124 Book Reviews / ARIES IO.

I (20IO) I07-I39

Wouter J. Hanegraaff and Jeffrey J. Kripal (eds.), Hidden Intercourse: Eros and
Sexuality in the History of "WesternEsotericism, Leiden and Boston: Brill 2008.
xxii + 544 p. ISBN 978-9004168732.

One simply does not talk about sex magic or spermatophagy, the ritual eating of
sperm, in polite company. And yet this is an integral part of a certain Western
esoteric tradition. Information about sex magic is in fact available, but it is
scattered throughout several obscure publications, some of them hard to find
even in public libraries. Hence the usefulness of this book, which collects
together an impressive amount of information on both sexual imagery and
practical sex magic throughout the whole history of Western esotericism, from
the Gnostics of old to contemporary occult groups such as the Ordo Templi
Orientis or the Fraternitas Saturni.
There are, however, two different relationships between esotericism and
sex. The first is the mere use of sexual imagery as a metaphor, without any
clear implication that the metaphor should be acted out and translated into
practice as ritualistic sex. Despite persistent rumours to the contrary, this is
the case with (most) forms of Kabbalah, according to the chapters by Elliot
R. Wolfson and Moshe Idel; of Medieval texts based on the Song of Songs, such
as the intriguing fourteenth-century Liber florum celestis by the monk John
of Morigny, studied by Claire Fanger; and even of Latin alchemy, where-
at least according to Lawrence M. Principe-there is little evidence that the
fascinating gendered imagery, with its vast array of male, female and neutral
minerals and plants, actually became a prescription for the ritualistic use of
sex.
But, from the very beginnings of Western esotericism, there is also a dif-
ferent, more practical stream. Since these are-as the editors remind us in
their introduction-"things we do not talk about", we cannot expect the
sources to be entirely forthcoming, and problems remain almost everywhere.
In the Hermetic and Gnostic sects discussed by Roelof van den Broek and
April D. DeConick some things are clear: a common doctrine of divine androg-
yny leads the Poimandres to a negative view of sexual desire, and the Asclepius
to a rather positive one. Whether a ritualistic intercourse was requested by
the Valentinians in order that Gnostic couples may produce an offspring of
"spirituals", or whether radical sects such as the Borborites (also known as
Phibionites) did indeed practice spermatophagy together with the ritual inges-
tion of menstrual blood, is an entirely different matter. Most, or all, of what
we know about these practices comes £rom hostile, anti-Gnostic witnesses. Did
they simply lie for polemical purposes? Not entirely, according to the authors.
© Koninklijke Brill NY, LeiJen, 2010 DO!: 10. 1163/15679891OX12584583445113
 Book Reviews / ARIES IO.I (20IO) I07-I39 125

Critics may have included in their reports some gross exaggerations, but the
presence of some sexual rituals is consistent from what we know about these
Gnostic sects.
Medieval Islam offered, according to Pierre Lory, an early instance of an-
other strange practice which reappears throughout the book: the marriage,
and sexual intercourse, between humans and demons or spirits. Evidence that
the practice was taken seriously is found in the fact that respected Islamic
legal scholars discussed the lawfulness of the marriages between human and
spirits (jinn), and the civil status of children produced by such marriages. The
latter were not declared utterly unlawful but were discouraged as inappropriate.
Nor was the matter put to rest with the end of the Middle Ages. In fact,
contemporary ethnologists still find evidence, £rom Morocco to Egypt and
Yemen, of troubles caused by beautiful female jinn, such as the famous Lalla
'Aisha, seducing young men away from their wives.
Sexual allusions in Renaissance esotericism are often classified within the
realm of mere metaphors. They deserve, however, a second look according to
Wouter Hanegraaff. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), Hanegraaff argues, may
have been burned at the stake, among other reasons, for his uninhibited
celebration of heterosexual love and sex within a clerical subculture which
was both sexophobic and prevailingly homosexual. Before finding peace in
priesthood and celibacy, Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) may have derived his
sexual imagery from his desire for a young boy, Giovanni Cavalcanti (1444?-
1509). The relationships of the witches with the Devil, with male warlocks,
and between themselves may have been on the other hand, Allison P. Coudert
claims, entirely fictional. But, if so, they tell us one thing or two about the
sexual imagination of the authors writing about them.
Stories of sex between human beings and spirits are not purely Islamic.
Antoine Faivre truly surprises us by publishing new documents about the
relationships with Sophia of some early Christian theosophers, particularly
Johann Georg Gichtel (1638-1710). The sources lead us to the unequivocal,
if puzzling, conclusion that Gichtel so successfully evoked the Divine Wis-
dom, Sophia, that his friends met her in the theosopher's Amsterdam home
as a charming young lady, who left them with little doubt that her rela-
tionship with Gichtel was anything but platonic. Sophia also helped Gichtel
in 'finding in Amsterdam some of the dwellings in which Gichtel succes-
sively lived' and, after his death, even helped in editing his correspondence
(p. 290). We do not know exactly what to do of these reports-nor does
Faivre. But there seems to be little doubt that Gichtel and his friends did
take them very literally. Nor can we doubt that Thomas Lake Harris (1823-
126 Book Reviews / ARIES IO.I (20IO) I07-I39

1906), the spiritualist prophet, sincerely believed to have married a faerie, the
Lily Queen. The tale is told by Arthur Versluis, who noticed that while the
practice of free love-cum coitus reservatus-within the Oneida community of
John Humphrey Noyes (18II-1886) is the subject matter of 'a lively scholarly
industry' (p. 334) the (perhaps more) interesting Harris has been almost for-
gotten. Versluis also discusses the secularization and medicalization of Noyes'
theories by Alice Bunker Stockham (1833-1912), who popularized the coitus
reservatus as "karezza". These characters, in turn, cannot be truly understood
without a survey of how spiritualism, having eliminated Hell (and, occasion-
ally, the very Christian notion of sin), interacted with the free love movement
and excited the imagination ofits devotees with tales of sex in the spirit world.
The survey of these "deadly dates" has been done by Cathy Gutierrez, in
one of the chapters offering an abundance of previously unpublished mate-
rials.
In his contribution, John Patrick Deveney has summarized his published
work about African American sex magician Pascal Beverly Randolph (1825-
1875). There is very little about Randolph that Deveney in decades of study
has not uncovered. And yet there are things we will probably never know
about Randolph's actual practices. The most innovative chapter of the book
is perhaps Marco Pasi's tour deforce about the Chevalier Georges Le Clement
de Saint-Marcq (1865-1956), a Belgian scientist, freemason and spiritualist
who became quite infamous after he published in 1906 L'Eucharistie, where he
claimed that the real subject matter of the Eucharist was Jesus Christ's (and
later, his disciples') sperm. This great truth, Le Clement claimed, was hidden
by Jesus Christ for entirely noble and admirable purposes, and by priests and
pastors after him for the less noble reason of preserving a system of power. It
was now time, Le Clement argued, to be entirely sincere and divulge the truth
of spermatophagy to the world through a movement he called "sincerisme".
Although the general outline of Le Clement's ideas and influence had been
studied by a handful of scholars (including the undersigned), Pasi was the first
who went to Belgium, interviewed Le Clement's family and found a number
of new, previously unknown documents. The chapter gives us a taste of what
is there, including how Le Clement, once a well-respected figure, became a
pariah in his own spiritualist and Masonic milieu after L'Eucharistie. We can
hardly wait for Pasi's announced next instalments on Le Clement's activities
and disciples, although presumably there will be disagreement on the crucial
matter of how much influential the Belgian esoteric author really was. In
particular, the questions of whether Le Clement advocated (not only merely
described as an historical matter) the practice of spermatophagy, and whether
 Book Reviews / ARIES IO.I (20IO) I07-I39 127

he was responsible for (re-)introducing the practice in the Western esoteric

milieu (or it already existed before him), will surely benefit from Pasi's further
research.
Le Clement was mostly influential on Theodor Reuss (1855-1923) and his
Ordo Templi Orientis, an organization which in turn influenced all Western
contemporary sex magic after it came under the control of Aleister Crowley
(1875-1947). Crowley is the most well-known modern sex magician, and
there has been a recent flourishing of academic studies on this most con-
troversial occult master. Hence the choice of the editors of devoting com-
paratively little room to his life and work makes sense. The book devotes
more room to characters that came after Crowley and are less well known,
particularly to the English-speaking scholars. They include Eugen Grosche
(1888-1964) of the Fraternitas Saturni, Giuliano Kremmerz (1861-1930)
of the Ordine Osirideo Egizio and the Fraternita di Miriam, Julius Evola
(1898-1974) of (inter alia) the Gruppo di UR, and Maria de Naglowska
(1883-1936) of the Confrerie de la Fleche d'Or. All four occult authors are
discussed in a chapter by Hans Thomas Hakl. He shows an impressive com-
mand of the existing literature in Italian on Kremmerz and on the sex-magical
side of Evola (English scholars normally confine themselves to his politics),
German on Grosche, and French on Naglowska, all virtually unknown to
the English-speaking academic community. Hakl also manages to navigate
with skill and brio around issues hotly debated among European continen-
tal scholars, such as what documents of Kremmerz's sex magical operations
published in the last decades are genuine and in what sense Naglowska was a
Satanist.
The chapter by Hugh Urban gives to the reader less familiar with Crowley
the essential of his career, and discusses in depth an important point: the rela-
tionship that Crowley and post-crowleyan sex magic have had with Indian
Tantrism. Tantrists did (and do) practice spermatophagy and other rituals
involving sex but, Urban argues, have been very much misunderstood by West-
ern occultists, including those like Crowley who really travelled to India. And
the Tantric reference becomes a mere travesty in the contemporary magic asso-
ciated with the New Age. Jeffrey J. Kripal in his concluding chapter on Esalen
offers a much kinder approach to Western neo-Tantrism. Kripal's chapter has
the strength and (in my opinion) the weaknesses of his magnum opus about
Esalen (Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, 2007). It is a treasure
chest of new information: including, this time, about an unpublished (and
important) Esalen novel by John Heider. On the other hand, Kripal is obvi-
ously in love with Esalen and his approach is hardly value-free. Esalen may well
128 Book Reviews / ARIES IO.I (20IO) I07-I39

be the capital of an American "religion of no religion" where "nobody captures

the flag". But the" religion of no religion" has his devotees and his missionaries,
and Kripal at times writes as one of them.
544 pages about sex magic and erotic esoterica may not conceivably please
everybody. No doubt this or that other interpretation will be discussed or
contradicted. The editors, however, deserve unrestricted praise for showing
that there is such a thing as the academic study of sex magic, and that it is
highly relevant for understanding both Western esotericism and the history of
sexuality in the West.

Massimo Introvigne