Paschal Beverly Randolph and Sexual Magic

John Patrick Deveney

355 to 367

p. 355

"The secondhand formulas of Barrett's The Magus (1801),

the Romantic pseudo-realism of Bulwer-Lytton's novel Zanoni : A Rosicrucian Tale and The Coming Race, and

the Gothic labyrinths of Eliphas Levi's disquisitions

bring us little information on any ... real magical ... experience.

Barrett was a dabbler ...;

p. 356

Bulwer Lytton confined his practice to ... hiring young girls to scry for him; and

Levi himself was ... timid". [fn. 7 : [According to William Alexander Ayton,] "Eliphas Levi ... had not the nerve or courage to carry out practically what his good knowledge told him were the means to use."]

"Even Mesmerism ... suffered almost universally from the bane of secondhand experience : the entranced seeress (for it was usually a young girl) saw visions, while the mesmerist could only look on and wonder at her descriptions. [pp. 356-7, fn. 9 : "See, e.g., ... The Celestial Telegraph, a partial translation of Cahagnet's Arcanes de la vie future, 3 vols. (1848-54), 180 (neither DeLaborde, Dupotet, Cagliostro, nor the sorcerer Le'on -- an eighteenth century Jew ... -- actually saw visions themselves)."]

The most detailed description we have of ...

p. 357

real magical groups near the mid-century is that of the "Berlin Club" and the "Orphic Circle" described [GhL] by Emma Hardinge Britten. [fn. 10 : "Britten ... almost certainly functioned as a "flying soul" for the Orphic Circle in her youth." (UWEHB)]

The members used drugs, crystals, and magic mirrors to separate the "flying souls" (astral projections) of their young subjects and send them on occult missions about the earth, or on clairvoyant journeys into the vast celestial hierarchy.

But it was the entranced seeress, not the occultist/magician himself, who beheld the wonders of the universe. His experience was secondhand : he was reduced to hearing ... the experience of another."

{The Omoto spirit-possession cult (in prae-World-War-II Japan) tended to suffer the same limitations.}

p. 357

"Paschal Beverly Randolph ... was a black man, born free in New York City in 1825. ... Randolph adopted the new revelations with fervor and promptly became a medium himself. ...

p. 358

Randolph quickly became, and remained, a trance speaker, ... speaking for ... Zoroaster, and for mysterious personages such as "Thothmor." He also began recounting his own visionary travels and experiences in the spirit worlds ... when he published Dealings with the Dead (1861), in which for the first time clearly describes his vision of a vast cosmos of worlds, universes, and entities coruscating out from the grand Central Sun of Being. [DD, p. 44] From this divine source ... all ... flowed outward :

mere matter, then

the all-pervading fire fluid of the Mesmerists, and finally

a never ending stream of "soul monads," "scintillas or parts of this third great thought of the Mighty Thinker, God ... coruscations from The Over-Soul." [DD, pp. 5, 134, 204]

These sparks of divine light are sprinkled through the planes of infinite universes in a vast hierarchy ... :

p. 359

... angels, Seraphs, Arsaphs, Eons, Arsasaphs, Arch-Eons, Antarphim, and other exalted entities, all existing and acting in

the fire fluid (which Randolph called "Aeth")

{Cymry /aeth/ 'point, prickle'?}

and all seeking to re-ascend to their divine source. Man begins this vast pilgrimage as an unconscious monad ... until reaching the human state. [DD, pp. 46-7] Here ... in its stead stands an immortal soul, ... "self-existent to all future states" ... and can begin his asymptotic re-ascent.

Randolph' s decription of ... coursing through the soul world as a "globe of resplendent white light" is ... ecstatic :

[quoted from DD, pp. 174-9] "... I was all sight. ... My spirit seemed to be all motion, and it knew instinctively that by the power of the thought-wish it could reach any point within the boundaries of earth where it longed and willed to be."

"Accompanying this ... was the ... ability to ... utlized the Aeth -- ... the "boundless ... ocean of Liquid Fire" which Andrew Jackson Davis called the Universcoelum -- that filled and animated creation and formed the basis of all magical power." [DD, pp. 180-2, 188]

"Massimo Introvigne has concluded that from the eighteenth century on, most ... initiatic groups practicing a form of "internal alchemy" (as did Cagliostro and his followers) were based upon ... techniques to construct an ... "interior child" ... that would be immortal."

{This is a very distinctly Taoist technique; surely derived from, and authorized by, Taoist religious establishments.}

p. 360

[quoted from DD, pp. 11-2] "by slow degrees ... my own personality was ... completely swallowed up, so to speak, in that of a far more potent mentality. A subtlety of ... understanding became mine at times ...; and occasionally, during these strange blendings of my being with another, I felt that other's feelings, thought that other's thoughts".

"Randolph had first experienced this state of Blending (or "Atrilism" or "mixed identities") ... when he "blended" in vision with the spirit of a deceased lover, but over the years he came to see that the process was universal and that in it lay the secret of communication with the exalted entities above man in the cosmic hierarchy."

p. 363

"Posism [gesticulatory bodily posing] was what made possible complete intercourse -- Blending -- with the elevated denizens of the universe. Each of these entities had a "location" and a pattern, as it were, which, when reached and emulated by the magician, allowed contact and intercourse with them. In its highest phase, this was what Randolph called

the "Sleep of Sialam,"

{"sleep of Siloam" (or 'Sialam')", associated with by Crowley the upside-down Tarock-figure "Hanged Man" (MWT, cap. LXII, n. 2)} {This word may have become misidentified as Strong's 5544 /SILLO^n/ 'brier, thorn', whence the Cymry 'point, prickle' [supra, p. 359]. But because the term was learned at "Muttra" nigh "Jubalpore" (TYI, Vol. 2, p. 286, quoted in LS) as /sialam/, it is likely to be Skt /syala/ 'wife's brother'. But even this word may be a pun on Skt /silisilika/ 'resin', alluding to the "Paranaphthaline gum" at Muttra.}

Blending with the highest of the cosmic entities reachable by man, and drawing in their powers and knowledge".

"Clairvoyance was the

[quoted from L&HH, pp. 166-7] ability ... to drop beneath the floors of of the outer world, and to come up, as it were, upon the other side. ... It ... the seer reaches ... together with a knowledge of the pincipia of the vast spirit-sea whereon the worlds of space are cushioned."

"Appended to The Ansairetic Mystery is a list of 122 powers obtainable through sexual magic, ranging to ... secrets of

Volantia,

{Latin term for for 'flying'}

Decretism, Posism,

Tirau-clarism {Pawnee god Tirawa?}, ...

Mahi-vapia,

{Skt. 'greatly-strewn' [the sparks as "sprinkled" (supra p. 358)?]}

Zorvoyance,

{cf. Bodish /zor/ 'missile'? -- or else Somali /zar/ 'possessing-deity'}

Aethaevoyance, and including the power to

"attach to oneself innumerable aethic, aerial, invisible assistants"

{Such "invisible assistants" are the divine spirit-helpers so much employed in shamanic activities.}

[quoted from EHL, p. 101] "at the very instant his seminal glands contract to expel their treasure, at such instant his interior nostrils open, and ... he draws in the pellucid aroma of divinity from the far-off multiple heavens."

p. 365

"his work passed to the next generation through the teachings of his few students (Freeman B. Dowd -- the ... father of New Thought -- most notably) and ... through his published and private writings. These gave rise a few years after his death in 1875 to the H. B. of L. (the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor), which copied

p. 366

his teachings ... literally ... . In France, his secret teachings appeared in the works of Maria de Naglowska in the 1930s, and they survived in the United States in the still-existing Brotherhood of Rosicrucians founded by Reuben Swinburne Clymer."

Mysteries of Georges le Cle'ment de Saint-Marcq

Marco Pasi

369 to 400

p. 369

p. 391

"the thesis that a Belgian spiritualist, the Chevalier Georges Le Cle'ment de Saint-Marcq (1865-1956) ... published in 1906, L'Eucharistie" : "during the Last Supper, ... Jesus Christ gave to his disciples ... his sperm."

"St. Epiphanius gives a complete description of the eucharistic ceremony ... he attributes ... to the gnostics, ... he says, men and women both eat the semen that reproduces the human species while turning towards the altar".

p. 371

"Georges-Phillippe-Alphonse-Marie-Alexandre Le Cle'ment de Saint-Marcq was born in Jodoigne, Belgium, on May 12, 1865".

p. 374

"In 1890 he entered the Antwerp chapter of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite ... (attached to the Grand Orient lodge ...). ... . ... finally in March 1910, he was elected to the highest degree of the Rite, the 33o, thereby joining the national Supreme Council."

p. 378

"1905, he became president of the Fe'de'ration Spirite Nationale Belge, which comprised most of the local spiritualist organizations in Belgium".

Catholic "priests are condemned by Le Cle'ment not because they indulge in spermatophagy, but because they do it secretly."

{What Roman Catholic priests actually do (with secret approval of bishops and of cardinals) in the way of secret sexual acts would include buggery of altar-boys.}

Sex Magic in the Ordo Templi Orientis

Hugh Urban

401 to 443

p. 415

"A mulatto born of a wealthy Viginian father and a slave form {read "from"} Madagascar, Randolph was raised a ... self-taught free black in New York city.

p. 416

... he traveled the world ... as ... the most famous scryer of his times, as well as America's foremost exponent of magical eroticism or Affectional Alchemy."

p. 416

"For Randolph, the experience of orgasm is in fact ... the key to magical power. During orgasm ..., the soul is suddenly opened up to the spiritual energies of the cosmos :

{so, likewise, in Wilhelm Reich's doctrine of orgone energy}

[quoted from PBR, pp. 218-9] "at the instant of intense mutual orgasm the souls of the partners are opened to the powers of the cosmos and anything then truly willed is accomplished."

p. 417

[quoted from MS, pp. 76-8] (on simultaneous orgasms of man and woman) "For the prayer to be effective the paroxysm of both is necessary ... the woman's orgasms should coincide with the man's emission, for only in this way will the magic be fulfilled."

p. 418

"In the course of his travels, Kellner ... studied with ... a S[.]ufi named Soliman ben Aifa and two Hindu Tantrikas named Bhima Sena Pratapa and Sri Mahatma Agamya Paramahamsa. ... Kellner was also in contact with an esoteric order known as the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light. First appearing in Chicago in 1895 (though some date it earlier, to 1885), the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light appears to be ... an offshoot ... of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor".

p. 419

"The son of a German father and an English mother, Reuss ... eventually ... identified himself as a master in a wide range of ... forms of Masonry such as the Ancient and Accepted Primitive Rite of Memphis and Miz[.]raim".

p. 420

"During the 1890s, Reuss ... collaborated with Kellner in order to form a new esoteric order dedicated to the inner secrets of magical practice. ... From its origins, the O.T.O. claimed to be in possession of the innermost secret of all esoteric systems ... . ...

p. 421

But what is this tremendous secret ...? The answer is given ... in the 1912 anniversary issue of the Oriflamme : the supreme secret is nothing less that {read "than"} the secret of sexual magic ..., extremely rare and precious ... :

Our Order possess[es] the KEY which opens up all Masonic and Hermetic secrets, namely the teaching of sexual magic ... . Now, though this teaching of sexual magic is the secret of the O.T.O. ..., nevertheless, the management of the Order has decided ... to enlighten earnest seekers."

"In a piece attributed to Kellner in the 1912 issue of Oriflamme, ... He was particularly interested in the vayus {vayu}

associated with the reproductive organ (the napa),

{not in Monier-Williams; but cf. Latin /napy/ 'mustard' (an allusion to Sinope of the Cynics?)}

which could be ... transformed into intense spiritual energy through yogic practice."

p. 422

"Kellner also engaged in more esoteric forms of magic together with a small circle of disciples called the "Inner Triangle;" these involved ... sexual rites aimed at generating the divine "Elixir"".

"O.T.O. literature employs complicated symbolism drawn from alchemy and Hermeticism to describe esoteric sexual rites. As Francis King explains" (MW, p. 79),

the code-name for __

is __

penis

athanor

semen

Serpent

vagina

retort

"fluids which lubricate the female organ" (Bartholin-gland secretions)

gluten

"the mixture of these with the male discharge"

"the first matter"

p. 430

"In 1904 ..., Crowley ... received a revelation from his guardian-angel, Aiwass, who dictated to him The Book of the Law (Liber AL vel Legis). [fn. 79 : "Actually, the revelation came first through Crowley's wife, Rose, during their trip to Cairo, when the voice of the god Horus began to speak through her."] ...

His most famous book, The Book of the Law announces

the dawn of the third Aeon of mankind :

the first aeon was that of Goddess Isis, centered around matriarchy ...;

the second aeon was that of Osiris, during which the patriarchal religions of suffering ... -- i.e., Judaism and Christianity -- rose to power.

Finally, with the revelation of the Book of the Law, a new aeon of the son, Horus, was born".

"According to his own ... account, he was approached by Reuss, who had read a cryptic chapter of Crowley's Book of Lies ... revealing the innermost secret of the O.T.O. : the secret of sexual magic. ... Crowley ... was named the Sovereign Grand Master of Ireland, Ioana, and all the Britains."

p. 431

"Styling himself "Mahatma Guru Sri Paramahansa Shivaji," Crowley wrote ... on hatha yoga" Eight Lectures on Yoga.

p. 431, fn. 84

"a certain particular Prana [namely, napa (supra p. 421)] ... resides in the Bindu, or semen. ... Therefore they stimulate to the maximum its generation by causing a consecrated prostitute to excite the organs" (De Arte Magica, XVI).

p. 431

"Crowley also added his own interpretation and ritual flourishes to the O.T.O.'s magical repertoire -- including a full-scale Gnostic Mass filled with highly erotic symbolism."

p. 431, fn. 86

"the Gnostic Mass is a creative re-imagining of the secret rites alleged to have been practiced by the early Gnostics ... . ... The primary actors are the Priest, who parts a sacred veil with his "Lance," and the Priestess, who removes her robes to embody the nakedness of the divine female principle. The Mass also involves the consumption of ... "cakes of light," ... made with "meal & honey ... [p. 432, fn. 86 : "and olive oil"]".

p. 432

[quoted from "S-G&OTO"] The 9th degree was "labelled heterosexual intercourse where

the sexual secrets were sucked out of the vagina

{as per the Kala-cakra Tantra}

and when not consumed ... put on a sigil to attract this or that demon to fullfill the pertinent wish".

p. 433

"Crowley developed a sexo-economic technique of imagining a shower of gold coins raining down at the moment of climax."

{cf. heroine Danae : "Zeus had sex with her by changing himself into gold that streamed in through the ceiling and down into her womb." (Apollodoros : Bibliotheke 2:26 & 34 -- "HD")}

"The O.T.O. itself gave birth to a number of offshoots ..., such as the Fraternitas Saturni, the Fraternitas Rosicruciana Antiqua, the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica,

the Typhonian current and

{"TOOTO"}

the Ordo Templi Orientis Antiqua, a breakaway branch formed in 1921 which focused on sex magic and Voodoo."

{"OTOA"}

p. 438

"Already in 1906, the first Tantrik Order in America was founded by ... Dr. Pierre Arnold Bernard, better known in the popular press as the "Omnipotent Oom"". ("OOT")

p. 439

"Neo-Tantric master of the 1980s was Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (a.k.a. "Osho"), the self-styled "Guru of the Rich.""