SEXUALITY: SEXUAL RITES IN EUROPE

Religiously motivated sexual rites date back to the early years of humanity's existence. Since the beginning of farming, the woman's sacral position shifted into the foreground and her secret fertility has been compared with that of the earth, as the planting of the field has been compared to the sexual act. Orgiastic rites aimed at increasing the earth's fertility, therefore, probably date to humanity's early period as well.

Already historically ascertained, however, are the great feasts in honor of Dionysos, who appears as Bakchos (Bacchus) in his orgiastic-mystic perspective. Their distinguishing characteristic was the frenzy, in which men and women—filled with God—stepped outside of themselves. According to Plutarch, the orgiastic feasts were celebrated at night on mountaintops, accompanied by torchlight and music. The wild flock of maenads (bacchantes), who in their frenzy ripped apart young animals and devoured the raw flesh, was accompanied by nymphs, satyrs, and sirens, who performed openly obscene acts. In the train of the Magna Mater cult, these rites entered Rome in the third century bce. Followers of this cult not only performed sexually excessive acts, but also criminal deeds, which, according to Titus Livius, caused the Roman Senate to intervene in 186 bce, and to cease the practice of the cult in the entire empire. This cult already exhibited some of the fundamentals of later sexual rites, up to (or including) modern sexual magic.

Gnosticism

These fundamentals can be seen even more clearly and are theoretically better formulated in the first centuries ce in Gnosticism. In various Gnostic systems, as in many ancient mythologies, the highest divine being is androgynous, just as Anthropos, the primal human, is. In order to return to this original wholeness and thereby escape death, which only occurred, according to the Gospel of Philip, after the separation of the two sexes, man and woman should sexually unite. In a much broader sense, according to these teachings, with this union other fundamental polarities of the world also become resolved in a coincidentia oppositorum. Even the Aeons, as primordial emanations of the supreme being, are said to have come together in sexual intercourse in order to achieve wholeness. For humans, the so-called bridal chamber rite (thalamos, nymphon ), which was mainly used by the Valentinians, was also a way to reestablish the original divine androgyny; a man as earthly representative of the redeemer (soter ) and a woman as representative of wisdom (sophia ) performed the hierogamy (holy wedding), whereupon the present believers copied their actions.

According to an account of Epiphanius from the fourth century (which is not completely above doubt), the Barbelo Gnostics engaged in a prototype of a practice that was also performed in sexual-magical groups of the twentieth century: the ingestion by participants of the rite of the male seed as "body of Christ" and of menstrual blood as "blood of Christ." In this rite, these substances are not used for earthly conception, seen negatively from a Gnostic standpoint, but rather are ingested to achieve self-apotheosis. In Gnosticism as a whole there existed two different ways to achieve this: sexual freedom, but also ascetic tendencies, whose advocates thought to strengthen their spiritual powers by abstaining from sex. A strong proponent was Saturninus, or Satornil, who attempted through strict asceticism (also vegetarianism to a degree) to rescue from Satan's power or influence the part of light in the human being that consisted of light. In a later version, men's sexual proximity to women was permissible, but only in order to strengthen their spiritual power of resistance. This proximity could even extend as far as sexual intercourse, but was not allowed to reach orgasm. This is consistent with ideas that also occur in Indian Tantrism and are similar to the ones ascribed to the medieval Fedeli d'Amore.

Christianity

In the first centuries of the Common Era, the repression of sexuality was a common theme within Christianity, contrary to its Jewish origins and the habits of its pagan neighbors. The Desert Fathers were usually converts with a stormy past whose temptations sometimes led them to the brothels in Alexandria. However, the desert standards of asceticism were very repressive, comparable, as far as sexuality was concerned, to the well-known rule of Mount Athos. The sight of a female, even a hen, was regarded as a great spiritual danger. Another example is Macarius, who as a young man was compelled to marry in order to please his parents. By feigning illness, he escaped the marital bed. When his wife died shortly after, he was very relieved and thanked God (see Leloir, 1982). The apostles Andrew and Thomas exhorted rich women to avoid intercourse with their husbands.

A particular importance for the restrictive aspect of sexuality in Christianity is accorded to the influential church father, Augustine of Hippo (354–430). For him, sexual desire was not something "natural," thus being originally willed by God, but rather a punishment for Adam's original sin, which also had sexual connotations for him. Abstinence was thus seen as a path to spiritual freedom from sin.

Sexuality was sometimes even violently repressed by self-mutilation. Castration was practiced by the priests of Cybele, called Galli. It has been suggested that their practice of emasculation could have had an influence on the Christian rejection of sexuality, which is exemplified by Origen's act of self-castration.

Fedeli d'Amore

When considering the Middle Ages, the so-called Fedeli d'Amore should be mentioned, even if their historical existence as a movement is not firmly established. However, the importance of the movement arises from the fact that Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) is supposed to have been the main proponent of this secret group, which allegedly lasted up to Boccaccio (1313?–1375) and Petrarch (1304–1374). The aim of the Fedeli d'Amore was to free men (and only men) from their earthly limitations and to lead them to divine wisdom through the all-transcending love for a woman (who need not necessarily be a real one, in which case the term woman was to be understood as an allegory for the female principle). Dante called this trasumanar, which means "going beyond a purely human existence." This practice could lead to erotic trials, whereby the man lay naked next to his "woman" for an entire night, but was not allowed to touch her (asag ). Through this "love" that transcended all other powers, he lost his "memory" (his usual human individuality), according to Dante, and reached a higher level of awareness. Thereafter, a so-called "exchange of hearts" is said to have occurred, which may suggest the attainment of a kind of androgynous state.

Renaissance Magic

In the sixteenth century, in a cultural context in which the ancient theories concerning pneuma or spiritus were still popular (see Daniel Walker, 1958), the philosopher and magician Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) achieved a spectacular synthesis between the love theories of Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), the art of memory (see Yates, 1972), and magic. The result, found in two manuscripts probably written in Wittenberg (De vinculis in genere ), is an erotic magic aimed at the total sexual self-control of the adept. The adept, acquainted with the practices of the art of memory, is instructed to learn to keep his fantasies under control. The images or phantasms produced are under certain circumstances transmitted to the individual or group that is to be magically "bound" (this is the meaning of the verb vincire, from which the noun vinculum, "bond," is derived). The images consciously produced by the adept are intended to correspond to the erotic expectations of the subjects to be "bound." The magician operates with phantasms that are sometimes sexual, yet he is at the same time completely immune to sexual stimuli. Bruno recommends that the adept never release sperm, for sperm retention represents the correct way to make "bonds" (vincula). But Bruno does not seem to have any particular exercise of semen retention in mind. His practices, which are meant to control sexuality through imagination, are similar in principle to Indian Tantric practices.

The Skoptsy

("the castrated"), a sect that originated in Russia in the eighteenth century as a dissenting group of the Russian Orthodox Church, resumed the practice of self-mutilation. They still existed in Russia up to 1930, and even later in eastern Romania, where they traditionally exerted a monopoly on coach driving. The Skoptsy are representatives of a view of the world in which the spirit is strongly opposed to the flesh; they believed that only through contempt and mortification of the flesh could the spirit be fully developed. Their efforts to suppress physical lust led in extreme cases to the excision of genitalia. It was said that, in one of their ceremonies, the left breast of a girl aged fifteen or sixteen was excised in a warm bath, after which the assembly took communion by eating the raw flesh that had been cut into fine pieces (Gehring, 1898, pp. 149–150). Even if this story was invented by their detractors, gruesome practices were common among the Skoptsy. Women sometimes had parts of their external genitalia and even one or both breasts cut off. For men, emasculation took place in several stages called seals: in the first, the testes were removed; in the second, the penis. In some cases also the pectoral muscles were cut into. And even mutilations on the shoulders, the back and the legs are attested. One could thus become an "angel with five (or six) wings."

The Khlysty

The Skoptsy derived from an earlier sect whose members called themselves Christy, that is, "apt to become Christ themselves." They were contemptuously nicknamed the Khlysty (whips, or flagellants). Constantly persecuted by the authorities but secretly supported by the fervent nuns of the Ivanovskii cloisters in Moscow and by several merchants, the sect was active until 1762. The Khlysty were ascetic puritans who abstained from meat, alcohol, and tobacco; they fasted, prayed, and performed severe penances. They were said to have practiced infanticide and cannibalism in their secret meetings and to have performed a Black Mass on the naked body of a woman called bogoroditsa (bearer of God), whose child had been sacrificed.

The Khlysty were also said to have practiced a kind of lucerna extincta rite, in which men and women came together at night and, turning off the lights, had intercourse. They were sometimes alleged to have indulged in incestuous or homosexual intercourse. For the Khlysty, promiscuous intercourse took place after lengthy dances and after forty to fifty strong clashes between groups of men and women gathered in opposite corners of the room (Gehring, 1898, pp. 153–154). Even Grigorij Rasputin (1869–1916), who had great influence at the court of Tzar Nicolas II, propagated individual neo-khlystic guidelines. However, he most probably did not belong to such a sect himself.

Lucerna Extincta

The rite of lucerna extincta, as practiced by the Khlysty, has a long history. Livy attributed its origin to the Dionysiac (or Bacchic) groups in Rome. Justin Martyr was the first one (in 150 ce) to accuse heretics of engaging in sexual orgies with the lights extinguished. On the other hand, according to the apologists Minucius Felix and Tertullian, enemies of the church attributed these rites to Christians in the second century ce. Clement of Alexandria mentions them in his description of the Gnostic Carpocratians. In 719 John of Odzun accused an Armenian Adoptionist sect of practicing lucerna extincta; in 1050 Michael Psellus accused the Bogomils in Thrace; and in 1090 Paul of Chartres said the heretics of Orléans performed it. In 1180 Walter Map stated that French heretics practiced this rite; Pope Gregory IX, in his bull Vox in Roma (1233), attributed it to heretics in Germany and to the Waldensians. Several fifteenth-century sources report that the Franciscan "Fraticelli" were involved in lucerna extincta practices.

There are also more recent cases of lucerna extincta rites, including those practiced by the followers of the Russian peasant Daniil Filippov (d. 1700). In 1645 Filippov convinced several people that God the Father had come to abide in Filippov's own "pure body." Thenceforth, Filippov called himself Sabaoth and gained several followers. Seven years later, he recruited the peasant Ivan Timofeevich as son and Christ. Suslov was said to have been miraculously born in 1616 (a purely fictitious date) from 100-year-old parents. The trinity was completed by a young girl who bore the titles of "bearer of God" and "daughter of God." Twelve apostles completed the picture. Suslov was repeatedly arrested and tortured, and, though his followers claimed that he was resurrected twice, it seems more probable that he was eventually released. He lived his last thirty years in Moscow and died in 1716 at the age of one hundred, a mythical age attributed to many founders of sects in Russia.

In addition to lucerna extincta, fornication and debauchery were also attributed to other heretics of the Middle Ages. The followers of Tanchelm of Antwerp (d. 1115), for instance, were said to have organized revels in which young girls were deflowered in the presence of their mothers; wives and children were offered to Tanchelm's lust (see Russell, 1965, p. 65).

In Europe's Inner Demons (1975), Norman R. C. Cohn analyzes the histories of groups that were said to engage in esoteric sexual practices. In dealing with the period from 186 bce to the end of the fifteenth century, Cohn found that in all allegations of promiscuous intercourse there was a suspicious pattern of uniformity. Promiscuity was frequently associated with more gruesome practices, the most common of which was infanticide. He noted that testimonies of lucerna extincta and other practices are directed against groups that seem to form a direct threat to the state or the church and are meant to discredit these groups. These testimonies present a regular pattern, whether they describe Bacchanalia in 186 bce or witch-hunts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; they belong to a stereotype of detraction used by several power groups against their opponents. Cohn admits that the idea of sexual promiscuity is consistent with the dualistic view of the world held by groups like the Gnostics, Manichaeans, Paulicians, Bogomils, and Cathari. But the first four groups were ascetic, and even the sexual freedom of the Cathari "believers" (in contrast to the asceticism of the "perfect") found its expression in individual deeds, not in collective rites.

Witches' Sabbath

Reports of the so-called witches' Sabbath have always been a central theme in the history of sexual rites. What these rites really embody has been answered in different ways by research. As Mircea Eliade wrote, today it is difficult, almost impossible, to determine what was real and what was imaginary when it comes to the witches' confessions. The persecution of witches began in the middle of the fifteenth century, reached its climax in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and subsided around the middle of the eighteenth century. In total, there are said to have been around sixty thousand male and female victims of these witch-hunts; female victims are more numerous, despite extensive regional differences. As Brian Levack states in his book The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (1987), the massive witch-hunt came about because belief in the reality of the witches' Sabbath was widespread. Such a Sabbath was said to involve several witches, who performed blasphemous, obscene rites, which included worship of the devil and which ended in sexual orgies. Therefore, when one witch was condemned, others had to be sought as accomplices.

The English Egyptologist Margaret Murray attempted to prove in The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921) that the descriptions of the witches' Sabbath given by the witches indicated that they were not torture-induced phantasms, nor drug-induced hallucinatory experiences. The witches' Sabbath was more likely the relic of a pre-Christian peasant fertility cult, which continued to exist into modern times, even supplying the roots of the modern witch movement (Wicca) of the twentieth century. This theory, however, no longer has many followers in scientific circles. On the contrary, the sexual researcher R. E. L. Masters, in his book Eros und Evil (1962), argues that the confessions, which contained every imaginable type of sexual debauchery, can be traced to the witch-hunters' morbid erotic fantasies, as well as the victims' hysteria and drug dependency.

Eliade, on the other hand, in Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions (1976), emphasizes that the witches' radical protest against the reigning societal and religious circumstances were expressed through the witches' Sabbath. One did not become a witch in order to indulge one's sexual desires, but rather in the hope that these rituals would lead to redemption from the difficulties of everyday life and to bliss as it was once allegedly experienced by humankind in its primeval state in "paradise." Eliade considered it proven that the witches' Sabbath could not have been about sexual desires, because witches often described coitus with the devil as being extraordinarily painful, and this voluntary suffering indicated that the Sabbath was a severe initiation rite.

Carlo Ginzburg in Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witch's Sabbath (1989/1992) addresses the witches' sabbath in a particularly comprehensive and well-documented manner. Ginzburg's earlier The Night Battles (1966/1985), a ground-breaking work, had attempted to uncover a core of truth in Margaret Murray's unverifiable statements. With the use of court files, he was able to prove the existence of a pagan agrarian cult called benandanti among farmers living in northern Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ginzburg also investigates the true background of the witches' Sabbath. In doing so, he takes the witches' statements during their trials very seriously and does not consider them to be fantasies or torture-induced confessions, in contrast to many authors of mainly feminist bent, who directed their attention almost exclusively to the cruel persecution of women by men. Nevertheless, Ginzburg does not find proof that such events actually took place. Instead, he suspects a more than 1000-year-old residuum of Euro-Asiatic myths and rituals related to shamanism to be the basis of the witches' Sabbath.

In Demon Lovers (2002), Walter Stephens delivers a precise investigation, based on early texts on the persecution of witches between 1430 and 1530, describing sexual intercourse between hellish demons and earthly women. The great interest that the inquisitors, judges, and experts at that time had in this question is not considered by Stephens to be based on hostility towards women or on misguided erotic desires on the part of the men. He is convinced, rather, that these men were concerned with serious metaphysical problems. If actual sexual intercourse between supernatural demons and terrestrial women could be proven, then the existence of demons and their interaction with our world would be proven as well. And if there were demons, then there existed also an order beyond our world, and thus a God. In this way, doubts in God, which mainly arose from Aristotle's writings, could be put to rest.

Black Mass

By the end of the seventeenth century, fears of witchcraft were replaced by a more skeptical attitude. Obscene rituals and satanic cults were only being celebrated in very small circles, in which individual moments were more central, as Gerhard Zacharias writes in Satanskult und Schwarze Messe (1970, p. 106). In 1682 King Louis XIV of France transferred all responsibility for prosecuting witchcraft from ecclesiastical to secular tribunals, effectively ending the witch-hunts in France. Witches were to be prosecuted only if they had committed crimes against civil law. During such legal proceedings by a special police commission against a group of people accused of poisonings, it was discovered that Black Masses being held in Paris were accompanied by erotic practices and infanticide, and Louis XIV's mistress, the Marquise de Montespan, was involved in the affair. Police reports of the time claim that her naked body served as an altar upon which the Black Mass was performed. Intercourse with the celebrating priest usually followed the profanation of the wafer. The performers of the mass were priests; infant sacrifices seem actually to have been performed.

In the seventeenth century, sexual repression in French nunneries in some cases manifested itself in the form of a sexual frenzy which seized the nuns and spread under the guise of a demonic and diabolic possession inside the convent but also to other nunneries. Several priests, including Louis Gaufridy, Urbain Grandier, and Jean-Baptiste Girard, are connected to these cases. The old Gnostic idea that sin could only be conquered by sin was central to these cases, and the nuns became involved in orgies and peculiar sexual behavior. The most famous cases involved Madelaine de Demandolx de la Palud (Aix-en-Provence, 1611), Jeanne des Anges (Loudun, 1633), Magdelaine Bavent (Louviers, c. 1644), and Catherine Cadière (Aix-en-Provence, 1731). One story of diabolic possession involved Elizabeth de Ranfaing (Nancy, 1618–1625), an attractive woman who subjected herself to self-mortification in an attempt to make herself ugly. In 1617 she succumbed to attacks of uninhibited sexual frenzy that lasted until 1625. After the male doctor who was accused of causing this sexual frenzy was executed, de Ranfaing founded a spurious monastic order noted for its emphasis on iron discipline and sexual repression. This order was, however, condemned by the Holy Office in 1644 and Pope Innocence X in 1649.

Frankists

Sexual rituals were also performed under the leadership of the qabbalist Jakob Leibowicz (1726–1791), known as Frank (Davidowicz, 1998, pp. 343, 354-356). Frank hoped that these rituals would enable him to reach the hidden harmonizing Sefira Daat of the qabbalistic tree of life on the terrestrial plane. By performing a "holy wedding," the cosmic harmony would be reestablished. It is not clear how exactly the rituals were performed or how often (probably seldom). At any rate, the sexual acts were performed according to precise directives from Frank, with Frank's followers as witnesses. It is also reported that Frank would suck on women's breasts for "nourishment." Davidowicz advises against judging the Frankists as simple heretics, but rather sees a meaningful link to the latter Qabbala in their teachings. It would be just as misleading to label the Frankists a spin-off of the Shabbateans. In the case of their founder, Shabbetai Tsevi (1626–1676), the practice of sexual rituals is uncertain, even if erotic mysticism and sexual permissiveness were indisputably an aspect of this group after Tsevi's conversion to Islam (Scholem, 1973, pp. 669, 880). In later Shabbatean circles, this sexual permissiveness is much more strongly pronounced.

Magia Sexualis

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, sexual rites became central to the ceremonies of erotic "satanic" clubs. Members of these clubs were usually wealthy young men, such as the English dandy Francis Dashwood of the so-called Knights of Saint Francis of Wycombe, more commonly called the Hell-fire Club. In 1753 Dashwood formed his own sexual brotherhood in Medmenham Abbey, adopting the motto "Fais ce que tu veux" ("Do What Thou Wilt") from the Thelema Abbey of François Rabelais. In 1763 the English public was shocked to learn that even its prime minister, its chancellor of exchequer, and other cabinet ministers had been masquerading as "monks" and celebrating sexual rites with "nuns."

The founder of modern sexual magic is undoubtedly Pascal Beverly Randolph (1825–1875), an African American writer who rose from poverty to become a trance medium and occultist serving the very high aristocratic, literary, scientific, and occult circles in America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Randolph became acquainted with the founder of the Theosophical Society, H. P. Blavatsky, though a bitter hostility later arose between the two due to occult rivalry. In his travels Randolph collected vast knowledge of magical mirrors, narcotics, and sexuality as an access to occult knowledge. Around 1870 he founded the Brotherhood of Eulis, through which he published manuscripts on sexual magic. Randolph's teaching reached Europe through the English bookseller Robert H. Fryar, who marketed Randolph's manuscripts in Great Britain. After Randolph's death, the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor emerged from among Fryar's friends. The brotherhood expanded Randolph's teachings under the leadership of Max Théon (the pseudonym of Louis Maximilian Bimstein, Binstein, or Beinstein; 1848?–1927), Peter Davidson (1837–1915), and Thomas Henry Dalton (1855?–1895?), better known by the name of Thomas H. Burgoyne.

Sexuality stood at the center of the entire metaphysical system and spiritual experience of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor. Male-female polarity was seen as the original principle of the universe and the primary driving force for evolution. Consequently, the sexual union of a man and woman became a practical path to unity, the divine self, and a state equal to that of an angel. The "vital secretions" or "seminal fluids" that are created by sexual intercourse were seen as fundamental elements for the construction of a "spiritual body." Sexuality was the only thing that could bring the neophytes into contact with higher spiritual spheres and powers of a heavenly hierarchy.

Another important factor for the emergence of modern sexual magic was the fact that Tantric teachings became known in the West. The Victorian pornographic writer and amateur mythologist Edward Sellon (1817/8–1866) is said to have played a key roll with his Annotations on the Sacred Writings of the Hindus (1865), which interpreted Tantrism in a one-sided way as purely erotic magical teachings.

Twentieth-century sexual magic

The influence of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor on all subsequent occult groups in Europe and the United States cannot be overestimated; sexual magic became the most intimate central mystery of many of these groups. It is, however, not entirely clear how these ideas were transferred to them. The Hermetic Brotherhood of Light, which was founded in Chicago or Boston in 1895, seems to have played a major role. Seemingly it was from this brotherhood that the irregular German Mason Theodor Reuss (1855–1923) adopted the secret. Reuss in turn initiated the best-known "black magician" of the twentieth century, Aleister Crowley (1875–1947). Reuss was an opera singer and journalist, who founded an entire series of irregular lodges, including the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), which he established between 1906 and 1912. Its sexual teachings, which had undergone much further development since Randolph, found expression especially in its seventh, eighth, and ninth degrees, based, respectively, on autoerotic, heterosexual, and homosexual practices. The Austrian chemist Carl Kellner (1850–1905) was an important predecessor to Reuss.

Crowley's OTO rites differed from Reuss's, from which they had emerged. Crowley, whose well-known motto "Do What Thou Wilt" can be traced back to "Fais ce que tu veux" of Rabelais's Thelema Abbey, but which is primarily directed towards discovering the "true will" of one's own personality, expanded his OTO hierarchic structure to twelve degrees. The eighth degree mainly consisted of masturbating on the symbol or sigill of a spirit or demon that was to be called forth. The ninth degree consisted of heterosexual intercourse in which the sexual secretions were consumed or used for evoking a spirit. The eleventh degree was fundamentally homosexual, whereby bleeding caused by anal intercourse was to call up the spirits, whereas the sperm kept them alive.

The basic premise in this form of sexual magic was the fixation of the spirit and will during orgasm solely on some spiritual or material goal, rather than on emotional climax. In this way the spiritual and astral world would be so strongly influenced that this goal would become material reality. Crowley strived for money and success with women through these activities, but he also sought the path to the "conversation with his Holy Guardian Angel," which must be seen as a type of divine self.

The OTO, which still maintains branches in numerous countries, inspired a series of new movements, which also saw themselves as obliged to perform sexual magic in the most varied forms. Examples include the Great Brotherhood of God and the OTOA (A stands for "Antiqua") under Michael Paul Bertiaux, as well as the Typhonian OTO under Kenneth Grant. One might also include the well-known Californian Church of Satan led by Anton LaVey, among whose members was the actress Jane Mansfield, although their beliefs were less esoteric and more directed towards material and social success. The sexual magic of Crowley's OTO also had a major influence on the modern witch movement (Wicca), a fact which can be attributed to Gerald Gardner (1884–1964). Gardner, who met Crowley before his death, founded one of the first modern English covens and propagated the ideas of Margaret Murray, according to which modern witchcraft relates back to an ancient pagan folk religion.

The Russian "Priestess of Satan," Maria de Naglowska (1883–1936), settled in Paris after having spent time in Egypt, Italy, and Switzerland. In Paris, she probably summarized and translated into French several of Randolph's sexual magic manuscripts and books, and published them in his name with the title Magia Sexualis. Naglowska also celebrated so-called satanic masses and private séances in Paris; these were actually only preliminaries for messes d'or (golden masses) in which seven couples were simultaneously to engage in public sexual intercourse. Self-strangulations in order to enhance the sexual stimulus were practiced in high initiations of men. In her teachings, De Naglowska pleaded for a future matriarchal culture.

In the German-speaking world, the Fraternitas Saturni emerged in 1928 in Berlin from an offshoot of the Panosophic Lodge of Heinrich Tränker (1880–1956), who also led the German branch of Crowley's OTO for a time. The leader of the Fraternitas Saturni was Eugen Grosche (Gregor A. Gregorius 1888–1964). Gregorius, who composed a substantial portion of the lodge's extensive magical material, was mainly interested in creating astral entities with the help of the male and female sexual secretions, which would then be available as spiritual aides when performing other magical operations. The astrological positions of the stars were important for this group—the stars even determined individual coital positions when performing the rites. The famous eighteenth degree of the fraternity's hierarchy, the so-called Gradus Pentalphae, was purely sexual-magical, but most likely it was seldom performed.

Rituals of sexual magic may have also been practiced around 1928 by the Viennese lodge Hekate under the Austrian Orientalist Franz Sättler (1884–c. 1942; fraternal name Dr. Musallam), and by their Berlin branch. Wilhelm Quintscher (1893–1945), who was in contact with Sättler, was also involved with sexual magic in his Orden Mentalischer Bauherren (roughly translates as "Order of Mental Architects"). The Belgian Kymris lodge, which was founded in the 1920s under the Chevalier Clément de Saint-Marcq, was engaged in the ingestion of sexual secretions for purposes of magical rejuvenation. This group considered the devouring of sexual secretions as the actual secret meaning of the Christian last supper.

Italy, too, has witnessed (and is still witnessing) orders that are concerned with sexual magic. The best-known movement is the Fratellanza Terapeutica e Magica di Myriam, which stood under the leadership of Giuliano Kremmerz (the pseudonym of Ciro Formisano, 1861–1930) and based its teachings on an ancient Italic school, to which Count Cagliostro is said to have belonged. The Myriam was connected to a certain Ordine Osirideo Egizio, which allegedly practiced the most secret part of the sexual-magical teachings. However it is not completely clear to what extent the order's manuscripts, first publicly circulated in 1985, contain falsifications. The purpose of the sexual-magical operations described in the manuscripts was to separate a person's solar "spirit" from his physical, astral, and mental bodies in order to autonomize this spirit and to construct around it a body of glory totally independent from earthly constraints, which was supposed to have the ability to survive even physical death. Following exact astrological calculations and long periods of fasting, male and female sexual secretions had to be ingested in a particular order. These procedures were known as Arcana Arcanorum, and they formed a type of "internal alchemy," similar to what has been known in India and China for centuries.

Kremmerz' beliefs were also known to the Italian cultural philosopher, Dadaist, and esotericist Julius Evola (1898–1974), who led the magical Group of Ur from 1927 to 1929. This group also espoused teachings from sexual magic. For Evola, sexuality was the only remaining direct path to transcendence for modern humans. According to the order's documents, followers strove to free the spirit from terrestrial constraints by building a body of glory as an instrument for overcoming physical death. This was to happen by conquering the general elementary "principle of life," which reigns over the earthly world and which was said to hide behind the sexual drive. This principle of life, whose flipside is death, was goaded to increasing degrees through sexual encounters, until it would present itself "uncloaked" in a paroxysm. In that moment this spiritual principle had to be permanently overcome in a sudden and dangerous tour de force. Among the practitioners of the Group of Ur (in contrast to Crowley, the OTO, and Kremmerz), the male sexual magician had to resist orgasm at all costs. If he gave in to the elementary powers hidden behind the whipped-up sexuality, they would overwhelm him and he would be driven to death or madness. This path to immortality was, however, only open to men, because women were considered to be the earthly representatives of the previously mentioned principle of life. Evola, who was friends with the reputed Orientalist Giuseppe Tucci, provided probably the most interesting presentation of the connections between religion, esotericism, and sexuality in his book Metaphysics of Sex (1958), even if it is marked by his so-called traditional idiosyncrasies.

Summary

What constitutes the power of religiously motivated sexual rituals, which have been in existence since the dawn of humanity? George Bataille (1897–1962) sees excessive eroticism and orgies as a transgression of borders that hit human individuality in its most intimate core. Bataille compares this crossing with death, because the same abyss into transcendence opens up in both cases. Individuality ceases to exist and something deeper comes into being: a mysterium tremendum, that which is "holy" in the sense of Rudolf Otto.

For Michel Maffesoli, the orgy and the Dionysic festival satisfy the desire to be together, only on a much larger scale, and they form thereby a necessary counterpart to the ossified rules of everyday life. The arising orgiastic life-emotion becomes then a fundamental structure for society. Maffesoli points out that the orgiastic element is always attributed to darkness, chaos, and night, and thereby it balances out regular daily activities. The divinely social element already represented by community in itself is, according to Maffesoli, celebrated by the chaos of the orgiastic bodies embracing each other in darkness. In the course of this process, one's own body is expanded into a collective body and is thus strengthened.

In conclusion, one must ask whether the term rite is even appropriate in this context. Rite stems from the Latin term ritus, which means "legitimate, regular action." Ritus in turn is connected with the Sanskrit rṭa, which means "cosmic order" or "truth." Is it not the case that the aim of all the sexual rites discussed in this entry is to question and thwart precisely this general cosmic order and legitimate action?

See Also

Castration; Clitoridectomy.

Bibliography

General and easily readable surveys on sexuality and religion include Denis de Rougemont, L'amour et l'occident (Paris, 1939; rev. ed., 1972), translated by Montgomery Belgion as Love in the Western World (New York, 1956; rev. ed., Princeton, 1983), a book that has proven to be very influential; H. Cutner, A Short History of Sex Worship (London, 1940), which portrays the history of the phallus cult; Nicolas James Perella, The Kiss Sacred and Profane: An Interpretative History of Kiss Symbolism and Related Religio-Erotic Themes (Berkeley, 1969), the contents of which go far beyond the title; the richly illustrated book by Clifford Bishop, Sex and Spirit (London, 1996); and Gerhard J. Bellinger, Im Himmel wie auf Erden: Sexualität in den Religionen der Welt (Munich, 1993).

Information about the sexual theories and practices among the Gnostics is mainly to be attributed to the church fathers Hippolytus, Ireneaus, and Epiphanius, as well as to writings from Nag Hammadi. As secondary literature see Mircea Eliade, Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions: Essays in Comparative Religions (Chicago and London, 1976), pp. 93–119; see pages 85–88 for an important analysis of the lucerna extincta. See also Benjamin Walker, Gnosticism: Its History and Influence (Wellingborough, U.K., 1983), pp. 107–132 and 147–158; Giovanni Casadio, Vie gnostiche all'immortalità: (Brescia, Italy, 1997), pp. 97–117, from which readings were held at the Eranos conference in 1990 in Ascona; Leonhard Fendt, Gnostische Mysterien (Munich, 1922); See also L. Leloir. "Infiltrations dualistes chez les Pères du désert," in Gnosticisme et monde hellénistique, edited by Julian Ries (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, 1982), pp. 326–336, and Ioan Petru Culianu, Expériences de l'extase (Paris, 1984). For the development of sexual teachings in Christianity in the first centuries, Elaine Pagel's Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York, 1988) is recommended.

There are only a few references dealing with the Fedeli d'Amore in religious scientific literature, including Elemire Zolla, L'amante invisible (Venice, 1986), and Mircea Eliade, Birth and Rebirth: The Religious Meanings of Initiation in Human Culture (Chicago, 1958). Eliade even attributed a highly probable "initiatic" structure to this movement. See also Henry Corbin's translation of Ruzbehan, Le jasmin des fideles d'amour (Lagrasse, France, 1991), and H. T. Hakl's essay "Die Getreuen der Liebe" in Gnostika (January 1998): 38–43, (July 1998): 43–50, and (October 1998): 41–50. The entire realm of courtly love is explored in Roger Boase, Origin and Meaning of Courtly Love (Manchester, U.K., 1977). With respect to literary historical studies, see the works by Luigi Valli, in particular his Il linguaggio segreto di Dante e dei "fedeli d'amore," (Rome, 1928), and Alfonso Ricolfi, Studi sui fedeli d'amore (Foggia, Italy, 1983). Sexual self-control in Renaissance magic is described in Ioan P. Coulianu, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance (Chicago, 1987). For the Renaissance see also: Daniel P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanela (London, 1958); Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago, 1972);

Promiscuous ritual intercourse is documented in Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, 3d ed. (New York, 1970), and in Jeffrey Burton Russell, Dissent and Reform in the Early Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1965; reprint, 1982). Gustave Welter provides a useful study of practices among Russian sects in Histoire des sectes chrétiennes, des origines à nos jours (Paris, 1950). See also J. Gehring, Die Sekten der russis-chen Kirche (Leipzig, Germany, 1898), as well as the very skeptical Karl Konrad Grass, Die russischen Sekten, Vol. 1, Die Gottesleute oder Chlüsten (Leipzig, Germany, 1907; reprint, 1966), and Nikolai Volkov, La secte russe des castrats (Paris, 1995). Rasputin is the topic of Alexander de Jonge's book The Life and Times of Grigorii Rasputin (New York, 1982).

For the history of the Black Mass see H. T. F. Rhodes, The Satanic Mass (London, 1954), which is popular but outdated in some areas by newer more detailed studies. Gerhard Zacharias's Satanskult und Schwarze Messen (Wiesbaden, Germany, 1970) reproduces numerous original texts, and also contains original material on the witches' Sabbath and the French possession cases. Satanic rites are the subject of Montague Summers's best known book, Witchcraft and Black Magic (London, 1946; reprint, New York, 2000).

The best book on the famous possession cases of the seventeenth century is Robert Mandrou, Magistrats et sorciers en France au dixseptième siècle (Paris, 1968); short surveys are provided by Jacques Finné in Érotisme et sorcellerie (Verviers, Belgium, 1972). For information on qabbalistic sexual rites, see Klaus Samuel Davidowicz, Jakob Frank, der Messias aus dem Ghetto (Frankfurt am Main, 1998), and Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626–1676 (Princeton, 1973). Sir Francis Dashwood and the Hell-fire Club are dealt with in Donald McCormick, The Hell-Fire Club: The Story of the Amorous Knights of Wycombe (London, 1958).

On sexual magic, see Joscelyn Godwin, Christian Chanel, and John P. Deveney, The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor: Initiatic and Historical Documents of an Order of Practical Occultism (York Beach, Me., 1995), which summarizes all known material from this movement and offers an excellent introduction. On the OTO, see Peter R. König, Das O.T.O. Phänomen (Munich, 1994), which was partly translated into English and is available online at http://www.cyberlink.ch/~koenig/. See also O.T.O. Rituals and Sex Magick by Theodor Reuss and Aleister Crowley, edited by A. R. Naylor (London, 1999). The most comprehensive book on Aleister Crowley is John Symonds, The Beast 666: The Life of Aleister Crowley (London, 1997). There is little material available about Maria de Naglowska, the most extensive being the brochures by her pupil Marc Pluquet: La Sophiale (Paris, 1993).

For English-language material on the Fraternitas Saturni, see S. Edred Flowers, Fire and Ice: Magical Teachings of Germany's Greatest Secret Occult Order (Saint Paul, Minn., 1990), a short survey work. One can receive insight into the rituals from Documenta et Ritualia Fraternitatis Saturni, edited by Adolf Hemberger (Giessen, Germany, 1975–1977). This seventeen-volume work has only been hectographed and has never been offered for sale. On sexual magic in Myriam and the Ordine Osirideo Egizio, see Giuliano Kremmerz, Corpus philosophorum totius magiae (Milan, Italy, 1987).

A broad overview of sexuality in esotericism, including Daoist, Tantric, and magical practices, is presented from a traditionalist viewpoint by Julius Evola in his Metaphysics of Sex (New York, 1983). The manuscripts of the Group of Ur are presented in Introduzione alla magia (Rome, 1987) in three volumes, of which the first has been translated into English as Introduction to Magic: Rituals and Practical Techniques for the Magus, edited by Julius Evola and the Ur Group (Rochester, Vt., 2000). See also George Bataille, Erotism: Death and Sensuality (San Francisco, 1991); and Michel Maffesoli, The Shadow of Dionysus: A Contribution to the Sociology of Orgy (Albany, N.Y., 1993).

Ioan Petru Culianu (1987)

Hans Thomas Hakl (2005)

Translated from German by Marvin C. Sterling