Morality of the Left-Hand Path 6: The Spiral, Reich, and A Sense of Duty

A Sense of Duty

At a cosmic level the oppressive nature of Collectivism can be understood simply as attempts to suppress the Black Flame – that cosmic Supersubstantial source of life and consciousness that fuels man’s independence and individuality. This again is the overriding theme of The Erbeth Transmissions, and publication of that book might be considered an example of a small effort to do something to leverage the situation in the direction of self-conscious evolution. “Central Authority” in that book is simply an analogy for the Church…or the State…take your pick for there is little difference. Both systems display the same centralized structure, the same outwardly emanating desire for total controls, and both display no tolerance for any alternative systems and can allow no completion to or questioning of their absolute authority.

In the Spiral Dynamics system of Beck and Cowan both Church and State fall into the realm of the Blue Meme for functionally they are virtually indistinguishable. The SD system claims that it is a natural state of evolution that all cultures go through – a natural and necessary authritarian stage that helps a culture define itself and makes certain advances from a more primal warrior society – the Red Meme. Emerging from the blue, SD envisions an Orange Meme of independence. Most consider the emergence of the Orange in the West to correspond generally with the Enlightenment, following roughly 2000 or more years of Blue authoritarian domination.

Looking at the big picture, If we consider most of our contemporary LLHPs (Crowley, LaVey, Aquino, et al) to have emerged during this most recent Orange, we next realize that most of our historical LLHPs (Yeshu, Zoroaster, Lao Tzu) come from before the last Blue Period. In other words 2000 years of dominance by Central Auhority resulted in a near vanishing of the Black Flame from the Earth. Next you have to reflect on the current geo-political environment of massive government, huge central banks, erosion of privacy and property rights and near constant warfare; and ask yourself if it doesn’t look like we are slipping back into the Blue; if it doesn’t feel like we are on the verge of sliding back into another dark age. There are more people than never exploring alternative and Satanic religious groups, but in most of them no Black Fire burns.

Another great 20th century thinker who perceive the functional homogeneity of Church and State is Dr. Wilhelm Reich. The idea that Church and State exhibit similar authoritarian patterns in their systematic attempt at suppressing the energy of the individual is a central theme in his work The Mass Psychology of Fascism. This is carried out initially through ceremonial suppression of sexuality. As he states:

Suppression of the natural sexuality in the child, particularly of its genital sexuality, makes the child apprehensive, shy, obedient, afraid of authority, good and adjusted in the authoritarian sense; it paralyzes the rebellious forces because any rebellion is laden with anxiety; it produces, by inhibiting sexual curiosity and sexual thinking in the child, a general inhibition of thinking and of critical faculties. In brief, the goal of sexual suppression is that of producing an individual who is adjusted to the authoritarian order and who will submit to it in spite of all misery and degradation. At first the child has to submit to the structure of the authoritarian miniature state, the family; this makes it capable of later subordination to the general authoritarian system. The formation of the authoritarian structure takes place through the anchoring of sexual inhibition and anxiety.

The idea of Church/State authoritarianism becomes axiomatic in James Demeo’s Saharasia: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence, In the Deserts of the Old World. It is easy enough to see the deleterious effects the Church had on technology and human advancement, and if you look a little closer you see the State is almost as bad. What’s ironic is that Central Authority, due to it’s inherently bureaucratic and ineffectual nature, is always playing catch-up with the latest technology. How far had e-commerce grown before they realized they needed to start forcing collection of sales tax in a new way? Look at how far Uber spread before local governments started trying accuse them of ‘piracy’? Look at the technology of smart phones – if government had decided in 1995 that everyone has a ‘right’ to a cell phone we’d all still be using cell phones the size of lunch-boxes. These are simply a few contemporary examples but one could easily write a book about them all, as did Jeffery Tucker in his book A Beautiful Anarchy: How to Create Your Own Civilization in the Digital Age. We shouldn’t have to spend as much time arguing how the church held back the advancement of technology for centuries with flat-earth theories, auto de fay, burning of witches and scientists and so forth. What is important here is simply to see the common pattern of authoritarianism inhibiting progress in the name of the bogeyman of individuality.

If Central Authority stays out of it, new technology typically gets out to everyone who needs/wants it pretty fast. But Central Authority can always just catch up later, requisition it, put their stamp on it and start re-writing history to make it look like they invented it, which is precisely what they are doing right now with the institution of Healthcare. Propaganda slogans like “You didn’t build that!” can have the effect of simultaneously affirming their authority and ridiculing the belief in individuality. This is also essentially what the Church did and still tries to do with the phenomenon of human life – “we built that, so you need to follow our requirements for using it.” When you start to see this you realize that ‘separation of church and state’ was really just a transfer of authority from church to state. But in seeing these little successes and advancements we are reminded that there is hope, and that in exercising our own individuality – even a little – it stirs up that sacred fire that can spread, help cleanse the air, and maybe even help someone else ‘wake up.’

Everything that is encapsulated in P.D. Ouspensky’s ideas about ‘Negative Emotions’ are things that are propagated, perpetuated, and enforced through the various institutions that comprise Central Authority. The sooner one realizes that such institutions are fundamentally immoral, the sooner one can divest their time, effort and attention in them. These institutions do nothing but work against Self-Deification and Individuality, and even if they really wanted to, they couldn’t help you anyhow. You must take responsibility yourself.

This is where the sense of duty kicks in. When you start taking responsibility for yourself. “Responsibility to the Responsible!” as Anton LaVey worded it. When you can finally see most of society is engineered to remove the sense of responsibility, you begin to realize how dire the situation is. It is so corrupt and mechanical that none of the Politicians or Priests could do anything to change it even if they wanted to, for to become a part of it is to be absorbed and absolved of responsibility. It is quite literal the case, for despite all their blatant crimes and corruptions no one who is part of this system every emerges as responsible. The secret is that responsibility cannot be given, only taken!

This is the great challenge given to us by the Magi – to become a responsible being. This is the greatest hope for humanity – that YOU awaken and take responsibility.

Coming Soon Part 7

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Morality of the Left-Hand Path 5: Compassion is Not Collectivism

 

Compassion is not Collectivism

Confusion over the meaning of the word “Collectivism” is quite common in the contemporary environment. You may encounter the erroneous assumption that simply because you uphold a morality of Self-Deification and Individuality it means you don’t believe in compassion – that you’re just a selfish brute, a narcissist, or an egomaniac. This is a false conclusion for as a free thinking individual you are free to exchange with whomever you want as much as you want, and as long as you are doing so voluntarily it is an act of free will and by definition not an acquiescence to collectivism. Collectivism always bears some amount of coercion if not out-right force. In truth it is always collectivist, socialist, and totalitarian systems which attempt to twist and mutate compassion to make good soldiers or police who can kill without conscience, to stir an irrational sense of impersonal love for ones own tribe or ones race, and so forth. The free individualistic and self-deifying Black Magician allows his compassion to develop freely and for it to develop him in return. Compassion is a great source of virtue and power and that is maybe just on reason Anton LaVey made it fully one-third of his system of Greater Magic.

It is the same for the act of cooperation. There are those who will point to any act of cooperation you appear to engage in saying, “See? You need collectivism!” Again this represents a wrong understanding of collectivism and obliviousness to the fact that it always carries with it some amount of coercion. Free and willful cooperation is the cornerstone of a productive society and the successful individuals who make it so. Cooperation is merely the continued exchange of value for value on another level that drives and fuels creation and innovation. It is in fact always collectivist, socialist and totalitarian systems that seek to control or prohibit free and voluntary cooperation between individuals, for instance by regulating and taxing certain transactions to manipulate human interaction and make certain forms of cooperation appear more or less valuable.

Communication is another area where confusion will emerge. Really more at the extreme end of the socialist spectrum, here the objection is that any form of communication demonstrates that you are part of a collective and that you are therefore being somehow hypocritical in rejecting collectivism. This is the extreme form of the old saying “no man is an island,” a ridiculous assertion that the only way to maintain individuality is to be completely cut off from any external influences of the environment. Communication via words and ideas is of course one of the great ways people trade value and learn and grow and is a vital part of human nature. In that it is engaged in voluntarily it represents no loss of will and no threat to individuality. Again, it is in reality always collectivist socialist and totalitarian systems which seek to coerce and control communication via propaganda, censorship, and political correctness (or as George Orwell called in in 1984 – Newspeak).

I realize that some who read this may scratch their heads and wonder why I have spent so much time on what may seem fairly obvious points, but I assure you each and every one of these – compassion, cooperation, and communication – have been presented to me as objections and evidence of mans need for collectivism and governance. Clearly there is much misunderstanding out there, and that is just one reason why it’s worthwhile spending some time considering the moral basis of rational self-interest, self-deification and individualism. Until we do, the Christians, Monotheists and Statists will always be able to claim the moral high-ground. If all you can say in response to their charges is “everything’s relative,” they will win the argument every time.

But if you can point out and articulate the very real and substantial immorality of coercion and sublimation of the self, then you will be able to stand your ground. Maybe in debates and such, but more importantly in your own mind. In your own mind you must understand clearly and without compromise why the Left-Hand Path is the moral high-ground. And you must also understand that regardless of any apparent goodness of anything the RHP tries to do –whether it’s feeding the poor or fighting bad-guys – they cannot do any of it without coercion and control. There is always a price, or as Dr. Aquino likes to say, “There is no free lunch.”

It is perfectly natural and normal for a self-actualized and centered person to have compassion for others, to be capable of sympathy, and to wish for love and companionship in one’s life. It is one of the tricks of the RHP to convince us that those who follow the LHP have somehow given up on such things. But in reality it is those re-born and Remanifested in the Black Fire of Set who come to know a much deeper and more powerful potential for compassion, a more objective sense of love, and a deeper sense of conscience. In these ways we develop stronger ties to others that transcend ethnicity, and may endure many trials and tribulations.

By embracing the LHP morality, it empowers and charges your ability to make more significant contributions to the various groups, circles, and institutions in which you interact. This is a foundational idea for what in the Esoteric Order of Beelzebub they call The Circle of Reciprocal Maintenance which demonstrates that your contributions to the right kind of group – one that embraces the morality of the LHP – may actually fuel and fire your own becoming.

To feel compassion does not mean that your individuality is fusing or blending with a collective, or that we can start blending our psyche-centric consciousness with collectives nowadays since we’re in some kind of new ‘post-individualism era.’ There is no such thing as a post-individualism era, and it should be noted that the idea we are some how ‘out-growing’ individuality as a species and growing into a collective mind is an idea that really comes from Karl Marx; it does not come from any of the Lords of the Left-Hand Path. Rather these teachers were trying to give us something to help us defend ourselves against this sort of idea of the diffusion of individuality. None of them went through all that trouble to utter words and suffer the slings and arrows of an ignorant world and establish teachings just for us to be able say “it’s all relative.”

If you read Dr. Aquino’s book MindStar, you may learn that the survival of the psyche is simply the idea of our individuality – the Subjective Universe – continuing beyond biological death within the Objective Universe, and that it may have existed even before we came here. In this teaching the only sense in which there is a blending of OU and SU is in the CSU or “Collective Subjective Universe,” which is something which can be used privately or creatively, but is more often used by monotheistic and statist systems to control you. Sure, by virtue of your separate psyche you’re still an individual no matter what, but don’t let your actions and your course in life be broken down into that of a slave. You were not given the Gift of Set so you could come to Earth and be a slave.

Coming Soon, Part 6: A Sense of Duty

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Morality of the Left-Hand Path 4: Church and State

Church and State

For some the Individualism Vs Collectivism axiom comes down to a question of balancing the needs of the many with the needs of the few; The objection we often hear is that while pure individualism is a great idea, it doesn’t work out in the real world where we must rely on leaders to help us balance the needs of the many with the needs of the few, in order to insure equality and fairness.

While such proponents will sometimes try to make the case that we are somehow ‘out-growing’ individualism, or that there can be a blending of individualism and collectivism, a serious examination of the four precepts leads inevitably to the conclusion that such assertions are simply reiterations of collectivism. A blend with collectivism is a win for collectivism, just as a compromise with evil is a win for evil. It may be helpful to recall that the idea of a centralized authority with a monopoly on force that’s going to put everyone into their proper place is not a new idea. This has been the way of Kings and Popes going back to the days of the Pharos.

Notice I said Kings and Popes; this is because from the point of view of LHP morality there is functionally very little difference between church and state.  This is why in The Erbeth Transmissions I began interchangeably using a common and inclusive term for them: “Central Authority.”  Both institutions follow the same sort of ‘hub and spoke’ structure with an indisputable and absolute centralized organizing body. Each member of this body (a spoke) will connect with a singular figurehead (the hub, e.g. a Pope or King) at the center. From this Central Authority flows the various laws and mechanisms which form what we call the Right Hand Path.

It at first seems counterintuitive that church and state should be qualitatively synonymous. After all, so much of contemporary secular education is pervaded by the idea that there is a separation of Church and State. But if you dare to study a little closer you will begin to see that all the main contemporary justifications for the State – that it protects us from evil and bad guys, that it helps the less fortunate, and so forth – are all ideas that the Church once used to justify its authority. The Church provided the first Hospitals, the first schools, and validated or blessed the King’s army and war powers as it saw fit.  Most of the early heretics and Lords of the Left-hand Path rejected precisely these authoritarian powers of the Church. Are all those same powers now suddenly legitimate simply because the final authority for their exercise has been transferred to a different organization? If we had a time machine and could go back to the days when our Left-Hand Path forebears were struggling and risking their lives to thrust off the oppression of the Church, would we try to stop them? Would we intercede saying “yeah I know none of it’s true but they do help the poor and protect us from evil!” Certainly many use just such justifications for continued participation in RHP systems, but it is safe to assume most followers of the LHP have overcome such justifications, noting that either they simply are not true, or else if there is a shred of truth in them it still doesn’t justify the sort of totalitarian power the Church exercised for so many centuries.

The more one examines the nature of society in relation to the sovereignty of the Individual it becomes increasingly clear that the patterns that form the political landscape are really just the same patterns that formed the Church, and adherence to either is really just the same pattern of collectivism, and a reiteration of the Right-Hand Path. It’s certainly not dedication to ideas like Self-Deification, Individualism, and so forth. Whether it’s a politician or a Pope the message they hand down to us is always the same – obey and conform; let us make the important decisions for you, we know what’s best.

There is nothing new or innovative about a centrally planned economy with a monopoly on force. It has been the way of society going back to the Pharaohs. Freedom of individuals and markets is (was?) really the radical new idea, which Remanifested in the Enlightenment Era with such fury that entirely new societies were formed around it. If that hadn’t happened, it is very unlikely anyone would even be talking about following a Left-Hand Path. The pattern, conveyed in The Erbeth Transmissions, was that the ideas about Supersubstantial Fire that Remanifests self-consciousness were all ideas originating somewhere in the Pre-Dynastic era.

No matter how much we may wish there were some sort of blending of Individual with Collective, in the end it really is simply an either/or question; the Individual is separate from the Collective in the same way the Subjective Universe is separate from the Objective Universe, for to blend them is simply to eliminate the former. That’s also why Hegel’s dialectic does not apply – there can be no synthesis from something that is completely obliterated. The SU is what gives rise to the very real and physical sense of individuality that all conscious beings are able to experience. Or if you prefer, our physical separation from each other has facilitated the arising of the Subjective Universe. Either way, the uniquely Setian concept of a Subjective Universe that is the core of the soul and can Xeper and Remanifest and maybe even live forever absolutely does indicate that individualism is distinct from collectivism, and the difference lies not only in their metaphysical implications but also in their underlying moral basis’.

When one can finally see clearly the very real threat to Individuality – and thus to the Subjective Universe and the Gift of Set itself – posed by Central Authority and the RHP, one realizes the dire urgency not only of embracing the LHP, but very real need to clarify, understand, and champion the LHP on moral grounds.

Part 5 Compassion is not Collectivisim

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Morality of the Left-Hand Path 3: The Individualism Axiom

The Individualism Axiom

The concept of Individuality is so significant in the study of morality it deserves special consideration. Individualism, which is perhaps best understood in examining the contrasting dichotomy of Individualism vs. Collectivism, is really axiomatic for the whole code of LHP Morality. It could easily be considered number one of the four precepts, because all the others are dependent on it. What could Self-Deification mean without individualism? How can you experience initiation without your own individual effort? If the collective can initiate you then we should all go back to Church-on-Sunday existence. Can Magic and Will ‘happen’ without an individual behind it?

Another reason why these questions are worth considering is that in recent years we’ve seen a lot of what can only be considered challenges to these four precepts, from within (apparent) LHP groups! We’ve heard that collectivism is good, or that we can Xeper as a collective. We’ve been advised we are collectivists to anyhow, since just talking to someone else means you are part of a collective. We’ve been told by self-proclaimed representatives of world-wide Satanic movements that compassion is a the highest virtue,  equality is a supreme social ideal, or that the collective state is a righteous authority.

The problem here clearly is that again, many simply haven’t studied these questions deeply enough, and are simply mistaking ‘cooperation’ or ‘communication’ for collectivism. We all work with people every day, exchange ideas, exchange value and so forth. That’s not necessarily collectivism. Collectivism always involves some sort of coercion, some sort of sublimation of individual will, ‘you’re either with us or against us!’ That’s not the same thing as cooperation and exchange, which is essential for our learning, growing, loving, and initiating. Cooperation, communication and exchange are all voluntary. Collectivism is involuntary.

Sometimes people confuse “collectivism” with the Aristotelian sense of “class,” that simply because I am in the same class of humans, or class of males, or class of people with green eyes and so forth, means I’m naturally a collectivist. Again this is a wrong understanding of the term because these are mere circumstances, and not the result of coercion.

The misunderstanding about equality comes again from confusing Morality with Metaphysics. To say that we should treat other as equals, that none have special authority due to birth, that no one is a slave, is a morally sound and in line with LHP Morality. But to insist that there is metaphysical equality is totally irrational. There are undeniable differences between individuals, both physically and intellectually. As Thomas Sowell once pointed out, “The same man is not even equal to himself on different days.” To insist that all are equal is also to deny the possibility of change, evolution, and Xeper. Yet this is precisely the sort of mentality that RHP collectivist groups like Church and State try to foist on the masses. The area of income is an especially contested area, the idea advanced by the state being it is ‘unfair’ for one person to do better than another. In the end the use this only as an excuse to rob people of greater amounts via taxation. So-called Satanic groups that support these sorts of egalitarian propaganda myths are embarrassing for their naievety.

The Individualism vs. Collectivism precept is so important in fact we could consider giving it a special name, maybe “The Individualism Axiom,” which can be expanded into the ‘Individualism vs. Collectivism Dichotomy.’ The other LHP precepts – Self-Deification, Initiation, and Magic – all follow from that axiom.  Economists who favor individualism like to talk about a ‘free-market’ – a market free of coercion – and this is simply the same idea taken to a social level. The Temple of Set differs from its predecessors in taking the same axiom to a metaphysical or spiritual level: the apprehension of one’s own uniqueness and individualism leads to the realization of isolate intelligence, and the idea that one can live an isolate and immortal existence beyond the body, as Dr. Aquino discusses in his book MindStar.

You may have also heard this expressed as the morality of ‘rational self-interest’. This term has been used by Setians, Satanists, even Ayn Rand, whom Anton LaVey had cited as an important influence, as well as many of the fathers of the Enlightenment such as John Locke, John Milton. It continues to appears at other points in history going back to the Greeks, Persians, and Ancient Egypt and begins fading into mythology somewhere in the pre-dynastic era. Tracing this line of true LHP thought throughout history is what the rest of Dr. Flowers’ book Lords of the Left-Hand Path does.

 

Continue to Part 4: Church and State

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