This page groups religions by their current standing, from a thriving global faith to one with only a small surviving community. Wikipedia notes that the Mandaeans, for example, "are the last surviving Gnostics from antiquity," a status very different from a religion still actively converting new adherents. Browsing by status today lets a visitor tell a living, growing tradition apart from one that survives only as a small remnant.
Facts
Status
Status TodayLiving: the movements grouped here are current organisations with members, published doctrine and a documented history, and are described here in the present tense. 4 Standing as a Comparative CategoryContested: left-hand path is used both as a self-designation by the groups themselves and as a label applied from outside, and the two uses do not pick out the same set. 2 Overview
What Defines This GroupingCurrents that take the self, rather than submission to a god or dissolution into a greater whole, as the aim of practice, and that deliberately invert the symbols of the surrounding religion. They differ sharply over whether their central figures are real beings or chosen symbols. 2 Origins
Origin of the NameBorrowed from Indian Tantra, where vamachara, the left-hand practice, names rites using substances and acts the orthodox path forbids. It was applied to Western currents much later and carries none of the Tantric context. 3 Learn More
Left-Hand-Path Traditions
This group gathers left-hand-path traditions, a modern category for spiritual currents that deliberately set themselves against mainstream religious norms, emphasising self-deification, individual will and the transgression of taboo rather than submission to a higher order.
The browser will find the traditions the atlas classes here. The entries describe each in its own stated terms, distinguishing a considered philosophical stance from the popular caricatures often attached to the label.
Living tradition, practised today
Filter Results2 entries
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. The Devil's Party: Satanism in Modernity
Per Faxneld and Jesper Aa. Petersen (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2013
3. The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century
Geoffrey Samuel, Cambridge University Press, 2008
4. Satanism: A Social History
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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