Sex Magick: Powerful Female Adepts​​​

As with most things occult, what was once secret and elite is now widespread and populist. Mainstream magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Teen Vogue invite readers to use sex magic to materialize their dreams through the power of orgasm. No longer is sex magic hidden away behind closed doors. In the consumer society of the Western world, sex magic has morphed from an occult path for male initiates into a technique for anyone desiring to manifest BMWs and glamorous vacations. 

Throughout the previous five thousand years of the patriarchy, sex magic ran as an underground current in Hindu and Buddhist tantra, Taoism, Hermeticism, Gnosticism, and the mystical branches of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. For the most part these androcentric traditions prized celibacy, denigrated sensual pleasure, and conceptualized spirituality as belonging to a higher, disembodied realm. When sex was used in codified rituals in esoteric traditions, the male aspirant used sex magic to gain power and elevate his consciousness. Women were utilized as merely disposable tools in this process. 

This denigration of women as lesser participants in sex magic (and life) began to change in the mid-19th Century when the world was alive with new ideals of individualism, science, free will, equality, and progress. A number of notable and powerful female sex magic adepts stepped forward to contribute their knowledge and experience. Despite this, they have been underrepresented in occult history. 

The father of modern Western sex magic is widely considered to be Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825-1875). He was the son of a Black slave who wrote over 20 books and pamphlets documenting the sophisticated use of sex magic techniques. Randolph was the first recorded sex magician to state that for effective sex magic, the male adept must practice with a woman partner of equal status (yes, this era was still heteronormative), and that sex magic could lead to the empowerment of women. Randolph believed that when a man and a woman experienced simultaneous orgasm, wisdom, knowledge, and power were downloaded from higher realms, and the mystical forces of the soul would open. 

Randolph’s work was highly influential on the most famous and infamous sex magic(k)ian, Aleister Crowley (1875-1947). Crowley was a member, later leader, of the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), an occult organization that attempted to unite the traditions of tantra with Western sex magic in its upper grades. Crowley’s particular take on the subject was a far cry from Randolph’s partnership-based sex magic, as he was interested in the power of transgressive acts and asking for money and material wealth during sex. Nevertheless, he elevated the status of his partners in his idealization of the Scarlet Woman. 

The Scarlet Woman, also known as Babalon, was an archetypal goddess who had been revealed to Crowley in the transmission of The Book of the Law. She was a strong, sexually liberated woman, the first time since prehistory that such a figure had been  imagined and iconized. She represented the passion that unites partners in sexual union. At least eight of Crowley’s partners were designated Scarlet Women, with Leah Hirsig (1883-1975) being the most well-known. Hirsig and her sister had been students of the occult when they met Crowley, and Crowley stated that Hirsig had been instrumental in guiding him. Hirsig consecrated herself as the Bride of Chaos in her book The Magical Record of the Scarlet Woman. Another of Crowley’s Scarlet Women was Leila Waddell (1880-1932), a powerful occultist in her own right with a successful career as a professional violinist.

Another adept from the Crowley line is Marjorie Cameron (1922-1995). Cameron was an actor, occultist, and artist who had a posthumous solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. She came to sex magic through her marriage to Jack Parsons, the noted scientist and Crowley-ite who claimed Cameron had been brought to him through a magical rite called the Babalon Working, which was co-created with L. Ron Hubbard of later Scientology fame. After Parsons’ death, she moved to Beaumont and created a multi-racial sex magic group with the intention to populate the world with mixed-race children. It did not last long.

Crowley stated that Ida Craddock’s book, Heavenly Bridegrooms, was one that no magic library should be without. Craddock (1857-1902) was an occult scholar, sex educator, and author. She spoke and counseled, advocating a sacred view of sex, and wrote extensively about sex magic techniques performed in conjunction with her disembodied spirit husband. Because of her open and frank discussions of sex, and because she advocated sex outside the mainstream view of its function as merely procreative, Craddock was arrested and found guilty of obscenity. Unfortunately, she committed suicide instead of spending the rest of her life in an asylum. 

Next to Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune (1890-1946) is considered the most influential occultist of the 20th century. Born Violet Firth, Fortune was a psychotherapist and the author of over 20 books as well as a ceremonial magician. In her work, she stated that all magic is sex magic, as sex is the life force of the universe. Fortune wrote that in Atlantis, people had paired off into couples for sex magic work to advance their evolutionary progress. She believed that the sex energy that flowed between partners could be harnessed for magical use. Her book The Esoteric Philosophy of Love and Marriage is in many ways a precursor of modern neotantra in its teaching of the use of sacred sex as a method for relationship enhancement and love.    

Outside the Crowley line but within the Western tradition was Maria de Naglowska (1883-1936), a Russian occultist and author who translated Randolph’s works into French, thus saving them from oblivion. She lived in Paris during the heyday of the surrealist movement and was well-known as a Satanist and teacher of sex magic. She believed herself to be the herald of the coming age of salvation through female sexuality. Naglowska founded and led the Brotherhood of the Golden Arrow which taught that the third figure of the Holy Trinity was female. She authored four books on sex magic, including Advanced Sex Magic: The Hanging Mystery Initiation, which details the group’s erotic ritual hanging practices. 

Alice Bunker Stockham (1833-1912) has been overlooked by occult scholars. One of the first female M.D.s in the U.S., she was a significant voice for gender equality, birth control, and the sacredness of sex. Dr. Stockham was an advocate of karezza, a form of loving, mindful, protracted sex without male ejaculation which she felt was a method of inducing expanded consciousness in the couple. Stockham wrote widely on the use of sexual energy for higher union, spiritual unity, and its positive benefits on physical and mental health. 

Doreen Valiente (1922-1999) is one of the major figures of Wicca and is known as “The Mother of Modern Witchcraft.” Valiente began practicing ceremonial magic as a teen. She later became a High Priestess in the Gardnerian tradition and wrote much of its liturgy. Valiente famously said, “Witchcraft does not need to apologize for involving sex magic.” One of the practices of witchcraft is The Great Rite which involves ritual sexual intercourse by a group of acolytes to draw powerful energy to the participants.

Margot Anand (b. 1944) was one of the first teachers outside of occult circles to introduce tantra to the West. She is the author of the bestselling The Art of Sexual Ecstasy and The Art of Sexual Magic. Anand’s interpretation of sex magic is influenced by Osho’s neotantra, which is a modern interpretation for those interested in relationships of equality with partners rather than using another human’s body for one’s own personal and spiritual advancement. She describes sex magic as “generating sexual energy as a fuel, or power, for making magic and realizing your personal goals.” Her books and workshops are full of rituals and techniques designed for modern lovers.

Since the 19th Century, the world has gradually and sometimes violently moved in the direction of inclusion and equality for all voices, and this has enabled women to make important contributions to a new form of sex magic, the aim of which is using sexual energy for the raising of both partners’ power and efficacy in the inner and outer worlds. Many of today’s students of the occult may bemoan the way that modern sex magic has succumbed to the Western consumer culture of commodification and commercialization. And yet, when we look back at the way sex magic has evolved to fit into an increasingly inclusive society and the way women have been instrumental in that creation, perhaps we can admire today’s readers of sex magic articles as taking their first initiation toward becoming tomorrow’s powerful female sexual adepts