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To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick.tantra,alt.magick,alt.thelema,alt.magick.order,alt.religion.sexuality From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nigris (333)) Subject: Tantra, Crowley and Occultism (was Tantra & OTO) Date: 23 Dec 1997 22:07:29 -0800 49970911 aa2 Hail Satan! E6 #> What's a good starter book on Tantra? Are/is there any that you #>regard as worthwhile that relate to OTO-style? # ...isn't the upshot of this discussion # that Crowleyan sex magic is not particularly related to Tantra, except in # the way that volleyball is related to golf? "Tantra" is a term with a variety of traditional Eastern as well as Western applications. unless one were to determine that age of tradition equates to accuracy, then one is faced with a variety of practices, social groups and ideas associated with this word, from Indian kundalini/tantra yoga and Tibetan Buddhism to New Age Tantra and any number of individual gurus and practitioners affiliated with orgs of all types including those like the (c)OTO with which Crowley was associated. # The handful of references he # made to the naughty bits of the Shiva Sanhita and the Hathayoga Pradipika # don't seem to qualify them as major influences and the form of the O.T.O. # sexual teachings does nothing to suggest an origin in or resemblance to # Tantra. please specify to what you associate the term 'Tantra' so that we can begin to understand your criticism. Crowley does seem to use some of the same terminology in his expressions as tantric yogis, including those regarding cakras. the (c)OTO, which Crowley heavily influenced, are rumored to have integrated 3HO sikh-kundalini yoga materials from sources other than Crowley (whose background is explored below by FKing). in searching on 3HO in Yahoo I have arrived at this URL for further reference: http://www.well.com/user/cmty/fic/cdir/res/SikhDharma.html # I suggest we consider this idea that Crowley got his sex magic from # Tantra as yet another of Francis King's dubious historical assertions, # and bury it with him. I never saw a quotation to this effect and when looking through King's _Tantra For Westerners_ I ran across the following (skipping large sections, I advise the interested to consult the text yourself): In considering the equation between the chakras of Tantra and the sephiroth of qabalism I have given considerable weight to the opinions of Crowley. How far, in fact, can Crowley be considered a tantric is a matter of debate. Some would say that he was a supreme tantric adept, others would affirm that his teachings were a gross perversion of Tantra and that he used tantric concepts to excuse his own immorality. ... ... much sexual activity by an occultist does not necessarily indicate an inclination towards Tantra, any more than rigid dieting by an occultist necessarily implies asceticism.... On the other hand the fact that a particular occultist enjoys sex for its own sake does not mean that he or she cannot, on occasion, be using sex as a sacrament as well as to obtain the physical pleasures of orgasm. ... Crowley first seems to have decided that sexuality could be incorporated into occult rituals as a result of reading some of the messier grimoires -- text books of ritual magic, some white, some black, most of an unpleasant shade of grey -- for his first attempt to use sex for occult purposes was in the course of a ceremony which most people would regard as the nature of black magic. ... While Crowley undoubtedly possessed some clairvoyant powers -- i.e. the ability to 'see visions' or 'have pictorial hallucin- tions' -- he preferred to use 'seers' who reported their visions to him. As a preparation for their visionary experiences the seers, usually, but not invariably, women, were excited by drink, sexual activity, and, on many occasions, psychedelic drugs, typically cannabis or anhalonium (mescal buttons). While alcohol and sexual intercourse are an integral part of *some* tantric rites, and cannabis is usually taken as a preliminary to such rites, there is nothing specifically tantric in using the stimuli of drink, drugs and sex as a means of overloading the central nervous system and inducing a dissoc- iation of consciousness in which visions are seen. One cannot, therefore, claim Crowley as an authentic practitioner of Tantra on this account. Nevertheless, there are certain aspects of Crowley's teachings which must, I think, be considered tantric, or at the very least, in total conformity with Tantra. These aspects of Crowley's system are to be found in codified, but not always easily understandable, form in those instructional texts compiled by Crowley and his associates which can be described as the tantric *Libres*. Over the period of almost half a century during which Crowley taught his Magic -- a synthetic mystical/magical system which could well be described as Neognosticism -- he wrote many inspirational and/or didactic works which he called *Libres*. Some of these are full length books, others little more than half a page or so text. Of these the ones which can legiti- mately be considered to be at least quasi-tantric are five in number. They are: *Of the Art of Magic* *Of the Nature of the Gods* *Of the Homonculus* *The Book of the Unveiling of the Sangraal* *Of the Secret Marriages of Gods and Men* The 'Tantra' techniques which Crowley expounded in these works he derived from a German source which claimed, almost certainly falsely, to have a shadowy ancestry leading back to the Knights Templar of the Middle Ages. The founder, or supposed founder, of this German organization was alleged to have received instruction in sexual magic from a Hindu teacher or teachers. There is no good reason to be unduly sceptical of this latter claim. On the methods he had learned from his German teachers, Crwoley grafted a philosophical structure which seems almost identical to that associated with Tantra of northern India. This Crowleyan philosophy regards the universe and its component parts in exactly the same way as they are regarded in the Tantra of Bengal -- as side effects of the eternal game played by Shakti and Siva. The terminology, however, is different. Crowley called Shakti by the name of Nuit, the Egyptian star- goddess to whom previous reference has been made. Shiva he called by another Egyptian name, 'Hadit'. The 'concrete incarnation' of Shakti was called 'Babalon' by Crowley, that of Shiva he called 'the Beast', a name which he specifically applied to himself, which seems both odd and arrogant. It is unlikely, however, that he, Aleister Crowley, was foolish enough to think that he was Shiva, the male principle of the cosmic duality -- although it has to be admitted that in moods of exaltation he sometimes wrote and spoke as if this was the case. It seems rather more probable that he believed that there existed an element in his psycho-spiritual makeup -- an element that had been developed as the result of a series of progressive illuminations -- which was an avatar, a manifesta- tion of Shiva. ...It is in [*The Vision and the Voice*] that Crowley's quasi- tantric philosophy is most clearly expressed, not in the tantric *Libres* referred to above. These latter are very largely concerned with techniques. These bear certain marked similarities to those used by left- handed tantrics, but are by no means identical with them. In some ways they are undoubtedly crude than their Indian analogues; there is less emphasis, for example, on the prelim- inaries to explicitly sexual rites. In part this was almost certainly because Crowley wished to strip Tantra down to its essential core -- the use of the senses to transcend sensuality and achieve adeptship -- in order to give it a universal validity free of associations with particular sets of cultural conventions such as those typical of Hindu society. But as far as Tantra was concerned Crowley was no mere simplifier. He subtracted some things from the tradition as he knew it, but added others, making innovations which, while they may be compatible with Bengali tradition, seem to have no oriental analogues. Notable amongst these innovations was an autoerotic technique which he expounded generally in the *Liber* entitled *Of the Secret Marriages of Gods and Men* and, more particularly, in the chapter of that work called 'Of Great Marriages'. When examining the text of this and Crowley's other tantric *Libres* it must be held in mind that, like many other tantric treatises, they employ a 'twilight language' in which words are given a secondary, tantric significance. It is very easy, however, to break Crowley's code. Thus in the 'Great Marriages' chapter of *Of the Secret Marriages*, referred to above in relation to autoeroticism, the word 'purge' is not used in its primary, excretory sense but in reference to orgasm. Similarly, in the eleventh chapter of the same work the phrase 'Evocation by the Wand' means an act of masturbation in which the operator's imaginary partner is an immaterial entity such as an angel. The 'Marrow of the Wand', refered to in the same chapter, simply means sexual fluids. The code words and phrases employed to express the sexual concepts in both the tantric *Libres* and Crowley's more general writings were often derived from the terminology of Western alchemy. Thus Crowley used the archaic word for an alchemical furnace (athanor) as a code word for the penis, while the word 'cucurbite', a piece of laboratory equipment used by alchemists for purposes of distillation, he used as a code word for the vulva. The male sexual discharge was referred to in the tantric *Libres* as 'the serpent' or 'the blood of the red lion', phrases which in texts concerned with physical alchemy, of the type conducted in a laboratory, refer to metallic salts. Similarly the fluids which lubricate the vagina were referred to as the 'menstruum of the gluten', while the mixture of this with semen Crowley called 'the First Matter' and, after it had supposedly been imbued with magical powers by the processes outlined in the tantric *Libres*, 'the Elixir'. These alchemical words and phrases were not arbitrarily chosen. Crowley believed, rightly or wrongly, that many Western alchemical texts were concerned, not with chemical processes intended to produce a mysterious stone which could transmute base metals into gold, but with sexual techniques, essentially identical with those of left-handed Tantra, the use of which would result in psychic transmutation. Such a variant of European alchemy, a sort of Western Tantra, *may* have existed. As was said earlier, polarity symbolism is apparent in many alchemical texts, and it seems probable that at least some alchemists were concerned with interior transformations rather than physical transmutations desired by alchemical laboratory workers. It is possible that a few of these 'psychic alchemists', a minority of a minority, practised something very like Tantra, interpreting alchemical polarity symbolism in a semi-literal way. There are so many resemblances between techniques taught in the tantric *Libres* and those employed in oriental Tantra that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Crowley was an authentic, if unorthodox, tantric. It would be possible, of course, to argue that Crowley was not just unorthodox, but perverted -- there are spiritual paths which lead to the depths as there are those which lead to the heights -- but a tantric I am sure he was. {FKing NOTE: Those who wish to examine the tantric *Libres* for themselves will find the text of *Of the Art of Magic* printed as an appendix to *Crowley on Christ* (London, 1974). Versions of the other tantric *Libres* are printed in *The Secret Rites of the OTO* (London and New York, 1973).} [333 note -- the (c)OTO appears to be attempting to restrict the publication of at last this latter document and appears to have acquired copyrights. interpret this as ye will.] Crowley, as was said earlier, had never received tantric instructions from an Eastern teacher and his knowledge of left-handed techniques had been derived from German sources. Curiously enough, he may have learned something of Tantra while he was a member of the Golden Dawn. For while the sexual technques of left-handed Tantra would have been regarded as black magic by most of the leadership of that society -- MacGregor Mathers attached so much importance to chastity that he never consummated his marriage -- a certain amount of tantric theory and (non-sexual) practice was incorporated into the Order's teachings. ----------------------------------------------------------- _Tantra for Westerners: a Practical Guide to the Way of Action_, by Francis King, Destiny Books, 1986; pp. 72-77. ___________________________________________________________ he goes on to talk about origins of GD sex magic, which I'm sure may have been mentioned previously. corrections, support and opposition strongly encouraged. E6/6/6 _______________________________________________________________________________ nigris (333) -- tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com -- http://www.hollyfeld.org/~tyagi/ caution: I don't read all posts, filtering out those of < 3000 bytes. 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