Reflections on the Left-hand path
With a two-part lecture series on the left-hand path later this month at Treadwells Bookshop 25 July and 8 August, I thought I’d share some personal observations on my previous identification with the LHP.
If you’d met me anytime between the late 1980s and early 1990s and asked me if I considered myself to be on the left-hand path, then I would have most definitely answered in the affirmative. After all, many of the areas of my life I was heavily invested were, according to the general occult wisdom of that time, evidence of being on the Left-Hand Path. Taking drugs, messing with demons, not being heterosexual, trying to bring occultism and politics together, an interest in transgressive spiritual practices and generally being an awkward and irreverent customer who challenged occult laws, overturned sacred cows and generally took the piss – I pretty much ticked all these boxes at one time or another. Oh – and I was Left-Handed too. One of my primary school teachers had tried to force me to write right-handed. They stopped when I developed a speech impediment.
If this was what the Left-Hand Path was about, then I certainly fitted that slot. I saw those who cleaved to the Right-Hand Path as being mired in convention, socially conservative, po-faced & boring. People who went along with the rules instead of striking out on their own; who never questioned what those in authority told them, who wouldn’t give money to a homeless person because he was working out his karmic debts.
But there was more to it. The Left-Hand Path, for many people, was a source of fear and horror and it was fun to stand up and say “Yep, I’m on the Left-Hand Path” and see them flinch. It was not unusual in the 1970s and 80s to see in the various occult “Contact Magazines” people advertising their groups and meetings but adding the rider, “no LHP”. One magazine even went as far as to proclaim that it would not even accept advertisements from those on the LHP.
What constituted the Left-Hand Path in people’s minds could be somewhat fluid. Apart from the obvious but often rather vaguely expressed relationship with Tantra, it could include Thelema if you didn’t like Aleister Crowley, who was let’s face it, highly suspect for numerous reasons. Satanism was definitely LHP, and Chaos Magic quickly got lumped in too, and TOPY. Any tradition, practice, or indeed individual who seemed too keen on sex and drugs could be swept into the LHP box and placed beyond the pale. At the same time, one might encounter stirring yarns on the occult scene about how various Right-Hand Path groups were embroiled in thrilling astral battles with the forces of evil. One time I met this guy at a party who said he was constantly battling black lodges who were trying to stop “the Great Work”. He asked me what I did in such situations. I turned to the woman who’d accompanied me to the gathering, who was wearing an assortment of studded leather garments. “Oh” I said “I just send Tracey round and she breaks their fingers”. Tracey grinned at the guy and cracked her knuckles. He left.
I had, by the early 1990s, cultivated what I saw as a Left-Hand Path magical persona. And I didn’t begin to question this attitude until I went to visit a friend, Samantha White, who ran an occult bookshop in Hull. At one point Sam said to me something along the lines of “You know you’re a much nicer person when you’re not being this Left-Hand Path Adept”.
Sometimes that’s all it takes – a comment from a friend, to allow you to see how badly you’ve fucked up. And it was Sam’s timely remark that started me questioning this whole Left-Hand Path vs Right-Hand Path binary. I began to see that what could be termed a Left-Hand Path ideology (of course some LHPers will tell you they don’t have an ideology) could be a rationalization for behaving like an arse, like the internet trolls who turn up and proudly announce that they are “tricksters” when called out for expressing racist or sexist views on internet forums. I remember one self-styled Left-Hand Path adept telling me with great satisfaction that he had transcended the boundaries of society to the point where he just couldn’t interact with “the masses” any more. It was existentially painful for him to be around “the sheep” when he went to outdoors. So his wife had to all the shopping. And I couldn’t help wondering what was elite about that. I started to think that the much-lauded LHP exhortation to be “an individual” was nothing more than what society told us to become anyway through advertising – “breaking the rules” and becoming an individual is pretty much normative nowadays.
