The tendency towards “black magic”

[Steppingfeet]

“It is impossible to worship both sides, – the male and female of nature, – at once; one or the other must predominate. Only by following the absolute, sexless Unity, can the white path be trodden. Hence the necessity for chastity. The occult and the physical must never be mixed up. It is absolutely necessary to concentrate on one or the other. The tendency naturally is to Black Magic, and that is why several years of training are necessary to cut away every sort of prejudice before power can be entrusted to you. Before you can become an occultist you have to give up every prejudice, every liking, every feeling of preference for one thing or another. The adept must entirely separate himself from his personality. He must say, I am a power! It is easy to fall into Black Magic.”

(K.H., Some Commentaries on H.P.B.’s Esoteric Instructions I and II, pg. 10, Par. 2, last line)

I get why you shared the quote, sillypumpkins, feeling as you did that it may help speak to why some felt that the world is "inherently STS." I just wish to comment briefly on Blavatsky's thinking as expressed here.

I agree completely with what SF said regarding the absolute necessity to balance and clear the lower chakras. If more power becomes available to you, whether a social or finanicial power or simply higher energy in your own system, then your blockages, particularly repressed (and thereby unconscious) aspects of your self, may wield that power in ways that reduce your polarity, whether toward self-aggrandizement, abuse of others, or other forms of separation. (Though, side note, it would have to take a huge act of conscious volition to then begin pursuing black magic, but surely the stories of switched polarity are many.)

What i wanted to reflect on was this absolutism in Blavatsky's words. "Cut away" "give up" "separate himself from his personality" - including "EVERY" single preference! Wow. I mean, in a certain light, I can see the liberation from the bonds of the personality shell through disidentification with form that is needed for union with the Creator, but this seems to me a recipe for war with the self. Dominating and controlling the lower or animal or physical or personality self to reach a conjured state of perfection.

Far better, I think, to love the self, the full 360-degree self, the light and the dark, that which is liked and disliked in the self, and to then do the work of the disciplines of the personality: Knowing the Self, Accepting the Self, Becoming the Creator.

Upon that path, distortion then falls away, as Ra indicates. I don't think we must identify undesirable aspects and then excise them from our beings, though certainly we can work toward understanding where we are out of our integrity, improving our habits, and even intentionally releasing toxic aspects (e.g., through fasting). I think we must embrace our imperfection and submit it to the Creator in the light of that grace and mercy, and seek ever to become purer instruments of the One.

Though maybe the rest of her large body of work helps to contextualize this one quote.