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Magia Sexualis Magia Sexualis Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism hugh b. urban University of California Press berkeley los angeles london University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2006 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Urban, Hugh B. Magia sexualis : sex, magic, and liberation in modern Western esotericism / Hugh B. Urban. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-520-24776-5 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-520-24776-0 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Sex—Western countries—Miscellanea—History. 2. Magic— Western countries—History. 3. Liberty—Miscellanea—History. I. Title. bf1623.s4u73 2006 133.4'309—dc22j 2006010715 Manufactured in the United States of America 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 10987654321 This book is printed on Natures Book, which contains 50% post- consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ansi/ niso z 39.48–1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper).8 Contents List of Illustrations vii Preface, Acknowledgments, and Apologies ix introduction Sex Magic, Modernity, and the Search for Liberation 1 1. the recurring nightmare, the elusive secret Historical and Imaginary Roots of Sex Magic in the Western Tradition 21 2. sex power is god power Paschal Beverly Randolph and the Birth of Sex Magic in Victorian America 55 3. the yoga of sex Tantra, Kama Sutra, and Other Exotic Imports from the Mysterious Orient 81 4. the beast with two backs Aleister Crowley and Sex Magick in Late Victorian England 109 5. the yoga of power Sex Magic, Tantra, and Fascism in Twentieth-Century Europe 140 6. the goddess and the great rite Sex Magic and Feminism in the Neo-Pagan Revival 162 7. the age of satan Satanic Sex and the Black Mass, from Fantasy to Reality 191 8. sexual chaos Chaos Magic, Cybersex, and Religion for a Postmodern Age 222 conclusion The Lessons of King Lamus: Religion, Sexuality, and Liberation in a “Post-Orgy” World 255 Notes 267 Selected Bibliography 317 Index 331 Illustrations 1. Hans Baldung Grien, “Naked Young Witch with Fiend in the Shape of a Dragon” 39 2. Alchemical Androgyne from Splendor Solis 48 3. Emanuel Swedenborg 51 4. William Blake, “Whirlwind of Lovers” 53 5. Paschal Beverly Randolph 56 6. The Goddess Chamunda, Kamakhya, Assam, India 87 7. A Shakta Tantrika, Tarapith, Bangla, India 90 8. Aleister Crowley 110 9. Aleister Crowley as “Mahatma Guru Sri Paramahansa Shivaji” 116 10. Aleister Crowley in his last years 119 11. Leila Waddell, branded with the mark of the Beast 134 12. John Whiteside (Jack) Parsons 136 13. Julius Evola 141 14. Gerald Gardner 163 15. The Great Rite 174 16. Starhawk 182 17. Mocata, in The Devil Rides Out 200 18. Anton Szandor LaVey with his personal magical symbol 202 19. The Black Pope leads a nubile acolyte toward earthly indulgence 207 20. Austin Osman Spare 229 21. Cover image for Peter J. Carroll, Psybermagick 236 vii Preface, Acknowledgments, and Apologies Writing about Sex Magic; or, How to Ruin Your Academic Career and Your Sex Life All in One Go Sex is a thing of the soul; most people think it but a mere matter of earthly form and physical structure....But its laws, offices, utilities and its deeper and diviner meanings are sealed books to all but about two in a million; yet they ought to have the attentive study of every rational human being, every aspirant to immortality beyond the grave. paschal beverly randolph, Eulis! The History of Love (1874) Sex is hardly ever just about sex. shirley maclaine When I first conceived the idea of writing a book on magia sexualis, or the tradition of sexual magic in the modern Western esotericism, I immediately encountered two very strong but completely opposite reactions. On one side, many friends and colleagues were naturally intrigued by the possibility of a book that could manage to take seriously a subject that is typically the province of New Age self-help manuals and pornographic Web sites on the Internet, while quoting Aleister Crowley, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Sting all in the same breath. On the other side, many strongly cautioned me against writing this book, sometimes sternly, sometimes emphatically, sometimes for personal reasons, sometimes for academic and professional reasons. Af- ter all, what better way to destroy one’s scholarly reputation and look like a opportunistic hack than to write a book on sex magic that will very likely join the shelves of Barnes and Noble right beside Wicca for Lovers and The Multi-Orgasmic Man? Meanwhile, much to my own (and my significant other’s) dismay, I also discovered that a long and intensive investigation of the history of sexual magic is not in fact the best thing for one’s personal or sexual relations. By the time I had finished writing this book, I had explored a staggering array of different uses, manipulations, and remarkably creative transformations of the sexual act, not to mention the transgression of nearly every imaginable ix x/Preface, Acknowledgments, Apologies sexual taboo and social boundary. Therefore, I apologize in advance to any readers who bought this book in the hope of finding the latest secrets of sex- ual ecstasy or a new method for achieving extended orgasm. The effect of this book upon the reader may well be, as it was for me, not so much erotic titillation as bewildering exhaustion. Nonetheless, despite these apologetic opening remarks, I do think that both scholars of comparative religions and nonacademic readers should find something of interest in this book. As I will argue throughout, the history of sexual magic in modern esotericism is far from an obscure occult aber- ration or a superficial masking of sensual lust behind mystical gibberish. On the contrary, it opens some critical insights into the shifting attitudes toward sexuality, gender, religious authority, and social liberation over the last two hundred years. As Douglas Brooks has observed, there are many religious traditions that were at one time largely dismissed, ignored, and even denigrated by “serious” scholars of religion—such as Hindu and Bud- dhist Tantra, Jewish Kabbalah, and Christian mysticism—that are now con- sidered to be on the cutting edge of current scholarship.1 In Shirley MacLaine’s words, sex is hardly ever just about sex. On the contrary, it lies at the cen- ter of a series of much larger social, political, economic, moral, and religious issues that have become increasingly volatile in our own increasingly sex- obsessed late capitalist consumer culture. As Jeffrey Weeks observes, “Sex- uality today is, perhaps to an unprecedented degree, a contested zone. It is more than a source of intense pleasure or acute anxiety; it has become a moral and political battlefield. Behind the contesting forces...lie contrary beliefs, languages, about the nature of sex; sex as pleasure, sex as sacrament, sex as a source of fear and loathing.”2 And sexual magic, I will suggest, is about far more than the occult fantasy of manipulating or optimizing or- gasm. Indeed, it brings into striking relief many of these social, moral, and political tensions, offering some surprising new perspectives of our own cul- tural history,not to mention the tense, often conflicting relationship between sexuality and spirituality in the modern era. Perhaps most importantly, the literature on sexual magic forces us to reflect self-consciously and critically on our obsessions with sex and liber- ation in late capitalist consumer society at the turn of the millennium. As Michel Foucault has aptly observed, “It may well be that we talk about sex more than anything else....We convince ourselves that we have never said enough on the subject....It is possible that where sex is concerned, the most long-winded, the most impatient of societies is our own.”3 In other words, the seemingly “magical” and “liberating” power of sex is by no means some quaint, archaic vestige of our premodern past, but something that contin- Preface, Acknowledgments, Apologies /xi ues to fascinate, obsess, and tantalize us to this day. Indeed, one of the best- selling but intensely controversial novels of recent memory is Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code, which suggests that a secret tradition of Gnostic sexual rituals and veneration of the female body lies hidden beneath the official history narrated by the Catholic Church.The fact that even a fictional narra- tive of this sort should generate such outrage and debate is telling evidence that these are questions that still haunt us to this day.4 A brief note on the title of this book: it is taken from a French transla- tion of the writings of Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825–75), arguably the single most important figure in the rise of modern sexual magic. First pub- lished in 1931 by a Russian émigré named Maria de Naglowska, who prob- ably also added some inventions of her own, Magia Sexualis would become one of the most influential works on the subject and continues to be repub- lished and widely read to this day.5 My own book might be seen as a criti- cal, historical counterpart to Randolph’s text. That is to say, rather than of- fering a new technique for achieving optimal orgasm or sexually enhanced magical power, this book examines the historical context and sociopolitical implications of sexual magic as it has emerged over the last two hundred years.

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