Unleashing_the_Beast.pdf

UNLEASHING THE BEAST

Aleister Crowley, Tantra and Sex Magic in Late

Victorian England

Hugh Urban

Ohio State University

If this secret [of sexual magic], which is a scientific secret, were perfectly

understood, as it is not by me after more than twelve years' almost constant study

and experiment, there would be nothing which the human imagination can

conceive that could not be realized in practice.

-- leister Cro le yi

What is peculiar to modern societies is not that they consigned sex to a shadow

existence, but that they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, while

exploiting it as the secret.

-- Michel Foucault ii

Aleister Crowley stands out as one of those remarkably enigmatic characters who

has had a tremendous impact on contemporary new religious movements, esotericism

and occultism, even as he has been almost entirely ignored by academic scholarship.

Known in the popular press of as "the wickedest man in the world," and proclaiming

himself the "Great Beast 666," Crowley was the object of intense media scandal, moral

outrage and titillating allure throughout his life. In the years since his death, he has

become perhaps even more well-known as one of the most important influences on the

modern revival of paganism, magic and witchcraft. Yet despite his importance, Crowley

has been largely ignored by historians of religions. In most cases he has been dismissed

as, at best, a pathetic charlatan, and, at worst, a sadistic pervert and a ridiculous crank.

Most scholars of Western esotericism, such as Antoine Faivre, make only passing

reference to Crowley, while leading scholars of new age religions, such as Wouter

Hanegraaff, give him only briefest mention. iii

Perhaps the primary reason for this neglect of Crowley -- and also for the intense

scandal and titillation that surrounded him during his life -- was his practice of sexual

magic (or Magick, to use Crowley's spelling). iv Rejecting the prudish hypocrisy of the

Victorian Christian world in which he was raised, Crowley identified sex as the most

powerful force in life and the supreme source of magical power. Taking an apparent

delight in outraging the British society of his time, Crowley made explicit use of the most

"deviant" sexual acts -- such as masturbation and homosexuality -- as central

components in his magical practice. At the same time, Crowley was also one of the first

Western authors to taken an interest in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions of Tantra -- a

highly esoteric body of teachings and that center, in part, around the use of sexual energy

as a source of spiritual power -- which had long been criticized by European Orientalist

scholars and Christian missionaries as the very worst and most perverse confusion of

sexuality and religion. v In fact, for most American readers today, Tantra is typically

associated with Crowley-ian sex magick. One need now only browse the shelves of any

Barnes and Noble bookstore or surf the endlessly proliferating web-sites on the Internet

to discover the secrets of Tantra, Sex Magick and Tarot , practice Tantra without Tears

or even engage in Wicca for Lovers. As his early biographer, John Symonds, remarks,

"His greatest merit was to make the bridge between Tantrism and the Western esoteric

tradition and thus bring together Western and Eastern magical techniques." vi

-139-

But the question remains: how much did Crowley actually know either first hand

or second hand about Indian Tantra? And what connection, if any, did his system of

sexual magic have with traditional Indian Tantric practices?

This article will continue and expand upon some of the arguments made in a

previous essay, in which I examined the impact of Indian Tantra on Western esoteric

traditions at the turn of the twentieth century, through figures like Dr. Pierre Arnold

Bernard, known in the popular press as "the Omnipotent Oom." vii Here I will trace the

increasing impact of Tantra on Western spirituality in the later twentieth century through

the work of Crowley and his later disciples.

Crowley, I will argue, is not only a fascinating figure worthy of attention by

scholars of religion, but he is also of profound importance for the understanding of

modern Western spirituality and culture as a whole. This importance is at least threefold.

First, with his radical rejection of Victorian morality and his central emphasis on sex as

the supreme magical power, Crowley is a remarkable reflection of his era and of the

sexual attitudes of late and post-Victorian England. viii Second, with his study of

Hinduism and Buddhism, he was also a key figure in the transmission of Indian religious

traditions to the West, including the controversial traditions of Indian Tantra. But as I

hope to show, although Crowley did know a fair amount about Hatha Yoga, Raja Yoga

and other Indian religious practices, he does not appear to have known much about

Tantra. What he did know seems to have come through secondary, superficial and often

highly distorted sources that are deeply colored by the Victorian Orientalist biases of the

19 th century. Nonetheless, not long after Crowley's death, Tantra would soon become

largely confused in the Western popular imagination with Crowleyian-style sex magic.

Ironically, despite his general ignorance about the subject, and arguably without ever

intending to do so, Crowley would become a key figure in the transformation and often

gross mis-interpretation of Tantra in the West, where it would become increasingly

detached form its cultural context and increasingly identified with sex. Finally, in part

because of this equation of Tantra and sexual magic, Crowley has also been one of the

most influential figures in the revival of magic and a variety of alternative religions at the

turn of the new millennium. Much of the literature now being sold under the titles of

"Tantra" and "sex magic", I would argue, is largely the fusion (and perhaps hopeless

confusion) of Indian Tantra with Crowleyian magic. ix

In my discussion of Crowley, I will adapt some of the insights of Michel

Foucault, Georges Bataille, and others who have examined the role of sexuality and

transgression in modern Western society. As Foucault argues, the Victorian era has often

mistakenly been characterized as a period of prudish repression and denial of sexuality.

In fact, the late 19th century witnessed an unprecedented explosion of discourse about

sex, which was now categorized, classified, debated and discussed in endless detail. x

Crowley's writings on sexuality and magic, I will suggest, were a key part of this larger

fascination with sexuality during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Yet Crowley

would also push this discourse about sexuality a good deal further than most of his

contemporaries would have dared; indeed, Crowley would make acts such as

masturbation and homosexual intercourse keys to magical power. In Bataille's terms, we

might say that much of Crowley's sexual practices centered around calculated acts of

transgression -- that is, deliberate violations and systematic inversions of the moral laws

and sexual codes of the larger social order. xi

-140-

After briefly recounting Crowley's early life and background ( part I ), I will place

him in the context of late Victorian society and its larger attitudes toward sexuality ( II ). I

will then look specifically at Crowley's sexual magical practices (III ) and his adaptation

of Indian Tantric techniques ( IV ). Finally ( V ) I will examine the role of transgression in

Crowley's life and magical work; Crowley, I will argue, found in deliberate acts of

transgression a radical form of super-human power that promised to explode the narrow

boundaries of Western Christian society and open the way for a whole new era of human

history. To conclude, I will suggest that Crowley not only reflected his own era and the

sexual anxieties of the late Victorian era, but also foreshadowed much of our own era and

our own sexual obsessions at the dawn of the new millennium.

I. THE NEW AEON: Crowley and the End of the Victorian Age

The nightmare world of Christianity vanished at the dawn...[T]he detestable

mysteries of sex were transformed into joy and beauty. The obsession of sin fell

from my shoulders into the sea of oblivion.

-- The Confessions of Aleister

Crowley xii

The point about Crowley is that he seems to contain all these sorts of ideas and

identities – indeed most of the vices of the twentieth century – and he was dead at

the end of 1947.

-- Snoo Wilson, author of the play “The Beast” xiii

Born in 1875, the son of a member of the highly puritanical Plymouth Brethren

sect, Edward Alexander (Aleister) Crowley embodied some of the deepest tensions in late

Victorian society as a whole. A child raised in a strict Christian home, he would later

turn to the occult arts and extremes of sexual excess. A prolific poet as well as an

accomplished mountain-climber, Crowley would also become one of the most reviled

characters of the 20 th century. He has been described variously as "the King of

Depravity, arch-traitor, debauchee and drug-fiend" xiv and "a perverse idealist, Master of

the occult and slave to the demons he liberated." xv Yet, as his most recent biographer

Lawrence Sutin argues, Crowley was far more than a mere sadistic master of the black

arts; not only was he a gifted poet, painter and "master modernist" in his prose style, but

he was also one of the first Western students of Buddhism and yoga, and "one of the rare

human beings …to dare to prophesy a distinctive new creed and to devote himself...to the

promulgation of that creed." xvi

-141-

The details of Crowley's life are fairly well-known, based on his own

autobiography and numerous popular biographies, so I won't reiterate all of them here. I

will simply provide a brief sketch of his background and context. Educated at Trinity

College in Cambridge, Crowley was from an early age fascinated with poetry and pagan

religion and was a prolific author of both verse and prose. While still a student at

Cambridge he had published his first collection of poetry, Aceldama, and his notorious

erotic collection, White Stains (1898). Having inherited a large amount of money while

still young, he was financially independent for many years and spent much of his time

pursuing his passions of writing and mountain climbing. During his Cambridge years, he

would also adopt the name "Aleister," a Gaelic form of his middle name, Alexander, and

an homage to the hero of Shelley's poem, "Alastor, the Spirit of solitude."

His first real initiation into the world of esotericism and magic occurred until

1898, when he was introduced to group known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden

Dawn. Founded by William Westcott and MacGregor Mathers in 1887, the Golden Dawn

was an eclectic blending of a number of older Western esoteric traditions, including

Hermeticism, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism and theurgic arts derived from Jewish

Kabbalah. An affluent and elite group, the Golden Dawn attracted a number of prominent

artists, poets and intellectuals, including W.B. Yeats. Eventually Crowley and Mathers

would part ways, and finally become mired in a lawsuit when Crowley published a full

description of the secret rites of the Golden Dawn in his journal, Equinox. xvii Revealing

secrets and sparking controversy, we will see, was something of an obsession throughout

Crowley's life.

Beginning in 1899, Crowley also began to explore a variety of eastern spiritual

traditions. After studying yoga in Mexico, he traveled to Ceylon and India in 1901-2,

during which time he studied various forms of Buddhism and Hinduism. As we will see

below, it seems possible that he also learned something of the esoteric techniques of

Indian Tantra --- though perhaps not as much as most contemporary adepts generally

suppose.

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