SILVERSTAR

FIRE SNAKE RISING

A book review by Papa Nick

MAGIA SEXUALIS: Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism by Hugh B. Urban, University of California Press, 2006
In this, the first decade of the 21st Century, Magick is emerging from the shadows and taking its place in the Sun. Serious scholarly works on the societal impact of occult practices are now being published by respected University presses. Even if some of our personal magical workings fail to achieve measurable changes in the "real world", our collective influence on society as Magicians has been felt, and feeds the fire of liberation. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is how the evolution of Western sex magic in the last 150 years has been mirrored by the unfettering of personal expression, not only in the areas of gender roles and sexual practices, but also in art, music, writing, theatre, cinema, and the general feeling of the wo-man on the street that the forces of Control have no right to impose their draconian standards on the individual. The cat has been let out of the bag, the genie has escaped from the bottle, and all the king's men can't get them back in there.
Urban, an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Ohio State University, has looked at the history of sex magic dating from the mid-1800s to the present day and makes the case for its being, far from a throwback to the imagined witches' orgies of the Middle Ages, a reflection of, and in some cases inspiration for, the emergence of personal empowerment in the Modern era.
Magia Sexualis is not an instructional guide to sex magic, despite the fact that Urban borrowed the title from a manuscript by that name written in the mid-1800s by Pascal Beverly Randolph -- a hugely influential, though still largely underappreciated, figure in the birthing of Western sexual magic. The focus here is how Hindu and Buddhist Tantric methods of utilizing sexual energy for practical magic became melded with the Western traditions of Kaballah and Hermeticism to create what we now know as sex magic. The chapters are in a more-or-less chronological order, starting with the pioneer Randolph and progressing to Theodor Reuss, Aleister Crowley, Julius Evola, Gerald Gardner, Starhawk and other feminist Wiccans, Anton LaVey, and Chaos Magicians such as Peter Carroll.   Nema receives an all-too-brief mention in the chapter "Sexual Chaos".
Reportedly Randolph only published 60 copies of Magia Sexualis during his lifetime, yet its impact on later esoteric groups was immense. There is evidence that Carl Kellner, the spiritual father of Ordo Templi Orientis, was exposed to his teachings through association with an offshoot of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, the secret teachings of which were lifted part and parcel from Randolph's writings. In addition to developing his science of sexual magic (which he called Affectional Alchemy), Randolph was an outspoken abolitionist and championed the cause of women's rights. Like later exponents of the secrets of sex magic, Randolph's public face was that of a progressive social reformer. Randolph's system was, despite being a radical departure from church-bound religious worship, rather conventional in that it was only to be engaged in by husand and wife. It would be for later developers of Western sex magic to introduce the element of transgression as the key to Liberation.
The chapter "The Yoga of Sex" traces the introduction of Tantra to the West in the 1800s, and credits Theodor Reuss, the "primary architect" of the OTO, as having made sexual rites the central focus of that Order. Reuss viewed Tantra as basically a "cult of the Phallus", so it is not surprising that successors like Crowley had a phallocentric focus. It should be noted that this is something early Western Tantrics didn't invent: the rites of the Shakta Tantrikas are designed so that the male is the main beneficiary, and the same can be said of Taoist dual cultivation in the yoga of inner alchemy: on the surface they seem almost vampiristic. Women in these rites are viewed as sources of power and little more. Reuss viewed semen as the key to magical power, and women as non-essential, so it follows that homosexual sex magic might not have been an innovation born of Crowley's personal proclivities, but could have been a part of the teaching of the higher grades of the Order from the earliest days, in theory if not in practice.
In a larger context, Reuss had an Utopian vision for society that went much further than Randolph's calls for racial and sexual equality: Reuss promoted the creation of a new civilization based on sexual freedom with "gnostic Templar-Christians" at the helm. Included in his larger program were the elimination of private property, forced labor, and even eugenics. Reading this chapter put one thing in perspective for me: Crowley's seemingly harsh social program, as codified in Liber OZ, was far from his invention or based on the more severe verses in the second and third chapters of Liber AL; it was a part of the OTO agenda (at least Reuss's) from the start.
Not surprisingly, Crowley looms large in Urban's book. "The Beast with Two Backs" chapter credits Crowley with pushing the limits and unfolding the possibility of using sexual energy, the source of magical power, in any and all forms -- pick a chapter from "Psychopathia Sexualis." His knowledge of Tantra was probably rudimentary and colored by the biases of his time, but like Tantric mystics, he believed in using the flesh and the senses as gateways to religious ecstasy, unlike the traditional mystics who hoped to gain Paradise by denial and mortification of the flesh. It is Crowley's transgression of sexual and social taboos as a Path to spiritual enlightenment that made him the innovator he was. Urban, like Professor Richard Kaczynski, gives this particular devil his due. Urban writes: "... I will suggest that Crowley is a figure of far more interest than the hedonistic sex fiend portrayed by the popular media. Indeed, he is a fascinating figure worthy of attention by scholars of religion and of profound importance for the understanding of modern society as a whole." In fact, when we look at today's world and see the prevalence of all types of pornography, open expression of what were once considered deviate sexual lifestyles, the widespread use of drugs despite the best efforts of the law enforcement, and the general sense that government and religion do not have the right to govern individual behavior, it is as if we are seeing Crowley turned inside-out. Not all of the Beast's magical workings to obtain money worked for him, but his overarching aim of the liberation of the human spirit was a success in many ways.
Like Reuss, Crowley was a "spermo-Gnostic", as Peter Koenig has said; for AC the role of Scarlet Woman was an office to which he appointed the woman with whom he was living at the time. For Crowley, Scarlet Women were interchangeable; he is even quoted as saying that, at some point, "a dog will do." This misogyny can be blamed on his upbringing in the Victorian era, but for a man whose goal was to break free from conditioning and tradition, he certainly failed in several areas.
But as society evolves, so does the magical current that feeds it. The Wicca of Gerald Gardner was the next step in the evolution of sex magic, and it found a welcoming embrace in the 1960s, when the radical feminist movement found in Witchcraft's exaltation of the Goddess over the Horned God both spiritual inspiration and a justification for its reversal of traditional roles for women. Whether or not Gardner's version of Witchcraft really was the continuation of a centuries-old Witch Cult that had survived underground in the New Forest, or was his own creation inspired largely by Crowley's writings, Witchcraft as a nature religion with a Goddess at its center struck a chord with many people, and the nudist, feminist and environmental movements in particular.
As Urban points out in this chapter, "The Goddess and the Great Rite", Gardner's Wicca, although exalting the Feminine, in many ways reinforces traditional gender roles. But as social acceptance of freedom of choice in sexual orientation has grown, so has Witchcraft. There are now a number of covens that have developed their own traditions and have found a way to construct new models of Witchcraft for their lesbian, gay, trans-gendered and bi-sexual members.
There are two chapters I am skipping over in this review, not because they aren't interesting but because they focus on characters whose contributions to sex magic are tenuous at best and only serve to feed a reactionary mindset. Those characters are the Italian fascist Julius Evola and the neo-Satanist Anton LaVey.   While both of them championed sexual freedom, the changes they sought do not serve to progress wo-mankind, only to isolate and fragment it. LaVey's temples are back-alley bars and strip clubs, where lost souls gather in a pathetic, desperate attempt to find a human connection. Evola's championing of "manliness" is only a whimpering testimony to his own lack of vitality, which had to be satiated by dreams of domination.
The final chapter, "Sexual Chaos", brings us to the present day in Urban's study of the eruption of the Fire Snake from the Modern to the Postmodern eras. Sex magic, he writes, "... is ultimately tied to a profound desire for liberation, transgression, and radical freedom on all levels -- sexual, social, political and religious alike." Chaos Magic is about stretching and rupturing all boundaries, the 8-pointed Arrow shooting Out from separate existence into the womb of infinite Space. Rather than the Utopian dreams of earlier sex magicians, Chaotes acknowledge that the vessel of civilization is already broken, it's too late for it to be glued back together, it is too fragmented for consensus. It is only by reaching back to ancient atavisms and reaching out to as-yet-unrealized possibilities that we can create a present that is moving with the wave of evolution.
As Urban points out in this chapter, sex magic and Magick in general are no longer occult or hidden. Anyone with a few dollars for a trade paperback or a good internet connection can find all the information they need to choose their own practices within the framework they choose. Even Chaos Magick, so popular in the 1980s, has deconstructed itself. The day when one had to seek out admission to an esoteric order and go through a long, tortuous and sometimes expensive series of initiations to gain wisdom and enlightenment is over. There is no longer a need for hierarchies or orders, but that doesn't mean that one must tread an alternative spiritual path alone.   It is only necessary to find a few friends of like mind and spirit to do the Work in tandem. These cells or tribes or whatever you want to call them, will naturally coalesce by attraction and spread the meme of enlightenment. Now, more than any time in human history, the Law is for All.