Ida Craddock

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ida Craddock
Ida Craddock, profile picture

Ida C. Craddock (born August 1, 1857 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , † October 16, 1902 in New York City ) was an American feminist , mystic and author .

origin

Ida Craddock was born in Philadelphia and lost her father when she was two. She received home schooling from her mother and an upbringing based on Quaker ideals .

Craddock was recommended for admission to the University of Pennsylvania ; she would have been one of the first students there. However, she was refused admission in 1882. Craddock made a living with a textbook of shorthand and teaching the subject at Giraud College. At the end of the 1880s she left her Quaker influence and after 1887 became increasingly interested in occult topics and theosophy . She also became active at the American Secular Union .

Craddock was a Unitarian and also dealt with esotericism and in particular the religious and erotic aspects of yoga . Never married, she said she was related to an angel named Soph.

Her mother then disowned her and tried to have her admitted to a clinic. Craddock moved to Chicago and offered erotic advice for couples on Dearborn Street, both in person and through brochure and book mailings. She became known nationwide up to the turn of the century, primarily through articles in defense of the Little Egypt belly dancers Farida Mazar Spyropoulos, Ashea Wabe and Fatima Djemille. Because of this began her long argument with Anthony Comstock , a Puritan politician who would develop into the personal nemesis of Craddock.

Fonts

Craddock wrote several tracts and guides on human sexuality and the marital relationship. The works had titles such as Heavenly Bridegrooms , Psychic Wedlock , Spiritual Joys , The Wedding Night and Right Marital Living .

The magician and occultist Aleister Crowley reviewed Heavenly Bridegrooms in his magazine The Equinox as:

... one of the most remarkable human documents ever, which should be properly edited as a book. The author claims to be married to an angel. It expands the corresponding philosophy very far….

... This book is invaluable to any occult student. No Magick library is complete without it.

The erotic instructions were considered obscene, their dissemination through Craddock was outlawed and punished several times with prison sentences. Craddock's alleged plea for free love was also linked to her occult inclinations and caricatured accordingly. Craddock, however, spoke out in favor of a monogamous relationship between spouses on an equal footing and against prostitution, abortion and masturbation, among other things. Her open discussion about sexuality as a woman was essential for the discussion with Comstock and other contemporaries. The mass distribution of her work Right Marital Living ("The right married life") after a publication in the respected medical journal The Chicago Clinic led to a conviction in 1899. Comstock made shipping through the United States Postal Service the basis of a process. The script itself was withheld from the jury.

In 1902 she was sentenced to prison in New York for mailing The Wedding Night . After her release she was charged again at the instigation of Anthony Comstock , whose Comstock laws had made the previous convictions possible.

After a five-year prison sentence, she committed suicide on October 16, 1902, the day before starting prison. She left a personal note to her mother and an open (farewell) letter dealing in particular with Comstock.

Aftermath

Her work was posthumously reviewed by Theodore Albert Schroeder . Schroeder assumed that contrary to what she said, Craddock had at least two human lovers. The sexual techniques recommended and described by Craddock were used in Sex Magick by Louis T. Culling , among others . Her estate is part of the collection of the Southern Illinois University Carbondale .

The examination of Comstock is, among other things, the subject of the play Smut by Alice Jay and Joseph Adler, which premiered in Miami in 2007 .

Web links

Commons : Ida Craddock  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Vere Chappell: Ida Craddock: Sexual Mystic and Martyr for Freedom . Retrieved August 10, 2009.
  2. ^ Inez L Schaechterle: Speaking of Sex: The Rhetorical Strategies of Frances Willard, Victoria Woodhull, and Ida Craddock , OhioLINK / Bowling Green State University. 2005. Retrieved August 10, 2009. 
  3. ^ Mark Frazier Lloyd: 1880-1900: Timeline of Women at Penn, University of Pennsylvania Archives . July 2001. Retrieved August 10, 2009.
  4. ↑ Fifty Years of Free Thought: CHAPTER XII. 1 - GOING TO JAIL FOR A PRINCIPLE. The events of 1879 . Retrieved August 10, 2009.
  5. ^ A b c Shirley J. Burton: Women Making a Difference: Ida Craddock, Adelaide Johnson, and Laura Dainty Pelham . Retrieved January 4, 2011.
  6. ↑ The Blue Equinox , Aleister Crowley (ed.), Volume III, Universal Pub. Co., Detroit MI 1919.
  7. ^ Theodore Albert Schroeder: Heavenly Bridegrooms . An Unintentional Contribution to the Erotogenetic Interpretation of Religion. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Cambridge, MA 2009, ISBN 978-0-21-728274-1 (Original title: Sex Psychology, Religious Anarchism Philosophy and Religion [Erotogenesis and Religion] Sex and Religion Family. 1918).
  8. ↑ Louis T. Culling: Sex Magick . Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, MN 1993, ISBN 0-8754-2110-5 .
personal data
SURNAME Craddock, Ida
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Craddock, Ida C.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American author and champion of the sexual revolution
DATE OF BIRTH August 1, 1857
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , United States
DATE OF DEATH October 16, 1902
Place of death New York City , New York , United States