In the West, a willingness to break with moral traditions, gain agency and break taboos, to one's self-interest and spiritual self-improvement.
"Do what thou wilt hall be the whole of the law"
—Aleister Crowley
"The thought had made a difference and that thought, that liberating, revolutionary, epoch-making thought, was mine"
—I, Lucifer
I offer a different take from Sleeping Wolf on the left hand path. In some traditions of Western esotericism and magick, notably the likes of of Aleister Crowley and Anton LaVey, the left hand path is associated with manifesting benefit to the self, directing energy toward the pleasure or uplifting of the individual. The lesser piece is having agency, being in control of one's own life, the will to power. That said, it rarely seems to exist on its own, and many (including Crowley) effectively ruled out causing direct harm to others, something oft forgotten by those who quote his "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." The Wiccan Rede for example, specifically states: "An it harm none, do what ye will". There's a balance to be maintained, in other words; look out for your own interests but don't forget others'. Manifesting one's own will should not have to trample on the will of others.
In my own mind, I see this rather like the yin yang symbol, the Taijitu, and indeed the Sacred Chao. Each side contains a little of the other, the altruistic side is not always wholly so because sometimes I may Do Good Things because there can be a positive outcome for me. I can be "building karma" in the minds of others, or even getting a brief buzz from doing the Good. If there's benefit to me, it's not 100% "right hand path" of altruism, the selfish left hand path has an interest.
The Western ideas about the path come via Madame Blavatsky, from Indian/Tibetan Buddhist Tantric thinking, where the left hand path meant the practitioner was deliberately flouting taboos in order to proceed rapidly toward release from the mundane and into a liberation (moksha) from the cycle of samsara.
In Tantric tradition the left hand path Vamachara is about breaking the taboos of the day, and Madame Blavatsky gave us the "left hand path" translation of the Sanskrit term Vamachara to mean diverging from the orthodox, but in doing so she has severely bowdlerised the meaning and depth of it. The original tantric left hand path was designed to get the practitioner to see God in everything, including the profane. Practitioners would eat meat (horrifying to the vegetarian dogma), handle the dead(ritually unclean) and even eat of dead bodies (ritually unclean and highly taboo).
For some Western practitioners, the left hand path is about the absolute deification of the self and setting oneself up over the rules of others, it's moral anarchy, total heterodoxy. For others (like me) there's a recognition of this side of self-interest, especially in sexual matters (while encouraging my partner in the same). Crowley promoted the left hand path in his sexual magic to a much greater degree, and sadly it is this aspect that is all too often picked up by those who consider the left path to be evil.
Is it evil? If you can only believe in a single moral code given by an Almighty God then any deviation from those morals must of necessity of of the Devil, therefore Satanic and evil. Many modern "Satanic" religions encourage followers to explore this left hand path, but most of them also reject not only the existence of a personal Satan but also a personal God. The individual now becomes the arbiter of wrong and right and must make their own decisions on acceptable behaviours. LaVeyian philosophy provokes the individual to allow themselves an amoral course, albeit one not demonstrating any type of abusive behavior to others. This course is seen as "evil" by many only because it is unbound by traditional moral philosophies, rather dictated by the individual, because God Forbid we deviate from some artificial bounds from some supposedly superior dogmatic religious authority.
The left hand path then, is to do with manifesting what one wants for the self, unfettered by any externals (and noting that even the LaVeyan Church of Satan explicitly states that its membership are atheists, believing in neither God nor Satan, as mentioned above). It's about gaining freedom from dogma, releasing the Self to Become what it may, unfettering the spirit, gaining self-realisation. His is what Lucifer wanted for himself and others, freedom to be one's own self.
Not everyone is going to benefit from this journey, and if you're depressed or suffering from any mental illness, I for one would not encourage you to try this as it can get quite dark as one uncovers aspects of oneself previously hidden. I'm currently reading I, Lucifer and it does more to explain this path than any number of esoteric tomes has done. Forget Crowley, read that novel; it's given me much insight into myself and how to healthily fulfil my own desires and needs, but above all else it has explained some of the Why.
The How part is trickier, and here is where so many people come unstuck. Just because we can do a thing does not mean we should. Additionally, each person's path is different, and one can no more follow someone else's advice and method than one can build a spacecraft to fly to the Moon. Each one's appetite differs from everyone else's, each one's needs, desires, hungers, goals. Each of us must define anew for ourselves what this path is, and how to balance it with the need to have others in one's life; and because we love them, how to accommodate their needs and desires too. Balancing the two sides is the really tricky part and no book or YouTuber is going to be able to help us, though The Nine Satanic Sins may help a little.
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There's a backstory to this in case you're interested: AUgust 28, 2024.
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