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Introduction Sex Magic, Modernity, and the Search for Liberation If this secret [of sexual magic], which is a scientific secret, were perfectly understood, as it is not by me after more than twelve years’ almost constant study and experiment, there would be nothing which the human imagination can conceive that could not be realized in practice. aleister crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley What is peculiar to modern societies is not that they consigned sex to a shadow existence, but that they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, while exploiting it as the secret. michel foucault, The History of Sexuality, volume 1 It might seem at first somewhat surprising and not a little ironic that the period of the late nineteenth century—the Victorian era, with its rather restrictive attitudes toward the human body and sexuality—gave birth to a large body of literature on the subject of magia sexualis. The same period that saw the proliferation of medical manuals on deviant sexuality, such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis,1 also saw the proliferation of a growing body of occult works on “affectional alchemy” and the mysteries of sexual intercourse as a profound source of spiritual and magical power. However, as Michel Foucault has argued, the Victorian era was by no means simply an era of prudish repression and denial of sexuality; on the contrary, the nineteenth century witnessed an unprecedented explosion of discourse about sex, which was now categorized, classified, debated, and discussed in endless titillating detail.2 A key part of this discourse on sexuality, I would suggest, was the new literature on sexual magic, which spread throughout the United States, England, and Western Europe from the mid-nineteenth century onward. Sexuality and the occult arts had, of course, long been associated in the Western imagination. Since at least the time of the Gnostic heresies, and continuing with the persecution of the Templars and the Cathars and the witch hunts of the late Middle Ages, illicit sexuality was often believed to go hand in hand with secret ritual and the black arts.3 And in various schools of Western esotericism, from Jewish Kabbalah to the Renaissance magic of Marsilio Ficino and the Enlightenment mysticism of Emanuel Swedenborg, 1 the physical union of male and female bodies was regarded as the earthly reflection of the union of the active and passive aspects of the Godhead.4 But it was really not until the middle of the nineteenth century,with figures like American Spiritualist Paschal Beverly Randolph and his European followers ,that we see the birth of a detailed,sophisticated,and well-documented system of sexual magic.5 That is, for the first time we see not just the use of erotic symbolism to describe the nature of spiritual union but, more specifically, the use of physical intercourse and genital orgasm as a source of magical power believed to have real effects in the material world. At the same time, perhaps not accidentally, Western occult traditions were being increasingly mingled with esoteric practices drawn from recently discovered Eastern traditions like Hinduism and Buddhism,and perhaps above all, from erotic manuals such as the Kama Sutra and from the esoteric sexual rituals of Indian Tantra. Most of the popular literature now being sold on the topics of “Tantra” and “Sex Magic,” I would argue,is a melding of nineteenth -century affectional alchemy and a somewhat garbled version of Indian Tantra, usually with a healthy dose of the Joy of Sex thrown in.6 Today we can not only explore the mysteries of Celtic Sex Magic and Wicca for Lovers, or browse the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Tantric Sex;7 we can even join organizations dedicated to the synthesis of Western and Eastern sexual techniques, such as “namaste”—the “New Association of Magical, Sexual, and Tantric Explorers.”8 In this book, I will critically examine the rise of sexual magic in America and Europe since the mid-nineteenth century, placing it within its larger historical, social, and political contexts. Specifically, I will trace the transmission of magia sexualis from the United States to Europe,as it was passed on through authors like Randolph,Theodor Reuss,and the infamous “Great Beast 666,” Aleister Crowley. At the same time, I will also examine the impact of Indian traditions like Hindu and BuddhistTantra,which by the early twentieth century had come to be increasingly fused (and perhaps hopelessly confused) with Western sexual magic...

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