On the Vama Marga

A rejoinder (a clarification) to Nikolas Schreck’s interviews with his student Lantern Bridge on YouTube.

In the very small world of the Western Left Hand Path, an ongoing debate has occurred for about 25 years on the Indo-Tibetan path of the Vama Marga.

In my 2020 conferred PhD dissertation The Development of Strategic Culture in Terrorist Organisations (which you can find available for free online from Australia’s Monash University) on Japan’s Aum Shinrikyo, I addressed aspects of this via three posited causal mechanisms: cultural transmission (longitudinal), social learning (group), and folklore (information, rumour, symbols, storytelling).

Its transmission form can vary - the major ones are vertical (such as in families and in close kinship groups, and in the traditionalist model of Teacher-Student or Mentor-Mentee relationships), horizontal (such as in group affiliation), and oblique (this may involve luck, aleatory chance, randomness, stochastic volatility, and what John Godolphin Bennett called Hazard). There is also the network (such as in the Jacques Vallee form of the Invisible College or the Jack Sarfatti form of the lifespan-based and retrocausal Destiny Matrix).

This week, I saw three lengthy interviews with the Kagyu lineage Tibetan Buddhist teacher Nikolas Schreck on the YouTube channel of his student Lantern Bridge. Mr Schreck spoke at length about how and why he took refuge in the Tibetan Buddhist path of Vajrayana. He spoke very candidly about his life experiences with the Church of Satan founder Anton Szandor LaVey and the Temple of Set founder Lieutenant Colonel Dr Michael A. Aquino. The interviews represent Mr Schreck’s personal life experiences. He has been a committed Tibetan Buddhist for over 20 years. Internet commentary or speculation to the contrary can be rightfully dismissed as misinformation / disinformation.

Mr Schreck and I have interacted briefly over the years, first whilst both in the Temple of Set, and then outside it. He has made “original contributions” to the Satanic subculture milieu, notably in The Satanic Screen (second edition published in 2024 by Headpress) and in Demons of the Flesh (co-written with Zeena Schreck and published in 2002 by Creation Books).

We differ on some specific issues that Mr Schreck raises in the Lantern Bridge interviews about LTC Dr Aquino. Some of this is ideological framing: I am not a traditionalist like Mr Schreck, nor am I a postmodernist (my MSc, MA and PhD training is transdisciplinary focused). We differ on our respective assessments of LTC Dr Aquino’s death on 1st September 2019; on his United States Army military career (which is mischaracterised significantly in the interview); on how corporate governance and appeals boards work in actual “lived experience” reality (as both Complainant and Respondent roles, and as institutional Administrator); and finally, comparing the Temple of Set as an IRS designated 501(c)(3) designated non-profit entity founded in 1975 to Indo-Tibetan Buddhist lineages involves what are analytically in terms of case inclusion / selection criteria are incommensurable comparisons. Elsewhere, much of what Mr Schreck notes (such as about Mr LaVey) can be summed up in Ichak Adizes’ diagnostic phrase “the founder’s trap” (as communicated to me by the late Dr Don Edward Beck). Mr Schreck draws some life lessons here that are invaluable, whatever life path you are on.

I can independentlyconfirm (as part of “peer review” norms of effective and transparent communal verification practices) having read the previously suppressed U.S. Army Criminal Investigations Division report into his Presidio case “titling” that the CID formal investigation team did not find the necessary and sufficient corroborating evidence on the specific allegations that LTC Dr Aquino faced. This matter did not proceed to a court martial, which LTC Dr Aquino’s military personnel file will independently confirm. The CID failed to meet the required criminal law standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt”. The CID formal investigation report in its unredacted sections has significant errors: methodological, prejudicial bias, and how the formal investigation was run. Therefore, I can confirm that Mr Schreck’s estimative assessment that LTC Dr Aquino is innocent of the Presidio case allegations is plausible: the CID did not meet the required criminal law standards, and so LTC Dr Aquino is legally entitled to presumption of innocence. The confusion is that the Presidio case was then dealt with as adverse administrative action by LTC Dr Aquino’s then employer, which then led to Aquino v Stone and the judge’s suppression of the CID formal investigation report, rather than allowing for a de novo review of its very significant flaws.

Mr Schreck advocates for the scholarly study of Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana. By sheer chance (psychological priming, receptiveness) today I found a key study on Tibetan Buddhist antinomianism that takes a semiotic rather than a hermeneutic approach (Mr Schreck’s life experience is a third way: experiential and initiatory via Trijang Chocktrul Rinpoche). This is Christian K. Weidemeyer’s scholarly study Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism: History, Semiology, & Transgression in the Indian Traditions (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013). At the time of writing, Weidemeyer was Associate Professor of the history of religions at the Divinity School and the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. This scholarly study engages with relevant primary sources like the Buddhakapala Mahayogini Tantra; the Kalacakra Tantra, and the Mahakala Tantra. Here are the relevant publication details of what is a major, important study that was pre-publication vetted and published by a leading U.S. university press:

https://cup.columbia.edu/book/making-sense-of-tantric-buddhism/9780231162418/

https://www.amazon.com.au/Making-Sense-Tantric-Buddhism-Transgression/dp/0231162405

A scholarly review:

https://blogs.dickinson.edu/buddhistethics/files/2015/07/Elacqua-review-final.pdf

The scholarly study’s author:

https://divinity.uchicago.edu/directory/christian-k-wedemeyer

https://wisdomexperience.org/content-author/christian-k-wedemeyer/

Thanks for reading.