The Mysteries of the Organism - Nakedness, Magic and Mysticism
Sexual Magick & Other Essays (1988)
Katon Shual
The Secret History of Western Sexual Mysticism (2008)
Arthur Versluis
A Brief History of Nakedness (2010)
Philip Carr-Gomm
If you are looking for some 'how to' manual
involving dark side practices, Shual's Sexual Magick is not the book for you. Rather it
is a sensitive and humane investigation of the role of the sexual in
modern magical practice and it is thoroughly liberal in tone. Katon
Shual is the pseudonym of the Oxford-based magician, Mogg Morgan, who
has done much in such circles to bring the somewhat harsh and
masculinised world of Crowley and Grant into line with modern liberal
and tolerant culture. The high point for me was an extended
'rant', allegedly from the God Set, against not Christianity (the usual
target of neo-pagan resentment) but late paganism as it developed under
the Roman elite. For a simple account of how neo-pagans see sexuality in
quasi-political and cultural terms, pages 86 to 92 are all you need to
read:
"Roman law is the culprit and not Christian ethics. And you have been living under Pax Romana right up until your so-called Industrial Revolution. And Roman Law, may I remind you, is hardly less repressive than the flesh-hating creed of Christianity."
'Set' certainly has a point here and he backs it up with sound evidence in the next few paragraphs. But the book loses momentum somewhat before this. It is short and most of what needs to be said is well said in the first two essays. The last two have interesting material on ambiguities in our sexuality and on the incorporation of the environment as analogy for the body (a core Tantrik concept) but it is all a little bitty and oddly unresolved, easy enough to read but without a clear theme that would pull all this material together. This inability to sustain an argument so that it moves easily as a narrative seems to be embedded in magic(k)al culture. It represents my most frequent frustration with its literature - throwing four articles or talks together does nothing to help this, especially as the articles/talks themselves are not always fully coherent in terms of their narrative thrust.
This first two articles represent a mere eighty pages or so. Nevertheless, there is, in these, fruitful and opinionated material on the history of attitudes to sexuality within the magical revival and on the 'kundalini' or serpent power concept even if it has to be said that, again, Shual presents but does not always integrate his material well. And, of course, as Phil Hine has persuasivelyargued, much of the Western magical tradition's appropriation of South Asian concepts is fundamentally flawed - a projection of often angry repressed sexual desire in that cold culture derived from Rome rather than a true reflection of an entirely alien cultural, religious and intellectual tradition. There are indulgent intrusions of material here that clearly mean a lot to him but look a bit like a cut-and-paste, interpolations to entertain his readers, where he wants to make a point yet cannot seem to be able to contextualise that point clearly. Some more rigorous editing would have been a courtesy to his audience.
Much of the book also seems to be a hidden polemic (appropriate in the mid-1990s but less relevant now) for acceptance of homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism and lesbianism as all capable of following through on the insights of his own preferred amalagam of the thelemite and tantrik traditions. I am sure he is right on the basis that anything is intellectually possible and permitted but, looked back on from a fifteen year distance, the book seems to be more geared towards entering the LGBT debate, somewhat guardedly since it was a minefield then as now, than a brave account of what sexual magic actually may be, what it means and how it can be used.
There is, despite the dramatic cover and promise in the subject matter, an odd diffidence about the text - as if the author is quite determined to humanise and liberalise his material but is nervous of putting a foot wrong in a difficult and touchy community. Similarly, the references to the Setian or Typhonian tradition of Grant and to the Nath tradition of the Tantriks (the two primary influences on Shual) contain great lumps of speculation. The Tantrik material must certainly now be considered dubious. We have got rather used to this from reading Grant but this method of investigation has a tendency to send the reader off into obscurity rather than gnosis. The numerology thing that thelemites do still strikes me as absurd and the readings of the modern meanings imputed to all ancient religions remain suspect. This tradition is as reconstructionist as any other neo-pagan religion if less likely to admit this than most because of the seriousness given to Crowley's revelation from 'Aiwass'.
My main quarrel with the book is that, like all magical traditionalisms, it tries too hard to reconcile past insights with modern discoveries. It often puzzles me why we can't just cut to the chase and give modern science and instinctive libertarian insights more direct leeway without cluttering our new world with analogical complexities and obscurities, references back to truly alien cultures, attempts to draw complex parallels between chakras and the endocrine system and acceptance of the rebellious but sometimes half-baked visions of spiritual leaders who still had one cultural foot in the attitudes of the late-imperial world. Yes, these were all exciting, valuable and true in their time but are we not in danger of getting 'stuck' and turning liberation into psychotherapeutic cultism for the few at the expense of the liberation of the many?
I can see that past rebels in our own culture and half-baked insights concerning the tantrics have been instrumental in getting many people to shift their mental models from acceptance of Roman oppressions to new and free ways of thinking. However, there is a real danger that we fail to move on from these 'magical' sources and develop a more appropriate post-industrial and post-modern mentality that accepts the insights of existential philosophy and science as way stations to mass liberation without need for cults and ritual beyond their individual psychotherapeutic value. A paradox of a book - a bit weak in the round but with value as a trigger for thought on one's own account if you have never thought deeply about sexuality as a spiritual matter rather than just as procreation, rutting or a tool in power plays between the genders.
"Roman law is the culprit and not Christian ethics. And you have been living under Pax Romana right up until your so-called Industrial Revolution. And Roman Law, may I remind you, is hardly less repressive than the flesh-hating creed of Christianity."
'Set' certainly has a point here and he backs it up with sound evidence in the next few paragraphs. But the book loses momentum somewhat before this. It is short and most of what needs to be said is well said in the first two essays. The last two have interesting material on ambiguities in our sexuality and on the incorporation of the environment as analogy for the body (a core Tantrik concept) but it is all a little bitty and oddly unresolved, easy enough to read but without a clear theme that would pull all this material together. This inability to sustain an argument so that it moves easily as a narrative seems to be embedded in magic(k)al culture. It represents my most frequent frustration with its literature - throwing four articles or talks together does nothing to help this, especially as the articles/talks themselves are not always fully coherent in terms of their narrative thrust.
This first two articles represent a mere eighty pages or so. Nevertheless, there is, in these, fruitful and opinionated material on the history of attitudes to sexuality within the magical revival and on the 'kundalini' or serpent power concept even if it has to be said that, again, Shual presents but does not always integrate his material well. And, of course, as Phil Hine has persuasivelyargued, much of the Western magical tradition's appropriation of South Asian concepts is fundamentally flawed - a projection of often angry repressed sexual desire in that cold culture derived from Rome rather than a true reflection of an entirely alien cultural, religious and intellectual tradition. There are indulgent intrusions of material here that clearly mean a lot to him but look a bit like a cut-and-paste, interpolations to entertain his readers, where he wants to make a point yet cannot seem to be able to contextualise that point clearly. Some more rigorous editing would have been a courtesy to his audience.
Much of the book also seems to be a hidden polemic (appropriate in the mid-1990s but less relevant now) for acceptance of homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism and lesbianism as all capable of following through on the insights of his own preferred amalagam of the thelemite and tantrik traditions. I am sure he is right on the basis that anything is intellectually possible and permitted but, looked back on from a fifteen year distance, the book seems to be more geared towards entering the LGBT debate, somewhat guardedly since it was a minefield then as now, than a brave account of what sexual magic actually may be, what it means and how it can be used.
There is, despite the dramatic cover and promise in the subject matter, an odd diffidence about the text - as if the author is quite determined to humanise and liberalise his material but is nervous of putting a foot wrong in a difficult and touchy community. Similarly, the references to the Setian or Typhonian tradition of Grant and to the Nath tradition of the Tantriks (the two primary influences on Shual) contain great lumps of speculation. The Tantrik material must certainly now be considered dubious. We have got rather used to this from reading Grant but this method of investigation has a tendency to send the reader off into obscurity rather than gnosis. The numerology thing that thelemites do still strikes me as absurd and the readings of the modern meanings imputed to all ancient religions remain suspect. This tradition is as reconstructionist as any other neo-pagan religion if less likely to admit this than most because of the seriousness given to Crowley's revelation from 'Aiwass'.
My main quarrel with the book is that, like all magical traditionalisms, it tries too hard to reconcile past insights with modern discoveries. It often puzzles me why we can't just cut to the chase and give modern science and instinctive libertarian insights more direct leeway without cluttering our new world with analogical complexities and obscurities, references back to truly alien cultures, attempts to draw complex parallels between chakras and the endocrine system and acceptance of the rebellious but sometimes half-baked visions of spiritual leaders who still had one cultural foot in the attitudes of the late-imperial world. Yes, these were all exciting, valuable and true in their time but are we not in danger of getting 'stuck' and turning liberation into psychotherapeutic cultism for the few at the expense of the liberation of the many?
I can see that past rebels in our own culture and half-baked insights concerning the tantrics have been instrumental in getting many people to shift their mental models from acceptance of Roman oppressions to new and free ways of thinking. However, there is a real danger that we fail to move on from these 'magical' sources and develop a more appropriate post-industrial and post-modern mentality that accepts the insights of existential philosophy and science as way stations to mass liberation without need for cults and ritual beyond their individual psychotherapeutic value. A paradox of a book - a bit weak in the round but with value as a trigger for thought on one's own account if you have never thought deeply about sexuality as a spiritual matter rather than just as procreation, rutting or a tool in power plays between the genders.
Versluis' The Secret History of Western Sexual Mysticism is more easily recommendable. It is a short but very readable account of the necessarily (given the mental universe of what Heidegger might refer here to as 'the they') 'hidden' traditions
of sexual mysticism in the West from the open era of classical paganism
through to the end of the twentieth century - an excellent counterpoint
to Hugh Urban's 'Magia Sexualis', read and reviewed by us elsewhere. Versluis is working in territory that is poorly
recorded, in part because mainstream culture has cruelly punished
heresies, and has consequently ensured that little survives by way of
texts. The self-censorship of practitioners until recent times has had
much the same effect on sources as has active and often cruel
repression. In addition, our picture of reality can be obscured or made misinterpretable by the deliberate exaggerations of elites to make innocence guilty and ensure that the worst possible interpretation of libertarian threats frightens the popular horses. This happens in all eras as we saw in the Satanic Panic starting in the 1980s and the current demonisation of all working class protesters today because of the criminal actions of a few.
Versluis' scholarly refusal to speculate beyond the
necessary makes one appreciate all the more the moral and sometimes
physical courage of those sexual-mystical dissidents who have appeared since the
Constantinian settlement of the 320s AD placed an effective ban on
sexuality as a positive spiritual force - a ban only removed slowly and
uncertainly with the opening up of America and the rise of secular
liberalism in Europe. His analyses are sophisticated, showing how
Western Christian mysticism owed something to its pagan predecessors.
Practices were analogous to those in the worship of Shiva in India in
the classical era and they developed (almost certainly independently
though with periodic probable inputs from the East) many of the
characteristics of the Tantric schools subsequently.
Indeed, he and we are struck by the alternative route that Christianity might have taken if it had not become the play-thing of imperial and papal authority. The story fills one with foreboding at the eventual outcome of the current Western Project if it is not curtailed and limited before it can become a threat to liberty under the growing economic and strategic pressures developing within and on the West. Versluis wisely distinguishes sexual mysticism from magic (the more utilitarian and dominant strand of occult sexuality in the West today) and so does not go over the same ground as Urban. His conclusions, linking the heretical to 'natural' connections in man and nature, to the egalitarian, to gnosis and to the transcendent are wise and thoughtful. Rather than give the game away, I suggest you get the book and come to your own conclusions before you read his.
Indeed, he and we are struck by the alternative route that Christianity might have taken if it had not become the play-thing of imperial and papal authority. The story fills one with foreboding at the eventual outcome of the current Western Project if it is not curtailed and limited before it can become a threat to liberty under the growing economic and strategic pressures developing within and on the West. Versluis wisely distinguishes sexual mysticism from magic (the more utilitarian and dominant strand of occult sexuality in the West today) and so does not go over the same ground as Urban. His conclusions, linking the heretical to 'natural' connections in man and nature, to the egalitarian, to gnosis and to the transcendent are wise and thoughtful. Rather than give the game away, I suggest you get the book and come to your own conclusions before you read his.