Hidden Intercourse: Eros and Sexuality in the History of "Westernesotericism, Leiden and Boston: Brill 2008

124 Book Reviews / ARIES IO.I (20IO) I07-I39

Wouter J. Hanegraaff and Jeffrey J. Kripal (eds.), Hidden Intercourse: Eros and Sexuality in the History of "WesternEsotericism, Leiden and Boston: Brill 2008. xxii + 544 p. ISBN 978-9004168732.

One simply does not talk about sex magic or spermatophagy, the ritual eating of sperm, in polite company. And yet this is an integral part of a certain Western esoteric tradition. Information about sex magic is in fact available, but it is scattered throughout several obscure publications, some of them hard to find even in public libraries. Hence the usefulness of this book, which collects together an impressive amount of information on both sexual imagery and practical sex magic throughout the whole history of Western esotericism, from the Gnostics of old to contemporary occult groups such as the Ordo Templi Orientis or the Fraternitas Saturni. There are, however, two different relationships between esotericism and sex. The first is the mere use of sexual imagery as a metaphor, without any clear implication that the metaphor should be acted out and translated into practice as ritualistic sex. Despite persistent rumours to the contrary, this is the case with (most) forms of Kabbalah, according to the chapters by Elliot R. Wolfson and Moshe Idel; of Medieval texts based on the Song of Songs, such as the intriguing fourteenth-century Liber florum celestis by the monk John of Morigny, studied by Claire Fanger; and even of Latin alchemy, where- at least according to Lawrence M. Principe-there is little evidence that the fascinating gendered imagery, with its vast array of male, female and neutral minerals and plants, actually became a prescription for the ritualistic use of sex. But, from the very beginnings of Western esotericism, there is also a different, more practical stream. Since these are-as the editors remind us in their introduction-"things we do not talk about", we cannot expect the sources to be entirely forthcoming, and problems remain almost everywhere. In the Hermetic and Gnostic sects discussed by Roelof van den Broek and April D. DeConick some things are clear: a common doctrine of divine androg- yny leads the Poimandres to a negative view of sexual desire, and the Asclepius to a rather positive one. Whether a ritualistic intercourse was requested by the Valentinians in order that Gnostic couples may produce an offspring of "spirituals", or whether radical sects such as the Borborites (also known as Phibionites) did indeed practice spermatophagy together with the ritual inges- tion of menstrual blood, is an entirely different matter. Most, or all, of what we know about these practices comes £rom hostile, anti-Gnostic witnesses. Did they simply lie for polemical purposes? Not entirely, according to the authors.

Critics may have included in their reports some gross exaggerations, but the presence of some sexual rituals is consistent from what we know about these Gnostic sects. Medieval Islam offered, according to Pierre Lory, an early instance of an- other strange practice which reappears throughout the book: the marriage, and sexual intercourse, between humans and demons or spirits. Evidence that the practice was taken seriously is found in the fact that respected Islamic legal scholars discussed the lawfulness of the marriages between human and spirits (jinn), and the civil status of children produced by such marriages. The latter were not declared utterly unlawful but were discouraged as inappropriate. Nor was the matter put to rest with the end of the Middle Ages. In fact, contemporary ethnologists still find evidence, £rom Morocco to Egypt and Yemen, of troubles caused by beautiful female jinn, such as the famous Lalla 'Aisha, seducing young men away from their wives. Sexual allusions in Renaissance esotericism are often classified within the realm of mere metaphors. They deserve, however, a second look according to Wouter Hanegraaff. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), Hanegraaff argues, may have been burned at the stake, among other reasons, for his uninhibited celebration of heterosexual love and sex within a clerical subculture which was both sexophobic and prevailingly homosexual. Before finding peace in priesthood and celibacy, Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) may have derived his sexual imagery from his desire for a young boy, Giovanni Cavalcanti (1444?- 1509). The relationships of the witches with the Devil, with male warlocks, and between themselves may have been on the other hand, Allison P.Coudert claims, entirely fictional. But, if so, they tell us one thing or two about the sexual imagination of the authors writing about them. Stories of sex between human beings and spirits are not purely Islamic. Antoine Faivre truly surprises us by publishing new documents about the relationships with Sophia of some early Christian theosophers, particularly Johann Georg Gichtel (1638-1710). The sources lead us to the unequivocal, if puzzling, conclusion that Gichtel so successfully evoked the Divine Wis- dom, Sophia, that his friends met her in the theosopher's Amsterdam home as a charming young lady, who left them with little doubt that her rela- tionship with Gichtel was anything but platonic. Sophia also helped Gichtel in 'finding in Amsterdam some of the dwellings in which Gichtel succes- sively lived' and, after his death, even helped in editing his correspondence (p. 290). We do not know exactly what to do of these reports-nor does Faivre. But there seems to be little doubt that Gichtel and his friends did take them very literally. Nor can we doubt that Thomas Lake Harris (1823- 126 Book Reviews / ARIES IO.I (20IO) I07-I39

1906), the spiritualist prophet, sincerely believed to have married a faerie, the Lily Queen. The tale is told by Arthur Versluis, who noticed that while the practice of free love-cum coitus reservatus-within the Oneida community of John Humphrey Noyes (18II-1886) is the subject matter of 'a lively scholarly industry' (p. 334) the (perhaps more) interesting Harris has been almost for- gotten. Versluis also discusses the secularization and medicalization of Noyes' theories by Alice Bunker Stockham (1833-1912), who popularized the coitus reservatus as "karezza". These characters, in turn, cannot be truly understood without a survey of how spiritualism, having eliminated Hell (and, occasion- ally, the very Christian notion of sin), interacted with the free love movement and excited the imagination ofits devotees with tales of sex in the spirit world. The survey of these "deadly dates" has been done by Cathy Gutierrez, in one of the chapters offering an abundance of previously unpublished mate- rials. In his contribution, John Patrick Deveney has summarized his published work about African American sex magician Pascal Beverly Randolph (1825- 1875). There is very little about Randolph that Deveney in decades of study has not uncovered. And yet there are things we will probably never know about Randolph's actual practices. The most innovative chapter of the book is perhaps Marco Pasi's tour deforce about the Chevalier Georges Le Clement de Saint-Marcq (1865-1956), a Belgian scientist, freemason and spiritualist who became quite infamous after he published in 1906 L'Eucharistie, where he claimed that the real subject matter of the Eucharist was Jesus Christ's (and later, his disciples') sperm. This great truth, Le Clement claimed, was hidden by Jesus Christ for entirely noble and admirable purposes, and by priests and pastors after him for the less noble reason of preserving a system of power. It was now time, Le Clement argued, to be entirely sincere and divulge the truth of spermatophagy to the world through a movement he called "sincerisme". Although the general outline of Le Clement's ideas and influence had been studied by a handful of scholars (including the undersigned), Pasi was the first who went to Belgium, interviewed Le Clement's family and found a number of new, previously unknown documents. The chapter gives us a taste of what is there, including how Le Clement, once a well-respected figure, became a pariah in his own spiritualist and Masonic milieu after L'Eucharistie. We can hardly wait for Pasi's announced next instalments on Le Clement's activities and disciples, although presumably there will be disagreement on the crucial matter of how much influential the Belgian esoteric author really was. In particular, the questions of whether Le Clement advocated (not only merely described as an historical matter) the practice of spermatophagy, and whether Book Reviews / ARIES IO.I (20IO) I07-I39 127 he was responsible for (re-)introducing the practice in the Western esoteric milieu (or it already existed before him), will surely benefit from Pasi's further research. Le Clement was mostly influential on Theodor Reuss (1855-1923) and his Ordo Templi Orientis, an organization which in turn influenced all Western contemporary sex magic after it came under the control of Aleister Crowley (1875-1947). Crowley is the most well-known modern sex magician, and there has been a recent flourishing of academic studies on this most con- troversial occult master. Hence the choice of the editors of devoting com- paratively little room to his life and work makes sense. The book devotes more room to characters that came after Crowley and are less well known, particularly to the English-speaking scholars. They include Eugen Grosche (1888-1964) of the Fraternitas Saturni, Giuliano Kremmerz (1861-1930) of the Ordine Osirideo Egizio and the Fraternita di Miriam, Julius Evola (1898-1974) of (inter alia) the Gruppo di UR, and Maria de Naglowska (1883-1936) of the Confrerie de la Fleche d'Or. All four occult authors are discussed in a chapter by Hans Thomas Hakl. He shows an impressive com- mand of the existing literature in Italian on Kremmerz and on the sex-magical side of Evola (English scholars normally confine themselves to his politics), German on Grosche, and French on Naglowska, all virtually unknown to the English-speaking academic community. Hakl also manages to navigate with skill and brio around issues hotly debated among European continen- tal scholars, such as what documents of Kremmerz's sex magical operations published in the last decades are genuine and in what sense Naglowska was a Satanist. The chapter by Hugh Urban gives to the reader less familiar with Crowley the essential of his career, and discusses in depth an important point: the rela- tionship that Crowley and post-crowleyan sex magic have had with Indian Tantrism. Tantrists did (and do) practice spermatophagy and other rituals involving sex but, Urban argues, have been very much misunderstood by West- ern occultists, including those like Crowley who really travelled to India. And the Tantric reference becomes a mere travesty in the contemporary magic asso- ciated with the New Age. Jeffrey J. Kripal in his concluding chapter on Esalen offers a much kinder approach to Western neo-Tantrism. Kripal's chapter has the strength and (in my opinion) the weaknesses of his magnum opus about Esalen (Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, 2007). It is a treasure chest of new information: including, this time, about an unpublished (and important) Esalen novel by John Heider. On the other hand, Kripal is obvi- ously in love with Esalen and his approach is hardly value-free. Esalen may well 128 Book Reviews / ARIES IO.I (20IO) I07-I39 be the capital of an American "religion of no religion" where "nobody captures the flag". But the" religion of no religion" has his devotees and his missionaries, and Kripal at times writes as one of them. 544 pages about sex magic and erotic esoterica may not conceivably please everybody. No doubt this or that other interpretation will be discussed or contradicted. The editors, however, deserve unrestricted praise for showing that there is such a thing as the academic study of sex magic, and that it is highly relevant for understanding both Western esotericism and the history of sexuality in the West.

Massimo Introvigne