Written as my final paper for a course on Hindu doctrines and theologies. Graded A+ by my wonderful and knowledgeable professor, otherwise I wouldn’t presume to post on this topic.

The term “left-hand path,” translated from the Sanskrit “vamachara,” was probably brought west by Helena Blavatsky in the 19^th century.[1] The phrase was absorbed into Western esotericism and quickly combined with European assumptions about “leftness.” “Sinister” is Latin for “left,” and Kabbalists had written about the demonic “left emanation” long before Blavatsky’s time.[2] In the west, the “left-hand path” quickly became associated with Satanism and “black magic.” Aleister Crowley solidified the western definition of the “left-hand path” to connote magical practices which solidify the ego, rather than leading to absorption in the oneness of the universe.[3] Though Crowley saw this as a negative, subsequent western magicians, such as Michael Aquino, have embraced the idea of a spiritual path that preserves individual ego.[4] This focus on the maintenance of selfhood is the most significant philosophical difference between vamachara tantra and the left-hand path in western magic.

Notes on Perspective, Terminology, and Methodology

This is a Comparative Theology paper written by a practitioner of left-handed western magic. This perspective is very empathetic towards vamachara, but is also prone to overidentification with it, which can lead to distortions and to colonizing behavior. To counter these tendencies, I will draw upon Dr. Rita Sherma’s suggested framework for what she calls “Interreligious Theological Reflection.”[5]

For purposes of clarity, this paper will henceforth refer to left-hand and right-hand practices originating in India as vamachara and daksinachara respectively, and to parallel western practices with the English terms left-hand and right-hand.

Because of the influence of east on west, comparing vamachara to the left-hand magic is both inevitable and problematic. The influence came about largely under circumstances of colonization, appropriation, and resultant economic inequality during the 19^th and 20^th centuries. However, there may also be older and deeper reasons for similarities between vamachara and the left-hand path. Judaism and Christianity are not originally products of Europe, but of the Middle East. The cultural and geographic proximity between Indian and Abrahamic religious traditions was, at one time, much greater. Judaism specifically has a history of flourishing in India free of persecution.[6] There are marked similarities between Jewish kabbalah and vedic (and later tantric) philosophy, which are probably not accidental. Kabbalah is one of the main influences on western esotericism. Exactly how these older Indian influences may have traveled west via kabbalah is a topic that needs much more study, and is unfortunately outside the scope of this paper. However, because it seems foolish to believe that such similarities in philosophy are purely coincidental, I will assume the existence of complex cultural exchanges between east and west predating colonization and the appropriations of Blavatsky and Crowley.

There are additional issues when comparing vamachara to the left-hand path, which has been primarily equated with “black magic” and “Satanism.” There is a long Christian history of turning other people’s gods into demons. This tradition reaches all the way back to the Bible.[7] It was perpetrated by colonizers against the gods and peoples of India. The Dictionnaire Infernal, a 19^th century catalog of demons, casually includes Kali[8] and Garuda[9], with shockingly racist illustrations, alongside familiar Abrahamic demons like Asmoday and Beelzebub. Leo Taxil’s hoax text The Devil in the 19^th Century, which describes a fictional world-wide Luciferian cabal of Freemasons, includes depictions of Brahma devotees as Satanists.[10] (The anti-Hindu stereotypes portrayed by Taxil are in fact the same ones infusing the much later popular text Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom[11].)

Of course, there is a difference between how a Christian thinks of Satanism and how a Satanist thinks of Satanism. Western practitioners of the left-hand path do not see Lucifer as evil, but as a god of knowledge, carnal pleasure, and spiritual liberation. His role can seem superficially similar to that of Shiva, with his feminine consorts, such as Lilith and Na’amah, occupying seemingly parallel roles to those of Kali, Durga, and other manifestations of Shakti. These left-hand practitioners do not see these parallels as insulting to tantric deities, but as celebratory and inspirational. Anton LaVey includes Kali and Shiva on his list of “Infernal Names” alongside many other deities and demons his wishes to invoke in a positive sense.[12] Aleister Crowley equates Kali with Lilith in his mystical odyssey The Vision and the Voice.[13] Unfortunately, such usages remain appropriative, and even though they are meant to be reverent, they come across as insulting in the context of Christian demonization of these gods.

The Absent Left-Hand of the West

One reason western left-hand practitioners are so drawn to tantra is the poverty of our own history. We have much in the of folklore, but little evidence of actual left-hand practice in Europe prior to the late 19^th century. Witch-hunting texts such as the Malleus Maleficarum and Compendium Maleficarum describe antinomian secret rites attended by supposed Satanic “witches.” These rituals are described as involving sexual activity, bodily fluids (primarily blood, urine, and semen) being consumed as sacraments or used for magic, and the intentional mixing of sacred with profane.[14] The infamous Satanic “Black Mass” of legend was supposedly performed over a living “altar” comprised of a naked female body, using communion wafers baked with human blood, and usually followed by ritualistic orgies.[15] However, despite the murderous hysteria of the witch craze, and other moral panics such as the Affair of the Poisons[16] and the aforementioned Taxil Hoax,[17] there is little evidence that such practices were ever actually undertaken in Europe prior to modernity.

Jewish kabbalists,[18] and Catholic demonologists such as Sinistrari,[19] have described human sexual unions with succubi and incubi which, with a little imagination, can seem similar to tantric practices undertaken with intangible visualized yoginis.[20] The witches of the sabbat were also believed to have congress with demons. They even performed ritual sex with Satan himself, offering him the ‘profane kiss’ under his tale (i.e., on the anus) [21] and allowing him to have intercourse with them.[22] But this, too, is only legend. There is no reason to believe that “witches” or Satanists were actually performing these cultic rituals in the renaissance or early modern period. Since Aleister Crowley, who of course appropriated considerably from tantra, such sexual rituals have been adopted by real left-hand practitioners. Inspired by what was then probably only urban legend and moral hysteria, we strive to “reconstruct” a religion that was once purely imaginary, making it, for the first time, real.

Any left-hand adept who does their research will realize that the Black Masses and witches sabbats were never real. There is a pain that can come with realizing that one has no actual history, no true grounding in the fabled past from which one draws inspiration. The “ancient” lineage of the western left-hand path is a lie. The temptation is then to look east for validation of this type of transgressive ritual. The antinomian practices of certain tantric sects seem to lend historical legitimacy to magical technologies like the use of blood and semen,[23] or ritual sex with both incarnate and discarnate partners. The western magician rejoices—they have failed to find the evidence they longed for of real European witchcraft, but they had found proof that seemingly similar practices 1.) existed historically elsewhere and 2.) had real spiritual utility.

Of course, this fits into a familiar white/western/European pattern of appropriating from other cultures to make up for the perceived (and often real) emptiness of our own traditions. In the quest for supremacy, whiteness has excised as many signifiers of difference from itself as possible, becoming bland and homogenous. Left-hand practitioners, who have a particular thirst for individuality and distinction, are particularly tortured by this cultural lack, and obviously unsatisfied by what so-called “western” civilization has to offer us—Christianity. This does not excuse our appropriations, but I believe it provides a needed context for our bad behavior.

Satanism and the left-hand path are comprised of cast-offs of “western civilization.” I have written before about how Satanism represents the “abject” of Christianity (in a Kristevan sense of the term). Our faith is stitched together from rumors, legends, and libels, from rejected texts and heresies—the excrements of Christendom. Another term for these abject elements, this one taken from kabbalism, might be klipot—the shards or shells, the broken refuse[24]. When I encountered the Hindu term uchista I pricked up my ears, sensing kinship—an illusory sense of shared context that dissolved in an instant, as I remembered that the only foundations on which I stand are the fever dreams of the dominant culture from which I come. Tantra cannot give me a history or a home. It cannot make me, or people like me, more legitimate or real. That is not its role. As a Satanist I proudly say non serviam; to turn around and expect someone else’s tradition to serve me would be high hypocrisy.

Subaltern Self-Critique

“Subaltern traditions need the opportunity to self-critique without the gaze of the dominant tradition” said Doctor Pravina Rodriguez during a class on December 3^rd, 2020,[25] eloquently paraphrasing Rita Sherma’s statement of “the need for minority faiths to drink deeply of their canonical, authoritative, normative traditions before critiquing the same.”[26] This statement brought many of the problems facing this paper into sharp focus. In performing a comparison of the left-hand path and vamachara, we run into this issue repeatedly. We are dealing with two subaltern traditions, in a structure of subordination to at least two dominant traditions—Christianity and non-tantric Hinduism—which are, due to colonialism, also in unequal relationship to one another.

Vamachara tantra is subject to the scrutiny of daksinachara tantra, and both are under the eye of non-tantric Hinduism. Meanwhile, the left-hand path is subjected to scorn and distrust by Christianity, sometimes quite violently (see: the witch craze, the Satanic Panic of the 80s[27]). Christianity also dominates and colonizes Hinduism. The left-hand path, while having relatively low status in its home environment, is also able to exercise colonial, appropriative power towards Hinduism, and many left-hand magicians and occult authors have stolen freely from tantric traditions.

At the same time, many Hindus (both tantric and non-tantric), eager to refute the demonization of their own religion, inadvertently reproduce Christian slanders against the left-hand path. ‘We aren’t Satanists because we do not worship evil,’ is the general shape of the sentiment. That is fine, as far is it goes—but I can tell you as a Satanist that we do not worship evil, either. We view Lucifer and his cadre of demons as positive, liberating forces. In one hand, we must hold the irrefutable truth that equating Hindu deities with Abrahamic demons has tremendous racist, colonialist baggage. In the other hand, we must hold up and examine the fact that both vamachara and left-hand practitioners perceive, experience, and philosophize about our supposedly fearsome or ghora deities in similar ways. After considering both points, we must somberly realize at these similarities are probably due, at least in part, to the fact that left-hand path practitioners have stolen theological frameworks from vamachara, often without credit, making it difficult to ascertain which parallels are good-faith coincidences (or even spiritually channeled reflections of deeper truths!) and which are due to colonialist plundering.

The hope that either vamachara or the left-hand path would be able to self-critique outside this context of colonialism and appropriative harm seems painfully slim. But if we have drunk deeply of this analysis, we may find at the bottom the dregs, the klipot or uchista of visceral, unadulterated spiritual experience and profound shared beliefs about the universe. This is the end goal, as I understand it, of what Sherma calls “‘reciprocal illumination’ without ‘mutual misappropriation.’”[28]

I do not know whether such a pure illumination is possible, but I do know that the call of the left is visceral in both the east and the west. Vamachara and the left-hand path are not the same paths, but they do have this in common: for those of us who are called to walk them, there is no other way. Now that the paths have crossed, a serious attempt at this analysis is both necessary and inevitable.

Initial Comparison and Contrast of Vamachara and The Left-Hand Path

The left-hand practices of the east and west have many similarities, as do their right-hand equivalents. Both daksinachara and the right-hand path are more orthodox, orthoprax, and exoteric.[29] Characteristics shared by both vamachara and the left-hand path are listed below. Both paths:

1. Are heterodox and heteroprax, and sometimes considered heretical.[30]
2. Are antinomian.[31]
3. Are traditionally more esoteric than their right-hand equivalents,[32] and are more associated with magic.[33]
4.  Embrace charnel imagery.[34]
5. At least occasionally involve sexual ritual and the magico-religious use of bodily fluids.[35]
6. Revere deities with fearsome iconography (i.e., Shiva, Kali, Satan, Lilith).[36]
7.  Are more inclusive of the feminine than their right-hand equivalents. [37]
8. Contain some element of self-worship.[38]
9. Collapse the space between sacred and profane, and violate ritual purity taboos.[39]
10. Seek material pleasures and powers, and spiritual liberation in this life.[40]

These are significant parallels which set both left-handed tendencies well apart from the dominant traditions of their home cultures. Consequently, both have also suffered stigma and misunderstanding. The careful reader may notice that I have provided citations only for tantric instances of these parallel elements. As a left-hand magician and head pastor of a Satanic congregation, I vouch for the use of these elements in my own practice, and the practices of others in my milieu. (Alternative textual support can be found in the works of Aleister Crowley, Anton LaVey, Michael Aquino, Thomas Karlsson, and others.)  

I believe many of the taboo, frightening, antinomian, and ritually profane elements of both vamachara and the left-hand path serve at least a dual purpose. Outsiders are repelled by images of skulls, corpses, flames, swords, blood, snakes, and other such leftward iconography. This visceral outsider response of repulsion and fear helps preserve the esotericism of the traditions, and ensure that those drawn to the path are drawn by a force strong enough to overpower initial misgivings. Left-hand spirituality is not for everyone. It is always considered a more rigorous path, best reserved for those who are irresistibly called.

To the initiated, antinomian and taboo elements have more profound functions. Tantric ritual consumption of the “five m’s”[41] is meant to help the initiate destroy illusory distinctions. Left-hand taboo-breaking exercises have a different function. Unlike their vamachara parallels, these practices often rightly come under the heading of ‘blasphemy’ and are aimed squarely at the destruction of Christian conditioning, and towards freedom from Levitical/Deuteronomistic prohibitions.

This points to another important distinction—vamachara does not exist in opposition to Brahmanical religion, but nests within it.[42] The vamachara initiate should be “Inwardly Śākta (kaulah.), outwardly Śaiva, and Brahmanical in his mundane observance.”[43] By contrast, the left-hand path exists in blatant opposition to Christianity, and places high emphasis on freeing the practitioner from mental, emotional, and spiritual restrictions that have been placed on them by this dominant tradition. This is a good time to remember that Satan translates as ‘adversary,’ and that this reflects one of his important and revered roles in left-hand path religion. This reflects the completely different cultural context out of which Satanism and the left-hand path emerges. One would never find a Saiva profaning the Vedas, but it would not be at all unexpected to see a Satanist ritually destroying a Bible or profaning a communion host.

Antinomian practices have many other benefits, functions, and motives as well, which can probably be generalized to both vamachara and the left-hand path. The breaking of a taboo cements the practitioner’s commitment to their subaltern spiritual path. It may free them from feelings of guilt or fear, or challenge their preconceived notions about purity, beauty, value, and holiness. Spending time in charnel locations can acclimate the practitioner to the proximity of death, and reduce dread of their own mortality.

The sexual aspects of both vamachara tantric and left-hand magic have been fetishized, overstated and overblown. Western neo-tantra is comprised almost exclusively of sexual practices, and Satanic-themed smut and exploitation media has been popular since at least the mid-20^th century. Sex is the first thing that the uninitiated think of when hearing of either tantra or Satanism. This history of sensationalism makes the sexual aspects of the left-hand path difficult to discuss, and many practitioners shy away from acknowledging these elements for fear of feeding into stereotypes. Yet the inclusion of sexuality within religion remains an important element of the left-hand, and is tied to another shared characteristic: the inclusion of the feminine.

Women have often been seen as a threat to male ascetics, both in the East[44] and in the West. “All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable”[45] the Malleus Maleficarum infamously proclaims. Positioning sex and materiality as impure or unspiritual frequently leads to the denigration of women, who males tend to associate with temptation and with the propagation of earthly life. Improved attitudes towards sex, women, and material being strongly correlate with one another in religion. This can be seen in Sakta theology, as Kathleen Erndl writes:

“Implicit in Såkta theology is a kind of monism in which matter and spirit are not ultimately distinct but are a continuity subsumed within Sakti, the dynamic feminine creative principle. This is not the monism of Advaita Vedånta which denies the reality of the material world but a monism in which the material world is identical with the divine which is conceived of as being feminine.”[46]

This is one reason that tantric and Satanic inclusions of sexuality are worth discussing. Another reason is that we as left-hand practitioners simply should not have to defend our attitudes towards sexuality. The idea that sex is polluting or unholy quite simply has nothing to do with anything we believe; it is a view imposed upon us from the outside. The prurient gaze of the uninitiated ideally should not be our concern.

So, let’s talk about sex. In both vamachara and the left-hand path, sexual ritual can be used to commune with the godhead (in both oneself and one’s partner). It can also be used to manipulate vital energy—conserving it, exchanging it, altering its quality. Both embodied and incorporeal partners may be involved. Incorporeal partners can be accessed by visualization in both east and west, but the left-hand path places more emphasis on spontaneous experiences through dreaming or episodes of sleep paralysis. Another occidental difference is that same-sex coupling is discussed much more frequently, probably because of the Satanic emphasis on breaking Levitical laws. The interplay of masculine and feminine energies is another important aspect of sexual ritual. The Western icon of Baphomet holds some parallels to the tantric idea that the supreme being incorporates both masculine and feminine, and also seems to reflect some icons that portray Shiva and Shakti united in a single body. Western images of the alchemical rebis, another divine androgyne, tend to employ a split-down-the-middle iconography that is even more reminiscent of the Shiva/Shakti images.

Finally, before moving on to the next section, I would like to make some remarks on self-worship. The location of divinity within the self is arguably the most crucial component of both vamachara and the left-hand path. This is also one of the aspects of the left-hand path most obviously stolen from India. Aleister Crowley, who spent much time in India and studied Hinduism, Buddhism and Yoga, is responsible for the collapsing together of worshipper and worshipped in Western esotericism. A bit of liturgy from his Gnostic Mass sums it up well:

“O secret of secrets that art hidden in the being of all that lives, not Thee do we adore, for that which adoreth is also Thou. Thou art That, and That am I.”[47]

Yet it is in subsequent left-hand variations on this concept that the most noticeable gulf between vamachara and the left-hand path has grown: that of the attitude towards self and ego.

Self-Conception: The Most Crucial Distinction

Despite the similarities between vamachara and the left-hand path, a profound philosophical difference divides them. This difference regards the retention of the individual ego. When we examine Hindu and western attitudes on selfhood, we realize that the spiritual goals of daksinachara and vamachara tantra, versus western right-handed and left-handed attainment, are almost perfectly inverse.

In Saiva Siddhanta, the practitioner strives to become equal to, yet distinct from, Shiva.[48] This is akin to western left-hand practices, in which the goal is the attainment of godhood, usually modeled on some deity such as Set or Lucifer, yet retaining distinct individual ego.[49] Meanwhile, vamachara tantra seeks complete unity with Shiva.[50] This seems superficially similar to right-hand spirituality, in which the goal is absorption in the infinite. It would appear that in the west, right is left and left is right.

At the same time, this broad inverse correlation is imperfect. The western Neoplatonist notion of unity with God never includes partaking in God’s omniscience and omnipotence, whereas vamachara liberation explicitly includes sharing in all the power of Shiva (or Shakti).[51] Relatedly, the similarity between Saiva Siddhanta and left-handed ego-preserving attainment is also shallower than it seems. Saiva Siddhanta initiates who attains equality with Shiva do not actually use his powers of creation and destruction, because in this enlightened state, supposedly they will have the wisdom not to do so.[52] Meanwhile, some left-hand magicians see themselves ultimately escaping into their own personal universes, which they themselves create, and becoming the deities thereof.[53]

Still, the left-hand path is fundamentally based on a desire for discrete, individual existence and assertion of the self which is alien to vamachara. One could explain this tidily with some trite, stereotypical remark about ‘individualist versus collectivist cultures,’ but this would be doing the subject a vast disservice. Neither vamachara nor the left-hand path, after all, are well-known for corresponding to their home culture’s dominant tendencies. I believe, instead, that these two strategies of self-deification—the individual versus the universal—developed based on which theology would be most liberatory in their native contexts, both social and theological.

The monist self-divinity that allows a sakta to proclaim “I am she”[54] allows for transcendence of varna, jati and gender within the Hindu world. “That low kaula who refuses to initiate a chandala or a yavana into the Kula-Dharma, considering them to be low, or a woman out of disrespect for her, is himself low and goes the downward way,” the Mahanirvana Tantra warns.[55] The total immanence of the divine in vamachara tantra dissolves all social distinctions, revealing them to be illusory, just as all other distinctions are dissolved on the way to moksha.

The west, of course, has more than its share of unjust social stratification. The Christian god is said to be a god of the poor and oppressed, but his efficacy in this role has been widely questioned since at least the Enlightenment. Theology stating that only Christ was fully human and fully divine prevents leaves little room for meaningful participation in the Godhead. One can be absorbed into God, but God cannot be absorbed into oneself—unlike in vamachara tantra, wherein the divine is taken into the self in the descent of power. Unity with God means being contained in the infinite as a small piece, never possessing that vastness in its entirety. One is merely a drop in the ocean. Hence, the Satanist struggles for independence from a deity that can only make us small, never large and powerful.

Worse, from a certain perspective, the Christian god has chronic problems with theodicy. While any Hindu conception of the supreme being will, of necessity, integrate both fierce and gentle aspects, much Christian theology insists that all evil is illusory and that God, the only reality, is purely good. For many people, this theology fails to reflect their experience of being. When Christianity veers to a more dualist, rather than a monist, direction, Satan is generated and all strife attributed to him, a scapegoating that many people sense is somehow unrealistic and unfair. To become one with the God of Christ, then, is to be assimilated into a static, Neoplatonic ideal of The Good, a vision of ultimate reality with no room for dynamism whatsoever.

The blueprint of these conceptions of ego and unity can also be seen in the myths and iconography around the gods of vamachara and the left-hand path. Kali shows up to fight demons, declaring her vastness, her primacy, her inclusion of everything.[56] This is how her divinity is asserted—by being all. Lucifer, by contrast, attained his divinity via separation from Jehovah. His enlightenment begins in the same place as his individual self-assertion. The parallel story of Adam and Eve’s fall from Eden highlights a similar trajectory, when read through a Satanic lens—the quest for knowledge and self-awareness is incompatible with the presence of Yahweh. Only by separating from the Father can the couple achieve liberation.

This focus on separating from oppressive authority to nurture an individual godhead leads to a much greater political emphasis in the left-hand path. Many precepts of modern Satanism are drawn not from sacred texts but from early anarchist writings, such as those of Proudhon[57] and Bakunin.[58] Since the mid-20^th century, right-wing Satanisms have developed, but overall, the left-hand path remains politically left as well. Satanic liberation is thus to be attained through a sort of cosmic class struggle. By contrast, the Śaiva or Kaula attains moksha not by wrestling for power, but by recognizing that all power already resides within them.

Another difference which likely stems from divergent views on the ego is the absence or presence of asceticism. Shiva is an ascetic, and so are many vamachara initiates. Lucifer is most emphatically not an ascetic, and asceticism is perhaps more completely absent from Satanism than from any other religion. This contrast is easy to explain—ascetic practices are usually designed to help shed the ego which left-hand magicians are so keen to retain. 

These reflections may provide some clues as to the reasons for differing attitudes towards ego in vamachara and the left-hand path.

Conclusion

The similarities and differences between vamachara and left-hand path philosophies can be explored at great length, and deserve to be. This has been only a shallow survey. There is much work to be done in disentangling the threads of these two left-hand paths, especially considering that Satanic studies is a very new discipline. The tendency of left-hand writers to omit citations of their (potentially tantric) sources will complicate such research.

Reservations about being associated with the occidental left-hand path are natural. Satanists make dubious allies. No matter how good our intentions, we tend to inadvertently taint everything we touch. Guilt by association is strong. Satanists per se did not even exist until the late 19^th century (or the mid-20^th century, depending on whether one dates from Crowley or LaVey), yet multitudes have been persecuted for “devil worship” throughout history. Thus, the number of non-Satanists who have been persecuted as Satanists is probably much higher than the number of true Satanists who have ever existed! Like the innocent so-called “witches” of the early modern era, Hindus have already been tarred with the demonic brush. The appropriations from vamachara and tantrism in general that many left-hand occultists have committed have, I fear, only served to deepen the association of Hinduism with diabolism. Thus, inviting vamachara practitioners to an interfaith dialog with Satanists and Luciferians might seem risky, or even unintentionally insulting.

It is my hope that “mutual illumination without mutual misappropriation” can eventually be attained regardless. One thing that the occidental left-hand may have to offer is a range of theological strategies for resisting Christian dominance. We can also do our part to speak up against demonization of Hindu practices and deities, making it clear that the religious traditions of India are in no way “Satanic.”

In summary, it is a mistake to equate the eastern and western left-hand philosophies too closely, but it is also perilous to deny their similarities, especially considering the influence of tantra on the esotericism of the west. And at a more profound level, there is much spiritual kinship to be found between the two antinomian and liberation-seeking paths of the left.

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[1] Michael Aquino, Black Magic (San Francisco: Temple of Set, 1996), 20.

[2] Isaac Jacob Ben Ha-Kohen, “Treatise on the Left Emanation,” in The Early Kabbalah, ed. Joseph Dan (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), 172-181.

[3]Aleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice (New York: Dover, 1976), 191-192.

[4] Aquino, 20.

[5] Rita Sherma, “New Directions in Comparative Theology: Methodological Considerations for Interreligious Theological Reflection,” in Sustainable Societies: Interreligious Interdisciplinary Responses (Springer Sophia Series, 2018), 1.

[6] Adrija Roychowdhury, “Here Is Everything You Need to Know About Indian Jews,” Indian Express, July 5, 2017, https://indianexpress.com/article/research/narendra-modi-in-israel-here-is-everything-you-need-to-know-about-indian-jews/.

[7] 2 Kings 1:2-3, Matthew 12:25-28

[8] Collin De Plancy, The Infernal Dictionary: Devils, Gods, and Spirits of the Dictionnaire Infernal (n.p.: Ordo Al Ghoul, 2019), 52-53, Kindle.

[9] De Plancy, 72-73.

[10] Arthur Edward Waite, Devil Worship in France: Or, the Question of Lucifer (n.p.: Project Gutenberg, 2007), 38, PDF.

[11] Steven Spielberg, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Westwood: Lucasfilm Ltd, 1984).

[12] Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible (New York: Avon, 2005), 145.

[13] Aleister Crowley, “The Vision and the Voice,” in Gems from the Equinox: Instructions by Aleister Crowley for His Own Magical Order, ed. Israel Regardie (San Francisco: Weiser Books, 2007), 567.

[14] Francesco Maria Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum: The Montague Summers Edition, trans. E.A. Ashwin (New York: Dover, 1988), 34-35.

[15] Ruben Van Luijk, Children of Lucifer: The Origins of Modern Religious Satanism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 43-45.

[16] Van Luijk, 45-56.

[17] Van Luijk, 207-280.

[18] Moses DeLeon, “Lilit and Na’amah,” in The Zohar (n.p.: The Kabbalah Centre International, 2020), https://www.zohar.com/zohar/Acharei%20Mot/chapters/60.

[19] Ludovico Maria Sinistrari, “Demoniality,” in Eros and Evil: The Sexual Psychopathology of Witchcraft, ed. Robert E.L. Masters (New York: The Julian Press, Inc., 1962), 205.

[20] Csaba Kiss, “A Sexual Ritual with Māyā in Matsyendrasaṃhitā,” in Śaivism and the Tantric Traditions: Essays in Honour of Alexis g.j.s. Sanderson, ed. Peter C. Bisschop (Boston: Brill, 2020), 428.

[21] Guazzo, 35.

[22] Phillip C. Almond, The Devil: A New Biography (New York: I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2016), 107-110.

[23] Kiss, 427.

[24] “Kabbalistic Glossary: Klipot,” The Kabbalah Centre, November 22, 2018, https://kabbalah.com/en/articles/klipot/.

[25] Pravina Rodriguez, “Mahadevi: The Divine Mother” (Zoom lecture, Starr King School for the Ministry, Berkeley, CA, December 3rd, 2020).

[26] Rita Sherma, “How the Graduate Theological Union Became an Interreligious Institution: The Theological Work of Viewing Our Neighbor of Another Faith as ‘friend’ and ‘intellectual Companion’” (Paper presented at American Academy of Religion Annual Conference 2017, Boston, MA, November 2017).

[27] Van Luijk, 356-364.

[28] Sherma, “New Directions in Comparative Theology,” 11.

[29] Alexis Sanderson, “Saivism and the Tantric Traditions,” in The World’s Religions, ed. Stewart Sutherland, Leslie Houlden, and Peter Clarke (London: Routledge, 1988), 692-693.

[30] Alexis Sanderson, “Meaning and Tantric Ritual,” in Essais Sur Le Rituel, ed. Anne-Marie Blondeau and Kristopher Schipper (Louvain-Paris: Peeters, 1995), 16-18.

[31] Sanderson, “Saivism and the Tantric Traditions,” 661.

[32] Sanderson, “Saivism and the Tantric Traditions,” 668-669.

[33] Sanderson, “Saivism and the Tantric Traditions,” 667.

[34] Sanderson, “Saivism and the Tantric Traditions,” 675.

[35] Gavin Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 191.

[36] Flood, 177.

[37] Flood, 164-166.

[38] Aleksandra Wenta, “Becoming the Dancer: Dissolving the Boundaries between Ritual, Cognition, and Theatrical Performance in Non-Dual Śaivism,” Cracow Indological Studies 20 (January 2018): 268.

[39] Flood, 190.

[40] Sanderson, “Saivism and the Tantric Traditions,” 692.

[41] Kathleen M. Erndl, “Sakta,” in The Hindu World, ed. Sushil Mittal and Gene R. Thursby (New York: Routledge, 2004), 141.

[42] Sanderson, “Saivism and the Tantric Traditions,” 662.

[43] Alexis Sanderson, “The Śaiva Exegesis of Kashmir,” in Mélanges Tantriques à La Mémoire D’hélène Brunner [Tantric Studies in Memory of Hélène Brunner], ed. Dominic Goodall and André Padoux (Pondicherry: Institut français d’Indologie, 2007), 232.

[44] Rita Sherma, “’Sa Ham– I am She’: Woman as Goddess,” in Is the Goddess a Feminist? The Politics of South Asian Goddesses, ed. Alf Hiltebeitel and Kathleen M. Erndl (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 43.

[45] Henry Kramer, Malleus Maleficarum (New York: Dover, 1971), 47.

[46] Erndl, 143.

[47] Crowley, Magick, 351.

[48] Flood, 163.

[49] Thomas Karlsson, Qabalah, Qliphoth and Goetic Magic (Jacksonville, OR: Ajna Press, 2009), 110.

[50] Flood, 164.

[51] Sanderson, “Meaning and Tantric Ritual,” 33-36.

[52] Sanderson, “Saivism and the Tantric Traditions,” 693.

[53] Karlsson, 136.

[54] Sherma, “Sa Ham,” 24.

[55] Sherma, “Sa Ham,” 39.

[56] Erndl, 150-151.

[57] Van Luijk, 117.

[58] Van Luijk, 119-120.