Stephen E. Flowers Ph.D. - Lords of the Left-Hand Path: Forbidden Practices and Spiritual Heresies

Lords of the Left-hand Path

Lords of the Left-Hand Path is an important contribution to the literature of the contemporary magical revival. Stephen E. Flowers celebrates the way of the hero and champions the courage of the individual who dares boldly to breach the gates of eternity. This book will surely be hailed as a classic in its field.

NEVILL DRURY, PH.D., AUTHOR OFSTEALING FIRE FROM HEAVEN:THE RISE OF MODERN WESTERN MAGIC

Lords of the Left-Hand Path, by Stephen E. Flowers, is perhaps the most influential work in the construct of the left-hand path as a particular current of contemporary esotericism. Flowers draws on a wide range of sources, many of which are exceedingly difficult to find elsewhere, and argues convincingly for his conclusions. This book is essential for anyone who wants to understand the left-hand-path.

HENRIK BOGDAN, AUTHOR OF WESTERN ESOTERICISMAND RITUALS OF INITIATION AND COEDITOR OFALEISTER CROWLEY AND WESTERN ESOTERICISM

Thus, then now as ever, I enter the Path of Darkness, if
haply so I may attain the Light.
(Aleister Crowley, The Supreme Ritual)

Anyone who is aware of the 1980s and its dastardly slanders of Satanic ritual child abuseincited by a collusion between faux law enforcement, bogus psychology, and a hysterical mediawill especially welcome this book. It presents a sober, scholarly, and revealing explication of the true nature of the left-hand path and its most prominent adepts through recorded history. Stephen Flowers makes an essential contribution to rational philosophic discourse while exploring the hidden byways of the Promethean archetype.

JAMES WASSERMAN,AUTHOR OF THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON:FROM ANCIENT ISRAEL TO MODERN SECRET SOCIETIES

Lords of the Left-Hand Path examines the principle of isolate intelligence and the subjective universe throughout history from ancient India and Iran to Lucifer and the Faustian Age and beyond. It devotes much attention to the revival of the occult, cosmology and Satanic beliefs and practices, being very informative on these issues.

THE LATE EDGAR C. POLOM,PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE RELIGION AND LANGUAGESAT THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTINAND DISTINGUESHED LINGUIST AND INDO-EUROPEANIST

Pro Omnis Dominis Viae Sinistrae

contra stupidos

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my appreciation to the many who helped in the shaping and reshaping of the work: Michael A. Aquino, Don Webb, Lilith Aquino, R. L. Barrett, Nikolas Schreck, Zeena, J. Chisholm, Seth Tyrsen, Dianne Ross, Sir Ormsond, Michael Moynihan, Diana DeMagis, Robert Lang, Lothar Tuppan, and my beloved wife, Crystal Dawn.

Additionally, thanks are due to Jon Graham and Inner Traditions for their courage in bringing out the present edition.

PREFACE

Under the Lens of Reason

The left-hand path and those who practice it attract the historical aura of dark romance and sensationalism. This path, viewed from the outside, is fraught with obscurity and misinformation. The purpose of this book is to elucidate the darkness and inform the reader from the inner perspective of the path itself.

The present volume was born of the circumstances of a specific period in Western cultural history, a time when the Eastern Bloc was withering away and the other, the enemy, was ill-defined. Given this age of angst, our culture once morealbeit in a short-lived fashionturned to face its inner demons. In so doing, it manifested its age-old fear of the darkness. This spawned an atavistic rebirth of medievalism splashed across tabloids and tabloid television. The true evil is that this distant aftershock of the witch hunts and the Inquisition ruined many peoples lives. Although born from this womb of history, Lords of the Left-Hand Path does not, in retrospect, belong to it.

The contents of this book present the ideas of practitioners of the left-hand pathor those who have been considered suchunder the lens of reason. By entering into the minds of the masters of the left-hand-path philosophies, the darkness is illuminated and deeper truths are revealed. No one who reads and understands the contents of this book will ever be subject to the tyranny of superstition perpetrated by the tabloid mentality as it regards the actual practitioners of the left-hand pathwhether they are called Satanists, Setians, or devil worshippers.

The common trait of all left-hand-path practitioners is that they focus on their own selves as their first source of power and they seek to cultivate, develop, and enhance that separate and unique source as the surest path to their happiness. This turning inward to the dark depths of ones own self to find the light is as old as mankind. It is a path fraught with peril. This book is a chronicle of those who have dared to master it.

INTRODUCTION

An Untimely Meditation

Is there a sinister conspiracy of Satanic forces loose in the world causing mayhem, abducting, abusing, and even sacrificing children and others to His Satanic Majesty? The media have asked these and other equally sensational questions in the recent past, and offered the most dramatic and entertaining answers possible for consumption by a bored and dull public.

If the question arises as to whether there is a coherent Satanic or left-hand-path philosophy or theology, the answer has to be that there is, and that there has been for centuries. However, the philosophers of this sinister path have rarely been directly heard from until this century. The present age offers us the unique opportunity to hear directly from the lords and ladies of the left-hand path in a way unknown since the days of ancient philosophers.

We live in an age that enables us to become better informed of a wide variety of viewpoints and approaches to the spiritual problems of human beings; at the same time, however, it is an age that encourages a monotonous sameness in the answers to fundamental questions acceptable in a mass culture. The philosophers of the left-hand path have always challenged the all-pervasive common ways of doing thingswhatever those ways might have beenand thus have always been agents for change. The left-hand path, as expressed in the world today, is an open challenge to certain individuals who are ready to take it. It is also now for the first time in ages being expressed openly in the hope that by knowing what its true character is, those who choose not to follow it will at least be informed as to what it is all about and, in this knowledge, be able to shed at least some of their age-old fear of it.

This is a forbidden book. The point of view championed in it is decidedly that of the left-hand path itself. I have years of training as a scholar, and have put these and other skills I have acquired to use in shaping a sympathetic, yet objective, analysis of the major historical and contemporary manifestations of this fascinating ultimate adventure of the human spirit in the cosmos. This will be a refreshing departure. There have been dozens of recent books, and hundreds of books throughout history, that have purported to study the devil and all his works from a decidedly antagonistic viewpoint. There have also been a very few studies for public consumption written by modern philosophical Satanists from a highly polemic angle. In the case of Lords of the Left-Hand Path, I, the author, am not a Satanist but may be characterized as a practitioner of the left-hand path based on purely indigenous Indo-European models. I trust that the objective reader will be no more put off by my viewpoint than he or she would be if a Catholic priest would write a book on the history of Christian theology.