Sex magic
Sex magic refers to the linking of sexual and magical practices in the context of modern western occultism and, more broadly, modern spiritual movements in the western world and the concepts associated with them. The American Paschal Beverly Randolph is considered to be the first representative of sexual magic practices, but the roots go back much further. Other important protagonists of sexual magic are Randolph Theodor Reuss , Aleister Crowley , Julius Evola , Gerald Gardner , Anton Szandor LaVey , Austin Osman Spare and Peter J. Carroll .
introduction
Two main directions can be distinguished among the various representatives of sexual magic, namely the one aiming at a spiritual exaggeration of sexuality, in which the sexual encounter is understood as being magical in its essence, and then that in which sexuality is a magical means to an end, a source of energy that can be tapped through sexual acts and rites and used by the magician as an instrument to achieve his goals. For example, the representative of the first position is Randolph, the representative of the second direction is Crowley.
While Randolph linked his theories exclusively with conjugal love and sexuality, the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) and Aleister Crowley used various sexual practices that ignored social norms and taboos, such as masturbation , homoerotic , autoerotic or sadomasochism . The more one dismantled one's inhibitions in a sexual practice, the stronger the sex-magical energy released by their practice was.
The appearance of sex magic towards the end of the 19th century is seen by some cultural scholars as an anticipation of the emergence of freer sexuality, the libertarian approach to it and the intensive preoccupation with sexuality in the modern age .
The opposing position, which fundamentally rejected sexuality in occultism and partially viewed celibacy as an essential element of occult practice, also developed in the 19th and 20th centuries. This tendency towards celibacy was particularly widespread in the United States. For example, in Hiram Butler's Esoteric Fraternity the doctrine of celibacy was spread, which in itself leads to the development of the spirit. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn , theosophy and other occult organizations also rejected sexual magic on principle.
Love spells and similar practices, such as potions, amulets and rituals against impotence or to increase potency, which have been handed down in numerous examples since antiquity, are not included in the area of sex magic . In love magic, magic practices are used to promote sexuality, while sexual magic as part of modern esotericism , conversely, uses sexuality to work magic or to promote spiritual development.
The comprehensive scientific treatment of the topic of sex magic with modern methods is in its infancy. Hugh B. Urban notes that apart from a few articles on specific topics (he mentions John Patrick Deveney , Joscelyn Godwin and Alex Owen in particular ) there have been no reviews and the scope of the scientific literature is out of proportion to the scope and effect of the esoteric and of popular literature with its barrage of titles like Celtic Sex Magic , Wicca for Lovers and of course the Complete Idiot's Guide to Tantric Sex .
history
Problems
Sex magic is difficult to distinguish from sexual rites found all over the world and in all epochs , which in religious studies , ethnology and related sciences are understood as cultic acts that are connected with sexuality, such as phallic cults (see cultic worship of lingam and yoni in South Asia), hierogamy or temple prostitution . This problem of delimitation corresponds to the general problem of distinguishing cultic from magical acts.
In addition, there is the problem that the vegetation cults , initiation and fertility rites with sexual elements found and described by researchers from Frazer to Eliade in historical tradition and among autochthonous peoples are increasingly asking whether they are not constructions that say more about the researchers than about the researched. Such constructions of cults of ancient mother goddesses, to which "primitive sexual rites [belonged], based on the magical connection of the fertility of men and the fertility of nature", are then taken up by modern sex magicians and occultists and concluded that sex magic is as old as it is the humanity. That may be true, but it is difficult to prove.
Ancient and Early Christianity
In the Christian tradition, sexual magic practices play a role from the beginning, in that such regularities are assumed to be heretical groups , based on the assumption that a deviation in the theological must correspond to a deviation in the sexual. Since the early days of Christianity, gnostic groups such as the Carpokratians or various denominations of the Barbelo-Gnostics have been accused of celebrating orgies in their services, sacrificing sperm, etc. This continued with the Cathars , with the allegations of cultic sodomy against the Knights Templar and in the early modern age in the witch madness , when witches were said to have carnal intercourse with demons or with Satan himself.
The connection between strange cults and sexual deviance was of course not an invention of the Christians, rather the cults of Cybele and Dionysus , for example, were viewed with great suspicion by the Romans and tried to suppress the latter after the so-called Bacchanalia scandal . What Livy reports about the meetings of the Bacchantes is already very similar to the descriptions of alleged orgies of heretical groups among the Church Fathers. Before that, however, the Christians were also regarded as a foreign, oriental cult, and the ideas that one had of the Christian love meal corresponded to the familiar pattern: Christians meet at night, slaughter children, drink their blood and at the climax they bring a dog to it to pull down the candlestick, and in the subsequent darkness everyone does it with everyone. The connection between cult and religion is obvious, the only question is to what extent a magical practice is assumed here. Authors such as Livius or Minucius Felix give no indication that the debauchery should serve any magical purposes, but simply interpret it as a result of the general depravity and viciousness of the cultists. In contrast, Irenaeus of Lyon or Epiphanios of Salamis claim that the members of certain Gnostic sects consume semen and menstrual blood, which they believed to be vessels of the souls, and thus prevent them from falling into the material world. One can interpret this as a sex magic practice.
Non-European cultures
In religions other than Christianity, however, a positive conception of sexuality and a corresponding integration into cosmological and spiritual concepts is common. Sex magic or sexual mysticism and its ritual form appeared in different cultures, for example in Sumer in the Hieros gamos and in China with the Fangshi , where they can be traced back to pre-Christian times and probably go back to the shamanistic practices of the Shang period . The Chinese form of the art of the bedchamber is strongly Taoist and often aims to prolong life and maintain health. In India , a form of sexual mysticism developed within Tantrayana , some of which includes sex-magic techniques.
Middle Ages and Early Modern Times
In the Middle Ages, the pattern, already found in antiquity, of assuming heretical groups to have sexual deviance and sex-magical practices, is often encountered again. The now dominant church applies it to the movements of the Cathars and the Bogomils , who, like the Gnostics, as far as can be judged today, were by no means devoted to sexual debauchery, but on the contrary demanded sexual abstinence and celibacy from their spiritual leaders . This did not prevent bugger , the English name for a sodomite , from being derived from the Latin bulgarus via the French bougre , a name for the Bogomils from the Balkans. These movements were pursued and, in the case of the Cathars, a veritable crusade was waged to destroy them.
The members of the Knights Templar were also accused as interns of sexual magic . They were accused of sodomy and accused of worshiping a symbol called Baphomet . It has not yet been possible to decide whether these allegations were based in any way on facts, but the general view is that the main motives for the action lay elsewhere, namely in the power-political interests and financial problems of the French King Philip the Fair .
As far as esotericism is concerned, the annihilation of the Templars is only the beginning of the story. Numerous occult currents invoked the Templars and claimed to be their successors, and elements from the indictments and protocols became part of the construction of the Black Mass , for example the omission or falsification of parts of the liturgy in the mass, blasphemous acts such as spitting on the cross or the so-called "obscene kiss", in which the bottom of a superior was kissed as a gesture of admiration.
The systematic persecution of witches by the church and state began in the early modern period . As thin as the evidence is here regarding the sexual magic actually practiced by the accused witches, the projection and construction in the writings of the prosecutors, the most famous of whom is the “witch's hammer” ( Malleus maleficarum ) by the Dominican Heinrich Kramer from 1486 , are obvious and present . In view of their infatuation with sexual detail, these writings have been certified as having pornographic qualities. The focus of the construction is on the Witches' Sabbath , a gathering of witches and demons chaired by Satan , which in its course again resembles the descriptions of Christian apologists of the gatherings of the Barbelo Gnostics, including the final climax at which everyone indulges in carnal lust. This is where the “obscene kiss” known from the Templars comes up again, for example in a well-known illustration for Francesco Maria Guazzo's Compendium Maleficarum from 1608.
The pattern already noted by the Gnostics was repeated by Templars and witches. Just as the accusations are alike, so is the reaction of modern occultism: The factuality of historical events is doubtful and a classification of them as a proven sex-magic practice is very questionable, but modern occultism reproduces all of this, expands it and makes it retrospectively true . This begins with the black masses of Catherine Monvoisin with the participation of Madame de Montespan , the mistress of Louis XIV , and extends to the modern, elaborated liturgies for black masses, which can be ordered in bookshops. Science also took part in the subsequent construction, for example Margaret Murray with her books The Witch-cult in Western Europe (1921) and The God of the Witches (1933), which were widely received in Wicca and Neopaganism , in which she left a witch cult of the cult from times of prehistoric matriarchy with a mother goddess and her opposite pole, the Horned God .
But regardless of such projections of sexual magic practices on heretical movements and fringe groups of society, the connection of magical powers with sexuality has a long history in Western esoteric traditions. For example, during the Renaissance there were several authors such as Marsilio Ficino and Giordano Bruno who saw the connection between eros and magic as one of the fundamental principles of nature. Paracelsus saw a power of magic in the seed and compared it to the powers of imagination , and among medieval Jewish Kabbalists conjugal sexuality was often viewed as a form of theurgy that linked the masculine and feminine aspects of God.
Finally, in the age of the Enlightenment, Emanuel Swedenborg should be mentioned as a forerunner or actually part of modern occultism , who especially in his later years dealt intensively with the relationship between spirituality and sexuality, for example in his work Delitiae sapientiae de amore conjugiali (“The Bliss of wisdom concerning conjugal love ”). In addition, evidence has been found in his writings and diaries that he used advanced techniques of meditation, visualization, and breathing control to harness sexual energies for spiritual experiences.
Paschal Beverly Randolph
Sex magic in the modern sense, as a current in western occultism and an element of western esotericism, did not emerge until the second half of the 19th century. The American Paschal Beverly Randolph is seen as the first representative of this direction , who in his writings propagated both a sexualization of spirituality and the spiritualization of sexuality, while at the same time asserting reservations about free, extramarital love. Randolph's work had a fundamental influence on later esotericism, since through Randolph's work sexual mysticism entered it in many forms and sexual magic became a form of mainstream within western esotericism.
Theodor Reuss
The first representatives of the other main tendency, which saw sexuality primarily as a source of magical energy to be harnessed, were Theodor Reuss , the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) he founded and, in connection with these, Aleister Crowley .
In this form of sex magic, the entire will is directed towards the desired goal or object during the sexual act and orgasm. With regard to the supposed magical powers of sexuality, the members of the OTO and Crowley assumed that sexuality was the most powerful force in life, psyche and nature in general and was therefore particularly well suited for magical operations.
Aleister Crowley
For the line of tradition of sexual magic in western esotericism, Aleister Crowley was mainly important, who dealt with sexual magic topics in numerous writings. Although he had only superficially received Indian tantrism during his trip to India and had no in-depth knowledge of it, it is of particular importance for the adoption, transformation and reinvention of tantric practices in the West.
The distinction between western sexual magic and Indian tantra is that western sexual magic is a magical technique and is not necessarily embedded in a religious or spiritual context. That is, it is primarily a means of bringing about changes in accordance with the will , but these changes can of course also relate to spirituality. The difference to the western ideas of tantra - which could be called therapeutic neotantra - is that sex magic does not aim to improve the quality of the sexual experience, but seeks to use sexuality as a magical source in order to realize specific goals. Through his writings on sex magic, he can be regarded as the founder of Neotantra , whose influence continues to have an effect on all modern currents, schools and practices that are now in the border area between sex magic, wellness and simple instinctuality.
Also of importance and continuing in other lines of tradition was the importance that Crowley, like the OTO, gave to transgression in sexual magic. Transgression means here that Crowley's sexual magic was shaped by a non-reproductive sexuality, which acts e.g. B. homosexuality and masturbation, i.e. a sexuality that was not in conformity with society at the time and was considered physically and morally dangerous, explicitly included. For Crowley, this transgression represented a form of liberation from moral constraints, which he saw as a tremendous source of strength and liberating bliss. Crowley viewed sexuality as the ultimate force that could be used magically. The "Gnostic Mass", which Aleister Crowley conceived for the OTO, symbolically implemented what the Church Fathers had imputed to the Gnostic congregations.
Pierre Arnold Bernard
The first tantric order in the USA was founded in 1906 or 1907 by Pierre Arnold Bernard , who also coined early sexual magic, and with whose order Aleister Crowley had personal contacts. As a scandalous figure in the US, Bernard was comparable to Aleister Crowley in Europe.
Today's western works of sexual magic and tantra mostly represent a mixture of Crowleyan approaches and a “western”, falsified tantrism ( neotantra ). Bernard played a formative role in this, as he was one of the first to apply tantra to its physical-sexual aspect reduced. Bernard's tantric order is said to have already shown tendencies towards the commodification of sexuality, which are related to the modern, consumer-oriented capitalism that was developing at the time.
Dion Fortune
One of the most elaborate systems of sexual magic in occultism of the 20th century is Dion Fortune's work. For Fortune, sexuality represented an expression of the creative primal forces of the universe. Fortune propagated sexual methods that should lead the creative force away from physical sexuality, but she did not belong to the representatives of celibacy and did not show any fundamental contempt for sexuality, as it did with the celibate direction is common. According to Fortune, the postulated creative primal forces can flow into all interactions of any level of being, and in her late work the erotic forces appear as neutral, which can be guided into or out of physical sexuality depending on the circumstances and needs.
Gerald Gardner
Through personal contact with Aleister Crowley, his sex magic teachings came to Gerald Gardner . This simplified and revised the concept for his newly developed religion, the Wicca cult. As a result, sexual magic became a "pagan" tradition claimed by many neo-pagan groups, which is ancient and has been practiced in England since prehistoric times. The Great Rite in Gerald Gardner's Wicca included sexual intercourse between witch and sorcerer accordingly.
literature
- Francis King: Sexuality, magic and perversion. Spearman, London 1971, ISBN 0-85435-161-2 .
- Francis King: The Secret Rituals of the OTO Samuel Weiser, New York 1973, ISBN 978-0-85207-111-3 .
- Wouter Hanegraaff, Jeffrey J. Kripal (eds.): Hidden Intercourse: Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism. Brill, 2008, ISBN 90-04-16873-7 .
- Peter-Robert König : A life for the rose (Arnoldo Krumm-Heller). Munich 1995, ISBN 3-927890-21-9 .
- Michael A. Köszegi: Sexuality, religion and magic. A comprehensive guide to sources. Garland, New York 1994, ISBN 0-8153-0921-X .
- Jonn Mumford: Tantric Sexual Magic. Theory and Practice of Occult Love. Edition Sphinx, Basel 1991, ISBN 3-85914-329-8 .
- Hugh B. Urban: Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism. University of California Press, Berkeley 2006, ISBN 0-520-24776-0 .
- Hugh B. Urban: Magia Sexualis: Sex, Secrecy, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism. In: Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Vol. 72 No. 3 (September 2004), pp. 695-731
- Hugh B. Urban: Transgression, Violence and Secrecy in Bengali Sakta Tantra and Modern Western Magic. In: Numen Vol. 50 No. 3 (2003), pp. 269-308.
- Benjamin Walker: Sex and the supernatural. Sexuality in religion and magic. Harrow Booka, New York 1973, ISBN 0-356-03464-X .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Michael D. Eschner, the secret sex-magic instructions of the animal 666 , Kersken-Canbaz-Verlag, 1993 ISBN 3 89423 020 7 , pp. 28-30
- ^ A b Hugh B. Urban: Magia Sexualis: Sex, Secrecy, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism. Journal of the American Academy of Religion. September 2004, Vol. 72, No. 3. p. 699.
- ↑ John Michael Greer: Encyclopedia of Secret Doctrines. Ansata, Munich 2005. p. 667.
- ↑ Urban: Magia Sexualis. Berkeley 2006, p. 41 f.
- ↑ Urban: Magia Sexualis. Berkeley 2006, pp. 2, 4 f.
- ↑ Urban: Magia Sexualis. Berkeley 2006, p. 22 f.
- ↑ Minucius Felix Octavius 9
- ↑ Urban: Magia Sexualis. Berkeley 2006, p. 28 f.
- ↑ Epiphanios of Salamis Panarion 26: 4-8. Of course, Epiphanios makes it clear that he considers the Borborites to be utterly corrupt and misguided. Nonetheless, he describes the presentation of sperm as an act of sacrifice and the eating of an aborted fetus as a cult meal.
- ^ Oxford English Dictionary . Online edition. Oxford University Press, 2015, sv bugger, n.1 .
- ^ Marsilio Ficino De amore VI, 10.
- ^ Hugh B. Urban: Magia Sexualis: Sex, Secrecy, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism . Journal of the American Academy of Religion. September 2004, Vol. 72, No. 3. P. 701 f.
- ↑ Delitiae sapientiae de amore conjugiali post quas sequuntur voluptates insaniae de amore scortatorio. Amsterdam 1768. German: Marital love. Translation by Johann Friedrich Immanuel Tafel; Tübingen 1845, 4th edition 1964, digitized .
- ↑ Urban: Magia Sexualis. Berkeley 2006, p. 50 f.
- ^ Hugh B. Urban: Magia Sexualis: Sex, Secrecy, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism. Journal of the American Academy of Religion. September 2004, Vol. 72, No. 3. p. 706.
- ↑ Hugh Urban: Unleashing the Beast. Aleister Crowley, Tantra, and Sex Magic in Late Victorian England. In: Esoterica 5 (2003), pp. 150-160; same: Magia Sexualis: Sex, Secrecy, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism. Journal of the American Academy of Religion. September 2004, Vol. 72, No. 3. p. 711.
- ^ Hugh B. Urban: Magia Sexualis: Sex, Secrecy, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism. Journal of the American Academy of Religion. September 2004, Vol. 72, No. 3. p. 713.
- ↑ Urban: Magia Sexualis. Berkeley 2006, pp. 21-25.
- ^ Hugh B. Urban: Magia Sexualis: Sex, Secrecy, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism . Journal of the American Academy of Religion. September 2004, Vol. 72, No. 3. p. 695, p. 718.
- ^ Hugh B. Urban: Magia Sexualis: Sex, Secrecy, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism. Journal of the American Academy of Religion. September 2004, Vol. 72, No. 3. p. 722.
- ↑ John Michael Greer: Encyclopedia of Secret Doctrines. Ansata, Munich 2005. p. 668.
- ↑ John Michael Greer: Encyclopedia of Secret Doctrines. Ansata, Munich 2005. p. 667.
- ↑ Urban: Magia Sexualis. Berkeley 2006, pp. 21-25.