SEX
MAGIC
About the Author Born in Heliopolis, Egypt, Frater U ... D... has been working within the magical tradition for decades. He lived in Africa and Asia and trained with yoga and tantra masters, as well as studying languages and literature at the univerisities of Bonn and Lisbon. He is recognized as the founder of Pragmatic Magic and Ice Magic, and has written articles for many magazines, including Unicorn, Thelema: Magazine for Magic and Tantra, Anubis (Germany), Gnostika (Austria), The Lamp of Thoth, and Chaos International (Great Britain). His published works include Practical Sigil Magic. Among his translations are the books of Peter Carroll and Ramsey Dukes and Aleister Crowley’s Book of Lies. At present, he is dividing his time between several countries, traveling the world, and working as a freelance writer, translator, and workshop speaker.
SEX
MAGIC Release & Control the Power of Your Erotic Potential
FRATER U ... D...
Llewellyn Publications Woodbury, Minnesota
Sex Magic: Release & Control the Power of Your Erotic Potential © 2018 by Frater U... D.... All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. First Edition First Printing, 2018 Cover design: Kevin R. Brown Interior art on pages 56–58 by Wen Hsu Interior art on pages 124 and 126 by the Llewellyn Art Department Llewellyn Publications is a registered trademark of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (Pending) ISBN: 978-1-5671-87069 Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business transactions between our authors and the public. All mail addressed to the author is forwarded but the publisher cannot, unless specifically instructed by the author, give out an address or phone number. Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific location will continue to be maintained. Please refer to the publisher’s website for links to authors’ websites and other sources. Llewellyn Publications A Division of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. 2143 Wooddale Drive Woodbury, MN 55125-2989 www.llewellyn.com Printed in the United States of America
Other Books by Frater U... D... High Magic High Magic II Money Magic Where Do Demons Live? Practical Sigil Magic The Magical Shield
Disclaimer Many of the practices and rituals outlined in this book are based on historical and culturally specific processes. Keep in mind that the information in this book is no substitute for qualified medical advice nor should practices be undertaken that could endanger the reader physically or psychologically. Take reasonable precautions especially when working with others and/or in potentially unsafe environments. Because laws and cultural norms vary, it is important to follow reasonable care when undertaking the practices outlined in this book. Exercise caution when ingesting herbs, tinctures, and other materials that can cause allergic or other adverse physical reactions.
Contents
Introduction … 1 Magic, Mysticism, and Eros— A Short History of Sex Magic … 3 The Spirit and the Energy Models— The Foundations of Sex Magic … 17 Taboo Sexuality—The Stress-Free Development and Utilization of One’s Own Sexual Energy … 23 The Stages of Training in Sex Magic … 35 Applied Sigil Magic and the Use of Talismans … 121 The Practice of Sex Magic … 135 Sex Magic Rituals: Invocation and Evocation … 241 Psi-Phenomena, Sex Magic Healing, and Energizing Practices … 253 Practical Sexual Mysticism: The Unio Mystica and the Chemical Wedding … 265 Bibliography … 273
Introduction
The history of practical magic does certainly stretch far back into the primeval past of human development, but all the same it has still taken a long time for it to have branched off into its various sub-disciplines, and ultimately for it to have been divided up into categories, which are sometimes widely divergent. Sex magic itself constitutes one such sub-discipline of the overall edifice known as “magic,” although it’s perhaps the most mysterious and controversial of all of them. It was only at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that the term “sex magic” was first mentioned, and, if it has also frequently drawn the attention primarily of the sensationalist media since that time, the precise details, techniques, customs, and the laws and symbolic structures lying behind it have mostly remained hidden. The work in front of you appeared in its first version in the year 1986 under the title Handbook of Sex Magic: Practical Ways for an Initiated Interaction with the Powers of Sex. Its publication was accompanied at the time by several technical difficulties. On top of that, in those days the situation in the book industry was not exactly conducive to the largescale dissemination of magical literature. So that edition only reached a relatively tiny audience in the German-speaking territories, in stark contrast to foreign markets, where it attracted attention for many years across the Anglo-Saxon lands. There is even a Japanese edition, and it has just recently appeared in Russian.
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Introduction
For this present edition, the original work has been completely revised, restructured, newly laid out, and in some areas expanded. Although the basic principles of magic always stay the same, it has tended to be been the primary task of magical authors—as children of their own time—to also speak the language of their own time, in order to bring an undoubtedly ancient but always fresh culture and system of knowledge offering renewed discoveries together with contemporary magical interests. After a period of some twenty-one years, it also seemed appropriate to bring some of it up-to-date linguistically. So it remains for me to wish that this present edition should find the largest possible network of interested readers, who are then prepared to get to know this so fascinating as well as effective specialized field of practical magic, to explore it and to develop it even further through their own research.
Magic, Mysticism, and Eros— A Short History of Sex Magic
It is considered a virtual certainty that there were sex magical cults and practices in past times, about which admittedly we know little for sure. These cults were most likely similar to what we can still observe to this day in shamanistic societies in, say, the Amazon Basin, in Papua New Guinea, or in some parts of the Arctic regions and the interior of Asia. The shamanic fertility cults of early history often made use of highly sexualized forms and figures; one might recall the Stone Age female forms with their voluptuous breasts and contoured buttocks, sacred representations of the vagina and penis, and so on. In ancient Sumer, sex cults were bound up more than anything with the worship of the moon goddess Ishtar (Astarte), and the Chaldeans cultivated a highly sophisticated form of temple prostitution, which must have had purely sacred and magical characteristics, at least in its early days. In Ancient Egypt there were, among other things, the cult of Isis and phallus worship, while India and Tibet developed tantra and Kundalini yoga, and in ancient China the inner alchemy of Taoism (also called “Taoist tantra”) was cultivated, mainly in court circles. Eros was reverenced in Plato’s Greece, admittedly mainly its masculine aspects, but the Demeter Mysteries for example were also used to placing strong emphasis upon the female elements. In some branches of esoteric Kabbalah, Judaism developed sex magical and sex mystical bodies of thought, and it also included
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some sects like the Sabbateans, who implemented and cultivated these kinds of teachings in their practices. The late Hellenistic Gnostics, who were involved for much of the time in disputes with Judaism and Christianity, had their own licentious sects and sex cults (like the Orphics and Simonians, and indeed the whole concept of Barbelo or “Sperm” Gnosticism), which were also exhaustively preoccupied with sex magic, as it is understood today. Even world religions like Christianity and Islam exhibited certain characteristics of sex mysticism and magic. One need just consider the medieval cult of Courtly Love or several esoteric sects within Sufism. Largely independent of this, but with the occasional specific connections with them also, followers of pagan religions maintained sex magical rites and invocations until deep into the Christian Middle Ages. This later or neo-shamanism underwent a revival via the cult of Wicca or witchcraft, which emerged out of England after the Second World War, and which is marked—at least in its higher degree initiation, the socalled “Great Rite”—by sex magical and sex mystical aspects. At the time of their destruction, the infamous Knights Templar were accused of sex magical practices, but there were still other sects and trends also within medieval Christianity, such as the “Brethren of the Free Spirit” (the Beghards and the Ortlibians), who were well acquainted with such ways of thinking. Overall, however, it can be said that sex magic and mysticism have been largely sublimated and thus “defused” in Christianity, be it then via high Courtly Love which we have already mentioned, via general mysticism and right up until later pietism, or also via alchemy. A development incidentally that we find interesting parallels with in India, Tibet, and China, as well as in Hasidic Judaism. We should not be surprised anymore that people’s attention has been directed for so long towards sexuality’s elemental power. It has been feared and revered, worshipped and vilified, closely maintained and suppressed—open and secret, drastic and mild. Nowadays we fundamentally deal with it in much the same way as our ancestors did for thousands of years. Despite all the research into sex, sexuality has re-
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mained a mystery to us, a book with seven seals, fascinating and terrifying at the same time. Yet it would be wrong to speak of a continuous tradition of sex magic. Although it might seem quite likely, it cannot be proven in an historical or objectively secure way. Rather, we must realize that a vast amount of the relevant knowledge is continually going to be falling into oblivion, only to be discovered or rediscovered at a later stage once more—and this will go on happening over and over again. An unbroken tradition of sex magic in Europe can only be proven to have existed since the end of the nineteenth century, and this is what has decisively shaped today’s sex magic. This then is what we want to turn our attention towards now. Apart from a few scattered groups formed around figures, who were relatively unknown even then, like Edward Sellon in England and Paschal Beverley Randolph in America, the beginning of actual modern sex magic can be securely located in the year 1904, with the founding of the Order of the Oriental Templars (the Ordo Templi Orientis or O.T.O) by Theodor Reuss. As already mentioned, there was also a whole host of precursors, and back in 1870 Hargrave Jennings tried in his work The Rosicrucians, Their Rites and Mysteries to put together a sex magical-mystical interpretation of Rosicrucian and Masonic symbolism. Yet we can see nevertheless in the documents of the Ordo Templi Orientis, that it does openly confess to using sex magic and that this is practiced in its higher grades (from VIII° to X°). Less well known is the fact that Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy, was head of the German division of the O.T.O. for nine years before the First World War, although he is said to have distanced himself relatively early from its sex magical practices. The Anthroposophical camp has always been content to conceal this, but I do happen to know from a reliable source that Steiner is said to have been laid out after his death in the full regalia of a Rex Summus X° O.T.O. and that there is even photographic evidence of this. This point is important, in so far as it puts the—in my opinion—up to now often undervalued role of the O.T.O. into a better light, because contemporary sex magic owes an enormous amount to this order, not least to its subsequent head
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Aleister Crowley (1875–1947). It was this magician, probably the most viciously slandered and misunderstood of all time, who gave modern sex magic its most decisive impetus, and not just through his introduction of an additional (XI°) grade within the O.T.O. which is principally engaged with homoerotic practices. Whatever else one might make of the Master Therion, what definitely remains undisputed is his enormous contribution to modern, pragmatically oriented sex magic. In which case it is amazing that Crowley never really revealed openly the innermost secrets of his order during his lifetime, when he had otherwise been so fond of fame and scandal. However further developments did follow through the diary entries published after his death and the decryption of many of his writings on the subject, which were later taken up long after Crowley’s death by authors such as Kenneth Grant and Francis King, as well as by Louis Culling, Israel Regardie, Michel Bertiaux, or Peter Carroll. The Forbidden Book of Knowledge, by the American Charles Fairfax Thompson, known to only a few insiders, also benefits greatly from it, and since then the number of authors associated with it has become legion, especially in the Anglo-Saxon territories. Many of them admit to copying the Master Crowley more or less subtly, without ever really trying to develop his ideas any further. In this book we are destined to encounter him on a regular basis. Less well known in this context is the Englishman Austin Osman Spare (1886–1956), who enhanced sex magic primarily through his own sigil magic and his concept of “atavistic nostalgia,” which we will discuss later in greater detail. Spare was also a member for a short time of Crowley’s A... A... order, which was later merged with the O.T.O. under the aegis of the Master Therion, but soon went back onto his own path once again. His influence is particularly evident in modern chaos magic, which has revived his Zos-Kia cult within its own I.O.T. (Illuminates of Thanateros) cult and “rejuvenated” it with contemporary ideas (quantum physics, existentialism, and structuralism). In this context the Fraternitas Saturni (F.S.), which broke away from the German Pansophic movement under Gregor A. Gregorius (Eugen Grosche) and which at least in theory maintained sex magic in its 18th grade (the “Gradus Pentalphae”), should not be forgotten either. This
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order will also be mentioned occasionally in the appropriate context. Gregorius maintained friendly relations with Aleister Crowley right up to his death. It can probably be said with total justification that the Fraternitas Saturnis also preserved and made use of the sex magical knowledge of the O.T.O. over a long period of time, while the latter only fragmented into various groups after Crowley’s death. This was ultimately a fate that was also to be suffered by the F.S., and on repeated occasions, until it re-achieved a level of stability and consolidation at the beginning of the 1980s. Nevertheless, the “special publications” from this order plus some editions of its internal periodical “Saturn-Gnosis” offer interesting insight into the older sex magical practices. This brief outline of the history of sex magic should suffice for now, as we don’t want to engage with the countless small and even minute groups and micro-groups, which are likewise preoccupied with sex magic, from the Adonistic Society of Ra-Omir Quintscher to the Parisian Randolph circle around Maria de Naglowska. In any case this overview will only be of use to the reader with a special historical interest, without truly being able to take us to any deeper levels. Whoever is interested in this aspect of the material is referred to the extensive bibliography in the appendix. For the most part the works of Evola, Hemberger, and Frick will give sufficient insight into the historical contexts of organized sex magic before the Second World War. So in those areas where we have knowingly profited from these pioneers, they have for the most part been given the coverage they deserve. However, as we have emphasized already, one should also be liberated from the illusion that there is such a thing as a history of sex magic. In fact, sex magic presents merely the same level of chaos as the history of sexuality itself. Incidentally these kinds of detailed studies are of use mostly to the theoretician and the historian, and are only of minor value to the practician. This is even more so, since readers of earlier pioneers and trailblazers in this field often encounter only bitter disappointment: It’s rarely that these authors call a spade a spade, and for the most part the reader must fight their way through a tangle and mess of allusions, encryptions, and moral admonitions, before they get to the practical part.
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This can then often be disappointingly flat and presented in a superficial and misleading fashion. It’s precisely this defect that we want to correct in this book. On the other hand, this historical grounding does help us to determine our own stage of development more clearly and sharply. The sex magician is also a child of his or her time, likewise influenced by it and benefitting from their involvement with it. It would be dishonest to conceal this. No, it would even be most unwise, because by this very knowledge we often gain a considerable magical power: Whoever knows the strong and weak points of his or her own time, their own predecessors and sources, can make use of them far more effectively than the historically unaware and uprooted human being, who is then required to use up a large amount of energy in repeatedly defining his or her own point of view, and, to use one particular image, has to keep constructing a house built on sand, because he or she keeps repeating past mistakes countless times. What’s more, this knowledge does in fact play a prominent role in atavistic sex magic. That’s why we would like to urge every aspiring sex magician to get acquainted with the history of sex magical ways of thinking and cultural manifestations. Because yesterday determines today, and only that person who has knowledge of yesterday and today can then hope to master, form, and shape tomorrow using their own powers. Although the mystic only knows the eternal Now, he or she is by no means rootless, and does not repudiate the past out of foolish shortsightedness—or just as little the future, which is “only” in fact the now of tomorrow, simultaneously both its fulfillment and its goal. Only someone who has internalized this approach is also able to make the now complete so that it incorporates yesterday and tomorrow and spans both. They can finally dispense with those kinds of distinctions, and overcome them. The orgasm is timeless. Nevertheless, it does have its history and its implications, and it is infinite and time-conditioned at the same time. All this of course does not mean that you can only—and are only allowed to—practice sex magic after a long and intensive study of its history. Ultimately it’s only the personal practice that counts, and that which is past as well as that which is to come both form part of this. Whoever
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thinks that they can’t and shouldn’t learn from history can then confidently do without it. However, in doing so they will probably miss out on some valuable guidance and miss its presence in their practice, and will have to uncover and formulate quite a lot very laboriously and from scratch. On the other hand, it doesn’t make much sense to gaze as if spellbound upon history, without ever establishing a link to the present day— that would be the other extreme. Sex magic will only ever take place today, in the here and now and in the physical as well as spiritual practice. Between these two opposing positions lies the happy medium of learning and planning, of receiving and thus creating the divine/demiurgic in the magic of sex. It’s this path that we want to take here.
Before You Start: The Risks and the Prerequisites Of all the secret sciences, sex magic has for centuries been considered the most dangerous. We know today how much this attitude actually reflected the carnal hostility of the then all-powerful Christian church. But even then the problem isn’t off the agenda conclusively, since it cannot be denied that sex magic undoubtedly does have its problematic and downright dangerous aspects as well. However these can frequently lie—as they also do in magic generally—on completely different levels to those we might often assume they are on. We must sum it up here using a comparison which we will keep making again and again: Sex magic is (like all magic also is) no more dangerous and no less dangerous than driving. It requires training and practice and has its rules and laws. Those wishing to make use of it must be in the appropriate condition and stay attentive. So one should certainly not trivialize the dangers of sex magic, but not overemphasize them either, as that wouldn’t help anyone, the actual human being involved least of all. Incidentally, it is a genuinely regrettable but undeniable fact that those people who are preoccupied with warning us of the dangers of sex magic most vocally, are usually the most sexually uptight and will have no practical experience of sex magic whatsoever. When you attend driving school in order to learn how to drive, you are not as a rule going to let yourself be terrified for hours before you
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start, by depictions of accidents and of the dangers of driving on the roads. A reasonable course of driving instruction will of course point out the genuine dangers and risks as a part of the curriculum, but it will not needlessly disconcert the beginner in advance. Similarly, we don’t want to discuss here the actual dangers of sex magic too early on, but rather we will deal with them as seems appropriate during the course of the practice we are outlining and recommending here. Instead we will deal first of all with the prerequisites for sex magic, as we understand them. Basically sex magic is possible for men and women. We will by all means always be mindful of the existing differences between male and female sexuality, wherever this seems expected of us, but for now suffice it to say that we won’t make any judgmental distinctions here between genders, and that we won’t even be able to, because this would be against the whole philosophy of sex magic. Because sex magic is not formulated in the first place for men or for women, for Asians or for Europeans, initiates or the unsaved, but for the human being him- or herself, regardless of racial, denominational, social, or gender differences. Nevertheless, sex magic has not up to now been something for the masses and it probably never will be either. Let’s not forget that the human treatment of sexuality, which we will go on to discuss in greater detail, is—in terms of its emotional explosiveness—tantamount to toying with a hand grenade! No power, no impulse dominates us so completely, so seemingly irrationally and so exclusively as sexuality does; no instinct must to such a great extent serve as a reservoir for our primal existential fears and uncertainties. Sex magic is more though than just the ritual handling of sexuality and it will actually lead to us overcoming those limitations, which on the one hand our sexuality is influenced by and which on the other hand it so frequently actually sets for us. To that extent we are actually getting ourselves involved with a “hot potato” when it comes to sex magic. So those people who want to practice sex magic will initially need courage—the courage sexually to overcome the limitations of what’s familiar to you, to look your sexually-related fears in the eye and to get past them, without replacing them or summarily eradicating them.
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This willingness is essential (and this will be put to the test over and over again in the course of your practice!), and without it sex magic can actually become a true spiritual hell. That would be like an aspiring motorist who when driving refuses to conform to the general pace of the traffic flow, and who sometimes stops and sometimes accelerates on a completely arbitrary and unpredictable basis: in such a way, that person is only endangering themselves and everyone else. But that does not mean, to continue the analogy, that everyone needs to develop the same ambition to become a racing driver! Sex magic has nothing to do with high-performance sports. If a person has the feeling that it’s enough for now, and that he or she in that moment really can’t cope with it anymore, then it would be the height of folly to use force to try and push forward their advancement. On the other hand you don’t learn to swim just by jumping straight into the water, so everyone has to find their own balance between being tough and being gentle towards themselves. In sex magic, you should underburden yourself just as little as overburden yourself. In this regard, though, you find your own middle way, and thus your own center, and in this way the gateway to success stands open. Secondly sex magic demands one-pointedness. It is not exercised only for its own sake, at least not initially. The explicit, focused setting of the will must precede it, if you don’t simply want to cultivate just a bizarre interaction with sexuality, without in the process ever really feeling the actual magic. Why then should a person opt for sex magic? There could be many varied reasons for this, a few of which are listed here in an abbreviated form: the general interest in an expanded sexuality, increased via magical interaction with the energies of the soul and of the universe; the interest in a particularly effective magical technique; the spirit of investigation; the longing to expand your own limits; interest in the conscious treatment of your anxieties and feelings; the wish to perfect and round off your own magical development; delight in the magical interaction with sexuality; the intuitive “gut feeling” that this is the way for you; and so on. Before you undertake to practice sex magic, you should be clear why you want to do it. This is for psychological as well as technical reasons:
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Firstly you will thus clarify for yourself your own relationship with sexuality and with magic, in so far as you can look sufficiently deep into yourself during your self-examination; and secondly you can then more capably work with a surer hand on those sub-divisions of sex magic which correspond closest to your concerns. Please consider also that no guidelines will be laid down here as to which motives for making use of sex magic are “noble” and “right,” and which “ignoble” and “false”! First and foremost it’s just a matter of becoming aware of what yours are. However, I would also like to draw your attention to motives which, as experience has shown, are likely to have a rather more problematic outcome: If you are looking for a tradeoff in sex magic, a substitute for frustrated sexuality, you will encounter several difficulties. Sex magic certainly does not require a magician, who is already—beyond good and evil—completely free from human needs and emotions, but it is also no substitute for a sexuality which is not being acted out. We hope that it will become clear in the course of these instructions, that sex magic is not the same as sexuality—an important point that can’t be made often enough! We are not claiming at this point that you should have to stay away from sex magic if you are merely looking to it for a substitute satisfaction, or even for the chance to be able at last to live out in a “legitimate” way all those things you would otherwise not dare to do (e.g., group sex, partner swapping, etc.). Even this can be an adequate driving force, which will eventually lead to real sex magic, but in this case you must deal as a priority and on an in-depth basis with the preparatory practice, which we will go on to dedicate some pages to. Basically if you don’t carry that out, you will then find that sex magic will only further broaden your collection of disappointments, and will take in several more, possibly especially “ugly” experiences, that you would be better off avoiding! Granted, sex magic does work with the energy of lust, but according to those criteria it does not always lead to pleasure, and in fact much of the time it can even be quite laborious. If anyone places expectations upon sex magic that should rather be directed towards addressing their own sexual inhibitions, the ball will be put back in their court without notice and without mercy.
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Unlike Eastern tantra, Western sex magic works very emphatically with both the male and female orgasm. This means that the ability of the practitioner to have an orgasm is of course also a necessary prerequisite for the execution of this art. This applies at least to physically/ sexually healthy people, meaning those capable of organic orgasm. For those who for psychosomatic reasons have difficulties with orgasm, the path of sex magic need not remain closed to them for long; he or she clearly must unlock this facility (again) for the so-called “higher” levels, and the relevant instructions on the subject will be given in this book. Orgasm avoiding practices like tantra, Taoist yoga, Carezza, etc. do still undoubtedly have their place as auxiliary disciplines within sex magic, but many sex magical operations do specifically and unavoidably demand the orgasm of the male or female magician. However we don’t necessarily mean by that the pure genital orgasm (the so-called “peak orgasm”), as we commonly know it. The “valley”—or “whole-body orgasm”—which in the man’s case usually takes place without ejaculation, is not merely completely adequate, but is often even preferable to peak orgasm. Again we will discuss this in greater detail in the appropriate context. Finally one further requirement should be mentioned, one which applies to all magic: The magician must be equipped with a stable spiritual (“psychic”) constitution. This point is perhaps the most delicate of all, and this is for several reasons: we must say first of all that the term “stable” is left unclear, and unfortunately it can’t be defined any more precisely than that. Whoever in life can only keep their head above water with great difficulty, in the spiritual/psychological sense, and who constantly runs the risk of being pushed over the edge because of a psychotic or schizoid event, should steer well clear of any form of magic. We can’t stress that often enough! The second reason why the term “stable psycho-spiritual constitution” is somewhat problematic, seems actually to contradict the previous requirement: Namely that it is often the case that it is inner spiritual tensions that actually facilitate a person’s magical inclination in the first place! Gregorius A. Gregorius illustrated this once using astrological symbolism: normally no old school astrologer particularly likes to see
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squares, i.e., 90 degree aspects in natal astrology, in transits or directions. They are considered to be problematic and full of tension—often as almost catastrophic—even if modern, and above all depth-psychology oriented astrology, have greatly weakened and relativized this principle since then. However Gregorius then in turn claims that in principle a magician could not actually have enough squares! Because these, he points out, are “cosmic influx angles,” meaning positions which make you susceptible to the supra-individual or transpersonal, and thereby to magical powers. This means, translated into the language of psychological magic: only internal and external tensions ever open us up to, and make us able to handle, the magical powers in ourselves and inherent in the world. In other words: were the magician not already in constant danger of slipping over into so-called “madness,” neither would they be in possession of those powers which are necessary for the practice of his or her profession. In this respect magic to a certain extent even represents a form of therapy for mental-spiritual disturbances. In fact it is often referred to as a kind of “controlled schizophrenia,” mainly in connection with so-called “theurgic” and possession magic. This brings us at last to the question of what magic really is. If you have been studying magical literature for a long time, you will already have encountered numerous definitions of magic. We would like to limit ourselves here to the following, which is a modification of the well-known formulation of Aleister Crowley, the doyen of modern magic, and state that: “Magic is the art and science of bringing about changes upon the material and spiritual levels by means of altered states of consciousness.” “By means of altered states of consciousness”—this is a principle you should memorize word for word. Because, as chaos magic aptly formulates it: “Altered states of consciousness are the key to magical abilities.” In this book, we call the states of consciousness that magic requires, similarly based on chaos magic, “Gnostic trances” or, in brief, “Gnosis.” Gnosis is a late-Hellenic term which actually equates to “intuitive, revealed knowledge.” It is used here in this modern context, because it means on the one hand that the intuitive and subjective aspect of magi-
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cal action is being emphasized, and on the other hand that, with the “Gnostic trance,” we are dealing with a kind of “hyper-lucidity,” therefore “super-knowledge,” an elevated “clear” seeing, which there is no proper equivalent for in our vocabulary. This condition could perhaps best be described as a mixture between “revelation” and “clairvoyance.” Sex magic draws a large part of its power precisely from the fact that sexuality in general and the orgasm in particular offer us a “natural” Gnostic trance almost ideal for magical work. (Crowley called this “eroto-comatose lucidity,” meaning a clairvoyance brought about by erotic practices, which is similar to a coma or a bout of unconsciousness.) So this largely requires us to dispense with an often very intricate meditative and mystical trance training, because we are from the outset making use of that natural trance which we call at its peak the orgasm or, approaching it, sexual arousal. It does need to be understood though that the term “trance” here does not mean anything like a full hypnotic trance, when the client loses all control over his or her own actions and can arbitrarily be manipulated by a hypnotist. The Gnostic trance does indeed resemble the hypnotic one in a few external characteristics, but it maintains completely the freedom of will and freedom of choice of the magician, even if they may in doing so be in a different, often apparently quite bizarre reality. The three pillars of conventional Western magic, as we understand it today, are will, imagination, and Gnostic trance. We discussed the latter straight off, and this was for good reason: without it, will and imagination alone are actually as good as useless! On the other hand this realization, even though it was well known to the old masters during medieval times for example (granted it remained unspoken), it wasn’t actually taught in magical literature until relatively late, that is until the 1970s and ’80s. Until then will and imagination alone were deemed to be wholly sufficient for magical practice. Unfortunately this then offered us a magic that in its basic structure could barely be differentiated from positive thinking and other similar psychological practices, and accordingly only achieved similarly laboriously gained if not entirely superficial results. Only now, via a relatively late encounter with shamanism, and the development of “freestyle shamanism” based on
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contemporary chaos magic, have we really become aware of what a key role Gnostic trance plays in all magic. Will and imagination also correspond to one-pointedness and visualization capability. These were strongly maintained in the Western tradition, probably most extensively and in the most sophisticated manner in the works of Franz Bardon. It’s important to mention once again that sex magic and sex mysticism are quite different from each other, in as much as the former is mostly goal and success oriented, while the latter as a rule forgoes any influence of a material or psychological kind, to place in the foreground primarily the experience and the ecstasy (itself a form of Gnostic trance!) instead. At the conclusion of this book we have added a sex mystical ritual, which will serve as a rounding off and completion. In reality, the separation between magic and mysticism is actually an artificial distinction only from a certain level onwards: for in the end the magician and the mystic become at some point one again, because they are both actually striving towards divinity and have already up to this point recognized and exercised their right to creation, even if then they often will opt to abandon its actual practice!
Body, Mind & Spirit / Magick Studies
UNLEASH THE PRIMAL POWER AND POTENT MAGIC OF MYSTICAL SEXUAL PRACTICES Harnessing the elemental power of sexuality is one of the oldest and most important disciplines in magic practiced by a wide variety of cultures and magical sects. In Sex Magic, one of the world’s most respected magicians shares the rituals and practices of this fascinating secret science. Join Frater U D as he explores practical and highly effective rituals for transforming sex into magical success in a way that is courageously free of taboos. This book is a thorough examination of erotic magical power, providing hands-on exercises and exploring how and why the magic works for you.
Frater U D is the founder of Pragmatic and Ice Magic, and he’s Europe’s best-known practical magician and contemporary occult author. He has written more than twenty-five books. Among his translations are the books of Peter Carroll and Ramsey Dukes, as well as Aleister Crowley’s Book of Lies. He lives in Wakefield, England.
$22.99 US
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