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Various: Golden Dawn Sex Magick

To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.occult,alt.magick,alt.magick.order,alt.magick.tantra,alt.magick.sex
From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva)
Subject: Various: Golden Dawn Sex Magick (LONG)
Date: 12 Sep 1997 13:17:07 -0700

[both orig-to: thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org]
=========================================
~From: "Michael J. Rae" 

93 Tim:

On Sun, 24 Aug 1997, Tim Maroney wrote:

> 
> >>I don't have
> >>the book on me, so I can't quote or cite pages, but there is
> >>correspondence between Moina and American GD Temples published in
> >>Greer's _Women of the GD_ on just these issues.
> 
> >I'll dig for it.
> 
> Here we go, pp. 160-3 of the hardback.

That isn't what I referred to.  That is a (longer and more instructive)
version of the letter in Howe.  The letter I refer to (which I apologize
for not posting yet) is on page 352.  JRemember, I said it was to an
AMerican Temple;  the letter you refer to is to Annie Horniman.

 The familiar tale of Berridge's 
> advocacy of the Thomas Lake Harris doctrines: a sexual form of 
> spiritualism involving couplings with spirit beings.
> 
> Greer cites Howe for her claim that Mathers issued a teaching paper on 
> elemental marriage, but checking Howe there is nothing like that on the 
> referenced page, only an ambiguous statement from Westcott and 
> Vigilate(?) in an unsent draft letter _to_ Mathers that such a teaching 
> on elemental marriage might exist but that Berridge's views on the 
> subject were clearly perverse and were being used by him for dishonorable 
> ends. In fact, the Westcott/Vigilate(?) letter seems quite incompatible 
> with Greer's interpretation -- it does not say that Mathers had issued 
> such a paper, only that it was denied by none of the Theorici that the 
> degrees above theirs might have such a teaching.

In the letter you refer to, are the following statements:

"I [Moina] thouroghly reverence ALL the teachings of the RC Order"
(emphasis mine)

"...the Elemental Theory which has been the subject of these letters."

"...elemental or human sexual connection (which I think ... beastly)"

"When I first heard this theory it gave me a shock, but not such a
horrible one as when I was young, about the human connection ... [Y]ou
distinctly have a fad as regards sexual subjects, and you know it is a
dangerous one."

"Your last letter to SRMD distinctly implies insult to him, for it attacks
HIS TEACHING as impure... You have charged US with immoral teachings."
(my caps)

This is very fragmentary, so do consult Greer (161-163), but the gist is
that there is a theory on elemental-human sexual relations, which Mathers
and Moina taught, which she personally is uncomfortable with, but which as
an RC teaching she reverences.

Now, the letter on p. 352:
"I hear that the Sex Theory subject has been under discussion in [your]
Temple, I should like to say a few words...  I regret that anything on the
Sex question should have entered into the Temple AT THIS STAGE, for WE
only BEGIN TO TOUCH ON SEX MATTERS IN QUITE HIGHER GRADES ... [and only
fully so] where the Adept has been proved to be so equilibrated and
spiritualized that he [sic] [is]... complete lord of his passsional self,"

which the present writer assumes means 7=4.  All emphasis mine, but
capitalized "Sex" in original.

 > 
> Greer also says that it was Mathers who recommended elemental marriage to 
> Sor. Amore, citing Howe, but again that is not what the letter reprinted 
> in Howe (pp. 121-3) says. It simply says that Mathers knew of such a 
> recommendation, which might have been made by Westcott, to whom Mathers 
> refers Horniman in the preceding sentence.
> 
Then Westcott reccomended an "Elemental Marriage" to a GD soror.  In the
total context, Mathers or Westcott, this supports the thesis that the GD
has a sex magic secret.

> In Greer you are dealing with an author who fills in the gaps in the 
> evidential record with horoscope readings. A suspect source needs to be 
> carefully cross-checked with other sources.
> 

But the documents are IMHO proof enough without her editorial.  

> There are two definite sources of sexual teachings in the Hermetic Order 
> of the Golden Dawn -- Berridge for the Harris doctrine and Ayton for the 
> HBL doctrine -- and there are very strong implications from a few letters 
> in Howe (a good source) that MacGregor Mathers, Moina Mathers, and 
> William Wynn Westcott knew that such things were being carried out in the 
> Order under legitimate but high-degree auspices. Moina directly denied 
> that she or her husband were involved in such practices or indeed in any 
> kind of sex on any plane,

Not NECESSARILY, tho' I suspect you are right.  Moina says (I am quoting
from memory, not from text) that they have kept "pure" with respect to
sex, human or elemental.  But in any case, whether they TAUGHT and whether
they PRACTICED are separate questions.  Right?

 and her husband refered an inquirer on the 
> subject of sex to Westcott. 

But Moina attributes the teaching to herself and Mathers, and says
(after Mathers' death) that she teaches the Sex Theory in the high Grades.

Meanwhile, the husband of the lovely Moina 
> seemed to be getting more and more unbalanced and prone to violent 
> outbursts, emotional rigidity, self-aggrandizement, and militarism, which 
> could be considered stndard symptoms of sexual frustration (though of 
> course there are other possible explanations).

Particularily Booze, which is well documented, and the rebelliousness
(justified or no) on the part of members of an Order he considered his
personal creation and perogative.

> 
> An interesting thing to note about the HBL doctrine is that it is 
> monogamous and therefore would be considered inherently less threatening 
> than the polygamous Thomas Lake Harris doctrine. This could help explain 
> why, since both were apparently present, one made such a stir and one 
> didn't.

But also, Berrige was openly promoting his theory, whereas the Elemental
Theory was only discussed in Grades evidently higher than Practicus 5=6.

> 
> As Deveney has documented, there was a lot of overlap between the various 
> progressive scenes of the latter half of the nineteenth century, 
> including large overlaps between the spiritualist and free love factions. 
> It is not inherently implausible that there would be sex magic in the GD, 
> it's just that the trail is cold and often confusing, requiring great 
> caution, especially when using unreliable, careless, and biased sources 
> in occult history. It does appear that there was support for some 
> post-Lake elemental marriage doctrine, at least, in Westcott's camp, and 
> he and Ayton were close associates as well.
> 
Perhaps that is the origin.

> Decades later, Moina Mathers threatened to expel Dion Fortune for a book 
> on marriage mysticism (not really even about sex, not much).

OK, I have NOT read anything more than snippets, but "marriage," in
Victorian days and well into the 50's, was often used euphemistically to
mean "sex," as in "Ideal Techniques in Marriage", etc.  By most ACCOUNTS
of the book, it is about sex, tho'expressed in the most geneteel and
sensitive of language.


 According to 
> Fortune's account in an article in the Occult Review which I have not 
> been able to dig up, Mathers said that teachings in Fortune's book were 
> part of the high degree GD material, which Fortune had come across on her 
> own -- she does not say exactly how that I recall, but perhaps someone 
> can dig up one of the frustratingly incomplete reprint sources.
> 

Where F got it, and whether it was a close analog of the GD method, are
separate questions.  Yes?

> My notes on this search: I don't recall where I saw a more lengthy quote 
> from Fortune's article. Alan Richardson is brief and apparently mistaken 
> (he refers to it an an expulsion rather than a threat of expulsion) 
> Culquhoun? No, she gives yet another irreconcilable story, that Fortune 
> and (Raoul?) Loveday departed in good graces from Mathers' group because 
> of differences over "The Cosmic Doctrine" (p. 184). Francis King? Only a 
> brief mention of the episode in "Ritual Magic in England," which is more 
> concerned with magical battles and the mysterious death of Ms. Fornario. 
> Greer reprints some scraps from Fortune's account (p. 357), where Fortune 
> claims the final reason for expulsion was that Mathers thought she was 
> missing symbols in her aura, some time after the earlier threat over the 
> marriage book.
> 
> Where the heck is Fortune's account reprinted? Anyone? Does anyone know 
> where the Occult Review is archived?
> 

I'd like answers in this dept too.


> >But you're missing the really interesting point of the story, which is
> >that it reveals that Moina was teaching a sexual magick to her high-level
> >initiates.  Whether she PRACTICED is another thing -- according to AC,
> >Reuss only ever tried sexmagick ONCE!
> 
> I don't think the evidence I've seen makes that seem likely.

Do you still think not?

 One 
> plausible model of the Mathers/Fortune incident is that Moina knew of 
> Ayton's HBL sexual doctrines, just as she had known of Berridge's 
> Harrisite teachings, and that Fortune's work was derived through an 
> independent source from Randolph or the HBL. Fortune was already involved 
> in Theosophy and the Golden Dawn at this point, and contacts with other 
> groups such as HBL survivors would not be surprising. Mathers in this 
> model recognized the HBL material from contact with Ayton and perhaps 
> Westcott even though it was not part of her own GD sect's teachings. She 
> considered it material bound under the seal of the Second Order, hence 
> the threat. I don't see that Greer undermines this possibility.
> 

If she considered it bound under the seal of RC, then she considered it an
RC teaching.  Greer undermines your alternative by quoting Moina
attributing the doctrine (whatever its historical origins) to the RC High
Grades.


> Please note that I'm stating plausible interpretations rather than facts. 

Understood.  But methinks my model is the only really plausible one.

> The recent work on HBL (Deveney et al.) and Thomas Lake Harris (in Peter 
> Washington) is shedding a lot of light on a question that remained 
> obscure from Howe, but I don't think we have all the answers yet. 

About what exactly the teaching was, no, we don't.  That it was a sexual
magical/mystical doctrine seems to me the only truly reasonable reading of
the facts.  But of course, you had not read Greer, p. 352.

 
> So far the ideas in the paragraph above are only dim leads for me, and 
> I'm not even sure how to proceed to investigate them. I need to expand my 
> language base and find some way to spend months in Europe and England. 

[some snipped - tn]

> By the way, there was an article on this in Gnosis a few months ago but I 
> don't recall it really adding anything new to the debate.

No; in fact, it missed the really important stuff.

93 93/93
==========================================================================

~From: Tim Maroney 

>>I don't have
>>the book on me, so I can't quote or cite pages, but there is
>>correspondence between Moina and American GD Temples published in
>>Greer's _Women of the GD_ on just these issues.

>I'll dig for it.

Here we go, pp. 160-3 of the hardback. The familiar tale of Berridge's 
advocacy of the Thomas Lake Harris doctrines: a sexual form of 
spiritualism involving couplings with spirit beings.

Greer cites Howe for her claim that Mathers issued a teaching paper on 
elemental marriage, but checking Howe there is nothing like that on the 
referenced page, only an ambiguous statement from Westcott and 
Vigilate(?) in an unsent draft letter _to_ Mathers that such a teaching 
on elemental marriage might exist but that Berridge's views on the 
subject were clearly perverse and were being used by him for dishonorable 
ends. In fact, the Westcott/Vigilate(?) letter seems quite incompatible 
with Greer's interpretation -- it does not say that Mathers had issued 
such a paper, only that it was denied by none of the Theorici that the 
degrees above theirs might have such a teaching.

Greer also says that it was Mathers who recommended elemental marriage to 
Sor. Amore, citing Howe, but again that is not what the letter reprinted 
in Howe (pp. 121-3) says. It simply says that Mathers knew of such a 
recommendation, which might have been made by Westcott, to whom Mathers 
refers Horniman in the preceding sentence.

In Greer you are dealing with an author who fills in the gaps in the 
evidential record with horoscope readings. A suspect source needs to be 
carefully cross-checked with other sources.

There are two definite sources of sexual teachings in the Hermetic Order 
of the Golden Dawn -- Berridge for the Harris doctrine and Ayton for the 
HBL doctrine -- and there are very strong implications from a few letters 
in Howe (a good source) that MacGregor Mathers, Moina Mathers, and 
William Wynn Westcott knew that such things were being carried out in the 
Order under legitimate but high-degree auspices. Moina directly denied 
that she or her husband were involved in such practices or indeed in any 
kind of sex on any plane, and her husband refered an inquirer on the 
subject of sex to Westcott. Meanwhile, the husband of the lovely Moina 
seemed to be getting more and more unbalanced and prone to violent 
outbursts, emotional rigidity, self-aggrandizement, and militarism, which 
could be considered stndard symptoms of sexual frustration (though of 
course there are other possible explanations). The finger seems to be 
pointed pretty well at Westcott as somewhat complicit with Ayton, 
Berridge, or both, or other sex magic sources in the group as yet 
undiscovered, and to point pretty well away from the Mathers.

An interesting thing to note about the HBL doctrine is that it is 
monogamous and therefore would be considered inherently less threatening 
than the polygamous Thomas Lake Harris doctrine. This could help explain 
why, since both were apparently present, one made such a stir and one 
didn't.

As Deveney has documented, there was a lot of overlap between the various 
progressive scenes of the latter half of the nineteenth century, 
including large overlaps between the spiritualist and free love factions. 
It is not inherently implausible that there would be sex magic in the GD, 
it's just that the trail is cold and often confusing, requiring great 
caution, especially when using unreliable, careless, and biased sources 
in occult history. It does appear that there was support for some 
post-Lake elemental marriage doctrine, at least, in Westcott's camp, and 
he and Ayton were close associates as well.

Decades later, Moina Mathers threatened to expel Dion Fortune for a book 
on marriage mysticism (not really even about sex, not much). According to 
Fortune's account in an article in the Occult Review which I have not 
been able to dig up, Mathers said that teachings in Fortune's book were 
part of the high degree GD material, which Fortune had come across on her 
own -- she does not say exactly how that I recall, but perhaps someone 
can dig up one of the frustratingly incomplete reprint sources.

My notes on this search: I don't recall where I saw a more lengthy quote 
from Fortune's article. Alan Richardson is brief and apparently mistaken 
(he refers to it an an expulsion rather than a threat of expulsion) 
Culquhoun? No, she gives yet another irreconcilable story, that Fortune 
and (Raoul?) Loveday departed in good graces from Mathers' group because 
of differences over "The Cosmic Doctrine" (p. 184). Francis King? Only a 
brief mention of the episode in "Ritual Magic in England," which is more 
concerned with magical battles and the mysterious death of Ms. Fornario. 
Greer reprints some scraps from Fortune's account (p. 357), where Fortune 
claims the final reason for expulsion was that Mathers thought she was 
missing symbols in her aura, some time after the earlier threat over the 
marriage book.

Where the heck is Fortune's account reprinted? Anyone? Does anyone know 
where the Occult Review is archived?

>But you're missing the really interesting point of the story, which is
>that it reveals that Moina was teaching a sexual magick to her high-level
>initiates.  Whether she PRACTICED is another thing -- according to AC,
>Reuss only ever tried sexmagick ONCE!

I don't think the evidence I've seen makes that seem likely. One 
plausible model of the Mathers/Fortune incident is that Moina knew of 
Ayton's HBL sexual doctrines, just as she had known of Berridge's 
Harrisite teachings, and that Fortune's work was derived through an 
independent source from Randolph or the HBL. Fortune was already involved 
in Theosophy and the Golden Dawn at this point, and contacts with other 
groups such as HBL survivors would not be surprising. Mathers in this 
model recognized the HBL material from contact with Ayton and perhaps 
Westcott even though it was not part of her own GD sect's teachings. She 
considered it material bound under the seal of the Second Order, hence 
the threat. I don't see that Greer undermines this possibility.

Please note that I'm stating plausible interpretations rather than facts. 
The recent work on HBL (Deveney et al.) and Thomas Lake Harris (in Peter 
Washington) is shedding a lot of light on a question that remained 
obscure from Howe, but I don't think we have all the answers yet. There 
are large related questions that I don't even begin to have speculations 
for, especially with respect to Westcott's documented association with 
Continental Freemasonry and the (possibly fraudulent) Westcott Palladian 
charter in Culling. It is still not possible from my perspective to 
completely dismiss a possible disinformational role for Leo Taxil, though 
I do think it unlikely. There are also many interesting questions that 
arise from the joint rise of phallic universalist interpretations of 

religion on one hand and esoteric Freemasonry in English-speaking 
countries on the other, and their potential interaction with the role of 
prostitutes in boys' club entertainments from ancient to modern times.

So far the ideas in the paragraph above are only dim leads for me, and 
I'm not even sure how to proceed to investigate them. I need to expand my 
language base and find some way to spend months in Europe and England. 
(Did you hear Apple just canceled sabbaticals? I'm hoping that in three 
and a half years when I'm up for my first they'll be back....) (Or who 
knows, at any time my writing might start to support me and then I could 
start to orient my life more around that and treat software engineering 
as a sideline. I wouldn't be able to do so much research if I didn't have 
so many unusual sources at hand all the time; libraries are notably 
deficient in these subjects; money is unfortunately not an optional part 
of this life's work, and a lot of my money goes to books. As if you 
couldn't tell!)

By the way, there was an article on this in Gnosis a few months ago but I 
don't recall it really adding anything new to the debate.

--
Tim Maroney    tim@maroney.org    http://www.maroney.org

EOF
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