UNLEASHING THE BEAST
Aleister Crowley, Tantra and Sex Magic in Late Victorian England
Hugh Urban
Ohio State University
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[1]
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[2]
Aleister Crowley stands out as one of
those remarkably enigmatic characters who has had a tremendous impact on contemporary new religious
movements, esotericism and occultism, even as he has been almost entirely
ignored by academic scholarship. Known in the popular press of as "the
wickedest man in the world," and proclaiming himself the "Great Beast
666," Crowley was the object of intense media scandal, moral outrage and
titillating allure throughout his life. In the years since his death, he has
become perhaps even more well-known as one of the most important influences on
the modern revival of paganism, magic and witchcraft. Yet despite his importance,
Crowley has been largely ignored by historians of religions. In most cases he
has been dismissed as, at best, a pathetic charlatan, and, at worst, a sadistic pervert and a ridiculous
crank. Most scholars of Western esotericism, such as Antoine Faivre, make only
passing reference to Crowley, while leading scholars of new age religions, such
as Wouter Hanegraaff, give him only
briefest mention.[3]
Perhaps
the primary reason for this
neglect of Crowley -- and also for the intense scandal and titillation that
surrounded him during his life -- was his practice of sexual magic (or Magick,
to use Crowley's spelling).[4] Rejecting the prudish hypocrisy of the
Victorian Christian world in which he was raised, Crowley identified sex as the
most powerful force in life and the supreme source of magical power. Taking an apparent delight in outraging
the British society of his time, Crowley made explicit use of the most
"deviant" sexual acts -- such as masturbation and homosexuality -- as central components in his magical
practice. At the same time, Crowley was also one of the first Western authors
to taken an interest in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions of Tantra -- a highly esoteric body of teachings and
that center, in part, around the use of sexual energy as a source of spiritual
power -- which had long been
criticized by European Orientalist scholars and Christian missionaries as the
very worst and most perverse confusion of sexuality and religion.[5] In fact, for most American readers
today, Tantra is typically associated with Crowley-ian sex magick. One need now
only browse the shelves of any Barnes and Noble bookstore or surf the endlessly
proliferating web-sites on the Internet to discover the secrets of Tantra,
Sex Magick and Tarot, practice Tantra without Tears or even engage in Wicca for Lovers. As his early biographer, John Symonds, remarks, "His greatest merit was to make
the bridge between Tantrism and the Western esoteric tradition and thus bring together
Western and Eastern magical techniques."[6]
But
the question remains: how much did Crowley actually know either first hand or
second hand about Indian Tantra? And what connection, if any, did his system of
sexual magic have with traditional Indian Tantric practices?
This
article will continue and expand upon some of the arguments made in a previous
essay, in which I examined the impact of
Indian Tantra on Western
esoteric traditions at the turn of the twentieth century, through figures like
Dr. Pierre Arnold Bernard, known in the popular press as "the Omnipotent
Oom."
[7]
Here I will trace the increasing impact of Tantra on Western spirituality in
the later twentieth century through the work of Crowley and his later
disciples.
Crowley,
I will argue, is not only a fascinating figure worthy of attention by scholars
of religion, but he is also of profound importance for the understanding of
modern Western spirituality and culture as a whole. This importance is at least threefold. First, with his radical rejection of
Victorian morality and his central emphasis on sex as the supreme magical
power, Crowley is a remarkable reflection of his era and of the sexual
attitudes of late and post-Victorian England.
[8]
Second, with his study of Hinduism and
Buddhism, he was also a key figure in the transmission of Indian religious
traditions to the West, including the controversial traditions of Indian
Tantra. But as I hope to show, although Crowley did know a fair amount about
Hatha Yoga, Raja Yoga and other Indian religious practices, he does not appear
to have known much about Tantra. What he did know seems to have come through
secondary, superficial and often highly distorted sources that are deeply
colored by the Victorian Orientalist biases of the 19th century. Nonetheless, not long after Crowley's death, Tantra
would soon become largely confused in the Western popular imagination with
Crowleyian-style sex magic.
Ironically, despite his general ignorance about the subject, and
arguably without ever intending to do so, Crowley would become a key figure in
the transformation and often gross mis-interpretation of Tantra in the West,
where it would become increasingly detached form its cultural context and
increasingly identified with sex.
Finally, in part because of
this equation of Tantra and sexual magic, Crowley has also been one of the most
influential figures in the revival of magic and a variety of alternative
religions at the turn of the new millennium. Much of the literature now being
sold under the titles of "Tantra" and "sex magic", I would
argue, is largely the fusion (and perhaps hopeless confusion) of Indian Tantra
with Crowleyian magic.
[9]
In
my discussion of Crowley, I will adapt some of the insights of Michel
Foucault, Georges Bataille, and others who have examined the role
of sexuality and transgression in modern Western society. As Foucault argues,
the Victorian era has often mistakenly been characterized as a period of
prudish repression and denial of sexuality. In fact, the late 19th century
witnessed an unprecedented explosion of discourse about sex, which was now
categorized, classified, debated and discussed in endless detail.
[10]
Crowley's writings on sexuality and magic, I will suggest, were a key part of
this larger fascination with sexuality during the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. Yet Crowley would also push this discourse about sexuality a good
deal further than most of his contemporaries would have dared; indeed, Crowley
would make acts such as masturbation and homosexual intercourse keys to magical
power. In Bataille's terms, we might say that much of Crowley's sexual
practices centered around calculated acts of transgression -- that is, deliberate violations and
systematic inversions of the moral laws and sexual codes of the larger social
order.
[11]
After briefly recounting Crowley's early life and background (part I), I will place him in the context of late Victorian society and its
larger attitudes toward sexuality (II). I will then
look specifically at Crowley's sexual magical practices (III) and his adaptation of Indian Tantric
techniques (IV).
Finally (V) I will
examine the role of transgression in Crowley's life and magical work; Crowley,
I will argue, found in deliberate acts of transgression a radical form of
super-human power that promised to explode the narrow boundaries of Western
Christian society and open the way for a whole new era of human history. To conclude, I will suggest that
Crowley not only reflected his own era and the sexual anxieties of the late
Victorian era, but also foreshadowed much of our own era and our own sexual
obsessions at the dawn of the new millennium.
I. THE NEW
AEON: Crowley and the End of the Victorian Age
The
nightmare world of Christianity vanished at the dawn...[T]he detestable
mysteries of sex were transformed into joy and beauty. The obsession of sin
fell from my shoulders into the
sea of oblivion.
--
The Confessions of Aleister Crowley
[12]
The
point about Crowley is that he seems to contain all these sorts of ideas and
identities – indeed most of the vices of the twentieth century –
and he was dead at the end of 1947.
-- Snoo Wilson, author of the play
“The Beast”
[13]
Born in 1875, the son of a member of the highly puritanical
Plymouth Brethren sect, Edward Alexander (Aleister) Crowley embodied some of
the deepest tensions in late Victorian society as a whole. A child raised in a strict Christian
home, he would later turn to the occult arts and extremes of sexual excess. A
prolific poet as well as an accomplished mountain-climber, Crowley would also
become one of the most reviled characters of the 20th century. He has been described variously as "the King of
Depravity, arch-traitor, debauchee and drug-fiend"
[14]
and "a perverse idealist, Master of the occult and slave to the demons he
liberated."
[15]
Yet, as his most recent biographer Lawrence Sutin argues, Crowley was far more
than a mere sadistic master of the black arts; not only was he a gifted poet,
painter and "master modernist" in his prose style, but he was also
one of the first Western students of Buddhism and yoga, and "one of the
rare human beings …to dare to prophesy a distinctive new creed and to
devote himself...to the promulgation of that creed."
[16]
The
details of Crowley's life are fairly well-known, based on his own autobiography
and numerous popular biographies, so I won't reiterate all of them here. I will
simply provide a brief sketch of his background and context. Educated at Trinity College in
Cambridge, Crowley was from an early age fascinated with poetry and pagan
religion and was a prolific author of both verse and prose. While still a
student at Cambridge he had published his first collection of poetry, Aceldama, and his notorious erotic collection, White Stains
(1898). Having inherited a large amount of money while still young, he
was financially independent for many years and spent much of his time pursuing
his passions of writing and mountain climbing. During his Cambridge years, he would also adopt the name
"Aleister," a Gaelic
form of his middle name, Alexander, and an homage to the hero of Shelley's
poem, "Alastor, the Spirit of solitude."
His
first real initiation into the world of esotericism and magic occurred until
1898, when he was introduced to
group known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Founded by William
Westcott and MacGregor Mathers in 1887, the Golden Dawn was an eclectic
blending of a number of older Western esoteric traditions, including
Hermeticism, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism and theurgic arts derived from Jewish
Kabbalah. An affluent and elite group, the Golden Dawn attracted a number of
prominent artists, poets and intellectuals, including W.B. Yeats. Eventually Crowley and Mathers would
part ways, and finally become mired in a lawsuit when Crowley published a full
description of the secret rites of the Golden Dawn in his journal, Equinox.
[17]
Revealing secrets and sparking
controversy, we will see, was something of an obsession throughout Crowley's
life.
Beginning
in 1899, Crowley also began to explore a variety of eastern spiritual
traditions. After studying yoga in Mexico, he traveled to Ceylon and India in
1901-2, during which time he studied various forms of Buddhism and Hinduism. As
we will see below, it seems possible that he also learned something of the
esoteric techniques of Indian Tantra --- though perhaps not as much as most
contemporary adepts generally suppose.
However,
it was in 1904 that Crowley would receive his first great revelation and the
knowledge that he was to be the herald of a new era in human history. According
to his own account, Crowley's guardian Angel, Aiwass, appeared to him and
dictated The Book of the Law (Liber AL vel Legis ).
[18]
His
most famous work, The Book of the Law announces the dawn of the third Aeon of mankind: the first
aeon was that of the Goddess Isis, centered around matriarchy and the worship
of the Great Mother; the second aeon was that of Osiris, during which the patriarchal religions of suffering and
death -- i.e., Judaism and
Christianity -- rose to power. Finally, with the revelation of the Book of
the Law, a new Aeon of
the son, Horus, was born: "In this aeon the emphasis is on the self or
will, not on anything external such as gods and priests."
[19]
The
peak of his magical career-- and also of his infamy as the wickedest man alive
-- was in the period after 1920, when he founded his own ideal spiritual
community called the Abbey of Thelema at a farmhouse in Cefalu, Sicily. The
original inspiration derived from Rabelais' classic work of 1534, Gargantua, which describes an ideal spiritual
community that would transcend the hypocritical corruption of the Christian monasteries. Called "Theleme" (from the
Greek, meaning "will"), the government of the community was "do
what you will," in a joyous blending of Stoic virtues with Christian
spirituality.
[20]
Crowley took Rabelais' ideal a
good deal further, however, by creating a utopian community in which every
desire could be gratified and every impulse expressed, through free
experimentation in drugs, sex and physical excess.
Perhaps
the most infamous product of this period was Crowley's
semi-autobiographical novel, Diary of a Drug Fiend, published in 1922. Written at top speed
to fund his growing drug habit, the Diary is one of Crowley's most outrageous works, but also
one that provides the most insight into his character and historical
context. A thinly disguised image
of Crowley himself, the central character, Peter Pendragon, describes his rapid
descent into cocaine and heroin addiction, as he careens through the affluent,
excessive and wildly hedonistic life of the roaring twenties, exploring every
possible sensual pleasure and moral vice.
As Leslie Shepard observes,
This
book...comes from another world -- an age of contrasts like a layer cake, with
a thick wedge of orthodoxy, a thin covering of daring literary cream, and a
certain amount of exotic jam. It was the world of censorship of taste and also
the Jazz Age of petting parties,
wild automobile rides, speak-easies, silent films... Puritanism and interwar
permissiveness lived side by side and made faces at each other.
[21]
Ironically, the
character is finally redeemed by a mysterious figure named King Lamus, who runs a spiritual center
called the Abbey of Thelema in far-off town called "Telepylus." In other words, the drug-addicted
Crowley has portrayed himself as the character's own final savior and
redemption.
-143-
Crowley Parodying Winston Churchill
 |
By
the 1940s, however, Crowley seems to have exhausted not only his money (already
largely spent by 1915) but also his once
infinite will to power. Though he continued to believe that his Book
of the Law might have a
decisive role to play in the unfolding of global events during and after World
War II, most people who saw him in those years described him as "a bored
old man who found the lonely evenings frightening."
[22]
He would spent his last years in small guest house in London, increasingly
addicted to heroin (taking as much as 11 grams a day, enough to kill most men),
until his death in 1947. There are many conflicting accounts of his final days:
according to some hagiographic accounts, he slipped blissfully into the
Buddhist state of final liberation, passing from "Samadhi to Super-Samadhi
to Nirvana to Super Nirvana, expiring in the boundless bliss of the
Infinite."
[23]
According to more cynical accounts, he died alone in misery and self-loathing,
uttering the final words, "sometimes I hate myself."
[24]
Still others say that he died quietly in bed, followed by a gust of wind and a
peal of thunder -- a sign that "the gods were greeting him."
[25]
In
sum, Crowley might be said to be a remarkable reflection of the era in which he
was born. While deliberately setting out to overthrow all established values,
he was perhaps only expressing the darker underside or "secret life"
of the Victorian world in which he was raised:
Crowley
was a contemporary of Freud; he grew out of the matrix of Victorianism...He was
one of many who helped to tear down the false, hypocritical, self-righteous
attitudes of the time. What is peculiar in Crowley’s case it not that he
chose evil but that in his revolt against his parents and God he set himself up
in God’s place.
[26]
And perhaps
nowhere was Crowley's simultaneous reflection of and revolt against the world in which he lived more apparent
than in his volatile sexual life.
II. THE BEAST WITH TWO BACKS: Crowley in
the Context of Late and Post-Victorian England
It
is sex. How wonderful sex can be,
when men keep it powerful and sacred, and it fills the world! like sunshine
through and through one!
--
D.H. Lawrence, The Plumed
Serpent
[27]
The
society that emerged in the nineteenth century -- the bourgeois capitalist or
industrial society...-- did not confront sex with a fundamental refusal of
recognition. On the contrary, it put into operation an entire machinery for
producing true discourses concerning it. Not only did it speak of sex and
compel everyone to do so; it also set out to formulate the uniform truth of
sex. As if it suspected sex of harboring a fundamental secret.
--
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, volume I
[28]
In
order to understand Crowley and his controversial work, we need to place them
against the backdrop of British attitudes toward sexuality in
the late nineteenth century.
[29]
Indeed, one of the many reasons for the
shocking, sordid and deliciously scandalous reputation that followed
Crowley was his practice of sexual
magic and his deliberate transgression of the sexual mores of the world in
which he was raised. Rejecting the effete morality of his Christian youth, Crowley deliberately set out to overturn
what he saw as the oppressive, hypocritical attitudes of Victorian England, by
identifying sex as the most central aspect of the human being and the most
profound source of magical power (in fact, in his Book of Lies,
he points out that the English word for the pronoun "I" is
itself a phallic shape).
[30]
The
popular press, of course, took no end of delight in sensationalizing Crowley's
sexual promiscuity, which was described in vivid, exaggerated and often
hilarious detail throughout the newspapers of the day. Thus he and his
degenerate band of followers were described in the most scandalous terms as
"a blasphemous sect whose proceedings lend themselves to immorality of the
most revolting character," whose main goal is "to fill their
money-bags by encouraging others to gratify their depraved tastes."
[31]
Crowley
did little to deny this popular image. As he wrote in his Confessions, the main reason for the violence and
turmoil of the modern world lies in the repression of the sexual instinct; and
conversely, the surest way to solve our contemporary problems lies in its
liberation:
The
battle will rage most fiercely around the question of sex….Mankind must
learn that the sexual instinct
is…ennobling. The shocking evils which we all deplore are principally due
to the perversions produced by suppressions. The feeling that it is shameful
and the sense of sin cause concealment, which is ignoble and internal conflict
which creates distortion, neurosis, and ends in explosion. We deliberately
produce an abscess and wonder why
it is full of pus, why it hurts, why it bursts in stench and corruption.
The
Book of the Law solves the sexual problem completely. Each individual has an
absolute right to satisfy his sexual instinct as is physiologically proper for
him.
[32]
Thus
we might say that Crowley really epitomizes what Foucault calls the
"repressive hypothesis" -- that is, the belief that the modern
Western world has painfully repressed and denied sexuality, and that what is
most needed now is the fullest affirmation and liberation of the sexual
instinct. As Crowley himself put it in his Confessions, "My sexual life was very
intense...Love was a challenge to Christianity. It was a degradation and
damnation."
[33]
Yet as Foucault points out, it is really inaccurate to say that the Victorian
era was one of repression and silence about sex. On the contrary, Western
culture was in fact saturated with a kind of "hyper-development of
discourse about sexuality," which was now classified and categorized in
endless detail. "Paradoxically,
it was during the nineteenth century that the debate about sexuality exploded.
Far from the age of silence and suppression, sexuality became a major issue in
Victorian social and political practice."
[34]
The
categorization, classification and control over sexuality was a critical
element in the regulation of society as a whole: "The array of sexual
discourses... exploited sexuality's secrets. Sex began to be
managed....perversion became codified...Sexuality proliferated as power over it
was extended."
[35]
However,
as Peter Gay points out, discussions of sexuality had to take place in the
proper contexts, either privately, in the closed realms of secrecy or,
publicly, through scientific discourse.
[36]
The
Victorian era, in fact, witnessed a tremendous proliferation of medical
treatises on sexuality, in both its proper and perverse forms. Viewing any
deviation from "normal" sex as morally suspect, the Victorian
imagination was obsessed with the identification, enumeration and scientific
classifica-tion of every imaginable sexual aberration. Among the most popular
works in late nineteenth century England was Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia
Sexualis (1886) which
became the most influential
catalogue of deviations. Under the protective cover of "medical
nomenclature" and with the "posture of moral outrage," Victorian
readers "could indulge in this 'medicoforensic' peep-show of sexual
hyperaesthesia, paresthesia, aspermia, polyspermia, spermatorrhea, sadism,
masochism, festishism, exhibitionism, psychic hermaphroditism, satyriasis and
nymphomania."
[37]
Among
the most sinister perversions, in the eyes of many Victorian authors, were
those that confused the religious and sensual spheres. British middle and upper class sensibilities of
the late 19th century insisted on the proper separation of religion and
sexuality: excessive religious celibacy and sexual licentiousness were both
considered destructive perversions. Only the married life offered the via
media between celibacy
and licentiousness, which "repairs the Fall and leads from earth to
heaven."
[38]
In an era that valued economic productivity, generation of capital and
restraint in consumption, healthy sexuality had to be useful, productive and
efficient: "normal heterosexuality appeared in one guise ...attraction
between men and women that led to marriage and family. Normal sex was
consistent with the values of Victorian industrial society--it was another mode
of production."
[39]
Thus the most physically and morally
dangerous of all acts were the "non-productive" acts such as
masturbation and homosexual
intercourse. As Lesley Hall
observes, masturbation was "reprobated universally throughout Victorian
society," and considered a possible source not just of moral decay but
even of epilepsy and insanity. So too, homosexuality was foremost among those
acts seen to violate the "borders of masculinity" defined by middle
class society, and thus among the greatest threats to a productive, efficient
and healthy social body.
[40]
However,
as Michael Mason suggests, the first two decades of the 20th century also gave
birth to a powerful reaction against the sexual values of the Victorian era.
[41]
As we see in a wide array of
authors like Havelock Ellis, Edward Carpenter and D.H. Lawrence, there was a
growing critique of the prudery of the Victorian age, and an increasing call
for social and sexual liberation. As
Carpenter put it, "the strange period of human evolution, the
Victorian Age...marked the lowest ebb of modern civilized society: a period in
which...cant in religion, the impure hush on matters of sex...the cruel barring
of women from every natural and useful expression of their lives, were carried
to an extremity of folly difficult for us now to realise."
[42]
Increasingly, as the character Kate remarked in D.H. Lawrence Plumed Serpent,
quoted above, sex was believed to harbor some deep, mysterious secret, the liberation of which was of
tremendous, even sacred, power. It
was precisely this awesome power that Crowley would seek to tap into through
his magical practices.
It
is in this sense that Crowley, "the Great Beast," might be said to
have had two backs, as it were, turned both backward and forward. For he was,
on the one hand, deeply rooted in the late Victorian Christian world,
reflecting the obsessive concern with sexuality and sexual deviance in the late
nineteenth century. Yet like others of the post-Victorian era, he would
struggle heroically to break free of that world, setting out deliberately to
destroy that useful, productive Victorian social order through the most extreme
acts of consumption and excess.
III. SEX IS A
SACRAMENT: Crowley and the Origins of Western Sexual Magic
[T]he
science of the sexual magic is the key to the development and the underlying
secret of all Masonic
symbols.…[I]t is certain that the sexual question has become the
most burning question of our time.
-- Theodor Reuss, "Mysteria Mystica
Maxima"
[43]
The
sexual act is a sacrament of WiIl. To profane it is the great offense. All true
expression of it is lawful; all suppression or distortion of it is contrary to
the Law of liberty.
--
Crowley, The Law is for All
[44]
Sex,
magic and secrecy had, of course, long been associated in the Western religious
imagina-tion. From the early
Gnostics to the Knights
Templar to the Cathars of medieval Europe, esoteric orders had long been
accused of using sexual rituals as part of their secret magical arts.
[45]
However, perhaps the first
sophisticated and well-developed system of sexual magic was that of Paschal
Beverly Randolph (1825-75). The
son of a wealthy Virginian father and a slave from Madagascar, Randolph was
raised a poor, self-taught free black in New York city. After running away from home at age
sixteen, he traveled the world and later emerged as one of the leading figures
in 19th century Spiritualism and America's foremost exponent of magical
eroticism or Affectional Alchemy. In sexual love, "he saw the greatest hope for the regeneration of the
world, the key to personal fulfillment as well as social transformation and the
basis of a non-repressive civilization.”
[46]
-147-
Paschal Beverly Randolph
 |
In the course of his wanderings in the
Middle East, Randolph claimed to been initiated by a group of Fakirs in the
area of Jerusalem, which may have been a branch of the mystical order of the Nusa'iri -- a
group long persecuted by orthodox
Islam because of their alleged Gnostic sexual rituals. Upon his return to the
United States, Randolph began to teach a form of sexual
magic that would have a profound impact on much of later Western
esotericism. For Randolph,
the experience of sexual orgasm is
the critical moment in human consciousness and the key to magical power:
"true Sex-power is God-power," as he put it. As the moment when new life is infused
from the spiritual realm into the material, it is crucial moment one the soul is suddenly opened up to
the spiritual energies of the cosmos:
"at the instant of intense mutual orgasm the souls of the partners
are opened to the powers of the cosmos and anything truly willed is accomplished."
[47]
The power of sex, then, can be deployed for a wide range of both spiritual and
material ends. Not only can one achieve the spiritual aims of divine insight,
but he can also attain the mundane goals of physical health, financial success
or regaining the passions of a straying lover.
[48]
Once Randolph's teachings on sexual magic took root in the late 19th century, they would
quickly flower and give birth to a wide array of occult movements throughout
America, England and Europe. At the same time, they would
also be reinterpreted in ways that might have been quite horrifying to Randolph
himself, as they were now mingled with the most transgressive acts of homosexual intercourse,
auto-eroticism and even bestiality as a form of sexual magic.
Perhaps
the most important vehicle for the transmission of Randolph's teachings on
sexual magic was the highly esoteric movement known as the Ordo Templi Orientis
(O.T.O.). Inspired by Karl Kellner
(d. 1905) and later founded by Theodor Reuss (d. 1923), the O.T.O. became the
main conduit through which Western sexual magic began to merge with a (somewhat
deformed) version of Indian Tantric practices. A wealthy Austrian chemist and industrialist, Kellner
claims to have been initiated into Indian sexual techniques in the course of
his Oriental travels, citing a
Sufi and two Indian yogis as his masters.
[49]
Reuss, too, had a general working
knowledge of Indian yogic practices and apparently some rudimentary
understanding of Tantra (though, like Crowley, as I will argue below, his
knowledge of Tantra was probably simplistic and inaccurate).
[50]
-148-
Karl Kellner
 |
Others,
however, believe that Kellner and Reuss’ true inspiration was in fact
P.B. Randolph, whose sexual-magical
teachings had been spread to Europe by a group of disciples in the late
nineteenth century. Many of Randolph's ideas were transmitted to Germany through a little known but extremely
influential group known as the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor (H.B. of L.),
begun by Max Theon (d. 1927) and Peter Davidson (d. 1916) probably sometime in the 1880’s. Following
Randolph, the H.B. of L. made sex central to its metaphysical system and
spiritual practice: it is the polarity of male and female energies that creates
the universe, and it is sexual union of males and females that leads to the
"reunion of the divine Ego and to angelhood."
[51]
At the same time, however, the H.B. of L. was even more emphatic about the dangers that arise from the
abuse of sexual magic. Indeed, they warn that Randolph himself was led to ruin
by his sexual excesses.
[52]
Nonetheless, the teachings of the H.B.
of L. would be one of the most important means by which Randolph's work was
transmitted and had a formative impact on most later esoteric traditions in the
West: "Once the secret was out of linking occultism with sex, it was
impossible to ignore...practically every occult order after the 1880s had some
debt to the H.B. of L."
[53]
Once
these sexual techniques were transmitted to new movements like the Ordo Templi
Orientis, however, they would also undergo some profound transformations. Much
of the O.T.O.'s ritual centered around this “inner kernel” of
sexual magic – though one already quite different from the more
conservative system of Randolph.
As the O.T.O. proclaimed in the
journal Oriflamme in 1904, "Our Order possesses the Key which unlocks all
Masonic and Hermetic secrets, it is the teaching of sexual magic and this
teaching explains all the riddles of nature, all Masonic symbolism and all
religious systems."
[54]
The
O.T.O. developed a system of nine degrees, the first six of which were more
conventional Masonic initiations.
The seventh, eighth and ninth degrees, however, focused respectively upon the theory of sex magic and on the
techniques of auto- and
hetero-sexual magic.
[55]
Through the magical act of
intercourse, by focusing all one’s will and imagination upon a desired
goal in the moment of orgasm, one can achieve success in any occult operation,
from the invocation of a god to the finding of hidden treasure. One may, for
example, use these techniques to magically empower a talisman or other magical
object: by focusing one’s entire will upon the desired object during
orgasm, and then afterwards anointing that object with the semen, one can use
that empowered object to achieve virtually any desired end.
[56]
Yet although the sex magic of the O.T.O. may have found some of its inspiration
in the techniques of Randolph, there were
also fundamental differences between the two. As Godwin points out, the
auto-erotic and homosexual techniques developed by Kellner and Reuss would have
horrified the more reserved Randolph, for whom sex was a sacrament between
married couples, guarded by ritual sanctity and moral injunctions.
[57]
Crowley as Head of OTO
 |
Crowley
became involved with the O.T.O. in 1910 and would soon become its most infamous
member. According to Crowley's account, he was approached by Reuss, who had
read a cryptic chapter of Crowley's Book of Lies and accused him of revealing the
innermost secret of the O.T.O.:
the secret of sexual magic.
Though Crowley had apparently done so unintentionally, the story goes,
he was named the Sovereign Grand Master General of Ireland, Ioana and all the
Britains. As Crowley suggests,
this secret is so powerful and "of such tremendous import," that it
"cannot be used indiscriminately" or revealed to the unworthy.
[58]
As he described it in his Confessions, "if this secret
which is a scientific secret were perfectly understood…there would
be nothing which the human imagination can conceive that could not be realized
in practice...If it were desired to have an element of atomic weight six times
that of uranium that element could be produced."
[59]
In
Crowley's revised system, however, the O.T.O.'s nine degrees were expanded to
eleven. The eighth, ninth and eleventh of these focused on more explicitly
transgressive sexual rites of auto-erotic and homosexual intercourse. As Peter
Koenig summarizes the upper degrees,
Crowley's
VIIIth degree unveiled... that masturbating on a sigil of a demon or meditating
upon the image of a phallus would bring power or communication with a divine
being...The IXth degree was labeled heterosexual intercourse where the sexual
secrets were sucked out of the vagina and when not consumed...put on a sigil to
attract this or that demon to fulfill the pertinent wish...In the XIth degree,
the mostly homosexual degree, one identifies oneself with an ejaculating penis.
The blood (or excrements) from anal intercourse attract the spirits/demons
while the sperm keeps them alive.
[60]
In many ways,
this secret of sexual magic was really the key to his entire vision of a new
Aeon based on the full affirmation of the Will and the complete liberation from
the repressive, oppressive religions of the past. Indeed, Crowley takes the "repressive hypothesis"
and the urge to sexual freedom to its furthest extreme: for he not only
proclaims the liberation of sexuality from the prudish bonds of his Victorian
childhood, but he also makes the most deviant and anti-social of sexual acts --
namely, masturbation, oral consumption of sexual fluids and homosexual
intercourse-- the ultimate keys to magical power. In other words, he set out to usher in his own new Aeon by
smashing and tearing down the entire social-moral structure of the world in
which he was raised.
[61]
Theodor Reuss
 |
IV. THE YOGA
OF SEX: Tantra and other Exotic Imports from the Mysterious Orient
Shiva, the Destroyer, is asleep, and when he
opens his eye the universe is destroyed...But the "eye" of Shiva is
also his Lingam [phallus]. Shiva is himself the Mahalingam, which unites these
symbolisms. The opening of the eye, the ejaculation of the Lingam, the
destruction of the universe, the accomplishment of the Great Work --all these
are different ways of saying the same thing.
--Crowley, The Book
of Lies
[62]
[P]aradoxical
as it may sound, the Tantrics are in reality the most advanced of the Hindus.
--
Crowley
[63]
Already
in the work of Kellner, Reuss and the early O.T,O, Western sexual magic had
begun to be mingled with the recently discovered traditions of Hindu and
Buddhist Tantra. But it is Crowley and Crowley's form of sexual magic that most
Westerners readers now think of when they hear the word Tantra. As we will see,
however, this association of Crowley and Tantra may turn out to be a good deal
more spurious and unfounded than most authors have generally assumed.
As
it is used by most historians of religions today, Tantra refers to a vast and
extremely diverse body of texts,
practices and traditions hat spread throughout the Hindu, Buddhist and even
Jain communities since at list the 3rd
or 4th century CE. There is in fact intense disagreement,
not only as to how it is best defined, but even as to whether Tantra really
"exists" at all. Is it really an indigenous Asian category, or is it
instead -- like the generic category of "Hinduism" itself -- the
product of western Orientalist scholars imposing their own fantasies and
obsessions onto the exotic mirror of the Oriental Other?
[64]
Although it has been defined in many different ways, Tantra centers in large
part around the concept of shakti -- power or energy, in all its many forms. Shakti is the power that creates, sustains and destroys the entire
universe, but it is also the power that flows through the social and political
world, as well. Tantric ritual
seeks to harness and exploit this power, both as a mean to spiritual liberation
and as a means to this-worldly benefits, such as wealth, fame and supernatural
abilities. As Douglas Brooks summarizes, "The Tantrika conceives of the
world as power. The world is nothing but power to be harnessed."
[65]
Sexual union (maithuna
) is indeed used in some traditions as one method to awaken and harness this
power; but it is by no means the
only, or even usually the most important, technique employed in Tantric ritual.
And even when it is used, it is
typically restricted to very closely guarded, highly esoteric ritual settings
and surrounded with the most severe injunctions warning of the dangers of its
abuse. In the words of one of the most famous and influential medieval texts,
the Kularnava Tantra,
What
I tell you must be kept with great secrecy. This must not be given to just
anyone. It must only be given to a devoted disciple. It will be death to any
others.
If
liberation could be attained simply by having intercourse with a [female
partner], then all living beings in the world would be liberated just by having
intercourse with women.
[66]
Many
forms of Tantric practice do involve explicit forms of ritual transgression.
The ritual consumption of meat and wine, and in some cases sexual intercourse
in violation of class laws, can be employed as a means of awakening and
harnessing the awesome power or shakti that flows through all things. Yet at the same time, as
Brooks, Sanjukta Gupta and many others have argued, Tantra is really by no
means the subversive, anti-social force that many Western readers imagine it to
be. On the contrary, it is in most
cases a highly conservative
tradition, which ultimately re-asserts the ritual authority and social status
of male brahmins. Social relations and sexual taboos are typically only
violated in highly controlled ritual contexts and are generally re-asserted --
indeed, reinforced -- outside the boundaries of esoteric ritual:
"Anti-caste statements should never be read outside their ritual context.
Returned to ordinary life, no high caste Tantric would think of breaking social
taboos. ..The ritual egalitarianism of Tantrism in practice acted as a caste-confirming ...force."
[67]
Since
its first discovery by European Orientalist scholars and Christian missionaries
in the 18th century, Tantra has held a place of profound ambivalence in the
Western imagination. To most European scholars of the colonial era, Tantra was
identified as the very worst and most depraved aspect of the Indian mind, the
source of all the polytheism, idolatry and licentiousness that had led to the
apparent degeneration of Hinduism in modern times. Above all, Tantra was
attacked because of its use of sensual pleasure and even sexual union as a
means of spiritual experience. Ironically, although physical intercourse plays
a very limited role in most Indian Tantric traditions, the sexual aspect was quicklyellingassage is, I think, very t singled out as the
most infamous and most shocking aspect of this terrible perversion of true
religion. As the great Sanskritist, Sir Monier Williams, put it, Tantra is
"Hinduism arrived in last and worst age of medieval development," in
which the noble philosophy of the Vedas
had been replaced by the obscene sexual perversions and black magic of
the left-hand (vamacara)
Tantras: "The rites, or rather, orgies, of the left hand worshippers
presuppose the meeting of men and woman of all castes in the most unrestrained
manner."
[68]
This
identification of Tantra with sexual licentiousness was only further
complicated in the late 19th century,
as Tantra became increasingly confused with various pornographic and
sexological literature proliferating in Victorian England. One of the most
widely-read authors on Tantra (though also one of the least original) was
Edward Sellon, who was best known as an author of cheap pornographic books,
such as The New Epicurean or the Delights of Sex Facetiously and
Philosophically Considered in Graphic Letters Addressed to Young Ladies of
Quality.
[69]
Having served as an Ensign in the
Madras infantry as a young man, Sellon also knew something of Hindu belief and
practice, which he published in his Annotations upon the Sacred Writings of
the Hindus. His vivid
and titillating description of Tantric worship -- in which "natural
restraints are wholly disregarded" and which "terminates with orgies amongst the votaries of a very
licentious description" -- would become one of the most influential
accounts in the late Victorian popular imagination.
[70]
Finally, this equation of Tantra with its sexual aspects would be rendered
hopelessly confused with the publication of various Sanskrit erotic texts such
as the Ananga Ranga and
the Kama Sutra by Sir
Richard Francis Burton and his cohorts in the Kama Shastra Society.
[71]
Although the Kama Sutra in
fact had little if anything to do with Tantra, it would soon become largely
confused and often completely identified with Tantra in the Western popular
imagination. Crowley, too, seems to
have inherited this Orientalist identification of Tantra with sex, and he would
soon become infamous as one of the first Western authors to wed sexual magic
with the esoteric rites of Tantra. As his disciple Kenneth Grant put it,
"The revival of Tantric elements in the Book of the Law may be evidence of a positive move on
the part of [Crowley] to forge a link between Western and Oriental systems of
magick."
[72]
But the question is, how much did Crowley really know about Indian Tantric traditions -- that is,
beyond the second-hand comments and bursts of moral outrage about Tantric
licentiousness that were common in Orientalist scholarship?
It
is true that he did have a reasonably good knowledge of Indian yoga, including
both the raja (royal)
or ashtanga (eight-limbed)
yoga of Patanjali and the more physical practice focused on bodily postures
known as hatha yoga. His Eight Lectures on Yoga -- or "Yoga for Yahoos," as he described it -- displays a competent grasp of the
classical yoga system and would become one of the first vehicles through which
yoga was transmitted to the West.
[73]
And it is also true that he made
frequent use of key Sanskrit
terms, such as lingam
and yoni, the male
and female sexual organs, to explain his own magical practice. In fact, he
records in his Confessions that
it was the Indian worship of the lingam that helped change his attitudes toward sex and to see that
the sexual organ can be a source of spiritual power and an object of
veneration. Unlike repressed and neurotic modern Western society, India had
long known the inherent divinity of sexuality and the human body:
One
of the great insights of South India is the great Temple of the Shiva lingam. I
spent a good deal of time in its
courts meditating on the mystery of Phallic worship...My instinct told me that Blake was right in
saying: "The lust of the goat is the glory of God." But
I lacked the courage to admit it. The result of my training had been to obsess
me with the
hideously foul idea that inflicts such misery on Western minds and curses life with civil war. Europeans cannot face the
facts frankly, they cannot escape from their animal
appetite, yet suffer the tortures of fear and shame even while gratifying it.
As Freud has now shown,
this devastating complex is not merely responsible for most of the social and domestic misery of
Europe and America, but exposes the individual to neurosis ....We
resort to suppression, and the germs create an abscess.
[74]
It also seems
that Crowley eventually came to have a certain respect for Indian Tantric
traditions. Unlike most of the Orientalist scholars of his day, who denounced
Tantra as a horrible perversion, Crowley described Tantra not only a valid form
of religion, but in fact the "most advanced" of all forms of Indian
spirituality. For unlike other forms of Hinduism and Buddhism, Tantra does not
deny the physical body or the natural world, but affirms and makes use of the
flesh and the senses:
The
essence of the Tantric cults is that by performance of certain rites of Magick,
one does not only escape disaster, but obtains positive benediction. The
Tantric is not obsessed by the will-to-die. It is a difficult business, no
doubt, to get any fun out of existence, but at least it is not
impossible...[H]e implicitly denies the proposition that existence is sorrow
and he form-ulates the postulate...that means exist by which the universal
sorrow...may be unmasked.
[75]
One
of the most explicit references to Tantric sexual practices in Crowley's work
is found in his key text for the
O.T.O. IX degree rite, De Arte Magicka. Here specifically compares the
Tantric view of the semen and the
rite of maithuna with
the IX degree rite, and also demonstrates that he is familiar with at least one
Tantric text:
Like
the Jews, the wise men of India have a belief that a certain particular Prana,
or force, resides in the Bindu, or semen….
Therefore
they stimulate to the maximum its generation by causing a consecrated
prostitute to excite the organs, and at the same time vigorously withhold by
will. After some little exercise they claim that they can deflower as many as
eighty virgins in a night without losing a single drop of the Bindu. Nor is
this ever to be lost, but reabsorbed through the tissues of the body. The
organs thus act as a siphon to draw constantly fresh supplies of life from the
cosmic reservoir, and flood the body with their fructifying virtue….
Initiates
will notice also that these heathen philosophers have made one further march
towards the truth when they say that the Sun and Moon must be united before the
reabsorption (see almost any Tantra, in particular Shiva Sanhita).
[76]
For
these reasons, many authors have speculated that Crowley did in fact have some
extensive knowledge of Tantra. Thus Lawrence Sutin makes the argument that
Crowley may have first been introduced to the more radical left-hand (vamacara) form of Tantra in Ceylon as early 1901. Infamous for
its use of normally forbidden substances, such as meat, wine and sexual
intercourse, vamacara
Tantra is considered the most
rapid and dangerous path to liberation.
[77]
Initially, Crowley seems to have been repulsed by such practices, for example when he wrote with disdain
about "these follies of… Vamacharya ("debauchery," i.e.,
normal life).”
[78]
In this negative view of left-hand
Tantra, however, Crowley was by no means alone among occultists and religious
leaders of the day. Many leading Indian religious figures, such as Swami
Vivekananda (1863-1902) -- one of the first to bring Hindu philosophy to the
West -- had a singular disdain for Tantra, particular in its left-hand forms.
[79]
Even many Western occultists such as Madame Blavatsky (1831-1891)-- who had a
great admiration for Indian philosophy and eventually re-located the
Theosophical Society to South India -- identified Tantra with black magic of
the most foul and depraved variety: "[T]he Tantras...are the embodiment of ceremonial black
magic of the darkest
dye...[T]hose Kabbalists who dabble in the ceremonial magic described...by
Eliphas Levi are as full blown Tantrikas as those of Bengal."
[80]
It seems probable that Crowley was influenced by these views of Tantra, which
were widely circulated in both India and England from the late 19th century onward.
However,
Sutin goes on to argue that
Crowley's attitudes toward Tantra became a good deal more positive in years
after 1901, and that he began to experiment in Tantric-influenced sexual
rites of his own. Already by 1902,
Sutin suggests, Crowley and his partner Rose had begun to engage in a series of “secret rites, of a sexual nature (and related to
Tantric practices, such as the emulation of the passive Shiva in cosmic
coupling with the mounted energetic Shakti)."
[81]
Unfortunately, Sutin provides no evidence that Crowley and Rose were engaging
in any sort of actual Tantric practices or that their sexual relations were in
any way influenced by Tantra.
Others
have speculated that Crowley was
even more deeply involved in
left-hand Tantric rituals during his travels in India. In 1936, for example, Elizabeth Sharpe published a
semi-autobiographical account entitled Secrets of the Kaula Circle, which describes a mysterious Englishman
calling himself by the number “666,” who engages in the most esoteric Tantric rites:
“I met a European who...called himself by a number. In the beginning he
was extremely handsome, afterwards he grew gross...He had many women at his
disposal... He learnt many magical processes by which he drew into his circle
great phantoms...666 wore a ceremonial robe, had a pentacle, a wand a sword and
a cup."
[82]
At least one author has taken this to be positive proof that Crowley had
intimate knowledge of and experience in Tantric practice.
[83]
However, given the fact that Sharpe's novel was published at a time when
Crowley's reputation as a pervert, black magician and drug fiend was quite
widespread, it seems equally (if not more) likely that Sharpe appropriated the
figure of the infamous "Beast 666," mingled him with some widespread
fantasies about Tantric licentiousness and incorporated him as a purely
fictional character into her novel.
But
apart from these general references, it would seem that Crowley's actual
knowledge of Tantra was fairly rudimentary and largely colored by the
Orientalist biases of his era. It is indeed striking, for example, that Crowley
does not once mention the work of Sir John Woodroffe (a.k.a. Arthur Avalon,
1865-1936),
[84]
whose work pioneered the modern study of Tantra and helped introduce Tantra as
a serious religious practice and philosophical system to the western world. A
judge on the British High Court in Calcutta and secret student of the Tantras,
Woodroffe was a contemporary of Crowley whose major works on Tantra were
published in England from around 1913 on.
[85]
One
would think that Crowley would have welcomed the publication of a large body of
ancient literature that allows for a positive role for sexual experience and
this-worldly pleasure, and one cannot help but wonder why he completely ignored
it in his own writings on sexual magic.
Moreover,
in the few places where he does discuss Tantric practices, Crowley frequently
either misunderstands or simply reinterprets them for his own purposes. For
example, most Tantric traditions use a form of physical discipline known as kundalini
yoga. According to the kundalini system, there are a series of seven
energy centers (chakras)
located along the axis of the spinal column. At the base of these lies the Great Goddess as power (shakti) hidden in the human body, which is
imagined in the form of a coiled serpent (kundalini). The aim of kundalini yoga is to awaken this serpent power and to
raise it through the seven energy centers where it will ultimately be united
with the supreme masculine principle, the God, Shiva, who is imagined as
dwelling in a thousand-petalled lotus at the top of the head. Crowley more or less accepts this
basic system of seven chakras and
the serpent power; yet, quite remarkably, he also adds a special set of lower
chakras located beneath
the lowest energy
center (the muladhara
or root), in the regions of the anus, the prostate gland (or urethra-cervix
region in the female) and the base of the penis (or clitoris in the female). In
other words, he has added a series of sub-chakras that are explicitly associated with the
sexual organs and orifices. As he explains in a letter in 1916,
It
appears that a special set of nadis [nerves] fed the Muladhara lotus as if it
had three roots. The source of
these roots is in the three centres...Buy they are not lotuses of the same
order as the sacred Seven...
The
anal lotus is of eight petals, deep crimson, glowing to rich poppy color when
excited...
The
prostatic lotus is like a peridot, extremely translucent and limpid...The
petals are numerous, I think thirty-two.
The third lotus is in the glans penis, close to the base...It is of a
startlingly rich purple...The centre is gold like the sun…
In
the female… these three lotuses also exist, but in a very different
form...[T]he second of the chakras is situated between the urethra and the cervix
uteri...[I]ts color is
neutral grey but in pregnancy it becomes a brilliant orange and flowerlike...
The
third lotus is at the base of the clitoris... The petals are forty-nine in
number…The basic color is a rich olive green, sometimes kindling to
emerald
[86]
This passage is
a telling example of Crowley's appropriation and reinterpretation of Tantra as
a whole. Not only does he identify
Tantra primarily with its sexual aspects, but, going still further, he also introduces
his own series of sub-chakras
identified specifically with the sexual organs. However, perhaps the greatest difference between the
Crowleyian and Hindu Tantric systems is the role of sexual intercourse in
ritual practice. But here again there is some confusion. Some authors have
suggested that the primary difference lies in the way in which the sexual acts
are carried out and the manner in which sexual union occurs. Thus Sutin argues
that the key difference is that the Hindu and Buddhist Tantrics call for a
retention and sublimation of the male semen during union, while Crowley calls
for the ejaculation and consumption of the sexual fluids (in fact, Crowley
himself pointed this out in De Arte Magicka, chapters XIV and XVI):
Hindu
and Buddhist Tantrism….call for retention of semen by the male, even in
the heights of mystical sexual union. Crowley followed that alchemical
tradition which regarded the fluidic commingling as an 'elixir' which, when
imbibed, could heighten both one's physical and spiritual state.
[87]
Actually, this
is not quite correct. It is true that many later Tantric texts emphasize
retention of semen during union; but there are in fact many Hindu Tantric
traditions -- and arguably, the older traditions -- that call for ejaculation of the semen and
consumption of the combined male and female sexual fluids. According to the Brhat
Tantrasara -- one of the largest compendia of
Tantric ritual and iconography composed by the great 16th century author, Krishnananda Agamavagisha -- the shedding of
semen into the womb of the female partner is the ultimate "sacrificial
act." For "sexual union is the libation; the sacred precept is the
shedding of semen."
[88]
The
mingled sexual fluids are then consecrated and consumed as the supreme
sacrificial offering -- called the kula dravya or "lineage substance" -- which has the power to fulfill all
worldly and otherworldly desires.
[89]
As
David Gordon White has argued, this practice of orally consuming the sexual
fluids can be found in many of the oldest Tantras and probably pre-dates the
practice of seminal retention.
[90]
Instead,
I would suggest that the key difference between traditional forms of Tantra and
Crowley's system lies not in the details of sexual union, but rather in the
emphasis that is placed on sex in the first place. In most Hindu and Buddhist Tantras,
sexual union is a fairly minor part of spiritual practice; when mentioned at
all, it is often taken in purely symbolic terms, and, when practiced literally,
is but one of many ways of awakening the divine power or shakti. As Georg Feuerstein observes,
"There is nothing glamorous about Tantric sexual intercourse."
[91]
But in most contemporary Western interpretations -- and above all, in the wake
of Crowley -- Tantra has been re-defined primarily by its sexual element, and
often simply equated with "spiritual sex," the goal of which is not
spiritual development but heightened orgasm and optimal physical pleasure.
[92]
In
the end, it seems there is little concrete evidence that Crowley had any
extensive knowledge of Indian Tantra, apart from the common association of
Tantra and sex in the Western imagination. So how, then, did Crowley's work
come to be so widely identified with Tantra in later literature? The answer
lies primarily, I think, in the work of Crowley's earliest biographers, such as
John Symonds and, above all, Kenneth Grant. In fact, Grant himself claimed to have received "full
initiation into a highly recondite formula of the Tantric vama marg," at the hands of one David Curwen,
who in turn claimed to have been initiated by a Tantric Guru in South
India. Having met Crowley in 1944
and studying with him in 1945,
Grant would go on to write a series of books on Crowley and magic, which
repeatedly emphasize the "Tantric" nature of Crowley's work. Thus, The Book of the Law is even praised as "the New Gnosis, the latest
Tantra," and Crowley is credited with having penetrated the innermost
secrets of Tantric sexual practices (which Grant also compares with the Orgasm
theory of Wilhelm Reich):
"Crowley knew that the crux of tantric ritual lay in its connection
with the magically induced ecstasies of sexual orgasm."
[93]
Ultimately, Grant also finds in the Tantras a confirmation of the central tenet of Crowley's law of Thelema -- the fundamental
belief in the divinity of the human will. Just as Tantra, in Crowley's new
interpretation, asserted the divinity of the human body and the sexual
instinct, so too did it affirm the godhood of Man above all the old false dying
gods of the past: "Another point of contact between Tantra and Thelema is
contained in the Thelemic aphorism: There is no god but man!"