(And the People Associated With Them)

Introduction

Sex magic?[1] Yes, really! So what is one to make of this salacious, risqué and frankly vulgar phrase that has attained currency among contemporary cognoscente?

…Even as STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) supposedly spiral out of sight in Euro-American public health.

One gathers that this is, to some extent, from the baleful renown of a certain Edward Alexander “Aleister” Crowley. Being featured on the cover of the Beatles’ 1967 Sgt Pepper’s record album – and even possibly as the real identity of the eponymous Sgt. –seems to have clinched (or validated) the idea of psychoneurotic sexuality for credulous millions.

The self-styled “Great Beast 666” Crowley – the “wickedest man in the world” – was the personification of demented eros, even though he himself, for all his supposed powers, ended his days an impoverished terminal heroin addict in December 1947. We will meet “Mr. Crowley” again, shortly.

All right: down to particulars. “Sex” I suppose needs no special explication, except that – more precisely – it is the adjectival form, sexual, that is implied here. Magic (or magick, Crowley style) is much more historically reverberating, as we will see throughout this presentation. A definition supposedly popularized by Crowley and repeated by an admiring Wikipedia is: “a technique for bringing about change in the physical world through the force of one’s will.”[2]

But with this basic groundwork in place, in this video, we will look at ten groups (and some of the often-notorious people associated with them) for whom sacred rituals have revolved around sexual intercourse, or what is sometimes given the lofty sounding title magia sexualis – that is, “sex magic.”

Caveats and Disclaimers

Just a few words of caution: As usual, no claim is being made for completeness. In other words, this presentation will merely be a survey, rather than an exhaustive exploration. Additionally, nothing herein should be construed as an allegation of wrongdoing on the part of any individual or organization. This isn’t a legal brief; it’s a video! And it’s for entertainment purposes, only! We will be looking at some of the racier characterizations that have been made of various institutions. But we leave it to viewers to decide whether these accounts are exaggerations, fabrications, or reliable histories.

20^th & 21^st Centuries

The phrase “sex cult” may immediately recall images from the ritual-orgy sequence in the blockbuster erotic tour de force, Eyes Wide Shut.[3] In the film, the late, inimitable Hollywood director Stanley Kubrick has main character Dr. Bill Harford, played by Tom Cruise, unwittingly infiltrate a group of wealthy debauchees. Harford observes masked participants in flagrante delicto. Ultimately, he himself is unmasked and threatened for his deception.

It is standard to hear movie analysts and critics (whether System-approved or self-proclaimed) issue blanket denials that Kubrick intended to lend his considerable weight to the opinion that such secret societies actually exist.[4]

It would be presumptuous of me to suppose that I could settle the question of what was on the famed movie-maker’s mind. However, recent developments must surely call into question dismissals that are pronounced in the usual, all-too cavalier manner.[5] 

After all, in 2018, major media outlets disclosed the arrest of one Keith Raniere. Raniere was ostensibly the head of a successful marketing company called NXIVM (“nexium”) that provided “personal-development” seminars to white-collar, executive types.

But, according to stories, underneath this sleek veneer, Raniere billed himself “Master of Slave Women”[6] and operated a sex-trafficking network with the help of a coterie of female accomplices, including actress Allison Mack and Seagram’s-liquor heiress Clare Bronfman.

This was followed, one year later, by the re-arrest of sex-offender and former financier, Jeffrey Epstein.  Epstein also appears to have had some kind of interaction or relationship with high-profile persons such as former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, Microsoft mogul Bill Gates, Britain’s Prince Andrew, and numerous others. And he also supposedly utilized the “fairer sex” to entice fresh meat into his predatory (and sex-obsessed) orbit.[7]

Or, consider the earlier Children of God group, also sometimes referred to as the Family International. Once upon a time, the group enticed the parents of notables such as actress Rose McGowan as well as of the “Phoenix” siblings – Joaquin, Liberty, Rain, River, and Summer.

River Phoenix, you may remember, reportedly overdosed on drugs inside of Johnny Depp’s Viper Room nightclub, along the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood in 1993. He was transported to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, but died on Halloween night at the age of 23. According to an article that appeared in Esquire Magazine two years before his death, River supposedly called the Children of God “disgusting” and claimed that it was “ruining people’s lives.”[8]

Apparently, the Children of God’s sex-obsessed “…leader, David Brant Berg” recruited new members through seduction – “proudly refer[ring]” to his sexual missionaries “…as hookers for Jesus.”[9]

Of course, this smacks of Charles Manson’s notorious – and, ultimately, murderous – collection of hippie youths, who also referred to themselves as a “family.”[10] It’s not uncommon to see the Manson Family referred to as a sex cult. And it’s worth point out that Manson himself seemed inexplicably well-connected with California movie-and-music-scene personalities like actress Doris Day’s son Terrence “Terry” Melcher,[11] actress Angela Lansbury’s teenage daughter Didi,[12] Rat-Pack member Dean Martin’s daughter Deana,[13] and – most famously – Beach Boys’ co-founder Dennis Wilson.[14]

For his part, Manson may have been (partially) influenced by the London-based, and oddly named, Process Church of the Final Judgment. The brainchild of a pair of British occultists named Robert and Mary Anne De Grimston, the “Process” was described in media reports as “an offshoot of” Lafayette Ronald Hubbard’s Church of Scientology – the outfit that has attracted Hollywood “A-listers” like Tom Cruise and John Travolta, as well as other big names like Kirstie Alley, Stanley Kubrick’s daughter Vivian, Giovanni Ribisi, and others.

But, as an offshoot, the Process was a more sinister variant – one “…which practice[d] black magic and glorif[ied] sexual excess.”[15]

According to Ed Sanders, some Process members were decidedly Luciferian,[16] and – to help ourselves to Sanders’ euphemism – “celebrated… sensuality”[17] by participating in what the pornographic-movie industry routinely calls “gangbangs.”[18]

Given all these cultish and sexual shenanigans, it seems fair to ask: What might some of these groups have been up to? Borrowing a phrase from Baroness Kessler (in Roman Polanski’s 1999 film, The Ninth Gate), we may ask: are these just “social club[s] for bored” degenerates “…who use …meetings as …excuse[s] to indulge their jaded sexual appetites”? Or is there a deep secret, or arcanum arcanorum, lurking in the background?

‘Spermo-Gnosticism’: Salvation Thru Sex?

In the West, no study of sex magic would be complete without some mention of ancient Gnosticism. So, we may as well start with that.

I dealt with what you might call the “main lines” of Gnosticism in a video titled “10 Arcane Words.”[19] So, for a sober-minded account of foundational philosophical-religious terms such as “dualism” and “gnosis,” with no hanky-panky, see that presentation.

Here, we’ll only be concerned with the more sensational possibility that some rivulets of Gnosticism involved members in risqué ritualism. Many of these offshoots would (sometime later) be described as “spermo-gnostics,” in order to differentiate them from their milder-mannered cousins.[20]

Cainism, Ophism, Sethianism: Revolt Against Jehovah?

But, to kick things off slowly, in a three-way tie at number ten, we’ll look at some sects that have one conspicuous thing in common: their heroes come off as villains in the Bible.

For instance, consider the Cainites. In the Old Testament Book of Genesis, chapter 4, Cain is the firstborn son of Adam and Eve. When God favors the sacrifice of his younger brother, Abel, Cain also becomes the first murderer. 

And then there’s the Ophites. The Greek root word – ophis – means “snake.” The reference, of course, is to the serpent that tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden, just two chapters before Cain and Abel.

The significance of serpentine references was perhaps uncovered by Thomas Inman. As George Ryley Scott summarizes: “The power of erection possessed by certain snakes” – and, here, he names “[t]he Egyptian asp and the Indian cobra” – “was likened to the same power exhibited by the male organ of generation.”[21]

The case of the Sethians is more complex.[22] But we can zero-in on a highly relevant detail by noting that they are widely believed to have been the composers of the Gospel of Judas, the first English translation of which was published to great media acclaim by the National Geographic Society in 2006.

In the canonical Gospels (according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), Judas is portrayed as the wretched betrayer of Jesus; whereas, in the Gospel of Judas, he is the beau idéal of the enlightened Gnostic and the sole Apostolic custodian of the “true teaching” that the crucifixion was necessary to liberate the Christ from his bodily prison.[23]

Why did the Gnostics have this predilection for inverting the Biblical narratives? Firstly, they sought to learn and possess, hidden doctrines, or “Gnosis,” lying beneath the literal storylines.

But, secondly, they also viewed the Old Testament God, variously transliterated Yahweh or Jehovah, as a fool or as an evil entity.[24] And they associated him with Plato’s Demiurge[25] – the being responsible for the physical world of privation and suffering.[26]

This led to the Gnostic conviction that the only appropriate reaction was to “[revolt] against” the Hebrew and Christian God.[27]

In the words of agnostic New Testament critic Bart Ehrman: “Anything that [the Old Testament] God commanded, [Gnostics] opposed, and anything that God opposed, they supported.”[28]

The 19^th-c. French occultist Éliphas Lévi would later connect this mentality of revolt – which included “profanation of Christian mysteries” – with “black magic” that would arise “in the Middle Ages.”[29]

With this backdrop, we’re positioned to appreciate why many occult commentators have stated the “true God,” represented by the subversive serpent and Judas Iscariot, was in fact Lucifer.

Something of this is echoed by 19^th-century Freemasonic majordomo Albert Pike, who put it starkly in his monumental, if largely unreadable, tome Morals and Dogma. “LUCIFER, the Light-bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of Darkness! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the Light…? Doubt it not!”[30]

Likewise, 20^th-century Masonic philosopher Manly Palmer Hall states: “When the Mason …has learned the mystery of his Craft… [t]he seething energies of Lucifer are in his hands…”.[31]

How does one carry out this revolutionary and Luciferian project against Yahweh? In the words of the 18^th-century French essayist Jean-Pierre-Louis de Luchet: You “destroy the works of God and …commit every kind of infamy.”[32]

This shows up in Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, where Lucifer’s servant-angel, Mephistophilis, tells the titular character:

“Therefore the shortest cut for conjuring
“Is stoutly to abjure all godliness,
“And pray devoutly to the prince of hell.”[33]

If this magical connexion seems farfetched, recall that the founder of Gnosticism was reputed to be the sorcerer Simon Magus, who appears in the Acts of the Apostles attempting to bribe Jesus’s apostles for the knowledge of how to “receive the Holy Spirit.”[34]

Apparently, Simon traveled with a Phoenician prostitute and encouraged his disciples to “…[follow] their own pleasure as though free…”.[35] It seems that, in these conditions, any Jehovian revolt would spill over into sexual deviancy.

Pretty salacious. But, you say: the case is merely inferential. 

Okay, but what may be merely implicit for the Cainites, Ophites, and Sethians, becomes more obvious later, starting with a system called Valentinianism, which comes in at number nine.[36]

Valentinianism Introduces the ‘Hieros Gamos’

For instance, the Valentinian-Gnostic Gospel of Philip uses “sexual imagery” to describe a “sacral rite” provocatively called the “bridal chamber.”[37] “[S]ome scholars [understand] the text as promoting sacred intercourse among group members…”.[38]

This same Gnostic “gospel” is mentioned both by author Dan Brown, in his 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code,[39] as well as in director Ron Howard’s 2006 movie adaption featuring famed American actor Tom Hanks and French actress Audrey Tautou.

The frenetic plot centers around the adventures of Harvard symbologist named Robert Langdon (Hanks), and French police cryptographer, Sophie Neveu (Tautou). In an attempt to solve the murder of Sophie’s grandfather, and lift suspicion from Langdon, the pair are pulled into the shadowy world of secret societies, and the search for the fabled Holy Grail.

In the course of the narrative, it is revealed that Brown’s heroine[40] “witnessed a sex rite” in her youth.[41]

The character Langdon explains that this ritual – which he refers to as a Hieros Gamos, or “Sacred Marriage”[42] – was meant to “achieve gnosis”.[43]

Proponents of this sex-for-knowledge idea frequently attribute it to Jesus himself who, in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, allegedly endorsed it with cryptic remarks about “[making] the two one”.[44]

Viewers will also remember that Dan Brown has the character Sir Leigh Teabing assert that Jesus was “married” to Mary Magdalene, as implied in the Gospel of Philip. If you’re catching the drift, it’s implied that Mary Magdalene would have been Jesus’s sex-magic partner.

Of course, in context of The Da Vinci Code story, the Hieros-Gamos participants – including Sophie’s murdered grandfather, former Louvre museum curator Jacques Saunière – were members of a mysterious, and possibly fictitious, 20^th-c. order called the Priory of Sion.

Priory of Sion Legend: Jesus’s Sacred Marriage Begat Royalty

The received view of the Prieuré de Sion is that it is a product of the fevered imagination of Frenchman Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair. Plantard claimed descent from an apparently long-extinguished line of kings known as the Merovingians.

Prevailing opinion has it that later writers, such as Anglo-Americans Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln,[45] notably in their bestselling 1982 volume, Holy Blood, Holy Grail,[46] provided Plantard’s delusions of grandeur with a backstory. So it goes that, in the expanded legend, the Priory – via its enforcement arm, the Knights Templar – were the protectors of a supposedly royal bloodline going back to Jesus of Nazareth and Mary Magdalene.

Brown’s fiction has a similar spirit. Or, at least, so it seemed to Baigent and Leigh, who brought an ultimately fruitless legal action against the Da-Vinci-Code creator for copyright infringement.[47]

Be that as it may, in his book, Brown has his lead male protagonist declare: “Sophie Neveu had unwittingly witnessed a two-thousand-year-old sacred ceremony.”[48] And that claimed pedigree, of course, situates Brown’s imaginary Hieros Gamos in the context of the birth of ancient Gnosticism.

Carpocratianism Taught ‘Deconditioning’ Thru Sex Rites

Another early variant of Gnosticism, Carpocratianism, takes us to number eight.[49]

The Carpocratians took up Plato’s idea that human beings have preexisting souls that reincarnate after death.[50] But…with a twist.

Essentially, they maintained that, in order to facilitate the purification (and ultimate release) of the soul over its many cycles of reincarnation: “One must try everything, experience everything, unveil everything…”.[51] In order to grasp this, you must lay a lot of stress upon the word everything.

“Thus bad deeds as well and good deeds were …wrought in pursuance of this idea.”[52] Get the picture?

The late 20th-c. French classicist Jacques Lacarrière calls this “deconditioning.” It is something similar to “sensitizing,” and it involved breaking down, through repeated exposure, a subject’s resistance to something viewed as objectionable.

An allied concept surfaces in alchemy, where the Latin maxim solve et coagula refers (roughly) to a process whereby something – for example, the consciousness of the alchemist – is first “dissolved” and the resultant residue is “rejoined” in a novel way.

In later traditions, this would come to be expressed as the thought that, in order to advance spiritually, a person needs to destroy or otherwise “transcend” his or her “ego.”

And one way to do this, or so it is sometimes held, is to engage in activities that, although they may be morally or physically repugnant, facilitate “[t]he terror, agony and despair” that tamp down the ego.[53]

A kind of neo-Carpocratianism recurs in European movements beginning around the 14^th century.[54] One core notion held in common by these groups could be expressed, in English, as the thought that “[t]here is nothing evil in nature except as men think it.”[55]

William Shakespeare appears to echo this sentiment when he has his Danish prince, Hamlet, exclaim: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”[56]

In France, where many of the medieval revivals originated, it might have been phrased: “Honi soit qui mal y pense,” or (roughly) “Evil to him who evil thinks.”[57]

The French phrase is all the more curious since it is the motto of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, a chivalric association to which numerous members of the British Royal Family belong.[58] (There’s that royal connexion, again!)

The concept of “subjectivizing” evil – or reducing morality to a matter of human convention – is, in this context, often related to something called “antinomianism.” And this, it turns out, is an overt part of another variety of ancient Gnosticism.[59]

Nicolaism: ‘Antinomianism’

Tradition holds that this system, Nicolaism, our number seven, also had a checkered past.

It may have originated with Nicholas, one of the first seven deacons in the Christian faith.

Interestingly, Fortean thinker Jim Brandon, in his 1983 study, The Rebirth of Pan: Hidden Faces of the American Earth Spirit,[60] touches upon the relationship of particular “names of power” with anomalism.[61]

“Nick”-names are among these dynamic words.[62]

Nicolaism was condemned outright in the New Testament Book of Revelation, where Jesus states to the church at Ephesus: “You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.”[63]

The antipathy of the mainstream ancient church for Nicolaism stemmed, partially, from the suspicion that Nicholas had taught the aforementioned antinomian heresy. The word, coined in the 1530s by seminal Protestant Reformer Martin Luther, literally means being “opposed to the law.”

Luther had argued with fellow reformer Johannes Agricola, because the guy taught not only that Christians could disregard the Mosaic Law, but also that they could set aside all moral constraints.

Agricola’s basic idea was that if, as even Luther maintained, doing good works isn’t going to help your chances of getting to heaven, then it’s hard to see why doing evil would hurt your chances!

But Agricola’s view was arguably a restatement of a belief that went back to the early days of Christendom. Specifically, it arose within various branches of Gnosticism.[64]

The basic rationale was this: your soul is “fallen” just because you’re trapped in a dirty, physical body. It doesn’t matter what you do with your body. You can’t make things worse than they are already!

This, or something like it, may help to explain why the Nicolaites were known for leaning toward libertinism and “…lead[ing] lives of unrestrained indulgence”[65]^,[66]

The Nicolaites were notorious for defiling an early Christian ceremony tantalizingly known as an Agape, which – in the present context – roughly translates into “love feast.”[67]

Apparently, the Nicolaites may have drawn too close a parallel between erotic “human love,” on the one hand, and “heavenly love…,” on the other.[68] And this is where the story takes a decidedly darker turn, with the inception of a group of Gnostics with an even more sordid reputation for sexual immorality during these “love feasts.”

Borborite’s Secret Technique for Absorption of Magical Energies

This deeply shadowy sect is perhaps best known by the disparaging term “Borborites,” which means – provocatively – “filthy ones,”[69] and brings us to number six.

Similarly to the Sethians, the Borborites may have venerated an obscure entity known as “Barbelo.” A religious text called the Secret Book of John calls “Barbelo”: “…the Mother-Father, the first man, …the thrice-named androgynous one…”.[70]

“Androgyny,” of course, refers to the property of being sexually ambiguous in virtue of possessing both feminine and masculine properties. One of the prime symbols of alchemy has long been the androgyne – or “man-woman,” depicted here as the so-called Rebis, Latin for “dual thing.”

Dan Brown mentioned “androgyny” numerous times in The Da Vinci Code. For example, he claimed that the sex of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is ambiguous. He had participants in his fictional hieros-gamos sport “androgynous masks.” And, drawing from a Kabbalistic tradition that we will expound in a few minutes, he relates the belief that “[t]he Jewish tetragrammaton YHWH – the sacred name of God – in fact derived from Jehovah, an androgynous physical union between the masculine Jah and the pre-Hebraic name for Eve, Havah.”[71] The theme of androgyny will come up again.

For the moment turning aside from esoteric bisexuality, and toward claims of the 4^th-c. Catholic heresiologist St. Epiphanius, the Borborites treated the previously mentioned Agape meals as occasions for orgies and wife swapping.[72]

Not only this, but – if Epiphanius’s lurid retelling is credible – they also took semen,[73] as well as “the unclean menstrual blood” of the woman, when it was available, and consumed these as …get ready for it: the “body” and “blood of Christ.”[74]

Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey’s daughter, Zeena Schreck, comments on “[t]he practice of ritualized copulation” and the “consumption of the sexual fluids,” saying: “…the celebrants …swallow the sexual elixir …to devour magical energies…”.[75]

Though Zeena herself reportedly renounced her father’s beliefs in favor of Tantric Buddhism, her heritafe is interesting since the Borborites are routinely cited as precursors to the establishment, in ostensibly Satanic circles, of the so-called “Black Mass.”[76] This dark ritual, it is alleged, is essentially an “inversion,” or mockery, of certain elements of the Catholic Mass.[77]

When Satanism or other forms of supposed “devil worship” recurred in France, beginning in the 17^th century, certain features of those tales – such as abortion, child sacrifice, and cannibalism – hearken back to early accounts of the Borborites.

Of course, the socio-religious context is important. During the heyday of Christendom, it was believed that “…magic …[was] taught by the Devil …and the practices were …more effective the more obscenely they were performed.”[78]

Unsurprisingly, this seems to have raised some hackles. Epiphanius, who was regarded as a defender of Christian orthodoxy, was especially incensed, since he understood these activities simultaneously as affronts to natural law as well as parodies and perversions of the Catholic Eucharist, also known as the “Lord’s Supper” or “Holy Communion.”[79]

Manichæans Reserve Secrets for the ‘Elect’

A similar charge (of defiling the Catholic Eucharistic host) was leveled against the next group that we’ll consider – number five – the Manichæans, a group that exerted a powerful influence over various Church-proclaimed “heretics” for at least one thousand years of European history.

Manichæanism has been described as a blend of Persian Zoroastrianism and Gnostic Christianity.[80]^,[81]

A chief Manichæan innovation was its two-tiered initiation system. At the entry level were the “auditors” (or “hearers”) and, at the top, was a group of élites known as the “Elect” or “Perfect.”

St. Augustine, the towering 4^th-5^th-c. “doctor” of the Catholic Church, accused this upper echelon of engaging in “secret vices,”[82] including ritual nudism and – like the Borborites – consumption of “…a kind of eucharist including human sperm.”[83]

Presumably, Augustine would’ve known; he was a member of the group for several years![84]

In typical Gnostic fashion, Manichæans viewed the ingestion of human sexual fluids as means of freeing the latent “divine substances” that had been trapped inside.[85]

In fact, some Manichæans called themselves “…Catharists,” meaning “purifiers”. And they believed that they were redeeming or “purify[ing]…part of God” by eating sexual discharges.[86]

Interestingly, a kind of neo-Manichæanism surfaced in Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Its name? Catharism![87]

Cathars / Albigensians

These Cathari,[88] more commonly termed “Albigensians,” flourished in the south of France.

At the time, the region was geopolitically removed from the orbit of the French king, who was headquartered in Paris. And it was also free from direct control of the Roman Church, which operated out of Italy. Consequently, a form of anti-Catholic, Manichæan religion appealed to the people in this area.

Albigensianism included the Manichæan system of initiation: an upper level of “…a ‘pure’ élite …(perfecti, parfaits, bonshommes or hérétiques)…” and a “…mass of simple believers (credentes).”[89]

Like the Borborites: “They were said to consume the ashes of dead babies and indulge in incestuous orgies.”[90]

Troubadours

According to Freemasonic scholar Manly Palmer Hall, Albigensianism “descended from the same source” as the tradition communicated by traveling minstrels called troubadours.[91]

According to Hall, these medieval singers (and, later, the celebrated Italian writer Dante) transmitted features of the Manichæan gnosis through poems dealing with chivalry and “courtly love.”

Writer Donald McCormick adds that “…the Troubadours …had [a tremendous] influence in creating the [modern] idea of love…”.[92] Tho, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet must surely also be mentioned in this regard.

These balladist and lyrists created a repository of folklore that would furnish the materials for the stories of Excalibur, the Holy Grail, and the Knights of the Round Table.

Recall that a principal plot point in the Arthurian Cycle revolves around the adulterous romance between King Arthur’s bravest and most illustrious knight, Lancelot, and Queen Guinevere, retold – in a lighthearted fashion – to modern audiences in various performances (and revisions) of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s 1960 musical, Camelot.

Suffice it to say, one or more of these Gnostic streams feed into later sex-magical currents. So much for one of the primary western roots of magia sexualis. Now, let’s shift our attention to a different tradition with roots that stretch further East.

Kabbalah: The Tree of Life

A second root comes from Jewish mysticism.[93] Scholar Hugh Urban puts it this way: “[O]ne of the most influential forces in the rise of modern sexual magic was the complex body of texts and traditions that make up Jewish Kabbalah. …Erotic symbolism is pervasive throughout Kabbalistic literature…”.[94]

Rabbi Moses de Léon, probable author of the major Kabbalistic text known as the Sefer Zohar (or, “Book of Splendor”) was “…a disciple of …‘Gnostic’ kabbalists…” who were preoccupied “…the world of the demonic …[and] with the sexual mysteries… [the alchemical] mysterium coniunctionis …[that] lies at the very heart of the Zoharic teaching.”[95]

A kabbalistic variation on the sacred-marriage theme was further developed in the anonymous, but highly influential, treatise titled Iggeret Ha-Kodesh (or, the “Holy Epistle”).[96]

The word Kabbalah itself signifies “tradition.” Specifically, we’re talking about a mystical tradition in which “[s]exual relations between a husband and wife were seen to replicate the union between [the] Shekinah and God.”[97] In Kabbalistic sex, “…the woman represents and to some extent becomes Shekhinah [sic],” while her male partner identifies with masculine aspects of divinity.[98]

The dictionary definition of “Shekinah” is the “glory of the divine presence.”[99] In Kabbalistic circles, it is linked with another concept, Malkhut, and it is construed as the “feminine aspect of God” – something like the Jewish version of the “goddess.”[100]

Of course, this recalls the “sacred marriage” – or hieros gamos – that we encountered with Valentinian Gnosticism.[101] Though, in this case, it has a Jewish complexion.

The topic of Kabbalah (and its origins) is, predictably, huge and multifarious. Once again, for its most basic – and non-sexual – contours, see “10 Arcane Words.”

However, since knowledge of the Bible and history is instructive, for now, I’ll simply lay it down that the Kabbalah appears to be an amalgamation of Hebrew and other traditions,[102] some of which – like Gnosticism and Neoplatonism – we’ve touched on both here and in our other videos.[103]

But, it’s arguable that some influence came by way of the ancient Akkadian empire of Babylonia, which enforced a system of “sacred prostitution.” In the words of the ancient historian Herodotus: “The foulest Babylonian custom is that which compels every woman of the land to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with some stranger at least once in her life.”[104]

The influence that the Babylon sojourn exerted upon later Jewish religion is a complex and oft-debated matter. “Some Biblical scholars… have interpreted the story of Judah and Tamar [in the Book of Genesis, chapter 38] as a case of sacred prostitution.”[105]

Hargrave Jennings puts it directly when he asserts that ancient “Hebrew grove worship was …Phallic worship.”[106]

The case is hotly disputed, but we can get an intuitive “fix” on the overall, complicated situation another way. Subsequent Jewish religion would be importantly centered around a library of texts known as the Talmud. Although there are two versions of this encyclopedia-length corpus, arguably the most important of them is called the Babylonian Talmud.[107]

Whatever the extent of the comingling – and occultists sometimes go so far as to maintain that Moses encoded secret, ancient-pagan teachings into the Pentateuch, that is, the first five books of the Old Testament in the Bible – the fact is, Jewish interpretive tradition displays signs of syncretism.[108]

On a lighthearted note, the phrase mazel tov – commonly used to express congratulations and for joyous occasions – literally means “good star,” and invokes concepts of pagan astrology.

More centrally and seriously, the 5^th-c. commentary[109] known as Bereshith Rabba explains that when the Book of Genesis says that “God created man in His image …male and female He created them,” the text doesn’t refer to Adam and Eve, as readers may assume. Instead, according to the commentator, Genesis is saying that the “first man” was androgynous.[110]

In the occult imagination, this original human (sometimes called “Adam Kadmon”) was supposed to have been a composite entity – similar to the previously mentioned Barbēlo. In other words, the male Adam and the female Eve were formed from the preexisting, and hermaphroditic, “Adam Kadmon.”[111]

Some analysts connect this legendary Jewish character to “Baphomet,” the diabolical idol of the Knights Templar (according to some accounts), also known as “the Sabbatic Goat.” Baphomet was drawn in its now widely recognized form – and embellished with the alchemical maxim solve et coagula – by Éliphas Lévi as an illustration in his 1856 book, Dogma and Ritual of High Magic.

The correct recombination of “sacred” male and female energies is believed by some occultists to issue in the creation of the “divine child.” This conjunction of opposites[112] is sometimes said to be the mystical significance of symbols such as the right triangle in Freemasonry as well as the so-called “Star of David” hexagram in Judaism. Whether in Jewish-Masonic or Eastern lore, “[t]he downward-pointing and upward-pointing triangles …symbolize the sexual union of the female and male principles…”.[113]

Far from having been specifically a symbol of Jewishness from time immemorial, the Magen David (or “Shield of David”) hexagram appears to have come from medieval grimoires, of spell books. This magical use was then funneled through the work of idiosyncratic and highly influential Kabbalist Isaac Luria. Ultimately, the so-called “Star of David” was adopted as a Jewish flag, first in 14^th-century Prague. Prague was a hotbed for alchemy, astrology, and other occult arts.

Either way, and “…ever since” this primordial sex-change operation, human beings have sought their “soul mates” to restore the complete perfection of this supposedly original androgyny.[114]

Notice that these musings hearken back to the Gnostic-Kabbalistic interpretation of the Tetragrammaton: namely, that it is a symbol of a quasi-sexual combination of male and female divine energies.

This principle also motivates some sexual magic since, as Kabbalists put it: “humanity left Eden as a couple, …as a couple they must return.”[115] Therefore, practitioners operating on this wavelength view hieros–gamos-type rituals as part of an elaborate program of “repairing the world,”[116] resulting either in the creation of souls for ourselves or the restoration of our latent divinity (or perhaps both).[117]

This necessitates gaining self-knowledge; or, as the Delphic Oracle put it: “Know[ing] Thyself.”[118]

For example, in esoteric anatomy, the Kabbalistic “Tree of Life” is identified with the human spinal column. Said to contain the Freemasonically significant number of thirty-three vertebræ, the spinal column, also associated with the rod of Moses, is rooted in the sexual organs. The knowledgeable sexual Kabbalist will understand that the fiery, creative energy of Moses’ brazen serpent (see Numbers 21:8) is generated during sex.

Incidentally, in Eastern traditions this business is sometimes called “raising the Kundalini” and it connects back, in the minds of some authors (such as the 19^th-c. British Freemason and Rosicrucian Hargrave Jennings) with Gnostic snake worship – which, we mentioned before.[119]

Kabbalists view themselves as custodians of hidden knowledge such as this. As we saw previously, in Greek, these secrets would be termed “Gnosis.” In Hebrew, the word is Da’ath.[120]

Both in the Bible and in other spiritual literature, the word Da’ath is sometimes used as a euphemism for sexual intercourse.[121]

For example, in The Book of Genesis, chapter four, verse 1, when it says that “Adam knew his wife,” the plausible interpretation is that he and Eve had sex.[122]

Craft Freemasonry is said to be fascinated with some of these Gnostic-Kabbalistic concepts, as are depicted in what is perhaps the most recognizable masonic emblem. As it is typically presented, the compass and square – which, if completed, would represent the interlaced triangles of the Star of David[123] – surrounds the letter “G,” often supposed to be shorthand for “Gnosticism.”

Also remember that another major set of Kabbalistic-Masonic symbols revolve around the fabled Temple of Solomon. In occult lore, Solomon was a powerful sorcerer who could summon and control demonic entities and other aethereal forces. But, he also had “700 wives and 300 concubines” – who, collectively, led him into apostasy.[124] This fact prompts some observers – like the previously named Rosicrucian Hargrave Jennings – to imagine that Solomon was a prodigious sex magician.

Apart from Freemasonry, another mysterious sect emerged from the syncretistic backdrop just sketched. These people, called “Frankists,” carry us to number 4 on our list of sex-captivated cultists.

‘Frankists’ Invert Judaism

First, we need a little historical context. In the inauspicious-sounding 1666, the same year as the Great Fire of London, Jewish theologian Nathan of Gaza proclaimed that the Messiah had come.[125] Nathan was the principal follower and promoter of the offbeat, 17^th-c. Sephardic Kabbalist Sabbatai Zevi.[126]

Sabbatai Zevi had long garnered a reputation for having a “‘Luciferan’ [sic] side” that issued in “strange acts.”[127] For instance, he once busted in on a synagogue service and, wielding an axe, “forced [worshippers] to pronounce the sacred, always unspoken, four-letter Name of God”[128] – the previously mentioned Tetragrammaton. Or, another time, he “publicly [married] himself to a Torah scroll.”[129] One wonders whether that “marriage” was ever consummated.

Nevertheless, for a host of socio-political and other reasons, the pair initially won over a considerable number of followers, who became known as Sabbateans.[130]

Many of these disciples became disillusioned, however, when Sabbatai Zevi converted to Islam after being apprehended in Turkey.

Curiously, some of the Sabbateans remained faithful to their founder – and even converted with him, in solidarity. For example, to this day, in Turkey, one may still find a group called the Dönmeh, who endorse what, as a first pass, could be glossed as a blend of Islam and Judaism.

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, and like the varieties of Gnosticism that we previously surveyed: “The mystical cult of the [Sabbateans]”[131] was a mixed bag. Some genuinely embraced asceticism, while others “gave themselves over to licentiousness.”[132]

“The Polish rabbis attempted the extermination of the ‘Shabbethaian heresy’…, but” – as is evidenced by the existence of the Dönmeh – “could not fully succeed, as it was kept alive mostly in secret circles which had something akin to a Masonic organization.”[133]

Enter Jacob Frank. In 1726, he was born into a family of Sabbateans in what we would today know as Ukraine.[134] Frank was raised to be a merchant, and he supposedly traveled back and forth between Podolia and Turkey, where the Sabbatean Dönmeh were headquartered.

By 1755, Frank had somehow managed to attract his own congregation, which he turned on to his idiosyncratic version of Sabbateanism. His activities – and popularity – provoked the wrath of the local Rabbis, and the Frankists (as they began to be known) were dragged in front of rabbinical courts.

As the Jewish Encyclopedia puts it: “…[M]any of the sectarians confessed to having broken the fundamental laws of morality; and women confessed to having violated their marriage vows, and told of the sexual looseness which reigned in the sect under the guise of mystical symbolism.”[135]

For example, the “…bet din (Jewish court) …found [the Frankists] guilty of breaking numerous halakhic prohibitions …[including] adultery, …wife swapping, stud[ying] banned Sabbatian books, and profess[ing] the faith of Shabetai Tsevi.”[136]

Eventually, Frank claimed to be Sabbatai Zevi’s successor. The form of religion that he evidently preached called for his followers to invert (or ritually break) the Jewish law.

And similarly to Sabbatai Zevi, who apparently converted to Islam, Frank and his Frankists converted en masse to Christianity and were collectively baptized in what is now Lviv, Ukraine[137] in 1759.

Rabbi Marvin Antelman would link the Frankists with all manner of subversive movements, including the Illuminati.[138]

Frank himself went on the lam, as it were. He ended up in Germany and lived the remainder of his life in apparent luxury, assuming the title “Baron of Offenbach.”[139]

The Moravian Connexion

Allegedly, he had contact with – and may have been partially funded by – a group of Protestants known as Moravians. The original Moravian Brethren go back at least to the 15^th century.

In the 18^th century, a Lutheran-Pietist[140] named Nicolaus Zinzendorf – and known more commonly as “Count Zinzendorf” – resurrected the label “Moravian,” though “there is no real historical association between the two” movements.[141]

Dusting off a teaching reminiscent of Nicolaism, Zinzendorf made “…sex into such an important act that Moravians referred to it as a ‘sacrament.’”[142]

Zinzendorf also borrowed from the language of some “[m]edieval mystics …[and] held that sex …both symbolized and reenacted the unification of Christ and his bride, the church…”.[143]

Married Moravians were – somewhat unbelievably – supposed to have sex “…while focusing on their union with Christ.”[144]

But, if this imaginative effort alone made the difference between base and sacred sex, then it was hard to see why unmarried people couldn’t, well… get in on the action, too – provided only that they achieved the proper mental state.

Zinzendorf appears also to have believed and taught that, since males are part of the church, and the church is the “Bride of Christ,” males must somehow eventually become female. This queer notion initially issued in “homoerotic …liturgical language.”[145]

Ultimately, Zinzendorf’s son, Christian Renatus, and a group of likeminded brethren got the idea that they could effect this end state in the here and now. They did this by “[performing] a gender-changing ceremony,” after which they began calling themselves a “choir of sisters.”[146]  

Predictably, nowadays, enthusiasts insist that “[t]he practice of sex magic does not require sex organs, male-female polarity, or a partner”![147]

The ‘Swedenborgian Church’

Speaking of redefining marital relations, 18^th-c. Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg came to believe that Conjugal Love (the title of his 1768 book) bordered on the liturgical. It seems relevant that, while he lived in London, Swedenborg associated with a group of English Moravians.[148]

However, to bring things around full circle, we note that it has long been assumed that Swedenborg was influenced by erotic Kabbalism. Though, this hypothesis has seen scholarly challenges, lately.

But Marsha Keith Schuchard has argued forcefully that that Swedenborg was trained in Hebrew by one Johan Kemper, formerly known as Rabbi Moses Aaron of Krakow. Additionally, Swedenborg was almost certainly acquainted with Rabbi Hayyim Samuel Jacob Falk, better known as the “Baal Shem of London.” In the first place, for a while, the Baal Shem – which is Hebrew for “lord of the (divine) name” – was practically Swedenborg’s next-door neighbor while he lived in England. But, also importantly for our purposes, both Kemper and Rabbi Falk were suspected of Sabbateanism!

Count Cagliostro figures in this broader picture. For an introduction, see “Top 10 Occultists.”

In any case, Swedenborg exerted an influence on numerous, subsequent celebrities – for example, 18^th-19^th-c. English Romantic artist and poet William Blake.

By some accounts, Blake, and a circle of associates – including engraver John Flaxman, portrait painter Richard Cosway, and the curious, androgynous, cross-dressing Freemason and spy known as the Chevalier d’Eon – may have participated in nudism and orgies.[149] Both of which were uncharacteristic for respectable Englishmen of the period.

Some of Swedenborg’s followers would proceed to start congregations based upon his teachings, loosely designated “Swedenborgianism.” This “New Church,” as it came to be called, has arms in Europe and North America where, according to Wikipedia, “[i]t is …liberal on social issues and sexual ethics, such as the ordination of women, homosexuality, and abortion.”[150]

In this, it is faithful to Swedenborg, who advanced a “view of sexual relationships outside marriage” that was “startling at the time”. “Unlike modern Christian fundamentalists, he did not condemn all sexual activity outside marriage, but saw that there were degrees of behaviour. …Just as subversive, …was his teaching that truly conjugial love is enjoyed in heaven.”[151]

Erotic Rosicrucianism

Still on the subject of revolutionary marriage-modifying movements, let’s move to number three, and call it “erotic Rosicrucianism.”

Circa 1856, an American spiritualist named Paschal Beverly Randolph founded the Fraternitas Rosæ Crucis, first in San Francisco, and then in Boston and Philadelphia. This is the order for which he is primarily remembered – though, his heirs disclaim any connexion to sex magic.

Though, according to Manly Palmer Hall, phallic and sexual symbolism was the original significance of the rose and cross, Rosicrucian emblems going back at least to the 17^th century.[152]

Bear in mind that Randolph conducted paid lectures and published numerous handbooks and novels[153] in which he advertised a mysterious set of privately printed manuscripts[154] that – he claimed – taught secret techniques of sex magic.

Randolph thus initiated select groups of customers during sub rosa meetings of his Brotherhood of Eulis – presumably introducing attendees our old notion of hieros gamos. His innovation was to place special attention on the idea that mutual climax – especially simultaneous orgasm of male and female partners – was especially powerful and can “[open] a momentary pathway to the cosmos” which, in turn, activates latent clairvoyant and psychic abilities.[155]

Randolph was interesting for several reasons, not least that he was of blended African-Caucasian extraction – which may have warmed him up to the alchemical-Rosicrucian notion known as coniunctio oppositorum, or the “union of opposites.”[156]

According to an apologetic offered in Hugh Urban’s volume Magia Sexualis,[157] Randolph would supposedly been horrified by any notion that a “sacred” sexual union could occur anywhere other than on a marriage bed.

However, according to Lara Langer Cohen, Randolph endorsed something close to Swedenborg’s view that “celestial marriage” is not to be confused with anything as base as an exchange of legal formalities in front of a justice of the peace. Professor Cohen contends that, in Randolph’s view, if mutual orgasm between two people is good, then the “best sex” involves “more than two participants.”[158]

In a CliffsNotes version, Randolph held that “true Sex-power is God-power.”[159]

Randolph’s influence extended far beyond his initial, possibly restricted circle. Numerous later practitioners, for example, the Russian-born artist, mystic, and (according to some commentators) Satanist Madame Maria de Naglowska, would take his insights in a variety of directions – such as in the rituals of Naglowska’s Parisian Brotherhood of the Golden Arrow. It is noteworthy that Naglowska claims to have translated – but may, in fact, have written – the volume Magia Sexualis that was published in Paris in 1931 with Paschal Beverley Randolph’s name on it.[160]

In their book, Demons of the Flesh, Nikolas and Zeena Schreck conclude that Randolph’s system has much in common with one final stream of sex-magical tradition,[161] which we will now take up.

Tantra

In fact, we’ll cheat a little and count this third important strand (in toto) as our top-two “sex-magical” cult. Of course, it’s the one that derives from the far-eastern mystical tradition known as “Tantra.”

Let me give a few prefatory words of caution, however.

At least since famed British explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton published the first English translation of the Kama Sutra,[162] there has been a tendency to sexualize wide swaths of Eastern philosophy. Although the Kama Sutra does contain portions that deal with sexual positions, which is the content it’s famous for, it is overall a treatise on how to live well – and not generally classified as “Tantra.”

Additionally, there are Eastern-religious practices that, for all their sexual appearance, are also distinguishable from Tantra, properly so-called. For instance, there is a maxim that, “[t]o prove one’s aloofness[,] one should lie with beautiful naked women in order to show self-control. Gandhi is said to have done this in the belief that it increased spiritual powers.”[163]

According to Donald McCormick: “The Tertiaries of the Catholic Order of St. Francis …[also] slept by the side of naked women” – and for similar reasons: supposedly “to test their powers of resisting temptation.”[164] Our attention will be focused elsewhere.[165]

Tantra, or Tantrism, is something of a blend of its parent traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism.

Preëminently, it is concerned with ritualized sex that purports to approximate – or identify with – the union of the god and goddess, in this case, Hindu deities such as Shiva and Shakti.

Some resources suggest that Tantrics, or practitioners of Tantra, may follow either of two “paths,” designated the “right hand”[166] and the “left hand.”[167] As a first pass, and although practitioners would bristle at the notion, you could think of this distinction as something like that between “white” and “black” magic in western occultism.[168]

So, the next set of sex-magic enthusiasts we’ll consider are those who adhere to this sinister track. (The word “sinister,” of course, comes from Latin, where it originally meant “left.”)

Left-Hand Tantrics: Taboo-Breaking

Left-hand Tantra,[169] or Vāmamārga,[170] ties back in with the concept of “deconditioning” that we mentioned, earlier. In Left-Hand Tantra, this deconditioning – or “destruction of the ego” – is frequently associated with the “breaking of ethical or social taboos” for the power that is believed to issue therefrom.

An entire procedure is prescribed, called (in English) the “Five Ms,” or Panchatattva.[171]

On the surface, the first four of the “M”-words uncontroversially represent substances that are generally taboo in Indian culture: madya (liquor), māṃsa (animal meat), matsya (fish), and mudrā (roasted grain).

However, the fifth word, maithuna, is of primary interest to us, here. Often translated “sexual intercourse,” maithuna provides us with an opportunity to take a peek under the surface, as it were.

Exoterically, it might appear that maithuna, the culminating taboo, is an action. On this superficial interpretation, which is also a common assumption for Western observers, sexual intercourse itself is seen as “taboo.” Therefore, having sex – at all; or, at least outside carefully circumscribed societal rôles – is tantamount to “taboo breaking.”[172]

But, seemingly more knowledgeable students of Tantra, such as Indologist David Gordon White,[173] disclose the explanation held by insiders: namely, that maithuna actually involves the ritual consumption of some combination of male and female sexual discharges or fluids.[174]

Ritual “consumption” or “reabsorption” may either be through oral ingestion (e.g., via cunnilingus) or through “…the drawing of the mixed essence …back into [the] still erect penis,”[175] in an alleged “flow reversal” that is bound up with various semen- and urine-retention techniques collectively known as amaroli, or the vajroli seal.[176]

We have seen ritual fluid ingestion before, with some forms of Gnosticism. Whether Tantra is, in some way now lost to history, the source of the Gnostic belief, or whether it is merely an allied system of thought, the fact is that later Western sex-magic practitioners recognized the similarities and began to look for ways to combine or syncretize the two.

This is sometimes put aphoristically to the effect that the way up is down or the adept must first descend in order to ascend.

So, for instance, some commentators reinterpret the Christian doctrine of “Original Sin” through this sort of lens, yielding the conviction that, with Gnostic-Tantric practices, “…the Fall into the body is reversed and human consciousness is able to escape its entrapment in matter.”[177]

On this view, Tantric sex is not simply an emblem for so-called “social liberation” – but it is literally a vehicle for spiritual liberation. In some streams of Tantra, for example, where “loss of semen is loss of soul,” having sex the “wrong way” may be spiritually deadly. Therefore, would-be yogis are either told to abstain totally, or else they are compelled to learn complicated breathing and meditative practices aimed at mastering the “correct” way to have sexual intercourse. There are competing theories, here.

‘Samael Aun Weor’

One suggestion comes from the South American apostate Catholic and neo-Gnostic Víctor Manuel Gómez Rodríguez, better known under the Hebraic-sounding appellation “Samael Aun Weor.” According to him, the aim is to have sex without achieving climax.[178] The rationale is that the orgasm is a wasteful expulsion of life energy and seed.[179]

In his 1961 book, The Perfect Marriage,[180] Aun Weor describes “Sexual Yoga” as divisible into three subsorts: white, gray, and black. In “white Tantra,” ejaculation is forbidden;[181] in “gray” and “black” varieties, on the other hand, it is allowed – to one degree or other.[182]

The movement of Tantra into the Anglo-American world is probably best understood against the backdrop of the so-called “19^th-c. Occult Revival,” part of which included the creation of the Theosophical Society – which was partially characterized by a syncretism that sought to fuse Eastern and Western forms of esotericism. For the basics, see (again!) my video titled “10 Arcane Words.”

Ida C. Craddock

One illustration of the Theosophical Society’s influence can be seen in the curious figure of Ida C. Craddock. Craddock was born into a Quaker household in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1857. After a brief stint as a Unitarian, and ostensibly following some sort of contact with the Theosophical Society, Craddock founded a “Church of Yoga,” and declared herself its head. She devoted her life to teaching and promoting eroticism and mystical sexuality, before committing suicide at the age of 45, due (according to some commentators) to despair over the constant barrage of obscenity charges that were leveled against her.

Craddock’s case might be thought an insignificant footnote – even for a study as specialized as this one – were it not that her posthumously published volume, Heavenly Bridegrooms,[183] caught the attention of no less an occultist than Aleister Crowley who reportedly wrote: “No Magick [sic] library is complete without it.”[184]

Crowley himself was influenced by both Buddhism and Tantra. He was an inveterate connoisseur of erotic occultism. At one time or other, he became a member of Freemasonry as well as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.[185] And this brings us to our final sex-associated organization.

Honorable Mentions

But… before that, let me name a few “runners up” for this list. Mainly, these systems (or associations) were – for one reason or other – simply too complicated to tackle, here. Each of them deserves fuller treatments – which I hope to provide in forthcoming videos.

The first notable – which we have mentioned in passing – is the esoteric discipline of alchemy, one ancient name for which was the “Gay Science.”

Alternatively called the “science of god,”[186] its central theme is transformation. Many of the vivid images associated with alchemy contain sexual symbolism. Indeed, the mysterious process of alchemical transmutation itself is frequently likened to sexual intercourse.

Secondly, we have the Knights Templar. This Catholic military order, founded in the 12^th century – partly due to the fervent support of mystic and saint Bernard of Clairvaux, attained then-undreamed-of heights of power and wealth following the Crusades. However, as many people know, the order was disbanded in the 14^th century by French King Philip IV and Pope Clement V, and many – though possibly not all – of its knights were jailed and executed. The pretext? The Templars were first of all accused of blasphemy and idolatry – specifically, the worship of the previously named goat-headed entity “Baphomet.” They were also charged with sexual immorality – especially homosexuality – in conjunction with their infernal rites.

As writer Donald Michael Kraig helpfully summarizes: “The accepted history is that the Templars learned sex magic from the Sufis of the Middle East, who had learned it from the Tantrics of India. The Medieval alchemists received this information from the Templars and encoded it into some of their works.”[187]

Sufism, in brief, is a mystical tradition within Islam that has “many features of Gnostic doctrine”. In fact, “…at various times, Sufis were …called Gnostics,” that is, “knowers.”[188]

Thirdly, I wish I had time to dive into the divining cards known as the Tarot deck. Several of the face or “Trump” cards allegedly have sexual interpretations. And, in any case, no study of the 19^th-c. “Occult Revival” – which gave birth to modern sex magic – would be complete without considering the Tarot.

Fourthly, of course, there’s Satanism – and its many offshoots. In the modern period, one of the more sexual of these was the notorious, 18^th-century “Hell-Fire Club.” It was revived – if not created – by British politician Sir Francis Dashwood, and it attracted prominent American inventor and statesman Benjamin Franklin.

But if the Hell-Fire Club’s Luciferianism is sometimes dismissed as irreverent mischief, it is worth noting that there were allegations – arising in late-19^th-c. France, to the effect that serious devil-worshipping cults and even rogue Freemasons were engaging in sex magic. I have in mind the circle of the defrocked Abbé Boullan, Henri Antoine Jules-Bois, and the so-called “Order of the Palladium.” Whereas the former were accused of out-and-out black magic, the latter participants – called “Palladists” in some chronicles – were supposed to have been involved in a kinky variation on “co-masonry” (that is, a form of masonry that allowed the admission and initiation of women as well as men). However, since much of this is derided as a fraud perpetrated by a habitual double-dealer, operating under an assumed name, the affair is often dismissed as the “Léo Taxil Hoax.” Probably, given all attendant difficulties, a more responsible treatment of it would be in line. At any rate, it would take up more space than I could afford, presently. So…call it a runner-up.

Finally, a major – if not seminal – branch of contemporary neopaganism and witchcraft is Wicca. There are several varieties to consider – not least is “Gardnerian Wicca,” principally established by Gerald Gardner, whom we mentioned in our “Top 10 Occultists” presentation. But, a few acknowledge a ritual, frequently termed the “Great Rite,” which is a take-off from the hieros-gamos ceremonies that we have already examined.

But, without further ado… my pick for the number one “sex-magic” cult, is a mashup of the Ordo Templi Orientis (“O.T.O.”), and an associated sex-suffused, Thelemic brand of “Gnostic Catholicism.” Lemme try to explain.

Ordo Templi Orientis

Crowley joined the O.T.O. in 1912. But, it had reportedly been founded more than a decade earlier (circa 1897) by a professed German Rosicrucian named Carl Kellner, and his associate Theodor Reuss.

At a high level of generality, the O.T.O. may be describable as a composite of magic and Masonic Templarism – both of which were largely focused through a lens of mystical sexuality.

Specifically, “Kellner and Reuss had in mind that they would form a new esoteric order that would fuse craft Masonry, Rosicrucianism, and Hindu Tantra.”[189]

Kellner’s organization was downstream, and partially derived, from the 19^th-c. American occultist and spiritualist Paschal Beverly Randolph, whose sex-magical system we mentioned, above.

But Randolph’s admirers in the O.T.O. were also instructed and motivated by other currents.[190] One of the most important was the sex-infused teachings of the Kabbalistic Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor.[191]

Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor

Allegedly founded by Louis-Maximilian Bimstein, who operated under the pseudonym “Max Théon,” The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor may – or may not – have exercised a formative influence on theosophist H. P. Blavatsky. But, in any case, its teachings were transmitted to the United States by the Scottish astrologer and psychic, Thomas Henry Burgoyne.[192]

According to Joscelyn Godwin, “…the primary result of the Order was to introduce occultists to the practical methods of P. B. Randolph.”[193] This was especially important, since “…[Randolph’s] detailed instructions in self-training were not easy to come by.”[194]

It’s not clear whether Kellner’s sex magic came from Randolph. For his part, Kellner claimed that he had been initiated into erotic mysticism directly by Sufi and Tantric masters.[195]

You’ll recall that, rightly or wrongly, widespread popular Western interest in Tantra was – ahem! – aroused (mistakenly, as we have said) in part by the aforementioned British scholar Sir Richard F. Burton, through his privately published (in 1883) early English version of the Kama Sutra. The Indian text is, of course, best-known for it’s explicit, illustrated representations of myriad sexual positions. 

The ‘Magnificent Oom’

But another, lesser-known, belt of transmission came by way of the mysterious American Pierre Arnold Bernard,[196] who was known by the colorful – if nonsensical – nickname “The Great Oom.”[197]

Bernard’s family includes individuals with connexions both to Buddhism and Sufism.

He founded “the Tantrik Order of America in 1905” and “[promoted] self-hypnosis and yoga.”[198]

In press reports, Bernard was depicted as a sex-obsessed philanderer who may have utilized hypnotism to debauch numerous women – and even young girls.

Enter Mr. Crowley

Enter “Mr. Crowley.” There’s no question but that the main sex-magical practitioner of the 20^th century – and possibly of all time – was British occultist Aleister Crowley.

You may view an introduction to Crowley in “Top 10 Occultists.”

Presently, we’ll start in 1909, with Crowley and his Jewish-English acolyte, Victor Neuberg, a poetry student who, incidentally, is credited as an early publisher of 20^th-c. Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.

Venturing into the desert of Algiers, Crowley suddenly had the urge to have homosexual sex.[199] As author Rosemary Guiley puts it: “The ritual marked a turning point …in [Crowley’s] view of the importance of sex in magic.”[200]

This rite, which Crowley claimed put him in contact with a demon – “Choronzon” – that had been known to Elizabethan sorcerer John Dee, led him to seek out other sex-magic adherents.

Crowley, who was by all accounts fairly sex-obsessed in any case (having had numerous partners of both sexes), would go on to found the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu, Italy, on the Island of Sicily. The name was taken from a bawdy work of fiction titled The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel, written in the 16th century by the Renaissance humanist and supposed Catholic monk, François Rabelais.

In 1923, Crowley’s “Thelemic” commune – with its sex-and-drugs experimentation[201] – was closed, and he himself was expelled from the country, by order of Benito Mussolini no less.

The proverbial “last straw” had been the death of a young Oxford literature student, Frederick “Raoul” Loveday, allegedly following a depraved black-magical ritual involving the ingestion of cat blood.[202]

Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica

Crowley drew upon these – and myriad other[203] – ceremonies to rewrite the O.T.O.’s ceremonials to include “the ritual consumption of semen and vaginal fluids,” masturbation, as well as heterosexual and homosexual intercourse.

Crowley also influenced the Gnostic Catholic Church.[204] In fact, Crowley’s “Gnostic Mass” would become its principal rite.

One of the mainstays of this Mass is the consumption of a “Cake of Light.” A useful summary of the ingredients is easily discovered by a visit to the pertinent Wikipedia page: flour, honey, oils, and …sexual fluids.[205]

Crowley used the phrase “Elixir of Life,” or the word Amrita, as euphemisms for these sexual secretions. Thus, he resuscitated themes found in ancient Gnosticism and Tantra.[206]

Not only these, but Kabbalism, too, is a huge part of Crowley’s magical system.[207]

One legendary – and widely fictionalized[208] – facet of Kabbalistic lore, generally, is the so-called Golem.[209]

Not unlike Frankenstein’s Monster, the creature of 19^th-century gothic novelist Mary Shelley,[210] the Golem is a subhuman entity that is animated by rabbinic magic – specifically, various, math-like manipulations of the Hebrew alphabet.[211]

On this wavelength, would you believe that various Crowleyan sex rituals may have been geared toward the magical generation of a similarly soulless entity known as an homunculus?[212] And with this, we arrive at what is (if true) perhaps the darkest of the secrets of this current of magia sexualis.

The Homunculus

To start with, following particular strands of occult speculation, a fetus is held to be soulless until “…the third month of gestation.”[213]

In fact, Strong’s Condordance, a widely consulted Bible-reference book, defines “golem” as “embryo.”[214]

In Crowley’s imagination, this opens the door for the possibility that a rite of conception, properly performed according to formulæ derived from the Gnostic-Kabbalistic-Tantric tradition earlier rehearsed, will issue in the creation of an apparently living humanoid that is actually some incarnated “elemental or planetary spirit.”[215] The purpose of this operation is to create a minion – one variety of which Crowley termed a “Moonchild”[216] – that will carry out the magician’s bidding.[217]

Crowley intimates that this rarely succeeds.[218] Though, it’s a bit unclear just what “success” is supposed to look like. Consider the case of American occultist and “Thelemite” rocket scientist John “Jack” Parsons,[219] possible inspiration for Marvel Comic character Howard Stark – father of the Iron Man superhero, Tony Stark.[220]

Parsons was initiated into a California-based branch of the O.T.O. The outfit’s name – the Agape Lodge – recalls the ancient Christian “love feast” mentioned in conjunction with Gnosticism. Originally founded in Hollywood by one of Aleister Crowley’s acolytes, an esotericist named Wilfred Talbot Smith, the Agape Lodge came under Parsons’ control when it moved to Pasadena.

Parsons was said to have attempted (on several occasions, and failed in) the creation of homunculi with his then-wife Marjorie Cameron.[221]

At least one of their sex-magical ceremonies, the “Babalon Working,” supposedly had this aim.

There has also been speculation that Parsons was attempting some dangerous version of the homunculus rite when he died in a fiery explosion in his Pasadena home.

According to author John Carter, “…Cameron later claimed to have been impregnated by Parsons during their first two weeks together… She said she had an …abortion[222] with Parsons’ consent (and another abortion later on), then just a few days later they were performing another working.”[223]

Was the human fetus supposed to have been the “clay” out of which a flesh-and-blood homunculus was produced? Or was the sexual act merely intended to generate (or summon) some sort of “astral” or ethereal entity? At the end of the day, we’re left to guess whether the physiological pregnancies were the unintended byproducts of the rite, or whether the abortions were, so to speak, magical sacrifices.[224]

In any event, in Aleister Crowley, we have something of the Mount Everest of sex magic – a long and perilous climb to a mythical peak from which some, in attempted ascent have plunged headlong into inhospitable depths. Perhaps this is a fitting metaphor since Crowley was, in his youth, a mountaineer.

Concluding Thoughts

As a coda, Crowley’s O.T.O. brings us back, full circle, to some of the groups touched on in the introduction.

For the “Solar Lodge of the Ordo Templ[i] Orientis” has been characterized as a “magical cult specializing in blood-drinking [and] sado-sodo sex magic” – and that has ties to none other than Charles Manson.[225]

The upshot is that, even with Aleister Crowley’s death in 1947, Thelemic “magick” – including, one presumes, its sexual varieties – apparently lives on, probably in one or more of the myriad groups that dovetail (or identify themselves) with it.

Scattered reports even suggest that heirs of Crowleyite sex magic may even have wormed their ways into unlikely places – such as the Roman Catholic Church. But, that will have to be a study for another time!

In summary, though, magia sexualis preexisted Crowley, and it will certainly survive him.

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End Notes:

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[1] I first became aware of “sex magic” through various presentations, such as: James Shelby Downard’s King Kill 33 (1998), Michael Hoffman’s Judaism’s Strange Gods (2000) and Hoffman’s Judaism Discovered: From Its Own Texts (2008) – all publications of Independent History and Research (operating out of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho) – as well as Jim Brandon’s audio recording Sirius Rising (privately circulated; ca. 1970s). Subsequently, I discovered that the topic had been taken up, to one degree or other (or, at the very least, touched upon), by numerous others, including (without limitation): Bob Dobbs, Phatic Communion With (Toronto: Perfect Pitch Eds., 1992); Francis King, Sexuality, Magic and Perversion (Port Townsend, Wash.: Feral House, 2002); Nikolas Schreck and Zeena Schreck, Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left-Hand Path Sex Magic (London: Creation, 2002); John Carter, Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons (Los Angeles, Cal.: Feral House, 2005); Peter Levenda, in his trilogy titled Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft: Book One: The Nine (Walterville, Ore.: Trine Day, 2005), Book Two: A Warm Gun (Walterville, Ore.: Trine Day, 2005), and Book Three: The Manson Secret (Springfield, Ore.: Trine Day, 2006); former “Blondie” bassist, Gary Lachman, e.g., in his Swedenborg: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas (New York: Penguin, 2012); S. K. Bain, The Most Dangerous Book in the World: 9/11 as Mass Ritual (Walterville, Ore.: Trine Day, 2012); Sherwood Kent, Most Dangerous: A True Story (Walterville, Ore.: Trine Day, 2015); and Allen H. Greenfield, Dr. Randolph’s Magical Elixir: The Story of the 19th Century Genius Who Created WESTERN Sexual Magic (Martinez, Cal.: Paranoia Publ., 2020). Recently, the topic has been undertaken by academics as well, for example, in: Joscelyn Godwin, Christian Chanel, and John Patrick Deveney, The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor: Initiatic and Historical Documents of an Order of Practical Occultism (York Beach, Me.: Samuel Weiser, 1995); John P. Deveney, Paschal Beverly Randolph: A Nineteenth-Century Black American Spiritualist, Rosicrucian, and Sex Magician (Albany, N.Y.: State Univ. of New York Press, 1997); and Hugh B. Urban, Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism (Berkeley, Cal.: Univ. of Cal. Press, 2006).

[2]  “Magic,” Wikipedia, May 14, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic>.

[3] Warner Bros., 1999.

[4] For one example, see Rob Ager, “Are satanic societies really depicted in EYES WIDE SHUT?” Collative Learning (channel), YouTube, Apr. 27, 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22UjKH-yrQw>.

[5] Not that I am accusing Ager, specifically, of being “cavalier,” necessarily. Though, in his brief (publicly available) analysis, he states that he has consulted the Kubrick Archives, and he evidences familiarity with Peter Brookesmith’s Cult and Occult (London: Guild Publ., 1985) – some claims of which he dismisses as “downright wacky.” It’s not obvious to me that this is a cogent counterargument. However, confessedly, I do not currently possess a copy of the book. Ager also references Francis King’s The Secret Rituals of the O.T.O. (originally published: London: Daniel, 1973), which – in a scanned copy of the American edition – I will have occasion to quote later, myself.

[6]The pseudo-Latin phrase that crops up repeatedly, here, is Dominus Obsequious Sororium (or “D.O.S.”).

[7] This included Epstein’s private island – Little St. James – which contained one odd, temple-looking structure (said to have been “a music pavilion” and which seems to have been the scene of innumerable crimes of molestation and rape in the synchromystically significant “U.S. Virgin Island” chain. See Mary K. Jacob, “Jeffrey Epstein ‘pedophile island’ gets price cut after two months for sale,” N.Y. Post, Jun. 9, 2022, <https://nypost.com/2022/06/09/jeffrey-epsteins-virgin-islands-properties-undergo-price-cut/>.

[8]Tad Friend, “River, With Love and Anger,” Esquire, vol. 121, no. 3, pp. Mar. 1994, 108ff; reproduced at <http://www.aleka.org/phoenix/zines/phoenix7.html>.

[9]Ibid. Berg allegedly called the “tactic …‘flirty fishing’,” ibid. Continuing, the article took a darker tone: “Berg also advocated incest and sex with toddlers, and mailed circulars with graphic pictures of molestation,” ibid. The cult was in the news as recently as 2020, when a former Family International “missionary,” Derek Lincoln, was apprehended after a five-year manhunt, charged, and convicted of sex crimes going back several decades. (Lincoln is also a curious name, synchromystically speaking.) See, e.g., Paul O’Hare, “Children of God cult rapist jailed for ‘horrific’ offences,” BBC Scotland, Aug. 7, 2020, <https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-53448774>.

[10] A forerunner, at least in name, seems to have been “Familism,” associated with the Familia Caritatis, or the “Family of Love.” This sect had been founded in 1539 by Henry Nicholis (see further on for a few remarks about “Nick” names), a native of Germany who was alleged to have had taken part in a political uprising known as the “Münster Rebellion.” Following this, he seems to have moved about – from various cities in Germany (including Cologne and Emden) to England and the Netherlands. Nicholis was inexplicably well-connected. His compatriots included humanist printer Christophe Plantin, artist Pieter Brueghel the Elder, and the cartographer Abraham Ortelius, who was in John Dee’s circle. John Dee, whom we highlighted in our video “Top 10 Occultists,” was best remembered as Queen Elizabeth I’s “astrologer royal.” Presumably exploiting some political connexions, the Familists requested religious toleration around 1604, during the reign of Scottish King James I. But the petition was rejected. Subsequently, they were lampooned in the anonymous play “The Family of Love,” possibly written by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker and published in 1608. As Wikipedia’s summary puts it: “The play satirises the sect’s reputation for sexual lasciviousness…”. See “The Family of Love (Play),” Wikipedia, Jan. 22, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family_of_Love_(play)>. As a coda, Jakob Böhme’s foremost English apologist, John Pordage (who established “Behmenism” on the British Isles), might have been operating on the periphery of the Familist movement. “Possibly, Pordage’s opinions owed something to furtive influence of the Familia Caritatis, followers of the sectarian prophet Henry Nicholis (alias H. N.). In 1637, Pordage’s brother-in-law, Henry Faldo, was accused of Familism.” According to “John Pordage,” Wikipedia, Aug. 28, 2020, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Pordage>; citing David Como, “The Family of Love and the Making of English Revolutionary Religion: The Confession and ‘Conversions’ of Giles Creech,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, vol. 48, 2018, pp. 562-65.

[11]This connexion is well-known. But, for a sample, see: Tommy Udo, Charles Manson: Music Mayhem Murder, London: Bobcat Books, 2012, passim.

[12]See, e.g., Jeff Guinn, Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013, p. 134. Supposedly, Manson may also have been in contact with actress Candice Bergen, via Terry Melcher. See: James Buddy Day, Hippie Cult Leader: The Last Words of Charles Manson, Toronto: Optimum Publ., 2019, back matter, <https://books.google.com/books/about/Hippie_Cult_Leader.html?id=IdtAxQEACAAJ>.

[13] H. Allegra Lansing, “The Children of the Stars,” Medium, Sept. 28, 2020, <https://themansonfamily-mtts.medium.com/the-children-of-the-stars-b231f52ad59c>.

[14]Again, this has been widely commented upon and reported. But, see: William McKeen, Everybody Had an Ocean: Music and Mayhem in 1960s Los Angeles, Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2017, esp. pp. 317f.

[15] Jerry Cohen, “Possible Links Between Tate, Scientology Murders Studied,” Los Angeles Times via Greeley Daily Tribune, Dec. 10, 1969, p. 13; archived at <https://access-newspaperarchive-com.eu1.proxy.openathens.net/us/colorado/greeley/greeley-daily-tribune/1969/12-10/page-12/>.

[16]Ed Sanders, The Family, New York: E. P. Dutton, 1971, p. 79. The other two were supposedly “the Satanists and the Jehovans,” ibid.

[17]Ibid.

[18]To be sure, Sanders admits, “…in the early phases of …[Process] initiation sexual celibacy is practiced. Further on, however, in the trek toward higher ranks, all sorts of bunch-punchings take place,” Ibid., p. 84. Sanders’ prose can be nearly equal parts colorful and opaque. For those unfamiliar with the lingo, “bunch punch” is slang term for: “A sexual encounter between one woman and multiple men.”^[18] See “Bunch Punch,” The Free Dictionary, citing Farlex Dictionary of Idioms, <https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/bunch+punches>. On the porno-flick term, see “Gangbang,” UrbanDictionary, Sept. 21, 2004, <https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gangbang>.

[19] For the companion text, see “10 Arcane Words,” TheSynchroMystic.com, May 23, 2022, <https://thesynchromystic.com/index.php/2022/05/23/10-arcane-words-that-are-easily-confused/>.

[20] See, e.g., Peter-Robert Koenig, “Ordo Templi Orientis: Spermo-Gnosis, Carl Kellner, Theodor Reuss, Aleister Crowley,” lecture, ParaReligion, 1994 / Mar. 2000 [these are the dates that appear at the following URL], <https://www.parareligion.ch/spermo.htm>.

[21] George Ryley Scott, Phallic Worship, reprint ed., London: Random House, 1996 [London: Luxor Press, 1966], pp. 68-69; citing Thomas Inman, Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names, Liverpool: privately printed, 1868, n.p.

[22] The name “Seth” seems to have been a reference to Adam and Eve’s third son by that name. The Gnostics appear to have read the Book of Genesis as if it were presenting a mythological cosmogony in disguise. In other words, as in certain pagan world-formation narratives, where one reads that Marduk slew Taimat or Cronus castrated Uranus, and it is perhaps not taken to have been literal, so too when Cain killed Abel, this was presumably understood as allegorical.

[23] See: Géza Vermes, The Real Jesus: Then and Now, Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Fortress; Fortress Press, 2010, p. 168; online at <https://books.google.com/books?id=M1RsWXhXXogC&pg=pa168>.

[24] “In general, Gnostics held that the …demiurge …was a fool (‘saklas’)… [and they identified this entity with the] god of the Old Testament,” according to Bart D. Ehrman, “Christianity Turned on Its Head: The Alternative Vision of the Gospel of Judas,” Rodophe Kasser, Marvin Meyer, and Gregor Wurst, eds., The Gospel of Judas, Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2006, p. 90.

[25] For the cosmos is “…the product of rational, purposive, and beneficent agency,” ibid.

[26] “In the [dialog titled] Timæus Plato …proposes …[that the universe] …is …the handiwork of a divine Craftsman ([also known as the] “Demiurge,” [or the] dêmiourgos… [citing Plato, Timæus, 28a6.])…,” Donald Zeyl and Barbara Sattler, “Plato’s Timaeus,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Summer 2022 Ed., Edward N. Zalta, ed., <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2022/entries/plato-timaeus/>. Continuing: The Demiurge “imitate[es] an unchanging and eternal model, [and] imposes mathematical order on a preexistent chaos to generate the ordered universe (kosmos). The governing explanatory principle of the account is teleological: the universe as a whole as well as its various parts are so arranged as to produce a vast array of good effects. For Plato this arrangement is not fortuitous, but the outcome of the deliberate intent of Intellect (nous), anthropomorphically represented by the figure of the Craftsman who plans and constructs a world that is as excellent as its nature permits it to be,” ibid.

[27] Nesta Helen Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, London: Boswell Printing & Publ. Co., 1924. According to Webster: “…to whom they referred under the Cabalistic term of the ‘demiurgus’,” Nesta Helen Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, reprint ed., Escondido, Cal.: The Book Tree, 2000, p. 30.

[28] Ehrman, loc. cit. “…all the figures in Jewish and Christian history who stood against [the Old Testament] God” – like the Serpent in Eden and the fallen angel, Lucifer, as well as “Cain, the men of Sodom and Gomorrah, and eventually Judas Iscariot – were the ones who had seen the truth and understood the secrets necessary for salvation,” ibid.

[29] According to Webster’s summary of Lévi in Secret Societies…, 2000, p. 30.

[30] Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, Richmond, Va.: L. H. Jenkins, 1947, p. 321; capitalization in original. Besides Pike’s Scottish Rite, this Gnostic-Luciferianism arguably surfaces in other esoteric such as Helena Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society. Further evidence for this will have to be the preoccupation of a forthcoming video. But, for now, see, “Are the Pyramid and All-Seeing Eye Symbols ‘Masonic’?” Bell Curve [weblog], Jun. 6, 2015, <http://curveofbell.blogspot.com/2015/06/are-pyramid-and-all-seeing-eye-symbols.html>.

[31] Manly P. Hall, The Lost Keys of Freemasonry, Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publ., 2009, p. 48.

[32] Again, Webster quoting, op. cit., p. 30; citing De Luchet, Essai sur la Secte des Illuminés, Paris & Londres [London]: 1789, p. 6. Webster: “…The glorification of evil …[also] constituted the creed of the Ophites, who worshipped the Serpent because he had revolted against Jehovah… and …of the Cainites,” ibid.

[33] Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, ca. 1588 / 1592; archived online at <http://www.lem.seed.pr.gov.br/arquivos/File/livrosliteraturaingles/faustus.pdf>. Marlowe’s work is understood as an adaptation of a preexisting folk legend regarding the life of the (ostensibly) real, 15^th-16^th-c. German Renaissance alchemist and sorcerer, Johann Georg Faust (sometimes called John Faustus). Later, famed German Romantic writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe would also pen his own version (Faust, ca. 1780 / 1806). In 1947, Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann published Doktor Faustus: Das Leben des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn (Berlin: Surkamp), which was a retelling of the basic “Doctor Faustus” story as it pertained to the imaginary “…Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn…”. Additionally, there are innumerable film and stage performances – based on one of the underlying traditions – including Richard Burton and Nevill Coghill’s Doctor Faustus (Columbia Pictures, 1967).

[34] The Books of Acts, chapt. 8, verses 18-19, New International Version.

[35] Irenæus, Against Heresies, book I, chapter 23, paragraphs 2 & 3; as quoted by the 19^th-20^th-c. Gnostic and Theosophist G. R. S. Mead, in Simon Magus: An Essay on the Founder of Simonianism Based on the Ancient Sources With a Re-Evaluation of His Philosophy and Teachings, London: The Theosophical Society, 1892, electronic version, online at <http://gnosis.org/library/grs-mead/grsm_simon_magus.htm>. Mead’s citation reads: “Irenæus (Contra Hæreses, I. xxiii. 1-4). Text: Opera (edidit Adolphus Stieren); Lipsiæ, 1848,” ibid.

[36] For some Gnostics, such as the Valentinians, even cosmic emanation was reinterpreted sexually. The various syzygies were construed as “sexually complementary pairs,” “Valentinus,” New World Encyclopedia, <https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Valentinus>.

[37]Paul Foster, The Apocryphal Gospels: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2009, p. 41.

[38]“…with the voyeuristic participation of the ‘sons of the bridal chamber’ as a type of ‘sacramental practice’ in the group.” Ibid.; emphasis added. Foster himself demurs.

[39]See Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, New York: Anchor; Random House, 2006, p. 266; <https://books.google.com/books?id=hbZ0Yfz-NG8C&pg=pa266>. (The original U.S. Edition, was New York: Doubleday, 2003, [where the reference is on p. 246].)

[40] Her given name (Sophie) means “wisdom.”

[41] Ibid., pp. 333f, <https://books.google.com/books?id=hbZ0Yfz-NG8C&pg=pa333>.

[42] Ibid., p. 334, <https://books.google.com/books?id=hbZ0Yfz-NG8C&pg=pa334>.

[43] “…by means of “[p]hysical union with the female,” ibid. (Brown’s italics.)

[44] Gospel of Thomas, Thomas O. Lambdin, transl., Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette Univ., n.d., <https://www.marquette.edu/maqom/Gospel%20of%20Thomas%20Lambdin.pdf>.

[45] “Lincoln’s” real name was Henry Soskin.

[46] Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, & Henry Lincoln, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, London: Jonathan Cape; New York: Delacorte Press, 1982.

[47] “Dan Brown Wins Da Vinci Code Case,” Guardian (U.K.), Apr. 7, 2006, <https://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/apr/07/pressandpublishing.danbrown>.

[48] Op. cit., p. 334.

[49]It was started by Carpocrates in the important Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, in Egypt. Alexandria had been founded by Alexander the Great in the 4th century B.C. Not only was it crucial militarily and politically, Alexandria also became a hub of learning and was the location of a library that was the most famous in antiquity. Additionally, Alexandria had long preserved the intellectual legacy of the great ancient Greek philosopher Plato. It was ground zero for a modified version of that school of thinking, now called “Neoplatonism,” that was heavily influenced by neo-Pythagoreanism. Neoplatonism was sparked by the mysterious Ammonius Saccas and given its seminal formulation by Plotinus. (I touched on Neoplatonism in the previously named video “10 Arcane Words.”) Of course, I’m skipping some intermediate steps. To remedy the deficit, see Maren Niehoff, who summarizes some of the relevant history and notes: “Alexandria occupies a special place in the history of Platonism. The first edition of Plato’s works with text-critical signs was produced here in the second century BCE by Aristophanes of Byzantium. The same scholar also introduced the trilogical division of the corpus, based on literary criteria, which was subsequently replaced by the tetralogical division of Tiberius’ court philosopher Thrasyllus. Other Alexandrians significantly contributed to the interpretation of Plato’s works. Eratosthenes, the famous scientist and literary critic of the mid-third century BCE, was known as a Platonist interested in the mathematical aspects of philosophy. More importantly, Eudorus in the first century BCE played a decisive role in the revival of Platonism. He may also have authored the anonymous commentary on the Theaetetus, our earliest extant, running commentary on any of Plato’s works. Another anonymous Platonic treatise most likely stems from Alexandria, namely On the Nature of the World and the Soul. Finally, the city hosted important harbingers of Neo-Platonism. Ammonius Saccas, the “Socrates” of the new movement, taught here influential thinkers, such as Plotinus, who spent eleven years in Alexandria before establishing himself in Rome.” Maren R. Niehoff, “Dossier Philon d’Alexandrie: Philo’s Role as a Platonist in Alexandria,” Etudes Platoniciennes, no. 623, Jul., 2010, pp. 35-62; online at <https://journals.openedition.org/etudesplatoniciennes/623>.

[50] For instance, Plato had maintained that human beings are – at least partially – immaterial “souls” that had somehow “preexisted” our current, earthly lives. Additionally, Plato advanced a doctrine known as “metempsychosis,” whereby the soul also survives the death of the body, only to be physically “reincarnated” again in the future. The peculiarly Neoplatonic take on this had been to extend the metaphysical speculations by claiming that these preexistent souls had come out of, or “emanated from,” an absolute divine entity known only as the “One.” The One’s involvement was said to have been mediated via the Logos and the “World Soul.” Neoplatonists frequently framed the precise chain with material gleaned from Aristotle’s “four causes.”

[51]Jacques Lacarrière, The Gnostics, Nina Rootes, transl., London: Owen, 1977; orig. Jacques Lacarrière, Les gnostiques, Paris: Gallimard, 1973; reproduced online at: The Anarchist Library, <https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jacques-lacarriere-the-gnostics>.

[52]Blunt, op. cit., p. 102.

[53] “In these experiences the ego will be totally altered or completely destroyed in the death that must precede a rebirth into life. The terror, agony and despair that accompany this process cannot be minimized,” John Whiteside “Jack” Parsons, ‘Freedom Is a Two-Edged Sword’ and Other Essays, Marjorie Cameron and “Hymenaeus Beta,” eds., New York: Ordo Templi Orientis; Las Vegas: Falcon Press, 1989, p. 56; quoted by John Carter, Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons, Port Townsend, Wash.: Feral House, 2004, p. xvi.

[54] Some of these include the Beghards, Beguines, and Brethren of the Free Spirit – and (possibly) such notables as Marguerite Porete and Meister Eckhart, though these associations are contentious.

[55] Ibid.

[56] William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act II, scene 2, <http://shakespeare.mit.edu/hamlet/hamlet.2.2.html>.

[57] See Oxford Reference online, <https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199539536.001.0001/acref-9780199539536-e-703>.

[58] Seemingly for popular-level, public consumption, the French is alternately translated “Shame on him who thinks evil of it.” However, we believe that the rendering given by Oxford Reference (and quoted in the main text)is more faithful to the original sense.

[59] I may as well address (even if only briefly) what, for at least some viewers, will be a lingering concern. Specifically, many questions exist about whether Gnostic ritual was actually sexual in nature, or whether some opponents – or possibly some injudicious and unrestrained Gnostic rhetoric itself – simply made sensational use of sensual metaphor. As evidence for this, some writers, seemingly keen to offer a defense of Gnosticism, point out that there are parallel reports describing many sects as abstaining from marriage and sex and encouraging their followers to live chastely – even in an austere and (if I may be forgiven the anachronism) “Puritanical” manner. Probably, the truth of the matter is that there was what one writer calls a “Gnostic spectrum”, with  “ascetic or libertine morality” on either extreme. Kenneth Cyril Carveley, Ecclesiological Docetism in Early and Medieval Dissent and Heresy in Eastern and Western Christianity, PhD. dissertation, Dept. of Theol. & Rel. Studies, Leeds, U.K.: Univ. of Leeds, Sept., 1990, p. 431, <https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/624/1/uk_bl_ethos_278360.pdf>. If this is so, then Gnostic groups – and individual Gnostics themselves – may have been variously situated at either pole of such a continuum, depending upon personal or psychological factors. Indeed, it is conceivable that certain people may even have swung back and forth from one extreme to the either.

[60]Dunlap, Ill.: Firebird Press.

[61]See, esp., pp. 180ff.

[62] That includes “Nicholas” and other cognate forms, such as “Nichole” and “Nicholai” – whether feminine or masculine. For an introduction to this theme, take a look at the article titled “Alias Saint Nick” posted at the Bell Curve weblog. 

[63]Revelation chapt. 2, verse 6b, New International Version (NIV).

[64] One reason Gnosticism was friendly to antinomianism was that, according to the Gnostic worldview, we live “…in a precarious world”; Carveley, op. cit., pp. 30-31; humans have been “…thrown into an alien environment from which gnosis is the only release for the self… This frees [the Gnostic believer] from the constraints of morality… This [freedom] could display itself in extremes of libertinism or austere asceticism…,” Ibid. In the middle, “…[m]any Gnostic groups were indifferent to moral issues,” ibid.

[65] At least, if the Catholic Church Father St. Irenaeus is to be believed! Patrick Healy, “Nicolaites,” Catholic Encyclopedia; vol. 11, New York: Robert Appleton Co., 1911, [p. 67a], <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11067a.htm>; citing Irenaeus, Adversus Hæreses, I, xxvi, 3; III, xi, 1.

[66] Some investigators, such as John Henry Blunt, thought that these references pertained to “fornication connected with religious rites.” John Henry Blunt, Dictionary of Sects, Heresies, Ecclesiastical Parties and Schools of Religious Thought, London: Rivintons, 1874, p. 371. Irenaeus’s (previously cited) charge appears to be a restatement of a claim found in the aforementioned Book of Revelation, also called the Apocalypse, where we read the somewhat mysterious comment that “some [people] …[held] to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they …committed sexual immorality,” Revelation, chapt. 2, verse 14, NIV. Balaam, by the way, was a magician some of whose exploits were discussed in the Old Testament Book of Numbers (e.g., chapt. 22.) Blunt connected this sex magic with the common pagan practice of “ritual” or “temple prostitution” that had periodically crept into the Hebrew religion and perverted it from a pure worship of Yahweh (Blunt cites, inter alia, Genesis 38:21, Deuteronomy 23:18; 2 Kings 23:7; and Hosea 4:14.) – as, indeed, some of the Old Testament prophets testified. E.g., Ezekiel; in the Book of Ezekiel, chapt. 23.

[67] According to the analysis of the 19^th-c. Anglican scholar John Henry Blunt, gesturing toward the New Testament Book of Jude, Blunt, op. cit., p. 372; cf. “follow[ing] …evil desires” (Jude [1]:16, NIV), resulting in unspecified “ungodly acts” (Jude [1]:15, NIV). Cf. Jude [1]:12, NIV; cf. 2 Peter 2:13. (As the Bible is conventionally divided, the Book of Jude has only one chapter.)

[68] Blunt, op. cit., p. 372.

[69]See “Borborites,” Wikipedia, Apr. 13, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borborites>. The word is a play on the Greek word Bórboros, meaning “mire, filth” or “mud.” For the former definition, see: “Borboros,” Wiktionary, Mar. 8, 2022, <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B2%CF%8C%CF%81%CE%B2%CE%BF%CF%81%CE%BF%CF%82#Ancient_Greek>; for the latter, see “Borborite,” Wiktionary, Oct. 10, 2017, <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Borborite#English>. Though, they are referred to by an array of alternate names including the Borbeliotes, Borborians, and Barbelites or Barbeliotes. They appear to have been named after Barbēlōs, an entity held to have been a part of a complicated Gnostic-mythologic scheme of emanation. I sketch the rudiments of “emanationism” – in both Gnostic and Neoplatonic varieties – in “10 Arcane Words.” See, also, the succeeding paragraph in the main text (and the next footnote) of the present work for the reference to “Barbelo.”

[70] The Apocryphon of John (The Secret Book of John – The Secret Revelation of John), Frederik Wisse, transl., The Nag Hammadi Library, online at <http://gnosis.org/naghamm/apocjn.html>. (The Apocryphon of John and The Secret Book of John are the same book.) It also says: “The first power, the glory of Barbelo, the perfect glory in the aeons, the glory of the revelation, she glorified the virginal Spirit and it was she who praised him, because thanks to him she had come forth. This is the first thought, his image; she became the womb of everything, …the holy Spirit, the thrice-male, the thrice-powerful, …and the eternal aeon among the invisible ones, and the first to come forth,” ibid. The Æons were supposed to have been “good” emanations and stood opposed to the “bad” Archons. Contrast this notion with the Kabbalistic notions of the “Tree of Life” that has a Side of Holiness (Sitra Kedusha), producing divine emanations called the Sefirot, and the Other Side (of Evil; Sitra Achra) that emanates the impure Qliphoth (also spelled Kelipot), on which, see: Nissan Dovid Dubov, “Kelipot and Sitra Achra,” Chabad.org, n.d., <https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/361900/jewish/Kelipot-and-Sitra-Achra.htm>. And compare it with the Tantric Right-hand Path (Daksini Marga or Dakshinachara) and Left-hand Path (Vama Marga / Vamachara).

[71] Brown, op. cit., pp. 130, 334, and 336.

[72]Epiphanius, Panarion, ca. A.D. 375, book 1, part 26, section 4, par. 1-4; reproduced at <http://www.masseiana.org/panarion_bk1.htm>; archived at <https://web.archive.org/web/20160304002946/http://www.masseiana.org/panarion_bk1.htm>.

[73] I.E., “the man’s emission,” ibid.

[74]Ibid., book 1, chapt. 4, par. 5-8.

[75] Nikolas Schreck and Zeena Schreck, Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left Hand Path Sex Magic, London: Creation, 2002, p. 189. Gnostics, being preoccupied with escaping materiality, “…believed that drinking the sperm or menstrual blood would prevent souls from being born, delivering the unborn beings …to …a spiritual realm above …the sphere of matter,” ibid. The “safe,” spiritual realm – termed the Plēroma – is the province of the Æons; while the “unsafe,” material realm is controlled by the Archons.

[76] E.g., see “Black Mass,” Wikipedia, Jan. 19, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mass>.

[77] Anton LaVey himself at times downplayed the rôle of the Black Mass in Church of Satan ritual, once writing: “The usual assumption is that the Satanic ceremony or service is always called a Black Mass. A Black Mass is not the magical ceremony practiced by Satanists. The Satanist would only employ the use of a Black Mass as a form of psychodrama. Furthermore, a Black Mass does not necessarily imply that the performers of such are Satanists. A Black Mass is essentially a parody on the religious service of the Roman Catholic Church, but can be loosely applied to a satire on any religious ceremony,” Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible, electronic ed. [orig. New York: Avon Publ., 1969], online at <https://ia802809.us.archive.org/23/items/the-satanic-bible/the-satanic-bible.pdf>. Though, in another place, LaVey speaks more admiringly, for example stating: “Historically, there is no ritual more closely linked with Satanism than the Black Mass,” Anton Szandor LaVey, Satanic Rituals, New York: Harper Collins, 1976, p. 31.

[78] Charles Poncé, Kabbalah, Wheaton, Ill.: Quest Books, 1997, p. 17.

[79] See, e.g., N.a., “What is the Eucharist? The Tradition of Communion from the Lord’s Supper,” Christianity.com, May 24, 2010, <https://www.christianity.com/jesus/following-jesus/communion/communion-lords-supper-eucharist.html>.

[80] Blunt, op. cit., p. 286.

[81] “Manichaeism: Manichaeism In Iran,” Encyclopedia.com, <https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/manichaeism-manichaeism-iran>; citing Manfred Hutter, Encyclopedia of Religion, 2005.

[82]Malcolm Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements From the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, Oxford (U.K.); Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publ., 2003, p. 6.

[83]Ibid. Specifically, he alleged, they developed a sex rite called the ischas. The word ischas “…means…wild fig.” In Christianity, the fig serves as a “…symbol of lewdness” and nudism, because Adam and Eve were said to have covered themselves with fig leaves once they realized they were naked in the Garden of Eden. St. Augustine, De Hæresibus, XLVI; reproduced in Roland Teske, transl., Arianism and Other Heresies, John Rotelle, ed., The Works of Saint Augustine, a Translation for the 2lst Century, Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City Press, 1995, p. 43, <https://wesleyscholar.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Augustine-Arian-Other-Heresies-1995.pdf>; Blunt, op. cit., p. 289. Cf. The Book of Genesis chapter 3, verse 7: “Then the eyes of both of them [i.e., Adam and Eve] were opened, and they realized they were naked; so, they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves,” New International Version.

[84] However, the Manichaeans are one of the sects that are also – and quite oppositely – said to have lived celibate lives of purity and self-denial. For example, see the doctrine of the so-called “three seals.” According to this, the Elect vowed abstinence as related to their mouths (e.g., they didn’t eat meat or drink alcohol), hands (they didn’t perform physical labor or go to war), and hearts (they renounced marriage and sex). “Three Seals (Manichaeism),” Wikipedia, Apr. 4, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Seals_(Manichaeism)>.Besides simply dismissing one of these contradictory reports as spurious, there are three possible resolutions to this apparent difficulty. Or, perhaps, there are three facets to a possible resolution. The first may lie in the already observed dual-membership structure of the cult. The idea is that one of the divisions (e.g., the Elect) had licentious sexual practices, while the other (the Auditors) did not. There is room for dispute even here, though. Others, like John Henry Blunt, suggest that it may have been the low-level “auditor[s] or catechumen[s],” instead, loc. cit. To add to the confusion, it’s sometimes unclear if commentators are referencing what might be called “human weakness” – and associating sex rites with that; or ruling on the issue of whether Manichaean theology countenanced a form of “holy sex.” In Blunt’s phraseology: The auditor’s “…enjoyed the license of the weaker nature and was not bound to the ascetic life,” ibid. Interestingly, he adds: “Even the elect …were permitted to retire, if strength failed them, into the humbler condition of the catechumen,” ibid. This brings us to the second possibility, that Manichaeans distinguished various types of sexual encounter. As one writer puts it, it may be wise to “…[differentiate] between sex during religious ceremonies and sex during the perfects’ day-to-day living,” James Edward Myers, “Morality Among Cathar Perfects and Believers in France and Italy, 1100-1300,” master’s thesis, Kalamazoo, Mich.: Western Mich. Univ., Dec., 1976, p. 58, <https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3378&context=masters_theses>.To round things out, a third possible resolution turns on the related question of the meaning of the word “purity.” Many viewers may assume that the word “purity” is a synonym for sexual abstinence. But, one of the innovations of Manichaeanism seems to have been its move away from the notion that “enlightenment” necessarily involved violating the commandments. The alternative view was that sex was a divine sacrament. And, again according to Augustine, the Manichaeans viewed themselves as God-ordained to the task of purifying the world. In their system of beliefs, this included “divine substances” – including human souls – imprisoned inside of physical bodies. Whereas we think in terms of digestion, the Manichaeans, in their pre-scientific era, apparently associated “purification” process with eating.

[85]See Teske, op. cit., pp. 42ff.

[86]Augustine, De Hæresibus, XLVI; in Roland Teske, op. cit., p. 44; emphasis added.

[87]In one place, Blunt defines “Cathari” as “Puritans,” op. cit., p. 16. Though, he is of course not insinuating that the 16^th-17^th c. English Protestants whose ambition was to reform the Church of England (which they viewed as too Catholic) were thereby implicated in this debauchery.

[88] Author Stephen O’Shea relates: “Their name, once thought to mean ‘the pure,’ is not their own invention; Cathar is now taken as a twelfth-century German play on words implying a cat worshiper. It was long bruited about that Cathars performed the so-called obscene kiss on the rear end of a cat,” Stephen O’Shea, The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars, New York: Walker, 2000, p. 13. They were ostensibly related to the Bogomils, about which connexion O’Shea comments: “Also common [in application to the Cathars] was the epithet bougre, a corruption of Bulgar – a reference to a sister church of heretical dualists in eastern Europe. Bougre eventually gave English [the word] bugger, which is yet another proclivity once ascribed to Cathar enthusiasts,” ibid. 

[89] Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error, Barbara Bray, transl., New York: Vintage Books; Random House, 1979, p. viii. The pathway for turning Believers into Perfecti, and supposedly the only sacrament professed by Albigensians, was a ritual called the Consolamentum. Cathar expert Malcolm Lambert described it this way: “…[T]he consolamentum, of the act of consoling, …was …the rite …whereby entry was made into the small, dedicated elite of the perfect… It was described as the baptism of the Spirit, or the baptism by fire, in contrast to the conventional baptism by water, despised as the work not of Jesus but of John the Baptist, which made use of evil matter and, so far from incorporating the baptized into the Church of Christ, put him or her into the power of Satan,” Lambert, op. cit., p. 21. This passage is interesting because it suggests that there is a connexion between Catharism and what would later become Pentecostalism. Indeed, this appears to be an acknowledged link in some circles. See, e.g., “The Pentecostal Tradition,” Christian History Inst., 2022, <https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/pentecostal-tradition>. Although the Perfecti were supposedly chaste and renounced both marriage and sexual relations, one writer plausibly comments that “[a]s long as the Believers had not received the full initiation, if need be[,] they could live with a woman, but outside the bonds of marriage. Any sexual intercourse was undoubtedly bad, but cohabitation could be tolerated, but not marriage because, in the event of complete initiation, it seemed easier to sever an illegal bond,” “The Albigensian Crusade (3),” FSSPX.news (communication agency of the Priestly Society of St. Pius X; Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sancti Pii X), Aug. 10, 2021, <https://fsspx.news/en/news-events/news/albigensian-crusade-3-67996>. In his book Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare, Michael Hoffman attributes the licentiousness ritualism to the Perfecti.

[90] O’Shea, op. cit., p. 13.

[91] Manly Palmer Hall, The Adepts in the Western Tradition: Orders of the Quest, reprint ed., Los Angeles: Philosophical Research Society, 2013 [orig. 1949], p. 45.

[92] McCormick, Temple of Love, New York: Citadel Press, 1965, p. 172.

[93] Bear in mind, these strands overlap. E.g., Daniel Matt describes a “Gnostic Kabbalism,” loc. cit.

[94] Hugh Urban, Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism, Berkeley, Cal.: Univ. of Cal. Press, 2006, p. 42. Though, as Michael Hoffman has summarized, sexualization of religious concepts is not exclusive to Kabbalah. For instance, Talmudic interpreters compare Aggadah (or, non-legal, narrative texts) to the male penis, which membrum virile – incidentally – Rabbis sometimes identify with the “image of god.” In the comparison, Rabbinical Pardes hermeneutics is thought of as the manipulation or massaging of texts in order to “pull them” from a limp state (in which deep meanings are hidden under the surface, Peshat), to a fully erect state (in which deeper meanings, such as Remez, Derash, and – especially – Sod, become visible). For an introduction, see Hoffman, Judaism Discovered, op. cit., p. 237.

[95] Daniel Matt, The Zohar (Sefer ha Zohar), Stanford, Cal.: Stanford Univ. Press, 2004, p. xliii; also quoted in Hoffman, Judaism Discovered, op. cit., p. 282.

[96] See Joseph Dan, “Iggeret Ha-Kodesh,” Encyclopedia.com, <http://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/iggeret-ha-kodesh>.

[97] “Kabbalah, Tantra, and Sexual Gnosis,” Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia, <http://tibetanbuddhistencyclopedia.com/en/index.php?title=KABBALAH,_TANTRA,_AND_SEXUAL_GNOSIS>. In the video presentation, I display the following: “This …is the Zoharic recipe for sex magic… In his Prayer of Moses, [Moshe] Cordovero develops the Zoharic model into a complete ritual script… [T]he text adds to this an imaginative preparation for role play, which determines the later placement of the participants’ bodies… “‘Here is its mystery and the meditation required with regard to it: firstly one will wash one’s hands at midnight or during the hours that follow and will purify one’s consciousness and void the spirit of all evil thought… The [the man] will gladden his wife with speech relating to the commandment [of sexual union], at the same time he will bring his awareness closer to the sacred… Then he will undertake to meditate on the secret of the embrace: he is at the level of Tiferet, she is at the level of Malkhut…’,” Brian Ogren, Kabbalah in America: Ancient Lore in the New World, Leiden, Netherlands & Boston, Mass.: Brill, 2020, p. 362; quoting Charles Mopsik, Sex of the Soul: The Vicissitudes of Sexual Difference in Kabbalah, Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2005, p. 140. Cf. Michael Hoffman, Judaism Discovered: From Its Own Texts, Coeur d’Alene, Id.: Independent History and Research, 2008 and Marla Segol, Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A Mythical-Ritual Genealogy, University Park, Penn.: Penn State Univ. Press, 2021. Mopsik draws, in part, from the work of a student of 13th-c. Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia, one Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla – specifically, Le secret du mariage de David et Bethsabée [“The Secret of the Marriage of David and Bathsheba”]. Although the title is in French, the text is (presumably) in Hebrew.

[98] Elliot Kiba Ginsburg, The Sabbath in the Classical Kabbalah, Albany, N.Y.: State Univ. of N.Y. Press, 1989, p. 292. Continuing: The Shekinah is the woman’s “…archetype. At the same time she enters into relation with (and in some sense is completed by) Tif’eret, the divine Other,” ibid. As the book’s title indicates, Ginsburg is principally concerned with the Jewish Sabbath. In this context, he writes: “As in virtually all rituals, timing is of the essence here: the mystic and his wife must engage in marital intercourse at the appropriate moment. Although ordinary Jews may engage in marital intercourse during the week, the adept is bidden to wait until Shabbat, Edenic time par excellence, the hour when the divine hieros gamos occurs,” ibid. Jewish scholars Daniel Matt and Arthur Green amplify this, writing: “For the mystic, sex is not merely a personal act; it is an occasion for communion with God… See [Rabbi Moses] Cordovero’s comment on this passage…: ‘Their desire, both his and hers, was to unite Shekhinha. He focused on Tif’eret, and his wife on Malkhut (Shekhinah). His union was to join Shekhinah; she focused correspondingly on being Shekhinah and uniting with Her Husband, Tif’eret.’ This corresponds to the Tantric ritual of maithuna, in which the human couple focuses on identification with their divine models…,” Daniel Chanan Matt and Arthur Green, eds., “Their desire focused on joining Shekhinah…,” Zohar, the Book of Enlightenment, Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1983, pp. 236-237; citing Rabbi Abraham ben Mordecai Azulai, Or ha-Hammah (“The Light of the Sun”), “ad loc;” Mircea Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, New York: Pantheon Books, 1958, pp. 200-73; and Agehananda Bharati, The Tantric Tradition, London: Rider, 1965, n.p. Or ha-Hammah is a commentary on the Zohar that is an expansion of, and extensively quotes form, Rabbi Moses Cordovero’s treatise Pardes Rimmonim (“Garden / Orchard of Pomegranates”). Matt and Green also (ibid., p. 236) bid the reader “…cf. Zohar 1:49b-50a; 2:89a-b; 3:81a-b; 168a,” and (ibid., p. 237) “cf. above [in their own volume], ‘Male and Female’,” which is a major section beginning on page 55 (and following).

[99] “Shekinah,” Lexico, 2022, <https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/shekinah>.

[100] The proliferation of innumerable goddess cults is viewed by some as remediation for the supposed, earlier, “patriarchal Christian” view that “[t]he Devil worked through women & [sic] women worked their evil through sex,” Poncé, op. cit., p. 19.

[101] According to the Talmud (see BT Yoma 54a-b), the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant were depicted as being locked “in intimate embrace.”

[102] Jewish Studies Professor Nathaniel Deutsch further claims that the Kabbalah was cross-fertilized with the near-Eastern religious tradition of the Mandaeans – not to be confused with the Manichaeans discussed a moment ago. “…[I]nteractions [between Mandaeans and Jewish mystics in Babylonia from Late Antiquity to the medieval period] resulted in shared magical and angelological traditions,” Nathaniel Deutsch, “The Date Palm and the Wellspring: Mandaeism and Jewish Mysticism,” ARAM (Journal of the Aramaic Society for Syro-Mesopotamian Studies), vol. 11, no. 2, 1999-2000, p. 222. Deutsch continues: “During this phase the parallels which exist between Mandaeism and Hekhalot mysticism would have developed. At some point, both Mandaeans and Jews living in Babylonia began to develop similar cosmogonic and theosophic traditions involving an analogous set of terms, concepts, and images. At present it is impossible to say whether these parallels resulted primarily from Jewish influence on Mandaeans, Mandaean influence on Jews, or from cross fertilization. Whatever their original source, these traditions eventually made their way into the priestly – that is, esoteric – Mandaean texts … and into the Kabbalah,” ibid. “Sex to the pious Mandaean is the holiest mystery of life and it is enjoined upon him to regard it as such and to pronounce the most sacred name, ‘the great Life,’ before performing a sexual act. …[S]exual metaphors and images employed by initiates are protected by special oaths of silence…,” E. S. Drower, The Secret Adam: A Study of Nasoraean Gnosis, London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1960, p. 10; archived at <http://khazarzar.skeptik.net/books/mandaean/adam.pdf>.

[103] In the first place, it proceeds from Merkabah mysticism, which recalls a vision of God beheld by the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel. But, Kabbalah was also informed by the time the Israelites spent exiled in Babylon. You should also keep in mind the twists and turns of Jewish history, as the Bible records it. After the period of the “judges,” the people clamored for, and instituted, a monarchy. This created what later became known as the United Kingdom of Israel and what was ruled first by Saul, then by David and finally by David’s son, Solomon. After Solomon died, circa 930 B.C., his son Rehoboam inherited the throne. Owing to Rehoboam’s heavy-handed and poor leading, a revolt was led by an apparently influential nobleman named Jeroboam. The resulting civil war split the nation into the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Around 720 B.C., the Northern Kingdom fell to Assyria. Assyria itself eventually fell to neo-Babylonia which, in short order, ransacked the Southern Kingdom around 586 B.C., destroyed Solomon’s Temple, and spirited many of the inhabitants of Judah to captivity in Babylon. Once Babylonia was conquered by Persia, some of these Judahites would be permitted to return to their homeland where, approximately 516 B.C., they constructed a smaller “second temple” that stood until A.D. 70 when it was leveled by the Roman Empire. But, before this return, the Judahites were interacting – and sometimes marrying – with Babylonians.

[104] Herodotus, The Histories, 199; A. D. Godley, ed. & transl., London: Heinemann; Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1922; archived at the Perseus Project, Tufts Univ., <https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hdt.+1.199>.

[105] Staff writers, “Sacred Prostitution in the Story of Judah and Tamar? Edward Lipiński on the influence of Canaanite Ashtoreth worship in ancient Israel,” Biblical Archaeology Society, Mar. 6, 2022, <https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-cultures/ancient-israel/sacred-prostitution-in-the-story-of-judah-and-tamar/>.

[106] For the details, see Hargrave Jennings, Phallism, London: privately publ., 1889, p. 98.

[107] Also called the Bavli.

[108] Esotericists frequently hold that Judaism was partially informed by the traditions of Sumeria and Babylonia. See, e.g., Sex: The Secret Gate to Eden, dvd, Brooklyn, N.Y.: Thelema Press, 2006.

[109] For the dating, see “Genesis Rabbah,” Britannica, <https://www.britannica.com/topic/Genesis-Rabbah>.

[110] Genesis Rabbah (a.k.a. Bereshith Rabba), 8:1, <https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/115214.1?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en>; quoting one Rabbi Yirmiyah ben Elazar.

[111] According to Craig Heimbichner: “In the sub-rosa mythos of Judaism, God is the ‘Jewish male’ as personified by ‘Adam Kadmon’…Adam Kadmon …[is the] Kabbalistic concept of the archetypal man, the primordial being who is simultaneously the Judaic male and the ‘body of God.’ Adam Kadmon is the androgynous and balanced, completed male Jew who manifests his own deity in this world through emanations of sefirot, which include evil in the left-hand pillar of severity or judgment – one half of which must be balanced with the opposite right-side pillar of mercy …[on the] Tree of Life…,” Blood on the Altar: The Secret History of the World’s Most Dangerous Secret Society, Coeur d’Alene, Id.: Independent History and Research, 2005, pp. 124 and 136. According to Robert Graves and Raphael Patai: “Primeval man was held by the Babylonians to have been androgynous. …[T]he Gilgamesh Epic gives Enkidu androgynous features: ‘the hair of his head like a woman’s…’ The Hebrew tradition evidently derives from Greek sources, because both terms used in Tannaitic midrash to describe the bisexual Adam are Greek: androgynos, ‘man-woman’, and diprosopon, ‘two-faced’,” Robert Graves and Raphael Patai, Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis, Manchester, England: Carcanet, 2005, p. 67, n. 2. Graves and Patai continue: “Philo of Alexandria, the Hellenistic philosopher and commentator on the Bible, contemporary with Jesus, held that man was at first bisexual; so did the gnostics. This belief is clearly borrowed from Plato. Yet the myth of two bodies placed back to back [sic] may well have been founded on observation of Siamese twins, which are sometimes joined in this awkward manner. The two-faced Adam appears to be a fancy derived from coins or statues of Janus, the Roman New Year god,” ibid. “…Graves’ embedded, passing mention of Plato refers to the dialogue entitled the Symposium – or ‘Drinking Party’ – in which the notion of ‘love’ is the main topic of discussion and reflection. …The basic idea of the androgyne, or man-woman, was that this combined state was part of the original order,” according to “Now Playing at the Century 16 Ampitheater of Eternal Wisdom: Aurora Consurgens, Part 2,” Bell Curve (weblog), Sept. 1, 2012, <http://curveofbell.blogspot.com/2012/09/now-playing-at-century-16-ampitheater.html>. Of course, in Greek mythology, it was “Zeus [who] divided the androgyne as punishment for hubris…,” Ibid. In Judaism, on the other hand, this division was attributed to the Hebrew God.

[112] Or, in alchemy, coniunctio oppositorum.

[113] Gudrun Bühnemann, Maònòdalas and Yantras in the Hindu Traditions, Leiden: Brill, 2003, pp. 43-44.

[114] “Now Playing…,” loc. cit. Continuing: ““And Aristophanes’ speech presents [erotic or romantic] love as a sort of searching for, discovering, and restoring this division of halves. On Aristophanes’ conception, the pair need not be male-female, but could be female-female or male-male,” ibid. Cf. Graves and Patai, loc. cit. Cf., also, Manly Palmer Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, reprint ed., Garden City, N.Y.: Dover, 2010, p. 351.

[115] Sex: The Secret Gate to Eden, loc. cit.

[116] In the Kabbalist’s lexicon, this is known as Tikkun Olam.

[117] Whether “the Divine” is an external deity or an “inner god” is debated among occultists.

[118] Greek: gnōthi seauton.

[119] See, e.g., Hargrave Jennings, Ophiolatreia: An Account of the Rites and Mysteries Connected with the Origin, Rise, and Development of Serpent Worship, N.p.: privately publ., 1889.

[120] A key notion is that soon after this separation of the sexes, humanity was expelled from Paradise. Rabbi and Zohar translator Daniel Matt, commenting upon what he views as a possible, alternative interpretation for Genesis 3:24 – which is conventionally and straightforwardly read as God’s expulsion of Adam from the Garden of Eden – says, instead: “Adam drove out, divorced, Shekhinah (the divine feminine), splitting Her from Her divine partner and from himself. Once, as Adam, humanity was wedded to God. The original sin lies in losing intimacy with the divine, thereby constricting our unbounded awareness.” “Zohar Questions – Daniel Matt,” <https://www.sup.org/zohar/QADM.pdf>. Matt continues: “This loss is inevitable—a consequence of tasting the fruit of knowledge, the price we pay for maturity and culture. But the spiritual challenge is to search for that lost treasure—without renouncing the self or the world.”

[121] Biti Roi, “Iggeret Ha-Kodesh,” The Shalvi / Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, updated Jul. 12, 2021, <https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/iggeret-ha-kodesh>.

[122] K. J. Aaron, “Biblical Euphemisms for Sexual Activity,”, posted by Brian Worley, Ex-Minister.org, Jan. 21, 2010, <https://www.exminister.org/Aaron-one-biblical-euphemisms.html>. I’m quoting from “Ex-Minister.org” for the sake of convenience. Though, any number of Bible expositors, theologians, and current ministers readily admit the point.

[123] Cf. Michael A. Hoffman II, Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare, Coeur d’Alene, Id.: Independent History and Research, 2001.

[124] See the Holy Bible, First Kings, chapter 1.

[125] These messianic pretensions had begun to be voiced almost two decades earlier: “In 1648 a scholar declared himself as a Messiah, fracturing the Jewish World,” Marsel Russo, “Sabbatai Zevi – The Messiah That Converted to Islam,” TheJ.ca, Apr. 22, 2021, <https://www.thej.ca/2021/04/22/sabbatai-zevi-the-messiah-that-converted-to-islam/>.

[126] Alternately, Shabbetai Tzvi, 1626-1676.

[127] David J. Halperin, Sabbatai Zevi: Testimonies to a Fallen Messiah, New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2012, p. 8, <https://books.google.com/books?id=bHJvEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA8>.

[128] Ibid.

[129] Ibid.

[130] Also spelled Sabbatians.

[131] Here, the Jewish Encyclopedia uses the slang abbreviation “Shebs.”

[132] Thus, the sect “…included the elements of both asceticism and sensuality: some did penance for their sins, subjected themselves to self-inflicted torture, and ‘mourned for Zion’; others disregarded the strict rules of chastity characteristic of Judaism,” and turned to the sexual shenanigans that have been our preoccupation, herein. All this, according to Herman Rosenthal and S. M. Dubnow, “Frank, Jacob, and the Frankists,” Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906, online at <https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9736-lejbowicz>.

[133] Ibid.

[134] Specifically, Podolia.

[135] Ibid.

[136] Pawel Maciejko, “Frankism,” The YIVO Encyclopedia of the Jews in Eastern Europe, New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 2010, <https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/frankism>.

[137] The Jewish Encyclopedia gives the location as “Lemberg.”

[138] See Marvin S. Antelman’s (possibly born Mosheh Shelomoh Anṭelman) twin volumes: To Eliminate the Opiate (volume 1), New York; Tel Aviv: Zahava, 1974 and To Eliminate the Opiate: Volume 2, Jerusalem: The Zionist Book Club, 2007.

[139] “Frank, Jacob…,” loc. cit.

[140] The 17^th-c. German Lutheran theologian Philipp Jakob Spener is known as the “Father of Pietism.”

[141] Blunt, op. cit., p. 342.

[142] Paul Peucker, “‘Inspired by Flames of Love’: Homosexuality, Mysticism, and Moravian Brothers around 1750,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 15, no. 1, Jan. 2006, pp. 30-64, <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236722092_Inspired_by_Flames_of_Love_Homosexuality_Mysticism_and_Moravian_Brothers_around_1750>. One could also factor in Donald McCormick’s comment that “the troubadours… tried to raise love to the dignity of a spiritual exercise,” Temple of Love, New York: Citadel Press, 1965, p. 170.

[143] Ibid.

[144] According to history Professor Jared S. Burkholder, in “Sects & Sex,” PietistSchoolman.com [weblog], Jan. 17, 2014, <https://pietistschoolman.com/2014/01/17/sects-and-sex/.>

[145] Peucker, loc. cit.

[146] Ibid. Cf. “Christian Renatus von Zinzendorf,” Wikipedia, Jun. 26, 2021, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Renatus_von_Zinzendorf>.

[147] According to Donald Michael Kraig, Modern Sex Magick, Woodbury, Minn.: Llewellyn Publ., 2006, p. 220. Continuing: “…ask any transexual sex magician!” Ibid. Note that “transexual” is an alternate spelling for “transsexual.”

[148] Richard Lines, “The Erotic Dreams of Emanuel Swedenborg,” Public Domain Review, Jan. 24, 2013, <https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-erotic-dreams-of-emanuel-swedenborg/>.

[149] At least, so says Rosemary Guiley in her The Encyclopedia of Magic and Alchemy, New York: Checkmark Books, 2006, p. 40.

[150] “Swedenborgian Church of North America,” Wikipedia, Jul 3, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedenborgian_Church_of_North_America>.

[151] Richard Lines, “Eros, Sexuality & The Spirit,” SwedenborgStudy.com, n.d., <http://www.swedenborgstudy.com/articles/marriage/rl02.htm>.

[152] Manley Palmer Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, reprint ed., Garden City, N.Y.: Dover, 2010, p. 410.

[153] For a list, see “Paschal Beverly Randolph,” Wikipedia, Jun 22, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paschal_Beverly_Randolph#Published_works>.

[154] Including, the Anseiretic Mystery, the Golden Letter, the Golden Secret, and the Mysteries of Eulis. See Lara Langer Cohen, “Paschal Beverly Randolph’s Occult Undergrounds,” Zoom lecture, Univ. of Penn., Nov. 2, 2020; recorded and posted to Penn’s Workshop in the History of Material Texts (channel), YouTube, Nov. 3, 2020, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoIeQTbW7cE>.

[155] Ibid. Author Donald Michael Kraig speculates that Franz Anton Mesmer, whose “animal-magnetism” techniques – which were called “mesmerism” and prefigured contemporary hypnosis – also used his powers (including the stimulation of supposedly healing “sexual arousal”) “to induce psychic abilities”, Kraig, op. cit., pp. 21 & 23.

[156] Randolph was also a “Pre-Adamite”; that is, he believed that humans existed on the earth prior to the Biblical Adam and Eve. This is too large a topic to cover, presently. But, the relevant Wikipedia article associates Pre-Adamism with – what it calls – various “racist” anthropological speculations. See “Pre-Adamite,” Wikipedia, Jul 2, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Adamite#Racist_pre-Adamism>. Again, Randolph’s “mixed” heritage may have motivated his interest in this doctrine.

[157] Urban, loc. cit.

[158] Cohen, loc. cit.

[159] P. B. Randolph, The Anseiretic Mystery; reproduced in John Patrick Deveney, Paschal Beverly Randolph: A Nineteenth-Century Black American Spiritualist, Rosicrucian, and Sex Magician, Albany, N.Y.: State Univ. of N.Y. Press, 1996, p. 317. According to Randolph, “the list of powers attainable by the human being …number hundreds of distinct energies,” ibid.; quoted by Arthur Versluis, The Secret History of Western Sexual Mysticism: Sacred Practices and Spiritual Marriage, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008, pp. 125-126 (of electronic edition), <https://books.google.com/books?id=Q14oDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT125>.

[160] Paschal Beverly Randolph, Magia Sexualis, Maria de Naglowska, transl., Paris: Robert Gélin, 1931. On the angle that Naglowska may have written it herself – and on the description of her as a “Satanist” – see Schreck and Schreck, op. cit., passim, but esp. p. 183.               

[161] Op. cit., pp. 178ff.

[162] Vātsyāyana (attributed), The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana, Richard Francis Burton and Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot, transl., eds., “Cosmopoli” [probably London]: Kama Shastra Society of London and Benares, 1883 (privately circulated).

[163] Richard Osborne, Introducing Eastern Philosophy, Borin Van Loon, illus., Cambridge, U.K.: Icon Books, 2001, p. 47.

[164] Donald McCormick, loc. cit.

[165] Though, in fairness, a Gnostic sect called the Adamites was said to have adopted practices for “…extirpating carnal desire by familiarizing the senses to strict self-control under the extremest [sic] form of temptation,” Blunt, op. cit., p. 5.

[166] Called Dakṣiṇimārga or Dakṣiṇācāra.

[167] Referred to as Vāmamārga or Vāmācāra.

[168] In Kabbalah, similarly, there is a “left side” or “other side” (sitra achra) of the Tree of Life.

[169]E.g., in Kaula (or Kula) Hinduism.

[170]Or, for Kaula practitioners, Kulamārga.

[171]A.k.a., pancha makara.

[172]For instance, an online version of the Encyclopedia of Hinduism states: “Sexuality outside marriage is looked upon as a negative thing.” Constance Jones and James Daniel Ryan,“Pancha Makara,” Encyclopedia of Hinduism, New York: Facts on File, 2007, n.p., <https://hinduism.en-academic.com/576/pancha_makara>.

[173]See, e.g., David Gordon White, Kiss of the Yogini: ‘Tantric Sex’ in its South Asian Contexts, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2003, pp. 77ff. Cf. The reference to the sacredness of “seminal fluid” by George Small, A Handbook of Sanskrit Literature: With Appendices Descriptive of the Mythology, Castes, and Religious Sects of the Hindus, London: Williams & Norgate, 1866, p. 182, <https://books.google.com/books?id=k9A9AAAAIAAJ&pg=pa182>.

[174]And, for some Tantrics, perhaps other “polluting substances,” such as excrement, menses (menstrual expulsion), urine, etc. White compares similar practices among the “Bāuls of Bengal” and the “Nizarpanthis, ‘Hinduized’ Isma’ilis of Western India” (op. cit., p. 77; where the “Nizarpanthis” are, presumably, followers of Nizari Isma’ilism and the Aga Khan [currently, number IV], and may be related to the Khojas.)

[175] Schreck and Schreck, Demons of the Flesh, op. cit., p. 96.

[176] See, e.g., “Urine Therapy,” Wikipedia, Jun 21, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine_therapy>; and “Vajroli Mudra,” Wikipedia, Dec. 15, 2021, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajroli_mudra>.

[177] “Bob Dobbs,” Phatic Communion With [Bob Dobbs], Toronto: Perfect Pitch Ed., 1992, p. 51. The name “Bob Dobbs” is frequently associated with a loose-knit organization known as the “Church of the SubGenius.” Wikipedia calls the so-called “Church” a “parody religion,” and claims that it was established in the 1970s by individuals such as “Ivan Stang” (born Douglas St. Clair Smith), “Philo Drummond” (born Steve Wilcox), and “Dr. X” (born Monte Dhooge). See “Church of the SubGenius,” Wikipedia, May 30, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_SubGenius>. To confuse matters further, my copy of Phatic Communion… has a sticker on the publication-information page stating that the copyright holder is one “Robert Dean” – who may (or may not) be one and the same person as the now-deceased career-military man who became a fairly prominent “ufologist” during the 1990s. See “Robert Dean (ufologist),” Wikipedia, Nov. 18, 2021, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Dean_(ufologist)>.

[178] For an illustration, see the Home Box Office (HBO) network’s “The Master of Non-Ejaculation,” Real Sex, episode 7, 1993; at one point, archived at <http://www.tv.com/shows/real-sex/>.

[179] See, e.g., Sex: The Secret Gate to Eden, loc. cit.

[180] New York: Amer. Inst. of Universal Charities, 1961.

[181] Donald Michael Kraig (Modern Sex Magick, op. cit., p. 25) suggests that others advocating similarly include Alice Bunker Stockham (via her Karezza techniques) and John Humphrey Noyes (through his idea of “male continence”). Noyes, remembered for Utopian-Socialist Oneida Community in New York, also encouraged “communal” or group marriage, ibid.

[182] “Three types of Tantras exist in India; first White Tantra, second, black Tantra, third, grey Tantra. In White Tantra, Sexual Magic is practiced without the spilling of semen. In black Tantra there is spilling of semen. In grey Tantra, the semen is and is not spilled. [That is, s]ometimes the semen is spilled, and sometimes it is not spilled. This type of Tantra leads the devotee to black Tantra.”Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, reprint ed., Brooklyn, N.Y.: Thelema Press, 2001, p. 253.

[183]Ida C. Craddock, Heavenly bridegrooms; An Unintentional Contribution to the Erotogenetic Interpretation of Religion, Theodore Schroeder, ed., New York: n.p., 1918 (reprinted: Whitefish, Mt.: Kessinger, ca. 1990).

[184]Cited by “Ida Craddock,” Wikipedia, Jun. 11, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Craddock>; citing “Baphomet” [Aleister Crowley], The Blue Equinox, vol. III, Detroit: Universal, 1919. No link was provided by way of primary documentation. However, Googling yielded the following URL, especially following the words “Heavenly Bridegrooms.” <http://www.the-equinox.org/vol3/eqv3n1/eq0301275.htm>.

[185] Ordinarily, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn isn’t thought of as preëminent in this subject. But, Kraig (Modern Sex Magick, loc. cit.) summarizes recent scholarly work suggesting that various Dawn members – including Edward Berridge (following Thomas Lake Harris), Dion Fortune (born Violet Mary Firth), and most prominently Samuel Liddell “MacGregor” Mathers and his wife Moina Mathers (née Mina Bergson) – were at least aware of (or obliquely wrote about) sex magic. Possibly, the Mathers exhibited these “mysteries” of magia sexualis in Paris while performing their Rites of Isis. (For the claim, see Kraig, ibid.)

[186] E.g., see Carl Gustav Jung, Collected Works of C.G. Jung: Alchemical Studies, vol. XIII, London: Routledge; Taylor & Francis, 2014, p. 96.

[187] Kraig, op. cit., p, 4.

[188] Andrew Phillip Smith, The Gnostics, London: Watkins Publ., 2008, pp. 152 & 150.

[189] Nevill Drury, Stealing Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Modern Western Magic, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2011, p. 93.

[190] This includes the speculative “Phallicism” of Hargrave Jennings, the oriental pornography of Edward Sellon, the compilations of Hindu mythology produced by W. J. Wilkins, and the Sanskrit translations of “Arthur Avalon” (Sir John George Woodroffe).

[191] Nevill Drury: “The bridging link between Randolph and the O.T.O. is provided by two American esoteric orders, the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor and Randolph’s Brotherhood of Eulis,” ibid., p. 100. Donald Michael Kraig, op. cit., p. 4, says that Randolph “was initiated into the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor.” Who knows?

[192] There are also sporadic mentions of the “Hermetic Brotherhood of Light.” See, “Hermetic Brotherhood of Light,” Wikipedia, Mar. 17, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermetic_Brotherhood_of_Light>.

[193] Joscelyn Godwin, The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor: Initiatic and Historical Documents of an Order of Practical Occultism, New York: Weiser Books, 1995, p. 61.

[194] Ibid.

[195]Kellner supposedly named these as Soliman ben Aifa (Sufi), Bhima Sena Pratapa (Hindu), and Sri Mahatma Agamya Paramahamsa (Hindu).

[196]Tho, Bernard was reportedly born either Perry Arnold Baker or Peter Coon. And he may also have sometimes employed the alias “Homer Stansbury Leeds.”

[197]Or “Oom, the Magnificent.”

[198] Isabel Stirling, Zen Pioneer: The Life and Works of Ruth Fuller Sasaki, Emeryville, Cal.: Shoemaker & Hoard; Avalon Publ., 2006, p. 7.

[199] Crowley refers to his spells as “calls,” and says that they were spoken in “Enochian,” an alleged ancient angelic language that owes its initial compilation and “discovery” to the Elizabethan sorcerer John Dee and his companion, Edward Kelley. This early linguistic material, which included an alphabet, was an important part of the communication, conducted over a period of years, that Dee and Kelley supposedly had with an assortment of preternatural entities during various sessions of crystal-ball gazing (or “scrying,” to use the technical term for it). Enochian largely faded into obscurity until it was rediscovered, as it were, by the British-based, 19^th-c. Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn assigned it great importance, along with the grimoires (or spell books) known as the Key of Solomon and the Book of Abramelin. For a time, Crowley was a member of the Golden Dawn. But its emphasis on magic and Crowley’s differed precisely over the question of sex magic. For example, after resignation of William Wynn Westcott from his headship of the Golden Dawn, the position of leading “magus” (or Chief Adept) was assumed by Florence Beatrice Farr. Farr expressly objected to Aleister Crowley’s advancement on the grounds of his “sex intemperance,” Guiley, op. cit., p. 101.

[200] Guiley, op. cit., p. 57.

[201] P. B. Randolph experimented with hashish and other drugs as well. The Schrecks (loc. cit.) perceive that Crowley may have derived many principles from Randolph without crediting him. They mention the similarity of Crowley’s maxim “Love is the Law; Love under Will” to Randolph’s Will reigns omnipotent; Love lieth at the foundation,” p. 181. One wonders whether Randolph’s “Eulis” may have put Crowley onto the “Rites of Eleusis,” which Crowley (and others) “performed” in London. See “Rites of Eleusis,” Wikipedia, Jan. 16, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rites_of_Eleusis>.

[202] Recall that one possible derivation of “Cathar” had to do with cat worship.

[203] There were other instances of sex magic, as well. E.g., on another such occasion, in 1918, Crowley and a female ritualist, one Roddie Minor (a.k.a., Roddie Warwick) reportedly engaged in a sexual “working” called the Almalantrah. There was also Crowley’s seminal “Cairo Working” in 1904 where his first wife, Rose Edith Kelly, allegedly made spiritual contact with a supernatural being referred to as “Aiwass.” Subsequently, Rose “channeled” a text that would become foundational for “Crowleyanity” and the religion of Thelema: namely, “The Book of the Law” (Liber Al vel Legis). Although the Cairo rituals are not generally considered sex-magical, per se, they occurred during Aleister and Rose’s honeymoon. Later Thelemites are careful to explain that the “honeymoon” has its origins in pagan fertility religions in which newly married couples essentially took religious pilgrimages to be taught sacred sexual techniques. (E.g., see Sex: The Secret Gate to Eden, dvd, Brooklyn, N.Y.: Thelema Press, 2006.) So, I guess, you do the math.

[204] For more on this, see “10 Arcane Words.”

[205] “The Cake of Light is the eucharistic host found within Thelema, the religion founded by British author and occultist Aleister Crowley in 1904 and some neo-Gnostic religions. A common ‘cake of light’ contains kamut flour, honey, a few drops of Abramelin oil, olive oil, beeswing, ash, and sometimes particular bodily fluids such as semen, vaginal fluids, or a mix of both…,” “Cake of Light,” Wikipedia, May 28, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cake_of_Light>.

[206] Explicitly and literally in a form that many modern scholars deny had ever been actualized (until the 20th century). Moreover, Crowley definitely had Buddhist or Eastern-mystical influences, not least from his friend and teacher Allan Bennett, as well as from his experiences living in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). A major Buddhist revival had been launched in Ceylon in the 1880s by (among others) Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, one of the main co-founders, with H. P. Blavatsky, of the Theosophical Society.

[207] As, indeed, it had been to precursor organizations like the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light, and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

[208] See e.g., numerous retellings of the most infamous of these, the “Prague Golem,” allegedly created by the “Maharal,” Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel. But the stories go back at least to the Talmudic rabbi known as “Rava.” In Talmud Tractate Sanhedrin (section 65b), Rava generates a mute “manikin” that is destroyed by Rabbi Zeira. Gustav Meyrink wrote about the creature in his novel Der Golem (“The Golem,” Leipzig: Kurt Wolff, 1915). More recently, Golem folklore was taken up by writer Howard Gordon and director Kim Manners in an episode (“Kaddish,” season 4, no. 15, Feb. 16, 1997) of the Fox Network’s X-Files television show. For an accessible overview of all this, see “Golem,” Wikipedia, Jun. 29, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem>. For a scholarly study, see Moshe Idel, Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid, Albany, N.Y.: State Univ. of New York Press, 1990.

[209] See, also, Michael Hoffman, Judaism Discovered: From Its Own Texts, Coeur d’Alene, Id.: Independent History and Research, 2008.

[210] Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones, 1818.

[211] These manipulations are cryptically communicated in a (circa) 3^rd-century Jewish text known as the Sefer Yetzirah (the Book of Formation”). Although the Sefer Yetzirah is by no means a Golem-how-to manual, numerous rabbinic commentators, such as Eleazar of Worms (e.g., in his Perush ‘al Sefer Yeẓirah), have understood the text to contain all the necessary ingredients.

[212] On this, see: Michael Hoffman, Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare, Coeur d’Alene, Id.: Independent History & Research, 2001, especially material deriving from Hoffman’s contact with synchromystic James Shelby Downard. As first reported by Jim Brandon in his Sirius Rising audio interviews, Shelby Downard had long speculated the U.S. government’s creation of an atomic bomb (spearheaded by General Leslie Groves and nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer), at Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico (the “Land of Enchantment”), under the name the “Manhattan Project,” may have involved – whether centrally or tangentially – an attempt to create a homunculus.  

[213] According to Francis King, The Secret Rituals of the O.T.O., scanned version [orig. New York: Samuel Weiser, 1973], p. 184; <https://archive.org/details/FrancisKing-TheSecretRitualsOfTheO.t.o.-1973/page/n183/mode/2up?q=gestation>.

[214] James Strong, “1564. Golem,” The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (“Strong’s Concordance”), Cincinnati: Jennings & Graham, 1890; Nashville, Tenn. & N.Y.: Methodist Press, 1890; reproduced on Bible Hub, <https://biblehub.com/hebrew/1564.htm>. The word golem is, from a biblical standpoint, a hapax legomenon – it is used only once, in the Book of Psalms, chapter 139, verse 16.

[215] Ibid., p. 185.

[216] Crowley wrote a novel in which this procedure is aimed at producing a homunculus imbued with a “lunar spirit.” See Aleister Crowley, Moonchild, N.p.: Mandrake Press, 1929.

[217] Not unlike Rabbi Judah Loew’s Golem of Prague.

[218] See remark: “…to have corn of so subtle a seed is a great thing once; to achieve it twice were the mark of a primal energy so marvellous, that We doubt whether there be one man born in ten times ten thousand years that hath such wonder-power,” King, op. cit., p. 188.

[219] Birth name “Marvel Whiteside Parsons.”

[220] Either him, or Howard Hughes. See Loren Coleman, “Synchromystic Howard Hughes,” Copy-Cat Effect [weblog], Nov. 28, 2016, <http://copycateffect.blogspot.com/2016/11/Howard-Hughes.html>.

[221] Born Marjorie Kimmel.

[222] Which was illegal at that time.

[223] John Carter, Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons, Port Townsend, Wash.: Feral House, 2004, p. 151. Carter comments that “[t]his abortion story …casts doubt upon the literal application of the term Moonchild” and “…actually serves as good evidence that Parsons was looking for an adult female to arrive,” (ibid.) were the ritual to have accomplished its intended objective.

[224] To put it slightly differently, there appear to be two primary possibilities. On the one hand, it could be that a physiological pregnancy is interpreted as a failure of the sex magic to create the desired homunculus – which, on this view, could be seen as some sort of “spiritual pregnancy.” On the other hand, it could be that the termination of a physical pregnancy – as a kind of magical sacrifice – is understood to be a sine qua non of the rite.

[225]Ed Sanders, The Family, New York: E. P. Dutton, 1971, p. 64.