![\"Goatboy,](\"http:\/\/www.thesectofthehornedgod.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Goatboy-by-Mark-Hiblen.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe Left Hand Path (LHP) is the road less traveled, the often misunderstood \u2018Bad Boy\u2019 of the Neo-Pagan movement today.\u00a0 Many in the General Pagan Community (hereafter the GPC) would rather we did not exist and try and ignore us as much as possible.\u00a0 The GPC feels a need to distance itself from \u2018Satanism\u2019 to the general public both as a means of appearing non-threatening to them and superior, somehow, to us. \u00a0 During the last 20+ years in the Bluegrass region, I have many times heard a Wiccan interviewed on local television say something along the lines of; \u201cWe are Wiccans, we worship nature and the great goddess.\u00a0 We aren\u2019t evil like the Satanists.\u00a0 No, we are not coming from that space at all!\u201d\u00a0 Barf, gag\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n
Of course there are reasons for this.\u00a0 The survival instinct in humans is strong and the Fluff Bunnies fear persecution and retribution.\u00a0 Those of us old enough to have lived through the \u2018Satanic Panic\u2019 can actually relate to this, despite the pandering of the GPC to John Q Public.\u00a0 Members of the GPC who are Right Hand Path (RHP) do not understand us, and distance themselves \u00a0to reinforce their \u2018good guy\u2019 image.\u00a0 We have to remember the Occult revival in the United States hit full stride in the 1960\u2019s, and often reflects the Hippie Flower Child beliefs of that era.<\/p>\n
The great irony on the last point is that the Left Hand Path had its own \u2018revival\u2019 during the same time period.\u00a0 And wonder of wonders, the LHP traces it origins to the \u2018City by the Bay\u2019 also!\u00a0 However, rather than Haight-Ashbury Park, our link is to the Black House of one Anton Szandor LaVey.\u00a0 And never the twain shall meet, except perhaps for our friends at The Satanic Temple, but I\u2019ll leave that discussion for another essay.<\/p>\n
The Right Hand Path pagans are no different from the more mainstream religions in that they seek union with the godhood, no matter what that may be called.\u00a0 Buddhists seek Nirvana and Christians Heaven, to name just two.\u00a0 The RHP pagans may cross the Abyss in Thelema or seek Summerland or Valhalla.\u00a0 The Left Hand Path practitioner, or \u201cBlack Brother,\u201d as Aleister Crowley would call us, do not seek this union with the divine, but rather to keep our Ego as we seek self enlightenment, or self deification, to be more exact.<\/p>\n
Black Magicians thus stand apart from the mainstream faiths and the New Age warriors or Neo Pagans, blindly casting stones and going on about the power of crystals.\u00a0 We have no master but ourselves, and seek no validation from others. \u00a0We operate from the perspective of rational self interest and do waste energy or time on ingrates, and those whom do not share our path.\u00a0 While this may seem evil to the RHP, the Black Magician is the ultimate individualist and realizes that before he is good to others, he must be good to himself first.\u00a0 We leave the often \u2018holier than thou\u2019 altruism to others.<\/p>\n
We have come a long way since that fateful evening, April 30th<\/sup> 1966.\u00a0 Magus LaVey opened a Pandora\u2019s Box, the end result of which even he did not foresee.\u00a0 Satanism has spread and diverged into many groups.\u00a0 But at its core the LHP remains the province of the individual, working toward self deification, the highest expression of life on earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By William S. Sect of the Horned God Member The Left Hand Path (LHP) is the road less traveled, the often misunderstood \u2018Bad Boy\u2019 of the Neo-Pagan movement today.\u00a0 Many in the General Pagan Community (hereafter the GPC) would rather we did not exist and try and ignore us as much as possible.\u00a0 The GPC […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[244,200,16,24,29],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7BLIO-Qz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesectofthehornedgod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3259"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesectofthehornedgod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesectofthehornedgod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesectofthehornedgod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesectofthehornedgod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3259"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesectofthehornedgod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3268,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesectofthehornedgod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3259\/revisions\/3268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesectofthehornedgod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesectofthehornedgod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesectofthehornedgod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}