Hey guys,
has anyone read “Lords of the Left Hand Path”? What’s it about, how is it, is it worth it? Please share your thoughts.
Its by Stephen Flowers (aka Edred Thorsson), it pretty much goes throughout the different coulters, past through present, and gives a description of the beliefs and practices of the various groups and religious sects considered to follow the left hand path. In the begining of the book he defines what he considers the left hand to be and follows these guidelines. In the later chapters relating to more recent times he brings up specific magicians and specific groups and orders.
Stephen Flowers is a former member of the Temple of Set, so his views are somewhat from that philosophical point of view (if I remember right he has a whole chapter on them); though he has since left and is focused on his Rune Guild. All in all I would say it is worth it, I have several of his books and the guy does his homework. Also check out Hermetic Magick and Nine Doors to Midgard if you end up liking his work.
Good summary by empyrean93.
My personal takeaway from the book was the accurate point that only RHP types want to kill or control the masses using death and fear of hell as goads to get compliance, for a start, and when I hear RHP talk now of merging back to the divine I think of the way only the flawed foetus is re-absorbed by the matrix that’s generated it, most of the rest of reality tends towards more life, more complexity and more variety, not stultifying unity via the renunciation of embodied experience.
I speak as someone disgusted by both the people and entities I met in my years attempting to be RHP (as I understood it) and so my view is coloured by this, and I make no pretence otherwise.
I found Flower’s book empowering and a wonderful antidote to being raised singing hymns about how powerless, meek and humble I must be at school and then the years of RHP-Hindu-based philosphies that were my primary experience of spiritual and occult work for years, it decontaminated me from lingering guilt over my choices and helped inform my subsequent path. I’m very grateful to him for the work and recommend it to anyone who wishes to heal from RHP conventional wisdom about the nature of life and the purpose of being.