THE GREAT BEAST AS A TANTRIC HERO: THE ROLE OF YOGA AND TANTRA IN ALEISTER CROWLEY'S MAGICK [A preliminary version of the paper, which was later published, wit some modifications, in Bogdan and Starr (eds), Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism [OUP, 2012] and republished in Djurdjevic, India and the Occult [Palgrave, 2014]. Not proofread. If quoting, please refer to the published edition only.] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[T]he Tantric’s sense of power was inseparable from his sense of transgression. A. Sanderson, ‘Purity and power among the brahmans of Kashmir’ … bad odor for Crowley was merely a veil of sanctity … M. P. Starr, The Unknown God The Sacred Symbols … exist in the most terrifying appearances. Everything that is, is holy. A. Crowley, ‘Cefalu’ In the summer of 1900, Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) found himself in Mexico pursuing his two great passions, mountaineering and magick. Although only twenty-four, Crowley was already one of the highest initiates of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the most important fin de siècle occult fraternity in the West. He considered himself an adept in magick, but the futility of his endeavors and a sense of dissatisfaction were now starting to assert themselves with increasing force. When a fellow mountaineer Oscar Eckenstein (1859-1921) joined him in Mexico towards the end of the year, Crowley confided his concerns to his friend. Eckenstein, a railway engineer and an analytical chemist by profession who apparently had no interest in the occult, gave a response that addressed the heart of the matter: Crowley's problems stemmed from his inability to concentrate. ‘Give up your Magick, with all its romantic fascinations and deceitful delights,’ Eckenstein advised him. ‘Promise to do this for a time and I will teach you how to master your mind’ (Crowley, 1969: 213--4). 1 Crowley agreed to the proposal and before long immersed himself in a set of exercises devised by Eckenstein, the purpose of which was to enable his thoughts to remain focused on a chosen mental image or a sensory input. These exercises were in their essence the initial steps in the path of Yoga, undertaken by a person who was later to become one of the principal advocates of yogic and, to a lesser degree, tantric teachings in the field of Western esotericism. Crowley's influence on the twentieth century and contemporary occultism has been enormous1 but his unusual life-style and teachings continue to be controversial and misunderstood. This essay will focus on the place of Yoga and Tantra in Crowley's writings, within the structure of magical Orders that he was the head of, and in his own spiritual practice. My argument is simple: not only is Crowley important for the fusion of Eastern and Western esoteric traditions,2 but his own practice of magick becomes clearer if aspects of it are understood against the background of Yoga and Tantra. INDIA, WESTERN ESOTERICISM, AND CROWLEY Indian civilization is far superior to our own … A. Crowley, Confessions The tendency towards syncretism is one of the defining characteristics of Western esotericism. By the end of the 19th century, this tendency was strongly manifest as openness towards Eastern, most notably Indian, religious traditions. These were otherwise becoming increasingly familiar through numerous translations of original 1 One indication of Crowley's influence is the number of biographies of which he is the subject. Richard Kaczynski (2002: 485) lists sixteen of these in his own Perdurabo. 2 I imply throughout that there is at least a functional parallel between what I call rather vaguely ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ esoteric traditions. I am aware of the contested nature of my chosen conceptual vocabulary but continue to employ it for several reasons, elaboration of which is beyond the scope of this paper. Let it suffice to mention that I consider the concept of ‘esotericism’ a second order term that is applied by scholars to the subject under scrutiny much more consistently than it is used as a self-referential designation. (Crowley, for example, vary rarely uses the term.) It is emphatically not my intention to conflate Eastern tantra and Western magic although I find it heuristically useful to refer to both of them as forms of esotericism. 2 texts and through popular accounts written by colonial travelers. A landmark event in this regard, as far as Western esotericism is concerned, was the formation of the Theosophical Society in 1875.3 This same year also gave birth to arguably the most important and influential occultist of the XX century, Edward Alexander, better known as Aleister, Crowley. In his voluminous writings and in his own spiritual practice and teaching, Crowley engaged and incorporated elements of Indian Yoga and Tantra to a significant degree. It may be safely claimed that Yoga on the one hand and the Western esoteric tradition in general (including magic, alchemy, astrology and kabbalah) on the other form the twin aspects of what Crowley called magick.4 In addition to this, he often asserted that Eastern and Western esoteric traditions share a fundamental resemblance, which he attempted to elucidate and which he regularly emphasized. A clarification is appropriate at the outset. While Crowley’s engagement with Indian Yoga is a straightforward affair that may be easily documented on the basis of his theoretical writings, practical instructions, and personal records of practice,5 his involvement with Tantra is much more complex and controversial. To a significant extent, this involvement shares primarily functional parallels with the tantric path. It is feasible to recognize in the whole project of Crowley’s magick an analogy with the approach of tantra, even if his formal knowledge of the latter was limited. I will, later on, anchor my arguments by focusing on three areas of convergence between Crowley’s and tantric methods: employment of sex (e.g., ingestion of sexual fluids) as a tool of achievement; harnessing of the occult aspects of the human (subtle) body (represented by cakras and the kuṇḍalinī); and the use of transgression as a spiritual technique. SKETCH OF CROWLEY'S EARLY BIOGRAPHY: MAGICK, YOGA, THELEMA, AND THE ESOTERIC ORDERS My own task was to bring Oriental wisdom to Europe and to restore 3 This subject is explored in detail in Godwin, 1994. Crowley was also instrumental in popularizing Chinese esotericism. See, for example, his inspired “translation” of Lao Tzu (Crowley, 1995). 5 See, inter alia, Crowley’s diaries published in John. St. John, in Crowley, et al., 1909a and ‘The temple of Solomon the king’, in Crowley et al., 1910b. 4 3 paganism in a purer form. A. Crowley, Confessions Aleister Crowley's spiritual career begun with his initiation into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which he joined in 1898.6 He rose rapidly within the Order's hierarchy, having a superb tutor in the person of Allan Bennett (1872-1923). Bennett would in time leave England to join the Buddhist Saṅgha in Burma (now Myanmar), as one of the first Westerners to receive ordination in the Theravāda tradition.7 In 1901, Crowley joined Bennett for several months in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). They studied yogic meditation together, taking advantage of the knowledge Bennett acquired from Hon. P. Ramanathan, the Solicitor-General of Ceylon who was also a Tamil Śaivite guru and the author of a book that interpreted the gospels of Matthew and John from the standpoint of Yoga.8 After his initial exposure to the exercise of mental cultivation under the tutelage of Oscar Eckenstein, this was Crowley's first attempt in the formal practice of Yoga. He claimed that as the result of these meditations he successfully attained a deep stage of yogic meditation, dhyāna, on October 2nd of the same year.9 In addition to his engagement with yogic practices proper, in this period Crowley also learnt the essentials of Buddhist meditation.10 He described a classical Buddhist form of meditation, mahāsatipaṭṭhāna, in his essay ‘Science and Buddhism’, written in India in 1901.11 He also incorporated basic methodology of this practice into two of his instructional manuals for the Order of A\A\ (see bellow), ‘Liber Ru vel 6 The Golden Dawn material is collected in Regardie, 1971. For a more skeptical account, see Howe, 1972. 7 On Bennett, see Godwin, 1994: 369--77. 8 See Crowley, 1969: 237. 9 See Crowley, 1969: 248--9. 10 The difference between the two methods of the training of the mind lies in the following: in Yoga, there is ordinarily an attempt to arrest the fluctuations of the mind by keeping it focused on a chosen object, while in Buddhist meditation the objective is usually to maintain the awareness of bodily, emotional or mental processes, without the attempt to arrest their modifications. 11 See Crowley, 1906: 244--61. 4 Spiritus’12 and ‘Liber Yod’.13 The fundamentals practices of classical Yoga, consisting of posture, breathing exercises, and concentration of the mind, were described concisely in ‘Liber E vel Exercitiorum’, originally published in Crowley’s “Review of Scientific Illuminism”, The Equinox I, 1 (1909a).14 The general theory of Yoga is laid out in the text called Mysticism, which is incorporated into Crowley’s magnum opus, Book Four or Magick.15 In the spring of 1904, the most significant event in Crowley's career occurred. According to his account, while on honeymoon in Cairo, Egypt, he received a short prophetic text, which came to be known as Liber AL vel Legis or The Book of the Law.16 The book announces the core doctrine of a new religion called Thelema, with Crowley referred to in the book as “the prince-priest the Beast”17 - as its prophet.18 On the basis of this revelation and his continuous research into, and practice of, various mystical and magical traditions, Crowley felt that the time was ripe to start a new magical Order, being convinced that the Golden Dawn has lost its charisma and authority. The new Order, the structure of which Crowley developed in collaboration with his friend and mentor George Cecil Jones around 1907, is officially known only by its initials, the A\A\. Like the Golden Dawn, the Order is modeled on the pattern of the Tree of Life, where every Sephira on the Tree corresponds to a particular mystical or magical achievement.19 12 See ‘Liber RV vel Spiritus sub figura CCVI’ in Crowley et al., 1912. Reprinted in Crowley, 1997: 638--42. 13 Originally published as ‘Liber Tau sub figura XCIII’ in Crowley et al., 1912. Reprinted as ‘Liber Yod sub figura DCCCXXXI’, in Crowley, 1997: 643--6. 14 Reprinted in Crowley, 1997: 604-12. 15 Originally published as Book 4: Part I (London: Wieland, n.d. [1912]). Reprinted as ‘Part I: Mysticism’, in Crowley, 1997: 1--44. 16 For the text of The Book of the Law (or Liber AL vel Legis, as it is technically called) see, inter alia, Aleister Crowley, 1983: 105--28. There are numerous reprints of this text. 17 Liber AL, I: 15. 18 Crowley's position vis-à-vis philosophical, religious and scientific aspects of the message of The Book of the Law is summarized in a text called ‘On the reception of The Book of the Law’, in Crowley, 1997: 693--708. 19 The structure of the A\A\ is set out formally in ‘One star in sight’, in Crowley, 1997: 486--98. 5 In its essence, the method of the A\A\ rests on the fusion of ceremonial magick and Yoga. One of the introductory grades of the Order, the grade of Zelator, involves mastery of the posture or āsana and the control of breathing, prāṇāyāma. In the grade of Dominus Liminis, the practitioner is expected to master the methods of yogic introspection (or withdrawal of senses from outside objects), pratyāhāra, and concentration, dhāraṇā. An initiate of the grade of Adeptus needs to attain mastery in deep meditation, dhyāna, while the Master of the Temple - a grade which involves the annihilation of the ego - has to achieve the final step in classical Yoga, samādhi. In this manner, the methods and practices of Indian Yoga are firmly implanted into a magical Order that is simultaneously rooted in the Western esoteric tradition.20 This shows that Crowley, in reorganizing the Golden Dawn, relied on what may be called the principle of “occult cosmopolitanism”, which is to say that the Thelemic path to spiritual perfection rested upon the amalgamation of Eastern and Western esotericism.21 In 1912, Crowley met Theodor Reuss (1855-1923).22 Reuss was at the time the head of a fringe freemasonic23 order known as Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.). An important impetus towards the establishment of the O.T.O. came from a wealthy Austrian chemist Carl Kellner (1851-1905), who supposedly received secrets of tantric teachings from three oriental adepts.24 Both Kellner and Reuss wrote texts on the principles of Yoga and Tantra.25 After his meeting with Reuss, Crowley was given a high 20 Western esoteric subjects studied and practiced within the A\A\ include astral travel, divination (tarot, astrology, geomancy), kabbalah, fashioning of magical instruments, evocations and invocations (one of the central objectives involves the invocation of one's Holy Guardian Angel). See, inter alia, ‘One star in sight’ in Crowley, 1997 and ‘Liber XIII vel Graduum montis Abiegni' in Crowley et al., 1910a: 3--8. 21 Cf. Crowley’s (1969: 839) statement: ‘My own task was to bring Oriental wisdom to Europe and to restore paganism in a purer form’. 22 For Crowley's views on the O.T.O., a good place to start is the 72nd chapter of his Confessions (1969: 695--710). His meeting with Reuss is described at pp. 709--10. See also Crowley et al., 1919. 23 Literature on freemasonry is vast but for a survey from the perspective of esoteric studies, see Bogdan, 2007. For a comparison between some aspects of freemasonry and Tantra, see Urban, 1997. 24 ‘[Kellner] is believed to have studied Yoga with Bhima Sen Pratap and Śrī Mahātmā Agamya Guru Paramahansa’. H. Beta, Editorial notes, in Crowley, 1991a: 121, n. 3. 25 See Kellner, 1896 and Reuss, 1913. 6 initiation and made the head of the British section of the O.T.O. He eventually became the international head of the Order, which he reorganized in order to infuse it with the teaching of Thelema. The history and structure of the O.T.O. are beyond the scope of our present concerns, but it is important to emphasize that the central teaching of the Order is often considered to have connections and parallels with some tantric practices. Gerald Yorke, Crowley's friend, one-time disciple, and a major collector of his works, explains the essence of the O.T.O. teaching as handed down by Reuss: He explained to Crowley the theory behind that school of Alchemy which uses sexual fluids and the Elixir of Life. He enlarged on the Baphomet tradition of the Knights Templar and traced its alleged survival through the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light [a nineteen-century esoteric society]. He then showed the connection with those Tantrics who follow the left hand path [utilizing ritual sexual intercourse as a means of spiritual union with the godhead], and the Hathayogins who practice sexual mudras [sacred postures]. What however was more to the point [,] he offered Crowley leadership in the O.T.O. […]26 Accordingly, in addition to his writings on these subjects, Crowley was instrumental in incorporating and elucidating the theory and practice of Indian Yoga and Tantra within two major initiatory Western esoteric Orders, the A\A\ and the O.T.O. This fact is highly significant, keeping in mind Crowley's importance and influence on contemporary occultism. That his followers exhibit a continuing interest in Eastern esotericism is a mark of Crowley's legacy.27 Before venturing into the exploration of Crowley’s practices that were inspired by tantric and yogic teachings, it is appropriate to devote some space to his interpretations of the similarity between the Western and the Eastern esoteric traditions. Two elements of his interpretations stand out. On the one hand, he was consistent in his conviction that the method of magick requires the training of the mind. In that sense, it may be argued that he was elucidating western magical tradition 26 G. Yorke, ‘666, sex, and the O.T.O.’ (n.d., typescript, O.T.O. Archives). Qtd. Sutin, 2000: 226. The explanatory notes within square brackets are Sutin's; emphasis added. 27 See, for example, Wasserman, 2007. 7 as if it were a kind of Yoga. On the other hand, Crowley assimilated Yoga to the Western models by structuring it onto the design of the Tree of Life and by translating its essentials into Western esoteric concepts. In either case, what remains as a constant is his persuasion that Yoga and magick represent two different aspects of the same phenomenon.28 YOGA IN THEORY AND PRACTICE AND ITS CORRESPONDENCE WITH WESTERN ESOTERIC TRADITIONS ACCORDING TO CROWLEY [T]he way is now clear to set forth our Method. This is two-fold. (1) Yoga, introversion. (2) Magick, extroversion A. Crowley, Magick Without Tears To elaborate on the ways in which Crowley correlated theories and practices of Indian Yoga and Tantra with Western esotericism, the following examples are illustrative. We shall set out with the assumed similarity between Yoga and magick, as proposed in the ‘Postcards for Probationers’ of the A\A\. Following this, we will investigate a section of the Eight Lectures on Yoga, where the yogic concept of niyama (discipline or 'positive power' in Crowley's exposition) is brought into correlation with Western astrology and the kabbalistic Tree of Life. Finally, I suggest that we examine the ritual of Crowley’s Gnostic Mass, where the tantric notions that relate to the awakening of the subtle energy within the body and the consummation of sexual fluids are translated into an ecclesiastical rite. In an early short text entitled ‘Postcards for Probationers’(1909b), Crowley set out to establish a parallelism between the methods of Indian Yoga and Western ceremonial magic. He defined each discipline as ‘the art of uniting the mind to a single idea’.29 Thus, Jñāna Yoga and the Holy Kabbalah represent “Union by Knowledge”. Rāja Yoga and the Sacred Magic stand for “Union by Will”. Bhakti Yoga and the Acts of 28 ‘It will now be apparent that there is no distinction between Magick and Meditation except of the most arbitrary and accidental kind.’ Crowley, 1997: 232. 29 Crowley, in Crowley et al., 1909b: 199. 8 Worship exemplify “Union by Love”. Finally, Haṭha Yoga and the Ordeals stand for the methods of “Union by Courage”.30 Here we have a clear exercise in the practice of concordance, which Antoine Faivre asserted as a major component of Western esotericism.31 Throughout his career, Crowley consistently argued a deep similarity between the assumptions and methods of Eastern and Western esoteric traditions.32 In doing so, he postulated the human mind as the fons et origo of mystical and magical phenomena33 and saw its cultivation as the unifying element behind the multiplicity of various local traditions: All phenomena of which we are aware take place in our own minds, and therefore the only thing we have to look at is the mind; which is a more constant quantity over all the species of humanity than is generally supposed. (Crowley, 1991a: 13--4) Crowley thus interprets even the traditional magical paraphernalia from a mentalist perspective: the temple is coterminous with the extent of one's consciousness, the magical circle protects one from hostile thoughts, the wand symbolizes the will, the cup is understanding, and the sword refers to the analytical faculty.34 Similarly (Crowley, 1972: 104), ‘To call forth the Spirits means to analyze the mind; to govern 30 Crowley, in Crowley et al., 1909b: 199. In addition to these four major methods of achievement, Crowley adds Mantra Yoga and the Invocations as examples of “Union through Speech”, while Karma Yoga and the Acts of Service represent “Union through Work”. Bhakti yoga is also treated separately in an important manual of practice called Liber Asterté vel Berylli sub figura CLXXV, first time published in The Equinox I, 7 (Crowley et al.,: 1912). Reprinted in Crowley, 1997: 627--37. 31 See, for example, Faivre, 1994: 14. 32 In a later work, for example, Crowley (1991b: 159) draws a correlation between the major forms of Yoga and the so-called hermetic virtues or “the powers of the Sphinx”: ‘By Gñana Yoga cometh thy Man to Knowledge; by Karma Yoga thy Bull to Will; by Raja Yoga is thy Lion brought to his Light; and to make perfect thy Dragon, thou hast Bhakta Yoga for the Eagle therein, and Hatha Yoga for the Serpent’. 33 This statement should not, however, be construed as if to mean that Crowley neglected the value of the human body in the pursuit of spiritual goals. See infra. 34 See Crowley, 1997: 48. Keeping in mind that the Temple symbolizes the external universe, the following remark is equally pertinent: ‘When one realizes as an actual fact in experience that the starry universe is only a picture of one aspect of one's mind - no apodosis seems possible’. Crowley,1972: 113. 9 them means to recombine the elements of that mind according to one's will’. This is a significant reinterpretation of magical technique, which is otherwise habitually associated with ritual action. Crowley did not neglect ritual, but by placing emphasis on mental concentration as the key to success he was elucidating an aspect of magick that has a common denominator in the practice of Yoga. Eight Lectures on Yoga are a series of talks that Crowley delivered to small audiences in the upper rooms of London restaurants, starting the series in the January of 1937.35 The third lecture dealt with one of the preliminary stages of classical Yoga, the concept of discipline or niyama. Patañjali, the author of the foundational Yoga Sūtras, defines this practice as consisting of ‘Cleanliness, Contentment, Purificatory action, study and the making of the Lord the motive of all action.’36 In his elucidation of the concept, Crowley (1991a: 36) takes advantage of ‘a sort of Abacus’, which he alleges to be ‘very useful in all kinds of thinking’. This Abacus is the kabbalistic Tree of Life. Simply put, the Tree of Life as used in Western occultism is a symbolic representation of the totality of existence, consisting of ten circles or Sephiroth connected by twentytwo paths, arranged in a particular design. Each of these circles and paths is a focal point for a cluster of correspondences.37 In accordance with a standard practice, the planets of the Solar system in their astrological signification are also assigned their appropriate positions on the Tree. Crowley explains the qualities of the planets as understood by Western astrology and in the process stresses the “virtue” or “the positive power” of each of the planets as an aspect of its niyama. Thus, Saturn - traditionally correlated with the human skeleton - represents the firm foundation of one's spiritual practice. In addition, melancholy associated with Saturn carries a virtue of ‘the Trance of Sorrow that has determined one to undertake the task of emancipation’ (Crowley, 1991a: 36). Jupiter is ‘the vital, creative, genial element of the cosmos’ (Crowley, 1991a: 38). Mars refers to energy and strength associated with the muscular system. Its niyama is ‘the virtue which enables one to contend with, and to conquer, the physical difficulties of the 35 See H. Beta, ‘Foreword to the second edition’, in Crowley, 1997: 8-9. Yoga Sūtras, 159. 37 See Crowley, 1977. 36 10 Work’ (Crowley, 1991a: 38). The Sun is harmony and beauty, the heart of the system as of the human being. The niyama of Venus consists in ecstasy and graciousness. Mercury relates to intellectual powers.38 Finally, the niyama of the Moon is ‘that quality of aspiration, the positive purity which refuses union with anything less than the All’ (Crowley, 1991a: 42). The originality of the above correlation between the principles of yogic discipline and Western astrology in its connection to the Tree of Life lies in several factors. In addition to its manifest value as an exercise in comparative esotericism, the correlation serves the purpose of illustrating the point that ‘similar methods producing similar results are to be found in every country. The details vary, but the general structure is the same. Because all bodies, and so all minds, have identical Forms’ (Crowley, 1991a: 14). Crowley thus anticipates the cognitive view of religious systems, championed recently by the late Romanian scholar Ioan P. Couliano.39 According to this view, various religions are fundamentally systems generated by the human mind. In Couliano's own words (2000: 7; emphasis in the original), ‘The fundamental unity of humankind does not reside in a unity of views or solutions, but in the unity of operations of the human mind’. From this perspective, Yoga is stripped off of its otherness, its exoticism. Instead, it is shown to be a discipline embedded in the potentials and proprieties of the human body and mind. This anthropocentric approach is congenial to Crowley, whose consistent claim is that, ‘There is no god but man’.40 ‘Liber XV, Ecclesiæ Gnosticæ Catholicæ Canon Missæ’ or simply ‘The Gnostic Mass’41 is the major O.T.O. ritual that Crowley composed in 1913 while in Russia. This hieratic ceremony is one of the quintessential expressions of Crowley's religious philosophy and it combines influences and ideas from Western Gnosticism, Crowley's Thelema, and, arguably, Hindu tantra. The principal officers of the Mass are the Priest and the Priestess, who are assisted by the Deacon and the two “Children”. This is a synopsis of the ritual: the Priestess enters the Temple and “wakes up” the “dead” Priest 38 According to Crowley (1991a: 41), ‘In one sense Mercury is the great enemy; Mercury is mind, and it is the mind that we have set out to conquer.’ 39 See, for example, Couliano, 2000. 40 See, e.g., ‘Liber Oz sub figura LXXVII’, in Crowley, 1997: 689. 41 See Crowley, 1997: 584-97. 11 from his tomb (an event symbolized by lifting of the Priest's Lance, with obvious sexual referent). Together they approach the high altar at the opposite end of the Temple, upon which the Priest installs the Priestess, who then hides behind the veil. The Priest invokes the Goddess Nuit, a major deity in the Thelemic pantheon, identified as the ‘Infinite Space, and the Infinite Stars thereof’.42 The Priestess answers, becoming at this point one with the Goddess, whose speech from The Book of the Law she now quotes. Now the veil is rendered apart and the Priestess is seen holding the cup with wine or “Holy Grail” in her hand. The so-called “Cake of Light”, an equivalent of Eucharist, is consecrated and placed on the tip of Priest's lance, whereupon the top of the lance is depressed into the cup, allowing a part of the Cake of Light to dip into the wine within. The Priest eats the rest of the Cake of Light and drinks the wine, after which he declares, ‘There is no part of me that is not of the Gods’. This in effect represents the consummation of the ritual. In composing this ritual, Crowley was clearly influenced by the formal ceremony of the Mass as practiced within both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. However, although the form is Western and ecclesiastic, the underlying process that the Mass portrays in its ritual mode of enactment has its parallels in some fundamental tantric notions. Hugh Urban explains the essentials of tantric practice by stating that [t]he aim of sādhanā [practice] is therefore to reunite the divine male and female principles, to achieve the ideal union of semen and menstrual blood within the individual body. Through the use of both meditative imagination and physical rituals, sādhanā proceeds as a kind of mystical marriage, or, rather, an internalization and alchemical transformation of the ordinary process of marriage. (Urban, 2001: 145; emphasis added.) Keeping in mind that the Gnostic Mass operates at several levels of meaning, a possible interpretation of the ritual is as follows: The Priestess represents divine feminine energy or in tantric vocabulary Śakti, while the Priest symbolizes her masculine divine counterpart or Śiva, who is often associated with stylized phallus (lingam); the Cake of Light stands for semen (bindu) and 42 Liber AL I: 22, in Crowley, 1983: 108. 12 the wine in the cup refers to either the menstrual blood (rajas) or vaginal sexual fluids (yonitattva). The Priestess inspires and brings back to life the inert Priest - who is at the beginning of the rite hidden in his “tomb” - in a manner that carries associations to the famous tantric adage, according to which, ‘Without his Śakti, Śiva is just a corpse’. The Temple where the Gnostic Mass takes place is arranged in accordance with the symbolic structure of the Tree of Life. In such a setting, the tomb corresponds to the lowest Sephira Malkuth, which in its turn corresponds to the mūlādhāra cakra.43 According to tantric theory, the semen, which in its original state (and situated at the top of the head) has ambrosial properties, turns into poison when it reaches lower parts of the body, specifically the genitals (i.e. the mūlādhāra cakra). In order to remedy this situation, the semen needs to be brought back to the top of the head. This return is in the Gnostic Mass represented by the progression of the officers from the tomb to the high altar. Once the Priestess is seated upon the throne, she becomes divine and as such delivers the speech of the Goddess Nuit. The immersion of the Cake of Light from the tip of the Priest's lance into the wine within the cup held by the Priestess corresponds to the mingling of the semen with the menstrual blood, which is one of the standard procedures in tantric sex rituals.44 The consummation of these consecrated substances - the Cake of Light and wine - parallels the ingestion of the combined sexual fluids as done in tantric ceremonies. The purpose of this is to confer divine status onto the participants, clearly expressed by the concluding formula of the Mass, where the Priest declares that every part of him has become one with the Gods. SEXUAL MAGICK AND TANTRA Like the Jews, the wise men of India have a belief that a certain particular Prana, or force, resides in the Bindu, or semen. … Initiates will also notice that these heathen philosophers have made one further march towards the truth when they say that the Sun and Moon must be united before the reabsorption (see almost any Tantra, in particular Shiva Sanhita). A. Crowley, "De Arte Magica" In academic discourse, Tantra usually refers to a specific brand of 43 44 For these correspondences, see Crowley, 1977. See, for example, Zvelebil, 1996, esp. 115-28. 13 religious practice common to the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions …; above all, it is identified as a particularly radical and dangerous practice that involves activities normally prohibited in mainstream society, such as sexual intercourse with lower-class partners and consumption of meat and wine. H. Urban, Tantra The Gnostic Mass is a public ritual, and as such it refers to the actual performance of sexual magick in a veiled form. It is clear from Crowley's writings that he associated some aspects of sexual magick with certain elements of Tantra. Hugh Urban has recently argued (2003c: 218--9), too strongly and not quite correctly in my view, that ‘Crowley's practice is the clearest example of Western sexual magic combined (and perhaps hopelessly confused) with Indian Tantra’.45 The methodological aspects of the practice of sexual magick are elaborated for the most part in Crowley's official instructions for the highest degrees of the O.T.O., while the references to his actual performance of this form of magick are scattered throughout his diaries.46 Succinctly stated, in Crowley's view the sex act is a sacrament and the consummation of sexual fluids a Eucharist. The key to success in sex-magick ritual lies in the ability to concentrate one's mind so that it remains focused on the goal of operation, especially during the orgasm. ‘For in the preparation of the Sacrament, and in its consummation also’, writes Crowley (1974b: 216), ‘the mind of the Initiate must be concerned absolutely in one rushing flame of will upon the determined object of his operation’. He describes the essence of the practice by indicating the similarity between sexual and meditative ecstasy, which is otherwise a standard argument of a tantric orientation: ‘[T]he spiritual flower of this process is that at the moment of [sexual] discharge a physical ecstasy occurs, a spasm analogous to the mental spasm which meditation gives. And further, in the sacramental and ceremonial use of the sexual act, the divine consciousness may be attained’.47 45 For similarly construed arguments, see also Urban, 2003a, Urban, 2003b, Urban 2003c, Urban, 2003d, Urban, 2006, and Urban, 2008. I shall engage the question of the authenticity of Crowley's tantric endeavors at a later point in this chapter. 46 See, for example, ‘Rex de Arte Regia’, in Crowley, 1972: 1--82. 47 Crowley, ‘Energized Enthusiasm’, in Crowley et al., 1913: 25. 14 Although it is not completely clear through which channels Crowley arrived at the technique of sexual magick - through intuition and books, through actual contacts with Hindu and Muslim practitioners of similar rites, and/or through the O.T.O. teachings48 - there is no doubt that similar methods have a long history of use in some forms of Hindu and Buddhist Tantra. Belief in the potentially divine nature of the semen, so strongly present in Crowley's theories, is evidenced in Hinduism since earliest times. In his study of asceticism in Vedic India, Walter O. Kaelber (1989: 40; emphasis added) explores at length the notions of the fertility of male seed esoterically often associated with rain - and states: ‘Male seed, even without benefit of female contribution, is fertile and semen or seed retained increases in potency. It is capable of producing rain and fertilizing fields. Yet it is also capable of generating spiritual rebirth and immortality’. (It needs to be said that, unfortunately, both Indian tantra and Crowley display a tendency to overvalue the importance of the male seed.) Since the retained semen brings about power, celibacy is in India often encouraged: not necessarily because there is something inherently immoral about sexual act, but because the loss of semen was perceived to be conducive to disease, aging, and ultimately death. The connection between eros and spirituality was eventually to receive the highest emphasis in some theories and practices associated with Tantra.49 In the system of the Nāth Siddhas, a North Indian tantric tradition credited with the development of Haṭha Yoga,50 the semen or bindu was perceived as the carrier of immortality. It however continuously drips from its origin at the top of the head and either gets burned by the digestive fire in the stomach or is ejaculated through sexual 48 Henrik Bogdan (2006: 222, 226--7) suggests Paschal Beverly Randolph and his Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor as fundamental sources of the sexual magic associated with the O.T.O.. On Randolph, see Deveney, 1997 and Godwin, Chanel, and Deveney, 1995. 49 ‘Sexuality is ritual; this fact is the key to the understanding of all tantric and Siddha sexuality, even of the seeming obscenities of the language of the texts in question. That is: the sexual plane is sanctified and homogenized with myth and ritual; and, vice versa, the ritual and the myth may be and often is explained in sexual terms’. Zvelebil, 1993: 47. 50 On the Nāth Siddhas, see Bouillier, 1997; Briggs, 1998; Shashibhushan Dasgupta, 1969; Gold, 1992; and White, 1996. For an attempt to correlate the system of the Nāth Siddhas (and Indian tantra in general) with the Western esoteric tradition, see Djurdjevic, 2008. 15 act. Crowley was familiar with important yogic treatises composed from the Nāthist perspective, such as the Gheranda Saṃhitā, Śiva Saṃhitā and Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā,51 so it is quite possible that he adopted ideas about the divine potential of (male) sexual fluid(s) from these sources. However, there are differences: the Nāths are habitually celibate, and their main objective is to achieve the return of the semen to the top of the head through the manipulation of bodily postures, muscular contractions, breathing exercises and meditation.52 Alternatively, some forms of tantric practice allow for the actual sexual congress to occur, but the male adept is not supposed to release his semen. As Wendy D. O’Flaherty (1973: 262; emphasis added) explains, ‘The upward motion of the seed … represents the channeling of the life forces, and in order for the ritual to be effective it was essential for the yogi to restrain his seed’. If on the other hand the seed had been ejaculated, it was necessary to reabsorb it, sometimes through the urethral suction (vajroli mudra). In Crowley's practice, however, the semen is emitted, commingled with female sexual fluids, and orally consumed.53 The method favoured by Crowley, nevertheless, also has its parallels in Tantra. In his erudite study of Indian esoteric Buddhism, for example, Ronald Davidson (2002: 197) describes a practice of tantric sexual ritual as follows: ‘The secret consecration involved the disciple bringing a female sexual partner (prajñā/ mudrā/ vidyā) to the master, who copulated with her; the combination of ejaculated fluids, termed the “thought of awakening” (bodhicitta), was then ingested by the disciple as nectar’. Two elements of this account correspond with Crowley's practice: the actual ejaculation of the seed and the consummation of the mixed sexual fluids. On the theoretical level, 51 The Gheranda Saṃhitā is referenced several times in ‘The Temple of Solomon the King’, in Crowley et al., 1910b. The other two texts are included in the A\A\ Curriculum of books to be studied by a novice student. In addition, the Indian spiritual tradition is represented in the Curriculum by The Upaniṣads, The Bhagavad-gītā, RājaYoga by Swami Vivekananda, The Aphorisms of Patañjali, The Dhammapada, and The Questions of King Milinda. See Crowley,1997: 452. 52 See White, 1996. 53 It is obvious from Crowley's writings that he was aware of the tantric practice involving seminal retention (see, for example, ‘De Arte Magica’, in Crowley, 1974b: 228. He occasionally practiced it himself, as could be seen from the following entry: ‘The Operation was most extraordinary. I figured [i.e. kept a mental image of] the God well on the whole, and experienced the complete orgasm without the emission of even a single drop of semen’. Crowley, 1972: 15. Emphasis added. 16 there is a correspondence in viewing the sexual emissions as ambrosial. The necessity of mingling sexual fluids is also occasionally noted among the Nāth yogis. As George Weston Briggs (1998: 333) explains, ‘Within the yonisthāna [vagina] there is union of bindu [semen] and rajas [menstrual blood]. … Adepts, it is claimed, are able to [effect the return of the semen] … even drawing up after the act of coition both rajas and bindu. This is essential to the highest bliss’. The sex act involving the emission of the male seed and its mingling with menstrual blood, followed by the ingestion of the resulting mixture, is also observed among the Kartābhajās54 and the Bauls of Bengal.55 Hugh Urban (2003d: 157; 2010) and David Gordon White (2003a) have also suggested that the practice involving male ejaculation and the ingestion of sexual fluids represents a genuine and in fact older tantric tradition, eventually replaced by the custom of seminal retention. These examples reinforce the similarity between Crowley's and tantric methods. Arguably, the rationale behind the practice of the ingestion of sexual fluids for magico-religious reasons rests on a meaningful foundation. At the most obvious level, the semen and vaginal secretions form the basis of human life. The sense of their importance is observable in numerous taboos that surround methods of dealing with these substances in various cultural traditions. In Hindu Tantra, the semen is habitually homologized with the god Śiva and the menstrual blood with his divine spouse, Śakti. Thus we read in a Nāth yogic text: Semen is Śiva, menstrual blood is Śakti; semen is the Moon, menstrual blood the Sun. Highest station is obtained only by joining them together. Semen is associated with the Moon, and menstrual blood is associated with the Sun. The person who knows that they are of equal essence is the knower of Yoga.56 In tantric Buddhism, the semen is often associated with the “thought of awakening” (bodhicitta). The Buddha describes his esoteric nature in the Hevajra-Tantra in strong 54 On Kārtabhajās, see Urban's, 2001. See, for example, Openshaw, 2002, esp. 203--39, et passim. 56 Gorakṣa-Vacana-Saṃgraha, v. 38-9, in Mishra, 2003. The Sanskrit text may be found in Banerjea, 1999: 333--44. 55 17 language: ‘I dwell in the Sukhāvatī [Land of Bliss] of the woman's vagina in the name of semen’.57 The Bauls and the Kartābhajās of Bengal also teach similar doctrines.58 A recurrent motif of Indian spiritual traditions associates semen with the elixir of immortality, amṛta,59 or with the divine liquor, the soma. Shashibhushan Dasgupta (1969: 250) draws attention to the parallel between the yogic practice of drinking the nectar and the Vedic soma sacrifice, which ‘rejuvenates and invigorates the body and gives the drinker, whether god or man, eternal life in heaven or earth’. Crowley (1981: 47) also taught that ‘Vindu [i.e. bindu, semen] is identified with Amrita’, which according to him ‘has a will of its own, which is more in accordance with the Cosmic Will, than that of the man who is its guardian and servant’. In a similar vein, he describes the effect of partaking of what he calls the Eucharist - which is a veiled term for the consumption of sexual fluids60 - as consisting of deification of the practitioner: The Magician becomes filled with God, fed upon God, intoxicated with God. Little by little his body will become purified by the internal lustration of God; day by day his mortal frame, shedding its earthly elements, will become in very truth the Temple of the Holy Ghost. Day by day the matter is replaced by Spirit, the human by the divine; ultimately the change will be complete: God manifest in flesh will be his name. (Crowley, 1997: 269) THE OCCULT ASPECTS AND POWERS OF THE HUMAN BODY: CAKRAS AND THE KUṆḌALINĪ After lying down in my clothes, I made invocation … and then 57 Qtd. in Dasgupta, 1974: 142. I have slightly edited translation from Dasgupta's ‘I dwell … in the vagina of the female …’. 58 ‘[…] Kartābhajās' bodily cosmology and physical practice centers around the mystery of the sexual fluids, semen (bīja, bindu, śukra) and menstrual blood (raja). Identified with the supreme male and female principles of reality, Puruṣa and Prakṛti or Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā, the semen and uterine blood are the very particles of the absolute which lie hidden within each human body’. Urban, 2001: 143. 59 For his writings on this subject, see Crowley, 1990. 60 The actual process is hinted at with these words: ‘Take a substance [which, as the note adds, may be of composite character] symbolic of the whole course of Nature, make it God, and consume it’. Crowley, 1997: 267. 18 noticed that my Ajna was very small and tightly closed, while Brahmarandra was immense and brilliant, with Shiva and Shakti disporting themselves with love therein. A. Crowley, The Magical Record The theory and practice of Yoga and Tantra postulate the existence and spiritual importance of hidden aspects of the human body. Within the gross material body there is another, subtle body (sūkṣma śarīra), consisting of the centres of energy positioned along the axis that stretches from the genital organs, through the spinal column, to the top of the head. These subtle centers are customarily called ‘wheels’ (cakras) or ‘lotuses’ (padmas), and their numbers are habitually given as four in Buddhist, and six or seven in Hindu Tantra. It is assumed that the cakras are latent or ‘asleep’ in the case of an ordinary person. When awakened, however, they bring about occult powers (siddhis) and gnostic insights. The tantric teachings conceptualize that the primary spiritual energy lies at the base of the spine in the form of the “coiled snake” kuṇḍalinī.61 This “serpent power”, kuṇḍalinī śakti, is a microcosmic equivalent of the Great Goddess, whose divine spouse, Śiva, has his own esoteric dwelling place on the top of the human head. When the two appear as separate, the result is the illusory existence suffused with pain, in which the ordinary people live. If a yogi manages to bring these two inner divinities together - by making the kuṇḍalinī rise along the spinal column until she reaches the top of the head, ‘waking up’ the cakras along the way - the result will be spiritual awakening. In this manner, the yogi gains immense powers and effectively becomes a “second Śiva”. There are numerous references to the cakras and kuṇḍalinī in Crowley’s writings. The earliest mention and description of the cakras is given in the fourth installment of the serial ‘The Temple of Solomon the King’ in The Equinox I, 4 (1910), written by J.F.C. Fuller but incorporating a good deal of quotations from Crowley’s diaries. There is in this issue an illustration showing a yogi with the seven cakras along the central axis of his body. At a later date, Crowley added notes to his own copy of the book providing 61 On this subject, see Silburn, 1988. 19 the correlation between the cakras and the introductory degrees of the O.T.O.62 It is not entirely clear if the intention was to suggest that the O.T.O. rituals actually “activate” the cakras during the initiation of the candidate. It is however important that the two esoteric traditions – represented by references to the Western magical fraternity and Indian Yoga - were brought into correlation on the basis of the perceived analogical convergence of their respective experiential character, their mutual conceptual and symbolic correspondence. As far as the practical work with the cakras is concerned, of particular importance and interest is Crowley’s short instructional manual called ‘Liber Yod’.63 The text is introduced as providing ‘three methods whereby the consciousness of the Many may be melted to that of the One’.64 The first method is anchored in the Western magical tradition and consists of a series of banishing rituals that refer to the planets, zodiacal signs, and finally the sephiroth on the Tree of Life. The rituals culminate in the banishment, we might say deconstruction, of the symbolic order represented by the highest sephira, Kether or the “crown”. In this final phase, the magician tramples his foot upon the light of the candle and falls outside the circle that is symbolic of his individual consciousness. This represents the return to the primordial condition prior to the manifestation of the phenomenal universe, before the emergence of the separate sense of identity and the discriminative mind. The second and third methods are meditative in character. 65 The second method is a virtual parallel to the ritual described above, the difference being that the technique of reducing consciousness to the state of unity works by dissolution of the symbolic order associated with each particular cakra: 62 The illustration with Crowley’s annotations is reproduced in Crowley et al., 1986: 193. First published in Crowley et al., 1912 as ‘Liber Tau’. My references are to the edition in Crowley, 1997: 643--6. 64 Crowley, 1997: 643. 65 As the editor, H. Beta, mentions in the notes, these two methods are rooted in the Buddhist practice of mahāsatipaṭṭhana and in the techniques described in the books of yogic instruction Haṭhayogapradīpikā and Śiva Saṃhitā. See Crowley, 1997: 785--6, n. 364 and n. 367. 63 20 Let then the Hermit [i.e. the practitioner], seated in his āsana, meditate upon the mūlādhāra cakra66 and its correspondence as a power of the mind, and destroy it in the same manner as aforesaid. … Let the other cakras in their turn be thus destroyed, each one with its mental and moral attitude. … Lastly, having drawn all his being into the highest sahasrāra cakra, let him remain eternally fixed in meditation thereupon. (Crowley, 1997: 644) The third method suggests the transfer of the seat of perception, volition and the sensation (of movement and other activities) into the ājñā cakra.67 ‘Beware thinking of “my ājñā,”’ warns Crowley (1997: 646). ‘In these meditations and practices, ājñā does not belong to you; ājñā is the master and worker, you are the wooden monkey’. Since this particular cakra is associated with impersonal divine wisdom, the implication is that the end result of the practice leads to the telescoping of consciousness into the unitive experience, beyond the sense of duality. What needs to be emphasized is Crowley’s ability to incorporate into a meaningful whole what is usually thought of as distinct methods of esoteric practice. The magical ritual and yogic meditation are thus brought together and employed as alternative means in the service of the shared goal. Crowley has also provided descriptions of, and instructions for, the “waking up” of the kuṇḍalinī śakti. ‘The Book of the Heart Girt with the Serpent’,68 one of the inspired or holy books of Thelema, is at its core a long poetic description of the intense spiritual experience of ‘the relations of the Aspirant with his Holy Guardian Angel’ (Crowley et al., 1996: 87). The opening verses suggest in strong terms that the Serpent is, in at least one symbolic register, representative of the “snake’ kuṇḍalinī: ‘I am the Heart; and the Snake is entwined / About the invisible core of the mind. / Rise, O my snake! It is now is the hour / Of the hooded and holy ineffable flower’ (Crowley et al. 1996: 89). Even more important in this regard is Crowley’s comment on one of the verses from The Book of the Law, where he suggests that the love, mentioned in the phrases ‘Love is the law, love under will’ (AL I: 57) and ‘Nor let the fools mistake love; for there are love and love. There is the dove, and there is the serpent’ (AL I: 57), may refer to ‘the serpent love, the awakening of the kuṇḍalinī’ (Crowley, 1996: 78, n.2). 66 I.e., the root cakra situated at the base of the spine. Popularly known and represented as the “third eye”. 68 ‘The Book of the Heart Girt with the Serpent’ or ‘Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente sub figura LXV’ is first published in Crowley et al., 1919. See also Crowley, 1983: 51--83. My references are to the annotated edition in Crowley et al., 1996: 85--219. 67 21 The awakening of the kuṇḍalinī is also a subject of the essay ‘Energized Enthusiasm: A Note on Theurgy’, which appeared in The Equinox I, 9 (1913), although the Sanskrit term itself is not mentioned in the text. The essay describes a method of inducing the trance state with the use of “wine, woman and song”, providing in addition some practical and interesting suggestions for the practice of mantra chanting. The most explicit technique of waking up the “serpent power” is, however, given in the third section of the short text called ‘Liber HHH’.69 This text, and especially its third section, is a very good example of the syncretic tendency that is so characteristic of Crowley’s teaching. Again, the term kuṇḍalinī is not employed (although other Sanskrit vocabulary that refers to the practice of Yoga is there70); there is no doubt, however, that the practice refers to it.71 The brief description of the technique is as follows: The practitioner is to sit in the yogic posture and to imagine that the cavity of the brain is the yoni or vagina. Other images are also suggested: the womb of Isis or the body of Nuit. The spinal column is to be identified with the lingam, or ‘the phallus of Osiris, or the being of Hadit.’72 This aspect of the meditation merits a comment. It is typical for tantra to project divine entities into the human microcosm, but the gender arrangement is usually reversed: the god Śiva is thought to be present in the head, while the goddess dwells at the base of the spine.73 What is important in either case, however, is the presence of sexual polarity within the subtle body. The practitioner now focuses on the yearning of these sexual centers for each other, and attempts to prolong this feeling as long as possible. Next, an additional element is added: one is to imagine a current of light passing along the spine in as slow a manner as possible. 69 First published in Crowley et al., 1911a. See also Crowley, 1997: 598--603. I refer to the terms āsana, yoni, linga, samādhi, prāṇāyāma, and kumbhaka mentioned in the text. 71 ‘In the essay “Energised Enthusiasm” is given a concise account of one of the classical methods of arousing kuṇḍalinī’. Crowley, 1997: 233. 72 Ibid. Hadit, complement of the goddess Nuit, is one of the central concepts in The Book of the Law. ‘Nuit is Matter, Hadit is Motion, in their full physical sense. They are the tao and te of Chinese Philosophy; or, to put it very simply, the Noun and Verb in grammar. Our central Truth – beyond other philosophies – is that these two infinities cannot exist apart’. Crowley, 1996: 23. 73 Functionally, however, when the kuṇḍalinī makes her way up the spine, piercing the (female) lotuses of energy along the way, it does assume phallic attributes. 70 22 Finally, the yogi is allowed to accelerate the passage of light between the genitals and the head so that the experience culminates in orgasmic ecstasy. The above examples were intended as illustration of the importance attached by Crowley to the experience and use of hidden powers within the (subtle) body. I would like to underscore the similarity of Crowley’s methods with those of Tantra by making a reference to a recent definition (White, 2000: 9), according to which ‘Tantra is that … body of beliefs and practices [that] … seeks to ritually appropriate and channel [the divine] energy, within the human organism, in creative and emancipatory ways’. I would in fact argue that the emphasis on kuṇḍalinī as ‘the magical force itself, the manifesting side of the Godhead of the Magician’ (Crowley, 1997: 105) represents the strongest link between Crowley’s magick and Tantra. As he wrote in a letter to his “magical son”, Charles Stansfeld Jones: ‘All magical methods are merely methods of arousing kundalini’.74 The next section will focus on the use of transgression as a tool of spiritual liberation, which is yet another element of resemblance between Crowley’s modus operandi and that of Indian Tantra. CEFALÙ: DECADENCE AND TRANSGRESSION AS A SPIRITUAL TECHNIQUE [T]he tongue … functions as an instrument of union. … It breaks the bond of disgust and initiates its possessor into an experience of ontological Sameness, Unity, or Non-difference. … The tongue unites with the impure, and through it, with reality. It fulfills an eminently Tantric function. J. Kripal, Kālī's Child [T]he Most Holy must needs take its Delight under the Omphalos of the Unclean. A. Crowley, Liber Aleph 74 A. Crowley to C.S. Jones, April 14, 1916. Unpublished correspondence. 23 In order to further assess those of Crowley's practices, which contain tantric characteristics, I suggest that we focus on certain controversial75 episodes that took place at the "Abbey of Thelema”. The Abbey was established in a small Sicilian town of Cefalù in the period between 1920-3. It consisted of one large house occupied by a small number of Crowley's disciples and mistress(es), with an outbuilding called the “Umbilicus”. Life at the Abbey was for the most part Crowley’s attempt to translate his magical and Thelemic ideas into social reality. For the participants, the regime of life involved a great deal of occult and sex-magic activity as well as experiments with various mind- and mood-altering substances, such as hashish, cocaine, heroin, and opium.76 Crowley wrote extensively and claimed to have attained the highest grade of the A\A\77 during this period, but the life at the Abbey was far from the ideal. In addition to internal turmoil and frictions, he and his community became the frequent target of the yellow press, with Crowley being labeled as “the wickedest man in the world” and “the man we'd like to hang”.78 He was eventually expelled from Italy by the order of Mussolini.79 In a certain sense, the life at the Abbey of Thelema may be taken to paradigmatically represent Crowley's lifestyle and philosophy in their most intense aspects. He considered himself the prophet of the New Aeon, which was to replace the old patriarchal religions that are most typically exemplified by Christianity. He was thus in a very important sense asserting his self-identity and pursuing his orientation against the grain of what was accepted as normative by his contemporary society, 75 I focus on controversial events since they involve the breaking of societal norms, which is also typical of tantra. 76 For an informative account of the life at the Abbey, see the two titles that focus on Crowley's disciple Frank Bennett: Richmond, 2004a and Richmond, 2004b. 77 ‘Discarding his clothes, he entered the temple with Leah [Hirsig] at his side. There, before his Scarlet Woman and all the powers of the universe as his witness, Crowley took the Oath of an Ipsissimus, (1º=10º), the final grade in the A\A\ hierarchy. The oath began his final and greatest initiation, one which would not see its conclusion until 1924’. Kaczynski, 2002: 290. 78 See, for example, Kaczynski, 2002: 309. Crowley and his community were especially the targets of the tabloids Sunday Express and John Bull. See Kaczynski, 2002. 79 For Crowley's Cefalu period see, inter alia, Sutin, 2000: 278--309 and Kaczynski, 2002: 276--312. 24 religion and culture. I would like to single out this element of intentional opposition to the normative societal values and emphasize its consanguinity with the tantric worldview in general. The ethics of Tantra are often characterized by opposition to brahminic priestly orthodoxy, and its method of practice is often defined as the process of regression.80 This regression, or going against the current - ulṭa or ujāna sādhana addresses an array of lifestyle choices as well as the actual methodology of tantric Yoga. Crowley (1972: 248; emphasis in the original) expresses the same orientation when he writes, ‘I recognize Magick as concerned to reverse any existing order’. This implies the transformation and transcendence of everyday profane reality by the method of going against its flow. From this perspective, the profane world is topsy-turvy and is set aright only by being turned upside down. This is a difficult task and for that reason the tantric practitioner is often described as the 'hero' (vīra). A newcomer to the Abbey of Thelema was expected to spend a night in what Crowley designated as the “Chambre des Cauchemars”. Crowley himself had painted, in vivid colours and sinister imagery, its murals representing hell, heaven and earth. The intention was to pass students of the Sacred Wisdom through the ordeal of contemplating every possible phantom which can assail the soul. Candidates for this initiation are prepared by a certain secret process before spending the night in this room; the effect is that the figures on the wall seem actually to become alive, to bewilder and obsess the spirit that has dared to confront their malignity’.81 80 For example, ‘The school of the Nāthas and Siddhas employed a well-known yogicotantric technique: ulṭā sādhana or ujāna sādhana, the process of “regression” or “going against the current” - that is, the complete reversal of human behavior …’. Eliade, 1969: 318. ‘This union of Śiva and Śakti symbolizes in the wider sense the stoppage of ordinary process of becoming and the retrogression of the whole world-process for the attainment of the changeless state of the Immortal Being. … The process has also been explained under the imagery of proceeding against the current (ujānasādhana)’. Dasgupta, 1969: 231. ‘One peculiar feature of abhicāra-rites is that of “inversion”’. Türstig, 1985: 90. 81 Crowley, untitled brochure, qtd. in Sutin, 2000: 281. Richard Kaczynski suggests that Crowley's style of painting was influenced by the work of Paul Gaugin (1848-1903). See Kaczynski, 2002: 280. 25 The “secret process” most probably referred to the use of a psychedelic, possibly mescaline.82 Crowley describes the outcome of the ordeal as follows: Those who have come successfully through the trial say that they have become immunized from all possible infection by those ideas of evil which interfere between the soul and its divine Self. Having been forced to fathom the Abysses of Horror, to confront the most ghastly possibilities of Hell, they have attained permanent mastery over their minds. The process is similar to that of "Psychoanalysis"; it releases the subject from fear of Reality and the phantasms and neuroses thereby caused, by externalizing and thus disarming the spectres that lie in ambush for the Soul of Man.83 Although Crowley compared the process of facing and conquering one's fears with the method of psychoanalysis, there is here also a functional parallel to a standard procedure in the practice of tantra, which consists of spending the night and performing rituals or meditating in the cremation ground or in a similar fear-inspiring place. Mircea Eliade (1969:269; emphasis added) suggests that by meditating at the cemetery, the tantric yogi ‘more directly achieves the combustion of egotistic experiences; at the same time, he frees himself from fear, he evokes the terrible demons and obtains mastery over them’. This is the philosophy of method that carries associations to the Nietzschean precept that what does not kill you makes you stronger. In his study of the Bengali saint Ramakrishna, Jeffery J. Kripal has argued against overly philosophical and whitewashed representations of tantra. ‘Too often scholars have equated Tantra with a philosophical school enshrined in ancient Sanskrit texts’, claims Kripal (1998: 28), ‘and have ignored the popular connotations of the term Tāntrika, almost all of which revolve around the notions of magical power, strangeness, seediness, and sex’. He instead suggests (Kripal, 1998: 29; emphasis in the original) approaching tantra ‘as a “dirty path” to ontological truths that are as terrifying as they are profound’, a path which ‘consciously uses decadence as a spiritual technique’. In a similar vein, Crowley's spiritual path may be conceptualized as an intentional use of “decadence, strangeness, seediness, and sex” as spiritual techniques with the aim of conquering inner limitations and psychological barriers. Crowley was possessed of an intuitive understanding of the transformational power of sexuality since his youth. For 82 83 See Starr, 1998: 8. Crowley, qtd. in Sutin, 2000: 282. Emphases added. 26 example, if we are to believe his Confessions (Crowley, 1969: 80), he asserted his sense of independence and rebellion against the religious fanaticism of his family by committing one of his first sexual acts with a servant maid on his mother's bed. Kripal (1998: 32) quotes Ramakrishna's saying, ‘Shame, disgust, and fear - these three must not remain’, as one of the definitions of tantra. This precept is equally applicable to Crowley and his own experiments in conquering shame, disgust, and fear. He argued: The Magician should devise for himself a definite technique for destroying “evil.” The essence of such a practice will consist in training the mind and the body to confront things which cause fear, pain, disgust, shame and the like. He must learn to endure them, the to become indifferent to them, then to analyze them until they give pleasure and instruction, and finally to appreciate them for their own sake, as aspects of Truth. When this has been done, he should abandon them, if they are really harmful in relation to health and comfort. (Crowley, 1997: 579--80) Several examples should provide substance to this thesis. In July of 1920, a Hollywood silent film actress Jane Wolfe (1875-1958) joined the community at Cefalù. Prior to this she was engaged in an intense correspondence with Crowley and there was a strong mutual attraction between the two. When she finally met Crowley face to face, she was appalled by his unkempt looks and by the general state of affairs at the Abbey. Only later was she to learn from another of Crowley's disciples that he was at the time undergoing a phase of deliberate exposure to the “mystery of filth”.84 It appears that Crowley was guided in this practice by the verses from ‘The Book of the Heart Girt with a Serpent’, which state: ‘Go thou unto the uttermost places and subdue all things. Subdue thy fear and thy disgust. Then – yield’.85 Since the pioneering work of Mary Douglas (1970), scholars have been alerted to the complexity of human behaviour and emotions surrounding the issue of purity and dirt. Alexis Sanderson has thus contrasted the brahminical fixation on the rules of purity with the tantric deliberate disregard of the same: 84 For this episode, see Sutin, 2000: 286--7 and Kaczynski, 2002: 284. Crowley, qtd. in Sutin, 2000: 287. Emphasis added. See also ‘The Book of the Heart Girt with a Serpent’, I, 44-5. 85 27 The conscientiousness essential to the preservation of purity and social system was to be expelled from his identity by the Tantric Brahman as impurity itself, the only impurity he was to recognize, a state of ignorant self-bondage through the illusion that purity and impurity, prohibitedness and enjoinedness were objective qualities residing in things, persons and actions. (Sanderson, 1985: 198) The functional parallel to this spiritual orientation is provided in Crowley's intentional exploration of the “mystery of filth”. He writes in his Magical Diary (Crowley, 1972: 257; emphasis added) about ‘a protest against … the thought that anything is common or unclean…’. Even more intense in this respect were some forms of his practice of sexual magick, conducted with the same objective of transcending the sense of shame and disgust. Crowley's principal partner during the Cefalù years was an American citizen of Swiss origin, Leah Hirsig (1883-1975). She was in this period his “Scarlet Woman”, a role designated by The Book of the Law, a female counterpart to Crowley as the Beast. (It is significant, in the light of present considerations, that Crowley (1974c: 103) defines these two officers as follows: ‘The Beast and the Scarlet Woman are avatars of … Shiva and Shakti’.) In addition to being each other's principal partners, both Crowley and Hirsig had sexual relations with other persons. Crowley's ideas on sexuality were in agreement with the liberal injunctions expressed in The Book of the Law, which contains statements such as ‘take your fill and will of love as ye will, when, where, and with whom ye will!’86 and ‘The word of Sin is Restriction. O man! refuse not thy wife, if she will! O lover, if thou wilt, depart! There is no bond that can unite the divided but love: all else is a curse’.87 Commenting on the last verse, Crowley (1996: 42) writes: ‘The sexual act is a sacrament of Will. To profane it is the great offence. All true expression of it is lawful; all suppression or distortion is contrary to the Law of Liberty’. Crowley's sexual life was consequently uninhibited and abundant and included both heterosexual and homosexual liaisons.88 With Leah Hirsig, whom he met in New York City in 1918, Crowley was exploring some darker areas of sexuality from the very beginning of their affair. It 86 AL I: 51, in Crowley, 1983: 111. "AL I: 41, in Crowley, 1983: 110. 88 For his approach to the mystical aspects of homosexuality, see Crowley, 1991d. 87 28 might be safely said that Eros and Thanatos were intensely intertwined and frequently interpenetrating in their relationship. On her second visit to Crowley's studio, Leah posed naked for Crowley. ‘When she took the pose I had asked her, “What shall I call the picture; what shall I paint you as?” She had said, “Paint me as a dead soul”’.89 On another occasion, Crowley wrote that making love to anorexic Leah was like having sex with a skeleton.90 This blending of sexuality and death is also typical of Tantra. Its imagery is teeming both with representations of erotic coupling (the maithuna) between Gods and Goddesses and yogis and yoginīs and with the motifs of skulls, spilled blood, cremation grounds and ferocious divinities such as the god Śiva in his destructive aspect as Bhairava and the goddess Kālī, who dances upon a corpse with a necklace made of severed heads. Crowley's relationship with Hirsig had in addition a strong self-destructive component, which occasionally manifested as a masochistic drive.91 ‘I want to be Leah's slave, her abject’, wrote he (Crowley, 1972: 257) in his Diary, ‘I want to abrogate the Godhead that melts soul in soul…’. It is within this relational context that Leah imposed on Crowley a major ordeal.92 Some schools of tantra, most notably the Aghorīs,93 maintain that an adept may achieve a peculiar power, which consists in the ability to consume with equanimity any kind of food, be it even the excrement or the flesh of the human corpse. Eliade comments: They justify these practices by saying that all of man's natural inclination and tastes should be destroyed, that there is neither good nor evil, pleasant or unpleasant, etc. Even as human excrement fertilizes a sterile soil, so assimilating every kind of filth makes the mind capable of any and every meditation. (Eliade, 1969: 296--7)94 89 Crowley, 1969: 793. See Grant, 1975a: 145. 91 See, for example, ‘Leah Sublime’ (Crowley, 1976), a poem in 156 lines written around 1920. 92 The larger context of the Cefalu period involves Crowley's self-initiation into the grade of Ipsissimus, the summit of the A\A\ Order. The essence of the grade is that "the Ipsissimus is wholly free from all limitations soever, existing in the Nature of all things without discriminations of quantity and quality between them." Crowley, One Star in Sight’, in Crowley, 1997: 491. 93 On the Aghorīs, see Svoboda, 1986. 94 Briggs (1998: 224) claims that ‘[t]he practice of making no discrimination in food is an old Pāśupata one’. 90 29 Similarly Crowley, while once making love to Leah, boasted to her of his ability to transmute even that which he loathes by the power of love and to ‘make it God's Body, or Blood, consume it, worship and delight in it, nourish and energize my soul thereon’ (1972: 235). At that point Leah offered to Crowley her excrement and demanded of him to practice what he preached. Crowley was reluctant. ‘False Priest,’ Leah replied, ‘tear off thy robe: forsworn to Me, forth from my Temple!’ (Crowley, 1972: 235). Finally he obeyed: ‘My mouth burned; my throat choked; my belly wretched; my blood fled whither who knows, and my skin sweated’ (Crowley, 1972: 235).95 But he did it; he ate the “Eucharist” and passed the test: ‘I am indeed High Priest. I'll blush no more, nor in that matter nor another’ (Crowley, 1972: 235).96 Despite the inner instinctual opposition to the experience he had demonstrated in a physical way his adherence to the creed, which asserts that there should be no difference between things,97 which claims that ‘All phenomena are Sacraments’ (Crowley, 1997: 95), and which sees every part of the human body as divine.98 The above episode is best understood if read in the light of a pertinent remark by Gerald Yorke. According to Yorke, ‘Crowley didn't enjoy his perversions! He performed them in order to overcome his horror of them’.99 Commenting on this statement, the Crowley biographer Richard Kaczynski (2003: 284) suggests that by 95 Crowley, 1972: 235. This episode and its transgressive aspects are also discussed in Urban, 2003d: 163. 96 Crowley, 1972: 235. Commenting on similar practices carried out by Ramakrishna, Kripal (1998: 305) states: ‘Thus Ramakrishna, possessed by Kālī, extends an ecstatic tongue to commune with rotting human flesh, polluted rice, river-bank feces, and symbolic vaginas, that preeminent ‘place of disgust.’ Kālī’s tongue here is not about shame but about the destruction of disgust’. 97 See Liber AL I: 22: ‘Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt’. In Crowley, 1983: 108. 98 See ‘The Gnostic Mass’: ‘There is no part of me that is not of the Gods’. In Crowley, 1997: 597. 99 Qtd. in Kaczynski, 2002: 284. Emphasis in the original. See also Fuller,1965: 244. There is an interesting entry in Crowley's magical diary (1972: 52; emphasis added) where he records a sex-magick operation conducted with the intention of acquiring ‘[t]he Divine Knowledge - with the special idea of sacrificing the divine ecstasy for that Knowledge: Ananda for Chit’. 30 following these methods the Great Beast sought ‘to reprogram his mind of Victorian mores’. But the intentional pursuit of those experiences, which one regards with 'shame, fear, and disgust', is also a distinctive orientation in the method of tantra, whether conceptualized as the 'conscious use of decadence as a spiritual technique' (Kripal, 1998: 29) or as the path that seeks 'power through impurity’ (Sanderson, 1985: 200). As Kripal (1998: 290) suggests, it is a tantric notion that “pollution and impurity can be used to induce mystical states” In addition, Crowley's method of sexual magick bears a “family resemblance” to Indian Tantra through the paramount importance attached to the human body. In Tantra as in Crowley's magick, the human body is both the instrument and the locus of gnosis. One can generalize that in both Indian and Western esotericism there is a tendency to sublimate religious quest. Crowley is similar to those tantric practitioners who maintain the necessity or even supremacy of embodied experience and bodily gnosis. This attitude is also congenial to alchemy as the science of transformations (of 'base metals' into 'gold'), and it is interesting to note that in India there was a close connection between tantric Yoga and the methods of alchemy. In Crowley's case, this orientation was yet another application of his fundamental precept that “There is no god but man’.100 CONCLUSIONS Am I then supposed to be saying that Yoga is merely the hand-maiden of Magick, or that Magick has no higher function than to supplement Yoga? By no means. It is the co-operation of lovers; which is here a symbol of the fact. A. Crowley, Eight Lectures on Yoga Aleister Crowley's connections with Indian Yoga and Tantra were both considerable and complex. He had direct exposure to some forms of these practices and was familiar with the contemporary literature on the subjects, wrote extensively about them, and what is perhaps the most important - he practiced them. In his assessment of the value of tantra, Crowley was ahead of his time, which habitually considered it a degenerate 100 See ‘Liber Oz’ in Crowley, 1997: 689. 31 form of Hinduism. Instead, he (Crowley, 1991d: 74) claimed that, ‘Paradoxical as it may sound, the Tantrics are in reality the most advanced of the Hindus’. Crowley's influence in bringing Eastern, primarily Indian, esoteric traditions to the West extends also to his incorporation of the elements of Yoga and Tantra into the structure of two influential magical Orders, the A\A\ and the O.T.O. In addition, in his theoretical writings, Crowley is notable for his practice of concordance, where he consistently attempted to emphasize the similarity of principles involved in Yoga and magick. In one of his final works, a collection of letters to a disciple, published posthumously, he wrote: The two seem, at first glance, to be opposed, but when you have advanced a little in both, you find that concentration learnt in Yoga is of immense use in attaining the mental powers necessary in Magick; on the other hand, the discipline of Magick is of the greatest service in Yoga. (Crowley, 1991d: 492) He came to consider these two traditions as the two orientations along the same path, one consisting in “Will to Death” or introversion (Yoga), another being “Will to Life” or extroversion (magick).101 Due to the enormous influence that Crowley continues to exert onto Western esotericism, there is no doubt that his interpretations of Yoga and Tantra will also loom large. It has been observed, most recently by Hugh Urban,102 that Crowley did not actually know that much of the real Tantra on the one hand and that he misinterpreted it as a solely sexual practice on the other. This view has its merit, but it may be challenged, in particular the suggestion that Crowley conflated Tantra with sexuality. There is no doubt that there are differences between what Crowley termed Tantra and what is implied by that appellation in India. However, this is a regular occurrence whenever cultural appropriation of some foreign ideas and practices takes place.103 As 101 Crowley, 1991d: 492. See also the footnote to Crowley, 1997: 232, where he says, ‘There is the general metaphysical antithesis that Magick is the Art of the Will-to-Live, Mysticism of the Will-to-Die; but 'Truth comes bubbling to my brim; Life and Death are one to Him’. As the editor H. Beta, mentions in his notes, the quotation comes from Crowley,s play ‘Scorpion’, in Crowley et al., 1911b: 67. 102 See Urban, 2003d. 103 Henrik Bogdan (2006: 214, n.10), arguing against the tendency of some scholars to dismiss the “New Age Tantra” as “a product of impostors”, claims: ‘Throughout the history of religions the transmission of ideas, symbols and practices from one religious 32 Urban (2003c: 3) himself wrote on another occasion, it is ‘the very nature of crosscultural dialogue, [that] the mutual re- and misinterpretations … occur in every crosscultural encounter’.104 The regional differences between various forms of Buddhism are a case in point. Are we to argue that Zen is not Buddhism, because it differs in discourse and methodology from Theravāda? Equally important, we should not assume that tantra is a unified phenomenon.105 There are, sometimes significant, differences between Japanese Shingon Buddhism, Tibetan Kālacakra system, Indian Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyās, Nāth yogis, Bengali Bauls, and the ideas and practices as observed among the devotees of the Goddess Kālī.106 Western Tantra, significantly influenced by Crowley, does differ from the above but not to the point of not being tantric in character at all.107 Finally, Crowley did not exactly relate tantra to sexuality, as a careful reading of his work will confirm. He was rather impressed by its positive evaluation of the phenomenal universe and the human experience and for these reasons he classified it system to another has been a permanent factor of religious change. New interpretations of religious symbols do not make them less authentic than older interpretations. For the historian of religions, new interpretations and uses of religious symbols is part of the ongoing development of religious traditions’. 104 Urban (2003c: 205) also writes: ‘Since at least the time of Agehananda Bharati, most Western scholars have been severely critical of these [Western] new forms of pop Tantra or neo-Tantra. … My own view, however, is that “neo” or “California” Tantra is not “wrong” or “false” any more than the Tantra of the Mahānirvāṇa or other traditions; it is simply a different interpretation for a specific historical situation. As such, the historian of religions must take it very seriously as an example of a new adaptation of a religious form to a new social and political context’. 105 ‘In the face of this intense confusion and contradiction, many scholars have abandoned the very idea of asserting a singular, monothetic definition for Tantra’. Urban, 2003c: 6. 106 All of these in addition to Kāpālikas, Siddhas, Śaivas, Śāktas, Isma˘ilis, Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyās, Jain yogis, Bhāgavatas (India), worshippers of the Goddess Taleju (Nepal), Chinese Esoteric Buddhists, followers of Japanese Soto Zen and Tachikawa-ryū, as well as Tibetan practitioners of Yoga, Gelugpa, Gcod, and Dzogchen traditions are included in the anthology Tantra: In Practice (White, ed. 2000). It could be argued that “Western tantra” differs from these traditions to a similar degree that they mutually differ from each other. 107 Kripal (2008: 487) has also argued in a similar vein: ‘If the Doctrine of the Elders (Theravada) can become the Great Vehicle (Mahayana) and even the Thunderbolt Vehicle (Vajrayana), why can’t, say, Bengali Shakta Tantra become English California Tantra? Why honor the former transformation and dismiss the latter?’ 33 as a White School of Magick,108 akin to his own Thelema. As already argued, he was also similar to tantrikas in his countercultural and antinomian practices and in his approach to the human body and sexuality as instruments of liberation. For these reasons it is meaningful to talk about “Crowley's Tantra” as a functional parallel, a variety, of Indian Tantra, to which it bears a significant family resemblance, a formal similarity. Crowley's unconventional life-style was an occasion for numerous and gross misunderstandings. His opposition to the prevalent morality, religion and culture have given growth to the popular image of him as a “Satanist”,109 which he was emphatically not, if for no other reason than simply because he did not identify himself as such. As any other binary opposition, Christianity and Satanism are entangled in a web of mutual correlation and codependence. They inhabit a common universe of discourse, albeit with a differing set of values. Crowley was about something else. He was a Thelemite. He was also a person deeply steeped in the practice of what he designated as Magick, the considerable part of which involved a pursuit of Yoga and Tantra. Being a child of his time, he also shared some typical misconceptions about these traditions.110 He was also, unfortunately, perfectly capable of displaying on ocassion an attitude of colonial (and gender) supremacy. It is nevertheless crucial that Crowley's life and work be evaluated not against some abstract canon of truth and morality, but in the light of the principles that are congenial to his methods. In addition, it needs to be remembered that, his erudition notwithstanding, he was not a scholar but primarily a practitioner of esotericism. In a certain sense, part of what he was attempting to do was to liberate himself from the constraint of Victorian limits in self-identification. As Alex Owen (2004) has suggested, Crowley belonged to the group of people whose experience of modernity included the search for a new, flexible, magical self that is potentially divine. In order to reach freedom from the 'shame, disgust, and fear,' which obscure the experience of this self, Crowley - like many other twentieth-century and 108 "We may define the doctrine of the White School in its purity in very simple terms. Existence is pure joy. Sorrow is caused by failure to perceive this fact; but this is not a misfortune. … The Tantric is not obsessed by the will-to-die. It is a difficult business to get any fun out of existence; but at least it is not impossible." Crowley, ‘The Three Schools of Magick’, in Crowley, 1991c: 77, 75. 109 See the pertinent comments on this issue by H. Beta in Crowley, 1997: lxii-vi. 110 See, for example, Urban, 2003d: 139. 34 contemporary esotericists - engaged in practices of syncretic character. All the wisdom or folly of such an endeavour aside, as far as the academic study of Crowley's life and work is concerned, an interdisciplinary approach, involving inter alia the comparative study of Eastern and Western esoteric traditions, appears as the most constructive method to adopt. 35