AMBIDEXTERITY: RIGHT AND LEFT HAND PATHS IN MAGIC

It is worth here attempting briefly to differentiate Right Hand Path and Left Hand Path magical systems.

There are two explanations for the terms Right Hand Path and Left Hand Path. One is that they represent the two methods of attaining enlightenment among the Hindu religious class. Most monks or sadhus take the Right Hand Path. Their path is one of virtue, of community, and of obedience to wise teachers or traditional precepts. They seek enlightenment beyond this world. A few, however, are drawn to Left Hand Path practice, and they tend to be individualistic and antinomian, turning away from social norms and focusing on individual power. I think of these paths as two ways up the mountain; same mountain, but with the choice of a broad, sociable, light-infused way versus a way that is obscure, solitary and dangerous.

The other explanation for the terms traces them back to the quirks of Roman urban planning. There was a dualistic element to Roman spiritual thinking, which possibly hearkened back to the earlier inhabitants of Italy, the Etruscans. They wanted to divide civic activities into those that occurred on the right hand of the citadel, and those that occurred on the left. On the right hand were government buildings, theatres, and the architecture of public life. On the left hand, outside the city proper, were the necropolis and other structures that were associated with the dead. Thus the left side was seen as wild, dangerous, and sinister. It is where our word sinister comes from. It is no coincidence that the left hand path is associated with the dead. Where the dead are, magic is. Those who work with the dead, sorcerers or necromancers, or even those who undertake more mundane pursuits with the dead, are othered as dangerous outsiders who are consulted only when necessary. Magic has always been associated with the dead and has often been the preserve of the outsider.

Much high Right Hand Path magic takes its cue from the ontological framework of religion. It employs techniques such as yoga or meditation, in order to gain power in the sense of vitality and understanding. Its aim is to change reality in accordance with will, but it bounds itself by morality and the consideration of the welfare of others. Pagan magic is sometimes bounded in this way, for example when Wiccans claim that if you do a bad thing it will come back to you threefold. Most practitioners of magic work on the RHP even if they see themselves as subverting dominant systems of power or embracing marginalised people and ideas. Famous transgressors such as Aleister Crowley and Jack Parsons were teleologically RHP. Their goals were to gain enlightenment, to merge with the Divine and to subsume their egos or ordinary selves. These goals are remarkably similar to the religious mystic.

RHP magic is often aligned with the New Age/New Thought ideas mentioned above. Here is a very typical example that might come across your Facebook newsfeed at any time:

          ‘Witch tip: Wash your front door with warm water and essential oils of         rosemary and spearmint to invite good vibes, love wisdom and protection         into your home’

I can’t find the source of this ‘witch tip’ I am afraid. But it is a nice example of contemporary low or folk RHP magic, in that it is relatively easy, harms none, and is aimed at generalised goodness rather than anything specific. You don’t have to stretch yourself psychically to achieve it. It is not dangerous or confronting. It is in tune with the age, and with most other practices including religious ones.

The Left Hand Path is the form of magical and other spiritual work that embraces the Nightside. Conventional magical experience exists in a consensual bubble. The Nightside is all that we fear, all the dark and glorious power of the forbidden that we must experience and understand in order to gain power and understanding. It is thus a very individual and mostly solitary path. There are many ways into the Nightside, possibly as many as there are LHP practitioners. However, there are also acknowledged experts who possess proven wisdom and whose advice is sought. LHP thinking includes forms of Satanism both theistic and non-theistic, Luciferianism and Dark Paganism. There are also LHP elements within the great religions. For example, some Hindu Sadhus such as the Aghori undergo rituals that deliberately subvert religious practice. There is often a ‘dark’ kernel within the usual mystical traditions. LHP is teleologically different. The aim is not oneness with reality or death of the ego, but to attain enlightenment and then swerve away from it, to say no to union with the divine and become a god instead. It is a captivating idea that an adept may have to do dangerous and terrible things in order to speed their way to enlightenment. It is also captivating to think there is a way to kick yourself out of the whole shebang, to use your own power to transcend karma or causal reality, and to become a god or godlike.

Techniques for RHP and LHP magic can often be the same, especially at the beginning. Meditation, memorization, ritual discipline, visualization, chakra work, yoga, study, all are germane here. It is the goal that is different. 

I have a feel for the Left Hand Path because it is where I started, and I have great respect for those who manage it safely. I now think the goals of magical practice evolve as the magician does, and the distinctions collapse in the final moment. 

And, blessings on you, gentle reader, or Ave Satanas, whichever you prefer.

 

AN ENTIRELY SUBJECTIVE HISTORY OF WESTERN MAGIC, WITH SOME DEFINITIONS

 

This post is an entirely subjective history of magic. I am aware there are some big gaps, and I am describing only the bits that interest me. Use it as start for further research. I want to introduce some ideas about the magician as 'other', and about how changes in how the development of science has changed magic.I figure if you want to do sex magic, you need to know something about what magic is. 

Here I will discuss Western formal magic, as influenced by local and folk knowledge and the spiritual and magical practices of the Middle East and the Levant. I am not talking directly about Far Eastern magic or about Shamanism or religious mysticism, even though these naturally intersect.

Linguistic evidence indicates that early Europeans such as the ancient Greeks did not have a word for magic. They had words for practices that were carried out by those who were knowledgeable. A good example is the word pharmakon, which gives our words like pharmacy and pharmaceutical. Pharmakon meant healing, often by means of herbs, but also other forms of treatment. It also meant the use of herbs for harming people. Another ancient Greek word which has entered the magical vocabulary is goetia. Its original meaning was wailing or vocal mourning, particularly as practiced by professional mourners at funerals. Funerals intersect the dead and the living, and so these mourners who practiced goetia became associated with the dead. Where the dead are, there is mystery and the unnatural. Treating with the dead is risky, uncanny and quite possibly the source of great power. Probably magical, in fact. Except that word only came into use when the Greeks met up with the Persians, and their wise men called the Magi. Thus the idea of magic as a separate activity, and of the magician as a practitioner of this activity, developed slowly over time.

Many traditionally minded cultures had a great suspicion of the culture next door. They considered their next-door neighbours to be barbarians, but interesting, mysterious, powerful and frightening barbarians nevertheless.  

The Norse, for example, revealed this in their writing about the Finns (whom they called Lapps, a pejorative term). The Finns were untrustworthy, dirty and definitely inferior. Finnish spirituality was weird and primitive. And yet these wild and uncivilised creatures had powers that were beyond Norse ken, and Finnish shamans were worth consulting if you didn’t mind getting your reputation soiled.

The Greeks felt the same about the Persians. Their term for the wise among the Persians, Magi, was not quite a slur but it was not respectful either. It hinted at the mysterious, the untrustworthy and the possibly dangerous. And it is where we get our word magic from.

I mention this othering of the culture next door for more personal reasons. If you are to practice magic, chances are you will find yourself in the position of the Finns or Persians. We are now pretty smart about the cultures of the world, but that doesn’t necessarily make us less xenophobic or untrusting of people who are not like us. We live within our respective societies and at least in part within our cultural norms. Yet if we practice magic we are the strange ones next door. We are the ones who may be considered weird and a bit dangerous. Get used to being othered. It can be to your advantage.

So we finally come to the word magic itself, and it is time to look at what it has become.

Here are some opinions from the knowledgeable:

 

"Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will". - Aleister Crowley

 

"Magic is the art of changing consciousness according to Will".  - Dion Fortune

 

 "Attempting to cause the physically unusual" – Gerald Gardner

 

 "The change in situations or events in accordance with one's will, which would, using normally acceptable methods, be unchangeable." – Anton LaVey

 

Magic is the highest most absolute and divine knowledge of natural philosophy advanced in its works and wonderful operations by a right understanding of the inward and occult vertue of things, so that true agents being applied to proper patients, strange and admirable effects will thereby be produced; whence magicians are profound and diligent searchers into nature, they because of their skill know how to anticipate an effect which to the vulgar shall seem a miracle.

-         Lamegeton Clavicula Salomonis, or the Lesser Key of Solomon, digital edition by Joseph H Peterson, 1999

 

Today, in North America, where ‘the Magic’ is a basketball team in a Disney city in Florida, the word is looser than it used to be. Stage conjuring can be magic, also anything seen as faked, unexplained, mysterious, supernatural or just very, very impressive (like Earvin Johnston, a wizard with the ball)

-         The Book of Magic: from Antiquity to the Enllightenment, Introduction by Brian Copenhaver, p. xx, 2015

 

Magic is a way of being and seeing that involves particular techniques that perform various functions:

-         To manifest our desires

-         To shield us from external sources of energy, (mostly negative)

-         To activate our internal energy centers

-         To attune us to the currents of energy active in our lives, the world, and the larger universe.

 

-         High Marick: A Guide to the Spiritual Practices that Saved My Life on Death Row, Damien Echols, p. 10

 

OK , so spot the odd one out. Correct, it is the quote from the late medieval Lesser Key of Solomon. What’s the difference?

Early medieval magical practice seems to have been more about manipulating environments than about manipulating states of consciousness. The medieval grimoires which have come down to us talk about spells and physical workings,  within a framework of astrological or seasonal alignments. These magicians studied the stars and the earth. They did their magic at the right time and place. They followed the instructions of the spell and the working, and then left the magic to take its course. They did not describe any psychological understandings or changes in states of consciousness. Magic did not seem to involve inner states. Of course, when we read about these workings from a twenty first century standpoint, we want to insert our own understandings, and maybe it is a function of language that magicians did not describe these inner states. I consider two reasons for this.

One reason relates to the telos of magic. Why does anyone practise magic? During the early medieval times, magicians seemed to want power and knowledge, and to manipulate their environments. They were technicians, and perhaps proto-scientists, but they were also philosophers of the world around them. You could say they were using ‘unnatural’ means to understand ‘natural’ philosophy.

Another reason may be because the magicians of the time were influenced by the great religions, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. All of these religions have an ambivalent relationship with magic, at the very least, or at least officially. Magicians may have feared persecution and misunderstanding.

They may also simply have used the intellectual and conceptual tools available to them. Spells from those early grimoires such as the Grimorum Verum involved some wild syncretism by our standards. The magician would invoke a demon in the name of Christ, making the sign of the cross after each word. Or make a spell to manipulate or hurt people, using human body parts for example, but also using a story about a saint or the life of Jesus to illustrate how the spell might work.

They wrote as if entities such as angels or demons existed in this ordinary reality. They would contact them in the way me might make a phone call or program a computer. With our post modern approach, we might see these entities as forces or beings from other dimensions. We may also see them as part of a collective unconscious, or parts of our own selves. In the words of occultist Lon Milo Duquette: ‘It’s all in your head, you just have no idea how big your head is’.

Here is an example. This is from the Goetia (yes that word again, in its current form, now specific to magic). The Goetia is part of the Lesser Key of Solomon, which was quoted earlier. It is a book of sorcery dated possibly from the sixteenth century, and it forms the basis of much modern Demonolatry. It is predicated on the idea that 72 demons followed Solomon, who was himself a great sorcerer as well as the standard Biblical figure. Solomon trapped these demons in a bottle, but they have somehow been released since then to plague the world. A clever magician can manage these dark powers, by calling them and constraining them. This particular paragraph is about the Demon Belial.

The 68^th spirit is called Belial, he is a mighty king and powerfull; he was Created next after Lucifer, & is of his order; he appeareth in y^e forme of a Beautiful angel sitting in a Charriot of fire, speaking w^th a comly voice, declaring that he fell first & amongst y^e worthier & wiser sort w^ch went before Michael & other heavenly angels; his office is to distribute preferments of senatorships, and to cause favour of friends & foes, he giveth Excellent familiars & governeth 80 Legions of spirits. Note this kink [! king] Belial must have offerings sacrafices & gifts presented to him, by y^e Exorcist or else he w^ill not give True answares to his demands; But then he Tarryeth [will tarry] not one hour in y^e truth except [unless] he be constrained by devine power & his seal is Thus w^ch is to be worne as a Lamin, before y^e Exorcist &c.

-         Peterson, ibid

Belial has a long pedigree going back to the Dead Sea Scrolls, and he is a complex entity. His name means worthless. He could be the champion of those who feel worthless, or he could make things worthless. He is beautiful and treacherous, the father of lies. He is also lustful and his character is base. Modern magicians associate him with the earth element. This paragraph from the Lesser Key talks about him in a purely pragmatic way. This is what he looks like, this is what he says, this is what he will do for you, this is how to manage him and how to use him to get what you want. Get it right, and he will give you earthly power. Make a sacrifice to him, and he will tell you the truth. It’s a business relationship. To transact with Belial, the magician does not need to know anything more about him. The magician does not change their state of consciousness in order to develop understanding or open themselves up to other realities. The magician is suspicious of Belial, as of all these entities. They ask for favours and made sacrifices, but they remain firmly within their magic circle and keep themselves safe. They sup with the devil with a very long spoon.

In contrast, when I met Belial it was with the aim of asking him to teach me about myself. I wanted to learn about my own ‘base’ nature, the part of me that is about earth and desire and darkness.  I didn’t want to evoke Belial, extract knowledge from and him and banish him. That seemed disrespectful. It would be like inviting a guest for dinner, then telling them they are way too scary, and making them eat in the porch. We must show respect for the entities we work with as they are greater than we are, but we must also stand before them and act as our best selves when in non-ordinary reality.

Thus I devised a complicated yet portable ritual which I carried out at midnight for seven days. I did this while on night shift at my job, at home, and on holiday. At the end of it, Belial kicked me right to the kerb. He found my efforts to be half hearted and mechanical. He told me that if I needed to contact my own earthy nature, I needed to be a lot braver.

It was one of my first attempts at demonolatry. I was chastened but also aware I may have got off lightly. When faced with the power of an old wise badass such as Belial, we are pretty much down to the bone. We can’t lie or dissemble and all we can do is go back to waxing on and waxing off like the beginners we really are.

Our knowledge of Western formal magic owes a lot to the magicians and writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. They worked hard to established historicity for their art, claiming their practices were rooted in antiquity even when they weren’t. However, they were involved in a major post Enlightenment philosophical shift, as magic became a function of the mind.

This was the time of spiritualism and psychic investigation. Victorian positivist thinking exalted the rules of science. The world made sense. Scientific truths could be extruded from the murk of ignorance and superstition. Physical reality was governed by rules and fixed principles. Therefore spiritual or occult realities should be amenable to observation and investigation, in the same manner as natural phenomena. The key to understanding these realities was the mind. Magic may have had an effect on the physical world, but it did its work via the mind. The mind itself was observable and amenable to science. We could analyse our thoughts and also change them. Changing our thoughts changed our reality.

Think of it like this. In medieval and early modern times, a magician could do a spell to make them invisible. In the nineteenth century, the magician could do a spell to make people not see them.

I want to say something about the history of ritual and actual praxis, as opposed to scholarship and theory. Early medieval magic seems to have been elite and wilfully obscurantist. Magicians were often intellectuals, doctors or religious clerics. They saw their art as a form of experimental enquiry. Their work intersected with medicine, and the very early physical sciences, such as astronomy. They also practised with commitment. Magic was rigorous and solitary. It took a lifetime of study.

By the early modern period, magical practice had become less esoteric. The printing press had enabled the emerging middle class to own and read books. Classical scientific and philosophical texts had been held and nurtured within the Islamic world during the supposed dark ages, but it was now freely available in Europe. There was also a burgeoning folk magic, and by the early nineteenth century a surprisingly large number of households owned books of magical spells for all sorts of everyday issues such as curing sick animals, making spouses faithful, and finding treasure. Here, magic intersects with hedge witchery and folk religion. Some of the ritual of these grimoires was quite elaborate, but it was pragmatic. The goals were always practical. The instructions did not involve any moral imperative or any change of state of consciousness.

The next group of mid to late nineteenth century practitioners hearkened back to the high magic of the early medieval period. They formed initiatory orders, took magical names, and made very elaborate rituals which they claimed came from ancient (and therefore wiser) times. They were influenced by the romantism and mysticism that came from two quite different sources: a longing for a simpler, folkish golden age in Europe, and the new interest in the mystic East. They were elitist and secretive.

A classic example of nineteenth century magical ritual would be the Abramelin Operation as propounded by SL McGregor Mathers of the Order of the Golden Dawn. This ritual was designed to take months and involved a complete lifestyle commitment and isolation. Its aim was contact with the magician’s Holy Guardian Angel. The purpose of this was the usual one, to develop what we would now call superpowers and influence the world. However, the rigours and length of time of the ritual made for a psychological shift. The magician came out of it, changed, powerful in themselves, with greater spiritual capacity. Personal spiritual development was not a stated aim for the initiate, but it grew out of the work, and it is easy to consider that it may have been the hidden goal all along.

We understand this instinctually now from pop culture. If the movie hero has a goal, such as learning kung fu or avenging a death, they must undergo a personal transformation of some sort in order to achieve it. This may seem incidental at the start, but by the end of the movie we have all seen how the hero has learned new things, or maybe even become a new person. This kind of ritual magic I have described above has this heroic, individualist quality. It is about the making of a new person. An initiation.

The nineteenth century also saw the beginning of what became known as New Thought. Briefly, this is the idea that our thoughts influence physical reality, or in a fuller form, that our thoughts are our reality. This idea is now folded into so much subsequent popular thinking that it has become almost indiscernable. From thinking and growing rich, to mindfulness, to the new age staple of the law of attraction, New Thought is hard to avoid. It has influenced our ideas about health, politics and success. When we tell ourselves we must be positive about our lives, we are talking New Thought. When we expect our positive thinking to result in wealth or health or good fortune, or when we are disappointed because it hasn’t, we are deep in New Thought.

New Thought is worth its own paragraph because it is close to magic and some magicians have been quite open about this. Magic is about intent, and about hooking Will up to Desire. It is also individualistic and often opportunistic. New Thought is fundamentally amoral, unless it is hedged about with notions of responsibility or ‘karma’, or the great virtues. By itself, it is amoral. It is between me and the power of my thought. Magic is the same; without the threefold law or whatever moral and ethical framework you have, it is amoral. It is between me and my Will. If I am a chaos magician and I want to give the political system a nudge, just to watch what happens, just because I damn well feel like it, then that is enough. It is enough that I have influenced the world. That is how I know I have the power. I may or may not be interested in what happens downwind.

And so, by the twentieth century, magical instruction had largely decoupled itself from its religious roots. Gone were the elaborate rituals and the secrecy. The new deconstructionist magical grammar was free form and emphasised individual creativity. The very notion of belief was undermined as magic was seen as being entirely subjective within a shifting, post-quantum matrix of intersecting possibilities.

Magical praxis may now absorb its influences from throughout the ages. Practitioners may use traditional Goetic demonolatry, invoke pagan Gods, and dabble in hedge witchery all together. This is a world that cares little for orthodoxy and unity. Wisdom is gained from shared experience as much as from theory. Populations are fluid and communities ebb and flow online and in vivo. Different groups are often at odds with each other. 

More complexity to follow, as I outline Left and Right Hand Path magic. 

Blessings on you, gentle reader.