Over the many years I have met, corresponded with and engaged in discussions with individuals who identify as being practitioners of the Left Hand Path, or LHP. Despite the fact that I have found such practitioners to be more open to my techniques and methods of magic, I have never considered myself a member of the LHP community. I have adhered to the theological tenets of Witchcraft (sparse as they may be), which take a neutral and nonjudgmental approach to their spiritual and magical world view. Witches see the importance and the equality of the powers and intelligences of light and darkness, and we don’t feel it necessary or part of our creed to align ourselves to one or the other. We associate this kind of duality of light and darkness, or good and evil, with the prevalence of the influences of the Abrahamic faiths, which we are not a member. So, I have engaged with practitioners who consider themselves white light workers and lefthand path practitioners with equal aplomb.
However, when I compare my magical practices to either groups, and this includes practitioners of traditional ceremonial magic, I have much more in common with the lefthand path than the right hand or white light workers. One of the main differences between what traditional ceremonial magicians do when they conjure spirits is that they guard themselves with an empowered magic circle that is used to protect themselves from unwanted spiritual contagion, and focus their evocations into a magic triangle outside of that circle. They may even use a scrying table and a crystal ball to communicate with this being, all of this so they will maintain a separation between themselves and what they are evoking. I don’t have those restrictions imposed on my magical techniques of spirit conjuring, and because I use a system of immersion so that I may engage with spirits in their own domain, I have direct encounters with all the spiritual entities that I would either invoke or evoke.
Similarly, my acquaintances of the left hand path also claim to not use the methodologies of ceremonial magic, and in fact, they engage directly with the spirits with whom they engage, including demonic or chthonic godheads and demonic spirits. I suppose that a traditional ceremonial magician would find these kinds of direct exposure to be problematic at best, or downright dangerous or insane at the worst. Yet it is this very methodology where left hand path workers firmly agree with me on the methodology for conjuring spirits. I may use different specific techniques in my magical workings that are not shared with the LHP community of magical practitioners, but otherwise, our approach is the same. That dawning discovery on my part leads me to ask the question of whether or not my magic would be considered to be left hand path. Should I be considered a member of the LHP community because of the way I work magic, and of course, a more broader question would be, are Witches who practice witchcraft forms of magic part of the left hand path?
The answer to this question really depends on to whom it is asked. White light workers would definitely label me and other Witches as LHP. So, too, would many traditional ceremonial magicians, if they considered the magic that Witches do as any kind of competent system of magic. (Yes, I do get that ceremonial magician sneer at my forms of magic rather often.) That leaves only LHP practitioners to offer their opinion, and who often find that witchcraft based magic, whether low or high, is recognizable to them as kindred practices. Some of the LHP crowd have stated their opinions that the Horn God of the Witches is another form of Satan, to which many Witches have strongly denied, for various reasons. I have written an article about just this controversy, and my opinion is that they are not quite the same individual, but do pose similarities which some Wiccans have found disturbing.
If we consider the long history of witchcraft from antiquity to just prior to the modern age, we will find that the magic wielded by Witches was something of a mixed bag. Yet overall, it would have to be considered definitely LHP, even when considering the good works that later cunning folk who were variously considered Witches have accomplished. Witches throughout that time were outcasts living on the social margins who were feared and also sought after to perform specialized rites and magic that no one else could or would perform. That’s a far cry from the late 20th century Wiccans who vow to the public that they will harm none with their powers, and some of these groups have even rejected any kind of magical or witchcraft practices, which I find strange. Witchcraft religion without the practice of witchcraft magic is decidedly peculiar to me from both a traditional and a practical perspective. This is because all the Witchcraft theology, mythology and folklore vests Witches with the practice of magic, as proclaimed by the Goddess of Witches herself. To only practice the religion of Wicca without the associated witchcraft magical practices is to deny that this religion has the ability to empower the individual so they may deal with an unjust and unequal world. In fact, the phrase “Witchcraft magic” is actually redundant.
We Witches have no creed, no holy books, nor even any kind of religious laws, ethics, or official cannon, so whatever religious perspectives we have are based on the dialectic process of personal gnosis, literary corroboration and peer group assessment. The famed Book of Shadows is not a gospel or a holy book of laws and moral proscriptions; it is just a book of rites, celebrations and spells. It is more akin to a priest’s missal than a bible. Witchcraft is really about magic, and it is the kind of magic that can emulate the darkness or the light, but overall, it is a kind of magic that breaks the rules and upends the status quo, so it is decidedly not strictly positive or light serving, but more suitably grey, like the real world we live in. Those who espouse “An it harm none, do what thou wilt” are hardly the true representatives of even a religious Witchcraft, since there is quite a bit of subtlety regarding what is harmful, and the need to protect oneself, family, loved ones, friends, and political allies. There is also a revolutionary kind of quality to anyone who breaks the rules of decorum or seeks justice, or wants the status quo representing inherent inequality to be overthrown, and modern Witches fit that definition as well.
Thus, we Witches are naturally outlaws who walk a decidedly crooked path, and our magic can be considered more aligned to the darkness than to the light, but because we also work with positive magical works, such as healing, consoling, finding lost objects, settling ghosts and resolving hauntings, performing divination, invoking angels and projecting the healing harmony of nature into the material world, we can also be considered aligned with those who work exclusively with the light. However, whether we work for the good or for the ill (of deserving others), our social image is sinister, spooky and mysterious, as it has always been since the beginning of civilization. We are, in a word, a Halloween kind of people.
Frater Barrabbas
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