As evidenced by the title, this book belongs to the "better sex through mysticism" genre. Unlike Linda Goodman's Love Signs or Sextrology, however, SeAs evidenced by the title, this book belongs to the "better sex through mysticism" genre. Unlike Linda Goodman's Love Signs or Sextrology, however, Seduction by the Stars is an honest-to-God seduction manual. No, seriously; you look up your intended quarry's sun sign, and in addition to a description of his traits, likes, and dislikes, you'll find methods for getting him into bed with you. Or, rather, you'll find methods for getting them into bed with you, since the authors use "they" as a singular pronoun in almost every scenario. In this sense, the book is remarkably forward-looking.
Some of these methods hover on the borders of consent; for example, grabbing someone from behind while that person is making coffee, or suddenly unzipping your intended's fly in the middle of an argument. Or, if you're not a budding rapist, you can flout the law in a different fashion by prostituting yourself. Again, that isn't a joke; one of the Aquarian seduction methods is to pretend you're a hooker in order to attract a man's attention—and, the authors add, this ruse "might bring in some extra pocket money." Others are just ill-advised, such as inviting your date to have sex in a moving airplane or on a mountaintop. This book really should have come with a disclaimer reading, "The authors are not responsible for any jail time, lawsuits, injury, or social disdain that may occur as a result of following our advice." It's as likely as not that Lexander and Rose were A) basing their ideas of sexual situations on romantic comedies, B) trying to one-up each other for the most ridiculous stunts they could think of, or C) both.
Most of the seduction techniques are fair game, however. Some of them even sound pleasant. Getting down to it in what the book describes as a "cross between an alchemist's lab and an artist's garret"? Delightful. Speeding away to your beloved's house in the pouring rain for a night of tender emotional confession and potential heavy-duty cuddling, your backpack full of poetry volumes and videos of classic movies? Lovely. Lying on a pile of cushions while your lover brings you soup and chocolate and a storm rages outside? Orgasmic in and of itself. Moreover, I found the book's description of the typical Pisces to be accurate of myself, though I don't know how representative I am of the sign as a whole. Yes, many people say this sort of thing when they read astrology books, but quantum weirdness dictates that some people will fit sun sign profiles better than others, and I suppose I'm one of those people.
Ironically, even though this book is written for heterosexual readers (the authors occasionally mention that certain tactics are better for men to use on women or vice versa), it's the most egalitarian in terms of gender relations when compared to the aforementioned erotic astrological books. Both Linda Goodman's Love Signs and Sextrology have more than a smidgen of gender essentialism in them (in fact, that is Sextrology's whole conceit, despite Goodman's tome being the far more old-fashioned of the two). Almost all of the seduction techniques can apply to same-sex pairings, and the authors very rarely presuppose inherent psychological differences between the sexes.
I like and hate this book, just as a close friend of mine likes and hates Love's Tender Fury. Its flaws are unavoidable, but its virtues are commendable. Give it a chance and see where you fall on the Wheel of Sexual Quirks....more
You might be wondering why I chose to review Cosmic Coupling if I've reviewed Sextrology, since the the former book contains little information that wYou might be wondering why I chose to review Cosmic Coupling if I've reviewed Sextrology, since the the former book contains little information that was not in the latter. The answer is simple: I couldn't resist detailing how Starsky and Cox's perspectives on sex and gender play out in another format. To put this as succinctly as possible, I can say with confidence that those perspectives are still stuck in the 1970s, even with a five-year gap between books. (I can just barely accept that the gender essentialist backlash of the 1990s [think Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus] pervaded the authors' consciousness into 2004. In 2009, however...they really, truly should have known better.)
Seriously. When reading a book, one useful game to play is “If I Were a Martian.” In this game, you imagine that you are a space alien reading a book to learn about typical human behavior. What would you think if you, a Martian, based your expectations of Earthlings on Cosmic Coupling?
Well, you would think that gender dysphoria only went in a single direction, that most humans were open to three-way sex, that bondage and sadomasochism were natural progressions of most sexual relationships, and that sexual orientation synced up more or less perfectly with traditional expectations of gender. You would traipse around the planet thinking that every third lesbian couple sought a young man to use as a dildo. As you oozed through Earth's major metropolises, you would wonder which men planned to beat their male lovers with whips and which ones only wanted to fist them. For that matter, you might as well relinquish any hopes of fitting in with the dominant culture, since Starsky and Cox's definitions of gender are so narrow that no Martian could ever live up to them. (Also, if you, Earthling or Martian, gathered that Starsky and Cox were heterosexuals who believed that they were qualified to make broad statements about gay people, prepare to have your suspicions confirmed by the book's introduction.)
Since this book is about couples rather than individuals, it dwells even more on sex than Sextrology did. Although the authors supply you, the eager reader plumped for esoteric secrets, with plenty of relationship and sexual analysis, the book's spiritual aspects are greatly diminished compared to its predecessor. In fact, your understanding of this book depends to an extent on your knowledge of the information contained within Sextrology, making Cosmic Coupling possibly the first astrology book to be a direct sequel to another astrology book. If you don't know that the Greek goddess that corresponds to Scorpio woman is Persephone and that the Biblical character most similar to Aquarius man is John the Baptist, then the book will remind you occasionally, but most of the time, you're up Semen and Blood Creek without a paddle if you haven't read the authors' previous work. You're left with what amounts to Starsky and Cox's sex therapy notes for the bulk of the pages.
The preceding paragraphs are not to disparage the book, but to inform you of what you're in for should you decide to read it. It goes without saying that if you enjoyed Sextrology, you will enjoy Cosmic Coupling. The corollary to this is that if you disliked Sextrology, you will despise Cosmic Coupling--and, to be honest, Cosmic Coupling deserves a few side-eyes for some of its assertions. ...more
Sextrology is a Pandora's box. You can find some good at the bottom if you search assiduously enough, but the multitudinous evils conceal it. No, thatSextrology is a Pandora's box. You can find some good at the bottom if you search assiduously enough, but the multitudinous evils conceal it. No, that metaphor is better reserved for Barbara Walker's The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets and the works of Gershon Legman. Sextrology is more like eating pepperoni pizza at a friend's house when you wanted cheese: it doesn't quite measure up to your standards, and you know that you're partaking of something other than what you wished for, but you go along with it because the alternative is to go hungry.
To demonstrate, the very first paragraph is as follows:
For years, we've contended that men and women of the same astrological sign are actually different signs. Most astrology books lump males and females together, while those that do attempt to treat the sexes separately have never fully explored the distinctions between the so-called sex signs or even so much as ventured to explain why it is they are, as is so often the case, markedly unlike each other. We maintain that astrology must factor in the great divide between the sexes, that the energies that comprise the signs filter through the opposite sexes as through prisms, separate and unique from one another.
That, speaking plainly, is a bad sign. No pun intended.
In all fairness, the opening paragraph establishes the guiding sins as quickly as possible. The authors' extreme focus on the gender polarities of the Sun sign lead them to forward some unorthodox (some would say nonstandard) interpretations of the zodiac. An astrology book that concentrates on sex might have a reason to take the differences between men and women into account. Sextrology focuses on archetypes, so it only follows that the authors would liken the men of one sign to famous male mythological figures and the women of the same sign to their female counterparts.
Unfortunately, Starsky and Cox do not stop there. A crucial factor in their decision to segregate the sexes is their insistence that certain Sun signs can incline people born under them toward certain sexual orientations, long after other astrologers discredited that notion. (This book was published in 2004.) And, aside from their nods toward gender-conforming or gender-exaggerating gay people (as seen in Sagittarius Man, for example), Starsky and Cox absolutely conflate homosexuality with gender deviance. I could scarcely believe how much the authors relied on stereotypes when writing about homosexuality. In other words, by cleaving the sexes from each other, the authors allow themselves to declare that Aries men are usually straight while Aries women are often bicurious--because Aries men are the most macho of all signs, of course, and Aries women are "bratty" and like to dominate both men and women. Similarly, in Starsky and Cox's view, Virgo women typically dislike lesbian sexual activity because they tend to fit traditional expectations of their sex, but Virgo men love mating with other men by nature because Virgo men are big sissies. Pisces women, meanwhile, are usually straight but find themselves flocked by admiring gay men, whereas Pisces men--who are often actually trans women because they're also big sissies, as are many Taurus men--are "homoerotic to the core" but "disdain men who call themselves bisexual."
Sextrology, as did Linda Goodman's Love Signs before it, suffers irreparably for its attempts to reconcile two contradictory concepts with each other. In the latter's case, Goodman's mental gymnastics almost made their own perverse sense: a woman can be liberated...if she is masculine, which is against nature but beneficial in societal terms. Sextrology jumps through hoops as well, but it stumbles and falls prone onto the sawdust. It wants to be hip and postmodern (which is a detestable enough goal), and yet it clings to primitive concepts of gender. For all its psychological efforts, this book's salient features betray its original intentions as a work of pop astrology: its romantic comedy-derived concepts of gender, its extraordinarily lengthy lists of celebrities of each Sun sign, its citation of pop culture icons in addition to the mythological and classic literary figures (likening Harry Potter to a Virgo and Draco Malfoy to a Scorpio is a particularly laughable example), its fixation on the minutiae of sexual acts and references to pornography, its various fashion tips, its tiresome belief that not labeling one's sexuality is somehow taboo-breaking or revolutionary instead of a sign of arrested development. (If your sexuality is fluid, then call it fluid. If it isn't, then call it by its correct name.) Oh, and incidentally, the book lists transsexuals and bisexuality as "turn-ons" alongside such items as water sports, bondage, and homemade porn.
In Sextrology's defense, I resonated profoundly with the book's profile of the Pisces man. Many people claim to identify with the characteristics of their sun signs as described in astrology books, but this one positively nailed it (though I have nothing against bisexual men, despite being "homoerotic to the core"). I honestly did not expect such an accurate analysis. As a pre-op transsexual (female-to-neuter-leaning-male, in my case), I anticipated that this book would have no place for me, but it did.
Unfortunately, the authors' view of transsexualism is...iffy, to say the least. They don't seem to realize that, for example, a trans woman would look up information on herself under "[Sun Sign] Woman" rather than "[Sun Sign] Man," or that the Unified Transsexual Narrative--biological male identifies as a woman, wants surgery to become biologically female, desires biological males sexually--is not a universal law. Trans lesbians, trans gay men, and non-binary people don't seem to ping these authors' radars. Neither do asexual people, although their conspicuous absence doesn't really surprise, since this book is about sex. The omission of these groups may be attributable to the combination of pop culture influence (when was the last time you saw a transsexual on television who wasn't a male-to-female androphile?) and Freudian-derived psychology.
Oh, yes, how could I forget about that? In their zeal to link everything to the sun sign, Starsky and Cox describe each character's home life, as if the child's sun sign determined the parents' behavior. You'd expect that that would be enough, but the authors sincerely refer to the Oedipus complex and similar late-ninteenth-/early-twentieth-century psychological concepts. I don't mean the Oedipus complex in the sense of a man who expects his wife to take over where his mother left off, since that's so common as to be a plague, but the honest-to-God father-killing, mother-fucking Oedipus complex that every little boy supposedly suffers, sometimes into adulthood.
I wouldn't go so far as to call this book bad--it has plenty of redeeming qualities, its spiritual dimensions chief among them. But my god, I wish it had focused exclusively on the archetypes....more
As an “Irreverend” (which sounds more appropriate for Discordianism than anything else) in the Church of Satan, Gavin Baddeley is a singular position As an “Irreverend” (which sounds more appropriate for Discordianism than anything else) in the Church of Satan, Gavin Baddeley is a singular position to write the history of Anton LaVey's Californian cult that spread, in fortunately small numbers, throughout the globe. Baddeley glosses over much of the horrible truth about LaVey's life to concentrate on all the aspects of Satanism, from its prototypical forms in the eighteenth century to its aesthetic influences in the early twentieth century to its solidification in the 1960s to its diversification in the late twentieth century. Unsurprisingly, Baddeley assails the Old Testament God and Christianity (or “the Jesus cult,” as he refers to it) in the first chapter and returns to this pose throughout the book. Refreshing, however, is his objective reporting on Satanists themselves. You might anticipate that Baddeley would lionize those who least deserve it, but he doesn't. Personally, I was left with the impression that Baddeley wanted to distance himself from the more extreme adherents of Satanism (e.g., those few who said that bigoted fundamentalist Christians were the “only Christians [they] could respect” because their actions caused suffering). Thank God for what limits he has?
The book contains hardly any likeable characters. Almost everyone profiled is some combination of greedy, selfish, racist, sexist, violent, sociopathic, and narcissistic. I'll put my cards on the table: LaVeyan Satanism encapsulates everything I despise about modern American life in particular and life on Earth in general. I will defend virtually every belief system, but not this one. Baddeley lays bare the unsavory anatomy of Satanism, sparing no glance at its inherent malevolence-—and he's in the church. For his objectivity, he comes across as perhaps the only sympathetic person in the book, unless one wishes to count H.P. Lovecraft—who was definitely racist, but he had nothing on several of the people featured in Baddeley's tome. (One can admire Zeena Schreck for disowning her evil father, but she absorbed many of his attitudes and married a man who shared them.)
This is not a book for everyone. For one thing, if you're a devout Jew, Christian, or Unitarian Universalist, it's extremely offensive. If you're any kind of feminist, liberal, or decent person, then you'll be aghast at a number of ideas presented by Baddeley's interviewees. If you don't wish to see photographs of nude women in your reading material, you should also give this book a miss. But if you're curious about the modern-day users of the Dark Side of the Force, then Lucifer Rising will be just the thing. ...more
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