Magic of Sex

Natural Magic - Doreen Valiente 1998


Magic of Sex

For nearly two thousand years, in the western world at any rate, the idea of sex has been almost synonymous with that of sin. This unhappy aberration in man’s philosophy, productive of so much misery and frustration, has been in complete contrast with earlier ways of thinking among the pagans of the ancient world and with a good deal of eastern mystical philosophy also.

Upon some of the ancient temples of India, magnificent sculptures portray gods and goddesses in every conceivable variety of sexual embrace. In old-time Tibet also, the deities were depicted in this manner. The sacred Yab-Yum, or ’Father-Mother’ pictures, showed male divinities united in sexual climax with their female counterparts.

The basis for this conjunction of sex and spirituality is the world-wide observation of the interplay of opposites throughout manifested nature. The followers of so chaste and ascetic a philosopher as Pythagoras bore witness to this idea in ancient Greece. To the mediaeval alchemists, the Great Work came from the union of opposites. The Chinese sages based both philosophy and magic upon the interplay of the complementary forces which they called Yang and Yin.

Yang and Yin were the fundamentals of the universe. Yang was positive, Yin was negative. Yang represented masculinity, the Sun, the heavens, the day; while Yin ruled femininity, the Moon, the earth, the night. The Tao, or absolute divinity, was depicted by a sacred diagram showing the Yang and Yin forces locked within a circle.

The sacred four-lettered name of God, the Tetragrammaton, which the translators of the Bible have rendered, somewhat misleadingly, as ’Jehovah’, also contains this idea. It is composed of four Hebrew letters, Yod, He, Vau and He again. The mystical Rabbis who formulated the Hebrew Qabalah or Kabbalah (a word meaning secret tradition handed down), said that the Yod of Tetragrammaton means the Divine Masculinity, the first He means the Divine Femininity, the Vau means their supernal union and the final He means the material universe which results from it.

The word ’Jehovah’ is in fact similar to a number of other divine names, or appellations of the Supreme Deity, which occur in those Graeco-Egyptian systems of magic that have come to be known as Gnostic. Such, for instance, is the word IAOOUEI, which magicians of Alexandria in Egypt used as a divine name and a word of power. It has been conjectured that this word is derived from the sounds made by people at the moment of sexual climax. Very similar is IO EVOHE the ecstatic cry of the dancers in the Greek Mysteries; and this, too, could have had its origin in the involuntary sounds of orgasm.

The mystic word IO is composed of letters in the shape of an upright and a circle; symbols which represent the male and female organs of generation. The same idea in prehistoric Britain was expressed in stone. Some of the mighty stones of Avebury, of unknown antiquity, are composed alternately of tall uprights, representing the male principle, or phallus, and broader, diamond-shaped stones, representing the female genital orifice, or cteis. Two of the biggest of these stones are known locally as Adam and Eve.

This time-honoured concept is even more plainly expressed by a group of prehistoric stones near Penzance in Cornwall, known in the old Cornish language as the Men-an-Tol. This group consists of two upright stones, with a broader stone between them. This broad, central stone has a large hole painstakingly carved through its centre, making it a feminine symbol. These stones have been revered from time immemorial as possessing magical powers. Sickly children were believed to be made stronger by being helped to crawl through the holed stone of the Men-an-Tol. This is probably a folk-memory of an ancient rite of rebirth.

Another group of prehistoric stones in Britain, with a long history of folklore and magic, are the Rollright Stones, near Long Compton, on the border between Oxfordshire and Warwickshire. These consist of a circle of large stones, originally more conspicuous than they are now as many have sunk into the earth. Outside this circle is a massive upright stone called the King Stone. The circle of stones is about one hundred feet in diameter, and the King Stone is nearly nine feet tall.

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The Maypole as it used to be in old-time London. Note upright-and-circle symbolism

This wonderful group of stones now has a modern road running through it, between the King Stone and the circle; but its ancient magic is still potent. The spirit of its basic design is evidently sexual; the upright and the circle, the masculine and the feminine. One legend about the Rollright Stones says that if a childless woman desired to be cured of her barrenness, she should go to the Rollright Stones secretly, on the night of the full moon, strip off her clothes and dance three times naked around the circle and then go up to the King Stone and embrace it, standing so that its shadow cast by the moonlight covers her.

No doubt this ritual was surreptitiously done by many Cotswold country wives in days long ago. Today, a would-be practitioner of the ritual would need to beware of passing cars on the road (though it is fairly lonely one) and she would also need sandals to protect her feet from the debris left behind by picnickers.

Ritual nudity as a magical practice is very old. The naked dances organized by the pagan cult of witchcraft in times past were denounced by the Church; but they still took place. In those days, when the countryside was much more thinly populated than it is today, large bonfires could be lit in lonely places, to provide light and warmth, and a gay, glowing centre of magic flame to dance around. By dancing naked, in a state of mind of ’oneness with nature’, witches contacted the universal life energy, and felt themselves revitalized. Even in modern days, the ashes of bonfires have been found at the Rollright Stones—fires believed locally to have been lit for purposes of witchcraft.

The ancient rites of fertility and vitality belonging to the Old Religion of Nature, still take place secretly in the countryside of Britain, as they do elsewhere in Europe and America, particularly at the full moon. They are done for luck, for enjoyment and for the continuance of age-old tradition.

One such ritual involves a man and a woman dancing seven times round a large tree, preferably an oak. Both have to be naked, so a warm summer night of the full moon is preferred. She pretends to be trying to escape and he to pursue her. But at the seventh round of the dance, she allows him to catch her and they have intercourse beneath the tree. At the end of the rite, a leaf is plucked from the tree and moistened with the sexual fluids that have been mingled in the woman’s vagina. This leaf is considered to be a powerful talisman and may be carried to bring good fortune, or used in other magical ways.

A similar rite is performed around a bonfire, lit within an old stone circle; and this may have been the purpose of the bonfires of which traces were found at the Rollright Stones, as mentioned above. This is seldom done today, as it is too likely to be seen and to attract the attention of outsiders. When it is performed, however, the woman carries a small branch with green leaves on it, as she dances. A leaf is plucked from the branch and used as above, and the rest of the branch is burned on the fire.

When the rite is finished, the fire, which need only be a small one, is extinguished by pouring upon it a libation of wine or cider. This is taken to the ceremony in a special flask or bottle marked with witchcraft signs, as nothing common should be brought into the magic circle. Each of the participants takes a drink from the bottle, and they repeat an old form of words:

As merry we have met,

As merry we have been,

So merry may we part,

And merry meet again.

Then the rest of the wine or cider is poured upon the fire.

If no ancient stone circle is available, the witches may use thirteen ordinary stones to mark out a circle to work in. These stones are usually removed afterwards, so that no tell-tale traces remain and the ashes of the fire are ascribed to picnickers or gypsies.

The Christian church proclaimed sexual intercourse to have been ordained for one purpose only, namely the procreation of children; to use it and especially to enjoy it for any other purpose was sin. But the secret practitioners of magic have always denied this idea. Sex, they say, has three functions: propagation of the race, sheer enjoyment, and revitalization by the exchange of vital magnetism. For the last function, actual intercourse was not absolutely necessary. It could take place between man and woman by touching, kissing and embracing, especially if both partners were nude. The only proviso was that they must be in sympathy with each other, so that their auras blended harmoniously.

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The dance of the witches’ Sabbat

Modern medical science supports these contentions, insofar as it has proved that a woman can only conceive for a brief time of a few days out of her monthly cycle of ovulation and menstruation. Yet she is fully capable of enjoying sexual intercourse throughout the cycle, except when she is actually menstruating. So what are the rest of the days of the cycle for?

As there are three functions of sex, so it exists in three forms of activity: auto-sexual, homosexual and heterosexual. That is, sexual enjoyment by oneself, or with a member of one’s own sex, or with a member of the opposite sex. Again, the idea of the magical number three, or the triad, appears. All these forms of sexual activity have been used, both in magic and religion, from time immemorial.

Old-time moralists made a tremendous fuss about so-called ’self-abuse’, or masturbation. It was even supposed to be ’the sin against the Holy Ghost’ as well as being responsible for just about everything from criminal lunacy to ingrowing toenails. Today, however, psychologists regard it as a perfectly natural thing; so what was the agitation really about? Just possibly, because of the use of human sexual secretions for magical purposes. This applies both to the male sperm and to the secretion of the Bartholin glands in the female. The latter are a pair of small glands, situated one on either side of the entrance to the vagina, that secrete a fluid which moistens the vagina when the female is sexually aroused.

These human sexual secretions, both male and female, are alluded to under the symbolism of alchemy; the male as the blood or essence of the Red Lion, and the female as the gluten or essence of the White Eagle. The ’Lion’ is the emblem of Leo, the fixed sign of fire; the ’Eagle’ is the emblem of the higher aspect of Scorpio, the fixed sign of water. Fire is regarded as a masculine element and water as a feminine one. Similarly, the alchemical vessels could represent the sexual organs. The athanor could be a synonym for the penis and the cucurbit (a gourd-shaped vessel) for the vagina. Old alchemical manuscripts sometimes have illustrations of these vessels, in which their shapes are clearly reminiscent of sexual significance. The mingled sexual fluids constitute the ’First Matter’, out of which is transmuted the ’Elixir of Life’.

The strange symbolism of alchemy was one way in which secret brotherhoods concealed the sexual nature of their rites, which might otherwise have been denounced as ’abominations’ simply because they involved sex. (Although, of course, not all alchemical symbolism should be interpreted in this way).

Aleister Crowley, in his notorious book Magick in Theory and Practice, had a joke at the expense of the credulous, when he wrote that “a male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence” was the most suitable victim for a magical sacrifice; claiming that he himself had been making such a sacrifice “on an average about 150 times every year” for several years past! What Crowley actually meant was that he used his own semen for magical purposes, but even some present-day writers have swallowed the bait and shudderingly declared that Crowley and his followers were criminals who performed human sacrifices. (Magick in Theory and Practise was first privately printed in Paris in 1929. It has since been reprinted by Castle Books of New York.)

The idea behind this practice is that the vital essences of the body give off power, which can be directed by the mind and will of the magician for some specific end. In the case of animal sacrifice, it is the freshly-spilt blood which gives off this vital power. But, say those magicians who practise sexual rites, why use such a crude, brutal and cruel method as killing some living creature, when there are much pleasanter means at hand?

Magica sexualis, or sexual magic, has been the well-kept secret of the inner circles of many occult brotherhoods, of both east and west. It has been disguised in curious symbolism and abstruse terms, because hitherto frank discussion of such ideas has not been possible. Because sexual enjoyment was the great sin, any ritual which involved sex must automatically be black magic and devil-worship. Quite a good deal of this mentality still lingers, even in our own day.

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A group of Etruscan dieties from a mirror back depicting the carefree rites of ancient times

The pagans of ancient times thought differently. They believed that which gave pleasure to humans also gave pleasure to the gods; in other words, the gods were happy to see man happy. This idea was handed down in the Orient for many centuries. M. C. Poinsot, in L’Amour et la Magie (Paris, 1926), quotes from a French translation of a famous Arabic treatise on sexual matters, written by Kohdja Omer Aleby Aben Othman: “La copulation est le plus grand et le plus saint des cantiques”, “Copulation is the greatest and holiest song of praise”.

Farther east, the Tantriks of India, those mystics who follow the old traditions called Tantras, perform a kind of fivefold sacrament of union with nature. Like the magicians of the west, they recognize five elements, the fifth being spirit or akasha. Their communion is called the Panchamakara, or ’Five Ms’, because it involves five things beginning with the letter M:

Wine (madya) for the element of fire.

Meat (mangsa) for air.

Fish (matsya) for water.

Bread (mudra) for earth.

Sexual intercourse (maithuna) for spirit.

The priestess with whom the sexual act takes place within the consecrated circle, is regarded as the living personification of Shakti, the goddess of universal nature.

They find the sacred elements of life present symbolically within the sexual act itself. The hardness felt as the penis penetrates the vagina, represents earth. The flow of semen and moisture represents water. The rubbing together of the genitals is like the rubbing of sticks to produce fire. The movement of the two bodies is like the movement of air. The passion of the climax produces pleasure and the nature of pleasure or ecstasy is akasha.

The penis is symbolically referred to as the vajra or ’thunderbolt’, and the vagina as the lotus-flower. Hence one meaning of the mystic mantram, or sacred phrase: Aum mani padme hum, “Hail to the jewel in the lotus”.

Another Tantrik belief is that at the moment of sexual orgasm a quantity of vital magnetism is released. If this occurs simultaneously with both partners in coition, then there is an harmonious exchange of vitality which is beneficial to both. Hence the kind of sexual intercourse all too common in western countries, where the only thing that matters to the man is his own satisfaction, would be quite useless from this point of view.

Two things are evidently very important for the purpose of sexual magic; namely, that the partners should be in complete harmony with each other, and that they should be sexually potent. Occultism has a good deal of advice to give upon both these points.

By comparing the horoscopes of two people, a skilled astrologer can tell if they are likely to be suited to each other or not. This requires correct horoscopes to be cast for both; but a rough rule-of-thumb guide is that people born under birth signs of the same element, earth, fire, air or water, are likely to get on well together, because such signs will be in trine aspect to each other on the map of the Zodiac, and this is the most favourable and harmonious aspect.

The fire signs are Aries, Leo and Sagittarius. The water signs are Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces. The air signs are Libra, Aquarius and Gemini. The earth signs are Capricorn, Taurus and Virgo.

A phenomenon I have often noticed with regard to people’s birth signs, is that people born under signs which are opposite to one another in the Zodiac are often violently attracted to each other, but the attraction does not last. It is more in the nature of infatuation than genuine love. This seems to bear out the old saying that opposites attract. Such attraction may be great fun while it lasts; but the end is usually stormy.

Such Zodiacal opposites are Aries and Libra, Taurus and Scorpio, Gemini and Sagittarius, Cancer and Capricorn, Leo and Aquarius, Virgo and Pisces.

People who are definitely unlikely to be in harmony with each other, are those whose birth signs are what the astrologers call in square aspect to each other, because this is a difficult and inharmonious aspect.

Aries is square to Cancer and Capricorn.

Taurus is square to Leo and Aquarius.

Gemini is square to Virgo and Pisces.

Cancer is square to Libra and Aries.

Leo is square to Scorpio and Taurus.

Virgo is square to Sagittarius and Gemini.

Libra is square to Cancer and Capricorn.

Scorpio is square to Leo and Aquarius.

Sagittarius is square to Pisces and Virgo.

Capricorn is square to Libra and Aries.

Aquarius is square to Scorpio and Taurus.

Pisces is square to Sagittarius and Gemini.

In addition to this astrological guidance, some occultists believe that there will be more excitement and satisfaction in a love affair if a fair person mates with a dark one and vice versa. Blondes, they say, are ’electric’ and brunettes ’magnetic’. Such expressions, of course, are figurative; but they are an attempt to express the difference between the auras of fair people and dark people, when it comes to a question of how their particular vibrations will blend.

The ways in which people have sought for occult means of securing sexual potency are so numerous, that the study of them forms a branch of magica sexualis in itself. People have been willing to swallow the most revolting concoctions, if only this end could be achieved thereby. Yet medical science assures us that, in most cases, the effect of such ’love potions’ could only be psychological.

Nevertheless, when it comes to such an intimate thing as one’s sexual relationships, psychology can be a very powerful influence. Many a supposedly impotent man has been made so by a nagging wife, for instance; there has been nothing physically wrong with him. Likewise, many allegedly frigid women have really been simply unable to respond to a selfish, clumsy and sexually ignorant man.

Leaving aside the horrid and often poisonous recipes recommended in old books of magic as aphrodisiacs, and the rich and expensive foods such as truffles and oysters, widely believed to have the same effect, is there anything left which is a genuine aphrodisiac or stimulant of sexual potency?

In the way of an actual potion, that is, something to be drunk, the only proven aphrodisiac is alcohol—in small but powerful quantities. Therefore, it would seem that the ideal love potion to be taken by two people before they start to embrace, is a good liqueur. Many liqueurs, in fact, have a secret reputation as aphrodisiacs. Creme de Menthe is notable in this respect; oil of peppermint, which it contains, has been considered an aphrodisiac since the days of ancient Greece. Another liqueur has the significant title of Parfait Amour, ’Perfect Love’.

However, the most bewitching of liqueurs is undoubtedly Strega. The word strega is Italian for ’witch’; and the story goes that this liqueur was originally made as a witches’ potion. It comes from the district of Benevento, in Italy, well-known for its legends of witchcraft, and reputed to be a time-honoured centre of La Vecchia Religione, ’the Old Religion’. The witches’ potion is now made commercially; but a memento of its origin may be seen upon the bottle, which bears a lively little picture of a witches’ dance.

Drambuie is another stimulating drink, reputed to have been a favourite with Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender, when he was adventuring in Scotland. Advocaat is a stimulant and restorative, containing egg-yolks. Kummel is a liqueur flavoured with the aromatic seeds of cumin and caraway, which have a tonic effect. Nor are the virtues of Chartreuse and Benedictine to be overlooked, in spite of the fact that these liqueurs are traditionally made by monks.

Remember, however, that all liqueurs are meant to be taken in small quantities only, to be savoured and sipped delicately from beautiful liqueur glasses. Haste and excess will defeat their own ends; instead of being stimulated, all you will get is a sick headache.

Good wine also tends to have an aphrodisiac effect; but beer or spirits are less suitable. Mead, that most time-honoured of drinks, has an excellent reputation for building sexual potency. It is not generally realized that our term ’honeymoon’ takes its name from this fact. Among our Celtic and Anglo-Saxon ancestors, newly-wedded couples used to drink plenty of mead for a month after their wedding, to make them strong and fertile. Mead is made from honey, hence this was the ’honeymoon’. When we remember how health food specialists today praise the virtues of honey, there may well be sound sense in this old belief. Once again, however, moderation is advised—really good old-fashioned mead, which can still be found in the English countryside, is powerful stuff.

A powerful stimulant to the senses is the right sort of perfume. Two perfumes which have the reputation of being aphrodisiacs are musk and patchouli. The latter first came to the western world when it was used to scent the luxurious Indian shawls which were so popular with Victorian ladies; and it soon became the favourite scent of high-class women of pleasure. Consequently, it tended to be frowned upon in respectable society, and a certain air of moral disapproval still seems to cling to it. The aphrodisiac properties of musk have been known throughout the East for many centuries. These and other oriental scents can be obtained in the form of cones and joss-sticks, to burn as incense. Indeed, I have seen packets of joss-sticks of the perfume known as favaji, unashamedly labelled “No. 1 Bedroom Special”.

Other sexually exciting scents are Ylang-Ylang and jasmine. The former name means ’flower of flowers’; it is obtained from richly scented flowers which grow in Madagascar. The Chinese of olden times called the jasmine ’sweetness in women’ and it was a favourite with oriental concubines.

Perhaps the strangest of all aphrodisiacs and yet one which has been proven to work, is mild flagellation upon the buttocks. The operative word, however, is mild. I am not dealing here with the practices of sadism or masochism; but simply with the use of flagellation as a stimulant, which it undoubtedly is. Indeed, it may surprise many people to learn that a number of highly-respected physicians of bygone days recommended the use of whipping or birching for this purpose, provided it was not applied with too heavy a hand.

This fact is commented on by an erudite Victorian writer, John Davenport, in a curious book called Aphrodisiacs and Anti-Aphrodisiacs; Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction; first published, privately printed, in London in 1869. He says:

As an erotic stimulant, more particularly, it may be observed that, considering the many intimate and sympathetic relations existing between the nervous branches of the extremity of the spinal marrow, it is impossible to doubt that flagellation exercised upon the buttocks and the adjacent parts has a powerful effect upon the organs of generation.

(Davenport’s very interesting book has been reissued in our own day under the title of Aphrodisiacs and Love Stimulants, edited by Alan Hull Walton, and published by Luxor Press, London, in 1965).

Flagellation has been used in this way for many centuries. A classic treatise on the subject was written by a seventeenth-century physician, John Henry Meibomius. It was called Tractatus de usu flagrorum in re medica et venerea (A Treatise on the use of Flogging in Medicine and Venery), first published in 1645 and several times reprinted in later years.

The ancient Egyptians worshipped the god Min or Menu, who presided over fertility and generation; he was depicted as a virile male, naked except for an elaborate head-dress and brandishing a whip. The ancient historian Herodotus tells us that the Egyptians practised flagellation as part of their religious rites; but, as an initiate himself, he was not allowed to mention the reason why these beatings were performed.

There is little doubt, however, about the inner meaning of a phrase which occurs in the letters which passed between those famous romantic lovers of the Middle Ages, Abelard and Heloise: “Verbera quandoque dabat amor non juror, gratia non ira, quae omnium unguentorum suavitatem transcenderunt”; “Stripes which, whenever inflicted by love, not by fury but affection, transcended in sweetness every unguent.”

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, flagellation was widely, though secretly, indulged in, to such an extent that it became almost fashionable. Indeed, it was whispered that a certain notorious but high-class brothel in London where flagellation was practised, was visited by no less a person than the Prince of Wales, later King George IV. A witty and widely circulated poem, though of doubtful authorship, was devoted to the various pleasures and pains of flagellation. It was called “The Rodiad”, and contained a couplet which summed up the social attitudes of many people of high society at that period:

Delightful sport! Whose never failing charm

Makes young blood tingle and keeps old blood warm.

Many magical orders and occult brotherhoods have cherished an inner circle where various forms of sexual magic were practised. The initiates of such societies have been sworn to secrecy. However, there can be no rule against quoting something which is already in print, and upon which the copyright has long lapsed.

The late nineteenth century in America saw a remarkable occultist and mystic named Paschal Beverly Randolph. He travelled to Europe and to the Near East, and claimed to be a Rosicrucian. He strove valiantly by his writings to enlighten contemporary society by giving people a higher and happier viewpoint about sexual matters and suffered condemnation by Victorian moralists on that account.

Randolph died in controversial circumstances in 1875. One account of his death says that he committed suicide; but another claims that he was murdered, because his writings had revealed and publicly discussed matters which powerful secret groups wished to remain concealed.

In one of Randolph’s major works, Eulis, occurs the following plain-spoken passage:

Remember, O Neophyte, that I am not dealing in mere philosophical formulae; but in, and with, fundamental principles underlying all being. Fix this first principle firmly in your memory: LOVE LIETH AT THE FOUNDATION of all that is. Second, the mystical moment, the instant wherein a portion of man’s essential self is planted within the matrix, is the most solemn, serious, powerful and energetic moment he can ever know on earth; and only to be excelled by correspondent instants after he shall have ascended to realms beyond the starry spaces. Third, it follows that as are the people at that moment, so will be that which enters into them from the regions above, beneath, and round about. Wherefore whatsoever male or female shall truly will for, hopefully pray for, and earnestly yearn for, when love pure and holy is in the nuptial ascendant, in form passional, affectional, divine and volitional, that prayer will be granted and boon be given; but the prayer must precede.

Elsewhere in Randolph’s works may be found the rationale of this teaching. He likens the human soul to a form of fire, a force which is polarized within the physical body. The negative pole of this soul-force dwells in the brain, while its positive pole is situated in the genital region. Between the two is the life centre, the solar plexus. Through the genital centre, we contact that aspect of the soul which “is in direct magnetic and ethereal contact with the Soul of Being; the foundation-fire of the Universe; with all that vast domain underlying increase, growth, emotion, beauty, power, heat, energy; the sole and base of being, the sub-tending Love, or Fire-floor of Existence. Hence through Love man seizes directly on all that is, and can come into actual contact and rapport with every being that feels and loves and dwells within the confines of God’s habitable universe.” (Quoted from the Manifesto of the Grand Fraternity of the Rose Cross, issued by P. B. Randolph, Supreme Master of the Order, in 1871).

It is possible that there is a connection between the ideas of Randolph and those of the Ordo Templi Orientis, the European brotherhood later made famous by Aleister Crowley. In his works, Randolph mentions a mysterious fraternity which he calls “the A∴A∴”; and this is the title which Crowley adopted for his supreme occult order. According to Crowley, the initials stand for Argenteum Astrum, the Silver Star.

It is almost impossible to talk about the revival of magic in modern times without mentioning Aleister Crowley, the flamboyant, eccentric poet and mystic who gloried in the title of “The Great Beast” and whom the sensational press dubbed “The Wickedest Man in the World”. Yet his ’wickedness’ mainly consisted of practising sexual magic; which, as we have seen, was nothing new in the western world, either in theory or in practice. On the contrary, ritual sexual intercourse is a very old idea indeed—probably as old as humanity itself.

Obviously, it is the very opposite of promiscuity. Intercourse for ritual purposes should be with a carefully selected partner, at the right time and in the right place. How, indeed, could there be anything truly magical about an act that has been rendered common, tawdry and degraded?

We hear a good deal today about the so-called permissive society. But what in practice does the great permissive society permit? A happy, natural, loving relationship between man and woman—or the flaunting of everything that is ugly, degenerate and eventually repulsive? Its main preoccupation is not so much sex as the commercialisation of sex. And amid all the endless discussion of sexual techniques, what ever happened to love?

It is love and only love that can give sex the spark of magic. Love can take two quite ordinary people, and create something beautiful between them, that no money can buy. To approach magica sexualis in a cold-blooded, calculating, clinical manner, is ultimately self-defeating.

One gets the impression from Aleister Crowley’s secret magical diaries that he had an approach to sexual magic which was basically of this nature. The old practitioners used to choose a magical partner with great care, and practise only with her, so that a very close bond of affection developed between them. But Crowley would pick up a prostitute and literally use her for some magical rite. Perhaps this is why all his magical enterprises seemed in his lifetime to have little endurance; and his last words were “I am perplexed.”

The order in which Crowley learned sexual magic, the Ordo Templi Orientis, or Order of the Temple of the East, was founded by a prosperous Viennese business man called Karl Kellner, in 1895. Kellner had previously made a journey to eastern lands, where he had received initiation and instruction from Arab and Hindu teachers. No doubt his status as a Freemason of high grade assisted him to gain entry into circles which might otherwise have remained unknown to him.

Kellner died in mysterious circumstances, in 1905. His place was taken by Theodor Reuss, assisted by Franz Hartmann, the author of a number of books about the Rosicrucians. Another famous occultist, Rudolf Steiner, was at one time a member of the O.T.O. It is evident from the fact that men like this were willing to join the order, that it did not at that time have or deserve the lurid reputation that it eventually acquired.

The O.T.O. kept its inner teachings of sexual magic very secret. In its journal, The Oriflamme, a little verse appeared, alluding to this secret teaching:

Who seeks it, will suffer.

Who finds it, conceal it.

Who uses it, let no one know.

He who is a true philosopher,

Shall remain unknown.

The order consisted of nine degrees, with a tenth honorary degree bestowed upon the Head of the Order, to denote his office. It was in the eighth and ninth degrees that the secrets of magica sexualis were given. However, when Aleister Crowley, on account of his friendship with Theodor Reuss, was made Head of the Order for Britain, he completely rewrote the rituals and added an eleventh degree, which was not in the original scheme of the order.

The teachings of the VIII° instructed in the use of one’s own sexual fluids, obtained by ritual masturbation, for the charging of talismans. The IX° taught the magical use of sexual intercourse between man and woman. This was known as the Formula of the Rosy Cross, the cross in this symbolism representing the male genitals and the rose the female.

The basic magical principle behind these rituals is the same as that already described, in the quotations from P.B. Randolph. Its application to the IX° is obvious; and in the auto-erotic VIII°, secret instructions were given under the title “De nuptiis deorum cum hominibus”, “Concerning the marriages of the Gods with men”. In other words, it was used for the invocation of a particular god or goddess, whom the magician visualized and concentrated on while performing the rite.

Crowley wrote in his Magical Record that he believed these rites worked by somehow moulding circumstances, which were already existing, so that things happened in one way rather than another, as the magician willed. In other words, just as sexual activity can produce a child on the physical plane, so a magical result can be produced upon the subtler planes, which is in a sense the ’child’ begotten by the act. This will then manifest upon the physical plane as the circumstance the magician desires.

Sometimes an observation was made of astrological influences and the time for the ritual selected accordingly. A particularly potent time for starting a new magical current, according to magicians of the Golden Dawn tradition, is at the equinox, either of spring or autumn.

We can now get a sufficiently plain idea of the practices which Crowley added in the XI°, because much that could not previously be printed about him has now been published. See The Great Beast: the Life and Magick of Aleister Crowley, by John Symonds (MacDonald, London, 1971), and The Magical Record of the Beast 666, edited by John Symonds and Kenneth Grant (Duckworth, London, 1972).

These books reveal quite clearly that Crowley had an anal-erotic fixation, as well as a general obsession with nastiness. This is a mental attitude well-known to psychologists and there is nothing ’magical’ about it. I only mention it here in order to make it known that the magical uses of sex do not necessarily involve such practices as Crowley indulged in.

Sex is the supreme sacrament, because it is one manifestation of the Great Work, which is the union of opposites. Hence its tremendous potency, for good or ill. We have seen in the ancient Mystery Cults, how the participants in the Orgia offered their pleasure to the Gods, believing that it made the Gods happy to see people happy. Some moralists may frown; but surely this was a higher concept of the Godhead than that which pictures God as jealous, vengeful and begrudging of the fulfilment and joy that are the Creator’s gift to humanity.

As Charles Godfrey Leland wrote in Aradia: the Gospel of the Witches (London, David Nutt, 1899):

Are not the charms of love of every kind, and the enjoyment of beauty in all its forms in nature, mysteries, miracles, or magical?