet in the clouds. In particular, finding Don Webb writing as Uncle Setnakt when I was still a teenager helped me realize that sorcery had to be successful within the world, and thus not separated from non-magical actions, if it was going to be worth anything. So in that way, as well as many others, the LHP is part of my own spiritual make-up.