Gnosticism & The "Real" World Part 12

The mystery of sex and the power and understanding derived from the practice of sexual magick is very important to any understanding of Aleister Crowley. In Gnostic Philosophy on page 343 we have some important information: "On June 28, 1930, Crowley reflected in his diary, "Spiritual attainments are incompatible with bourgeois morality." The morality Crowley is referring to is based on the restriction of natural impulse; a cocantenation of fear of disease, fear of self, fear of poverty, fear of truth, and ultimately fear of life itself."

Churton also has a wonderful letter that Crowley wrote in 1913 to a Dr. Graham of Cambridge on page 343 to 344: I should have supposed that any mind could see that the finest possible thing is the indissoluble union of the whole of two personalities. Such union would be Samhadi [union with Brahman] and in accordance with the One Great Law through whose operation we get back to God.

I should also have thought even the conventional mind could see that this union was not secured by marriage, and owing to this failure, marriage has today become certainly to the young a symbol for the association of all that is vile and degrading with all that should be most pure...It has consequently already been replaced by hazardous unions between economically independent people. That such unions are not open and respectable prevents them from developing into unions which would be marriage in all but name. Respectability, as always, defeats itself.

How I love that last sentence! Also on page 344 of Gnostic Philosophy: "Crowley regarded the sexual life of his time as a mass of hypocrisy that stirred up something akin to an international neurosis that could find satisfaction only in conflict of the destructive kind. On the outside, a crisp sugary coating of sentiment, lush, romantic and dreamy; on the inside, a craven desire for satisfaction of a blind urge with the reward of a relief redolent of defecation."

I think Churton is "spot on"-especially with this last sentence. How many times have you heard- "I need to get laid" and other "romantic" :-) phrases like that to describe something that should be beautiful and also something that links one soul to another? Continuing on page 344: "Crowley cut through the whole morbid morass with a sharpened scalpel in an attempt to clean out society. His efforts, as we might expect, earned him the kind of innuendo, police harrassment, tabloid character assassination, and widespread denunciation that would later be meted out to another sexual pioneer, Wilhelm Reich. It was not society but Aleister Crowley who was King of Depravity, living on immoral earnings, debauched, diseased, and demonic."

As Churton points out-not only did Crowley want to make sex holy and ineffable again-but he wanted people to take notice -to see what William Blake meant when he said, "The Lust of the Goat is the Bounty of God" and "Everything that lives is Holy."

According to Crowley: The close connection of sexual energy with the higher nervous centres makes the sexual act definitely magical. It is therefore a sacrament which can and should be used in the Great Work. The act being creative, ecstatic and active, its vice consists of treating it as sentimental, emotional and passive. Then going back to Tobias Churton on page 345: Crowley's theory of sex departs from the conception that ecstasy is a mystical state and that orgasm represents not only the condition whose sublimation is laughter but also, more important, the temporary annihilation of the ego-bound consciousness, thereby permitting in principle the unveiling of the unconsciousness..."

Also on page 345 to 346 of Gnostic Philosophy is a fragment of Hermes Trismegistus' dialogue with Asclepius which was found in a Coptic version of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945: And if you wish to see the reality of this mystery, then you should see the wonderful representation of the intercourse that takes place between the male and female. For when the semen reaches the climax, it leaps forth. In that moment the female receives the strength of the male; the male for his part receives the strength of the female, while the semen does this.

Therefore the mystery of intercourse is performed in secret, in order that the two sexes might not disgrace themselves in front of many who do not experience that reality, [it is] laughable and unbelievable. And, moreover, they are holy mysteries, of both words and deed, because not only are they not heard, but also they are not seen.

Therefore such people [the unbelievers] are the blasphemers. They are atheistic and impious. But the others are not many; rather, the pious who we counted are few. Therefore wickedness remains among the many, since learning concerning things which are ordained does not exist among them. For the gnosis of the things which are ordained is truly the healing of the passions of matter. Therefore learning is something derived from gnosis.

It would seem that Aleister Crowley realized that sexual magick was a virtually constant thread that was hidden in the symbolism of all of the world's esoteric teachings. Going way back to Hermes thinking on the subject "God eternally generates the cosmos, and that cosmos possesses generative power, and thereby maintains all races that have come into being." Another way of looking at this thinking is that a higher-more ineffable kind of "sex" is not only how God generates All but is also how he "looks" through the "eyes" (or any other sense organs) of the beings and things he has created.

Crowley did have a new take on the classical ascetic and Gnostic concepts of divine sexual union. His notions of purity and virginity were set against the framework of Einsteinian relativism. This should come as no surprise as Crowley was a contemporary of Einstein and many other great physicists of the day who realized the deeper implications of the theories (special and general relativity and quantum mechanics). The concept of relativism was spreading out into the liberal arts, and other areas too. One could make an argument that on the "bad" side of this revolutionary way of thinking about man and his place in the universe that relativism in the political world really got a much unwanted (I would think so anyway!) boost after these discoveries were made exemplified to the greatest degree by two real "Beasts"- Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin-who seemed to embody the "relativity" of morals when the ends justify the means.

True Will was what guided the adept in his or her experiential untion with God. On page 347 of Gnostic Philosophy, Churton lets us know the true meaning of some of Crowley's symbolism: Due to the repressive laws governing sexual material-as well as many other things-in Crowley's lifetime, in addition to the (necessarily) initiatic character of Crowley's teaching, much of his writing on the subject is expressed in symbol, metaphor, euphemism, and humorous plays on words in the old occult tradition. "Bloody sacrifice," for example, does not denote something out of a horror novel but refers to the expenditure of semen (=life="blood") for magical purposes other than reproduction of the species, and "child sacrifice" meant, cheekily, masturbation or contraception.

I am almost done with the "Crowley" part of the Gnosticism series. I really appreciate all of your thoughtful and open-minded comments about this part in particular. I didn't know what to expect when I started this -because of course-all I had ever heard of for the most part was how "evil" Aleister Crowley was. It has been fascinating for me to see this vastly different viewpoint from Tobias Churton! All the best to anyone stopping by!