Tantra and Madame Blavatsky Vāmācāra is a
Sanskrit term meaning "left-handed attainment". The converse term is
dakshinachara. The
Western use of the terms
left-hand path and
right-hand path originated with
Madame Blavatsky, a 19th-century occultist who founded the
Theosophical Society. She had travelled across parts of
southern Asia and gave accounts of having met with many mystics and magical practitioners in
India and
Tibet. She developed the term
left-hand path as a translation of the term
vamachara, an Indian
Tantric practice that emphasised the breaking of Hindu societal taboos by having
sexual intercourse in ritual, drinking
alcohol, eating
meat and assembling in graveyards, as a part of the spiritual practice. The term
vamachara literally meant "the left-hand way" in
Sanskrit, and it was from this that Blavatsky first coined the term. Returning to Europe, Blavatsky began using the term. It was relatively easy for her to associate
left with
evil in many European countries, where it already has had an association with evil and bad luck since the Classical Latin era. As the historian Dave Evans noted,
homosexuals were referred to as "left-handed", while in
Protestant nations
Roman Catholics were called "left-footers".
Adoption into the Western esoteric tradition In New York, Madame Blavatsky founded the
Theosophical Society with several other people in 1875. She set about writing several books, including
Isis Unveiled (1877), in which she introduced the terms
left-hand path and
right-hand path, firmly stating that she herself followed the RHP, and that followers of the LHP were practitioners of black magic who were a threat to society. The occult community soon picked up on her newly introduced duality, which, according to historian Dave Evans, "had not been known before" in the Western Esoteric Tradition. For instance,
Dion Fortune, founder of the magical group the
Society of the Inner Light, also took the side of the RHP, making the claim that followers of the LHP were
homosexuals and that Indian servants might use malicious magical rites devoted to the goddess
Kali against their European masters.
Aleister Crowley further altered and popularized the term in certain occult circles, referring to a "brother of the left-hand path", or a "black brother", as one who failed to attain the grade of
Magister Templi in Crowley's system of ceremonial magic. Crowley also referred to the left-hand path when describing the point at which the
Adeptus Exemptus chooses to cross the Abyss, which is the location of
Choronzon and the illusory eleventh
Sephira, which is
Da'ath or Knowledge. In this example, the adept must surrender all, including the guidance of his
Holy Guardian Angel, and leap into the Abyss. If his accumulated
karma is sufficient, and if he has been utterly thorough in his own self-destruction, he becomes a "babe of the abyss", arising as a Star in the Crowleyan system. On the other hand, if he retains some fragment of ego, or if he fears to cross, he then becomes encysted. The layers of his self, which he could have shed in the Abyss, ossify around him. He is then titled a "brother of the left-hand path", who will eventually be broken up and disintegrated against his will, since he failed to choose voluntary disintegration. Crowley associated all this with "Mary, a blasphemy against
Babalon", and with the celibacy of Christian clergy. A figure Fortune considered to be a follower of the LHP was
Arthur Edward Waite, who did not recognise these terms, and acknowledged that they were newly introduced and that in any case he believed the terms LHP and RHP to be distinct from black and white magic. However, despite Waite's attempts to distinguish the two, the equation of the LHP with black magic was propagated more widely in the fiction of
Dennis Wheatley; Wheatley also conflated the two with
Satanism and also the political ideology of
communism, which he viewed as a threat to traditional British society.
Later 20th and 21st centuries In the latter half of the 20th century various groups arose that self-professedly described themselves as LHP but did not consider themselves as practicing black magic. In 1975,
Kenneth Grant, a student of Aleister Crowley, explained in
Cults of the Shadow that he and his group, the
Typhonian Order, practiced the LHP. Grant's usage takes meaning from its roots in eastern Tantra; Grant states that it is about challenging taboos, but that it should be used in conjunction with the RHP to achieve balance. ==See also==