Two additions to the site are announced today. The first is a new text in the Library, the first since 2019. The second is a set of eight pages that describe the left-hand path beyond the Order: where it came from, the forms it takes, the figures and symbols it uses, and what its practice involves.
The Blind Maker
The Blind Maker is the seventh text in the Library. It takes up an old myth, of a maker who looked at his own creation and declared that there was no god but himself, and reads it as a description of the characteristic error of the left-hand path: the self that does not grow but swells.
The 2022 revision of The Seven Coils gave that error a name, inflation, and a place, the sixth coil. It did not say much more, and in the four years since we have come to think that it should have. The new text gathers what the Library says about inflation in several places, states the Order's disagreement with the view that the world is a prison, and includes one optional working. It also finds, in the gap of the Open Ring, a meaning that we had stated at the founding and not fully understood. Our entry of last August, From the Record to the Commons, closed by saying that the subject deserved a text of its own. This is that text.
We did not set out to make the number of texts seven. It is a coincidence, and nothing should be read into it.
Eight New Pages
Until now this site has described the Order in detail and the wider left-hand path in a single page. That page, The Left-Hand Path, remains the introduction. It now leads to five others:
- Origins of the Left-Hand Path, a short history from the tantric schools to the present.
- Currents of the Left-Hand Path, a survey of the main tendencies of the present day, and where the Order stands toward each.
- Faces of the Adversary, on the serpent's relatives in myth.
- Self-Deification, on what the path aims at, and how the aim goes wrong.
- Symbols of the Left-Hand Path, on the inverted star, the goat, the dragon, and the rest.
The Practice page leads to three more:
- On Magic, on what a working is claimed to do, and what it can be shown to do.
- Study, on reading beyond the Library.
- Working With Others, on orders, circles, and the questions to ask before joining one.
None of these pages is a Library text, and none adds to the Order's teaching. They are reference: an attempt to describe fairly the larger country in which the Order is one small house.
Why the New Pages Name No One
Readers will notice that the new pages describe currents, events, and kinds of book without naming any organization, author, or title. This is deliberate, and it follows from the oldest habit of the Order. Our own texts are unsigned because a name attached to a teaching becomes an authority. To name other people's teachers would be to do for them what we decline to do for ourselves, and to name other orders would oblige us to review, rank, or recommend them, which is not our business. The pages describe ideas and events. The names are not hidden, and any library will supply them.
Smaller Changes
- The Glossary has been enlarged with terms from the wider literature of the path.
- The Frequently Asked Questions have a new section on the left-hand path in general.
- Start Here has been revised to include the new text and pages.
- The page on the serpent now describes the serpent in other traditions.
- The Statements of Position have two additions, on other orders and on being studied or reported on.
Nothing has been removed, and no existing address has changed. The site still sets no cookies, loads nothing from anywhere else, and asks for nothing.