Sexuality, Magic and Perversion (21 page)

The original knowledge of the difficult content of these ancient sexual mysteries has, unfortunately, been preserved in only a rudimentary fashion. In the secret archives was found a sort of
Stele
containing very important instructions concerning these mysteries and strangely enough, pointing out the relationship between coital positions and astrological configurations.

It is said, among other things, that in squares of Venus and Mars sexual intercourse should be carried out in a sitting position, the exact nature of which should vary with the strength of the planets in
the Sign of the Zodiac where they are situated. If Venus is stronger the female partner should be on top, if Mars is stronger the male should be on top. In a square of Moon and Mars either the woman (=Moon) or the man (=Mars) may be underneath or on top. A square Moon and Moon is said to be most suitable for Lesbian sexuality, a square of Mars and Mars for male homosexuality. Where Neptune is part of the square it is advised to use drugs in order that both partners may achieve a simultaneous state of intoxication.
⁵
If there is opposition
⁶
between the above-mentioned planets, no sexual act should be carried out, and only preliminary preparation should be made, i.e. states of erotic tension may be induced. All conjunctions are to be used in a similar way to squares because a conjunction means a concentration of forces.

As is generally known, trine formations between these planets obviously provide favourable conditions for the fertilisation of the woman, should this be desired.

It is now left to the Brethren to make use of these instructions in their practical application of magic. Unfortunately, no further details were contained in the script, but it is very interesting to note that the aspects were used to conceal the practice and therefore constituted the key to this symbolic secret.

The aim of these sexual rites was not only the achievement of the peak polarisation of the senses of both partners but also the creation of thought-forms and, above all, the attraction of daemonic beings. This makes the astrologically based practice of magic understandable. Such daemonic beings extend their astral vibrations through vampire-like inhalations from the etheric bodies of the participants. Thus the sexual act becomes a kind of sacrifice to the invoked daemon or,
in purely religious cults, a sacrifice to the worshipped godhead or to the god.

When intended for a purely magical purpose these acts must be undertaken only as a magical ceremony under the strictest observation of all magical precautions. Defensive symbols must be employed together with protective fumes such as incense. The use of erotically effective ingredients is advisable as is the wearing of precious stones appropriate to the planets.

Naturally the brethren know the sigils of the daemons they wish to invoke and the way to use them. Thus the foregoing exposition should merely serve the Frater as a complement to the magical knowledge already made available to him through his training. In the grade of Pentalpha the brethren will learn more of this secret knowledge.

Thus ends this strange discourse on astrological sex magic, and, alas, I have no documents pertaining to the exalted “Grade of Pentalpha”.

Probably the most interesting, and certainly the most important, member of the German Section of the O.T.O. was Karl Johannes Germer, the man who, under his magical name of Frater Saturnus, eventually became Crowley’s successor as “Outer Head of the Order”.

Germer, born on January
22
nd 1885, seems to have been an intelligent child and, after attendance at school and various German universities spent six terms at the Sorbonne. In 1914 he visited Russia and was still in that country at the outbreak of the First World War. He managed his escape to Germany, however, and was called to the colours; like most middle-class Germans of his age he was a reserve officer. His war record was a good one and he was awarded both the first and second class Iron Cross for what were discreetly termed “special services”; while I am unaware of the exact nature of these special services I suspect that Germer had combined his Russian travels with a certain amount of spying and that it was these intelligence activities that had led to his first contact with Reuss and the O.T.O.

At the beginning of the ’twenties Germer was appointed to an important management position in the Barth-Verlag, a Munich publishing house. He co-operated with Herr Tränker (Frater Recnartus) in the translation and publication of seven short works by Crowley (of which
Der Meister Therion: Eine biographische Nachricht
is not published elsewhere) brought out by the Barth-Verlag in 1925.

For the next ten tears Germer lived and worked with Crowley, returning to Germany from time to time in order to superintend the activities of the Thelema-Verlag, a small occult publishing company he had established in Leipzig with the aid of Martha Küntzel (Soror I.W.E.), an elderly lady who had been converted from Theosophy to Crowley’s brand of magic and his new religion of Thelema. On the last of these visits, in 1935, Germer’s high-grade masonic connections attracted the attention of the Gestapo and he was arrested. After some weeks of solitary confinement in the Alexanderplatz Prison on a diet of bread and water, during which he was tortured but kept himself sane by the recitation of the Crowleyan Holy Books (such as the
Book of the Heart Girt Withe the Serpent
) from “beginning to end and from end to beginning”, he was sent to the Esterwegen concentration camp.
⁷
Before his sudden release some ten months later Germer was comforted, according to his own account, by a vision of his Holy Guardian Angel.
⁸

After his restoration to freedom Germer lived for some years in Brussels, making desperate efforts to remain in touch with the scattered remnants of the German sex-magical groups, finally suppressed (along with other occult and masonic organisations) by the Nazis in 1937.

On May
10
th 1941 Germer was again arrested, this time by the Belgians, and deported to France, where he spent ten months in an internment camp before emigrating to the United States in June 1941. From then until 1947 he occupied the office of “Grand Treasurer of the O.T.O.” and his life was largely devoted to raising enough money to print such unpublished “Thelemite magical treasures” as the
Book of Thoth
which appeared in 1944.

After Crowley’s death at the end of 1947 and Germer’s inheritance of
the Headship of the O.T.O.
⁹
various attempts were made to revive the German “Oriental Templars”. None of these met with the new Chief’s approval, however—he went so far as to denounce one German-speaking magician as an agent of the F.B.I.—and the only group to which he gave a full O.T.O. Charter was a Swiss one,
¹⁰
led by a certain Herr Metzger (Frater Paragranus).
¹¹

Germer died on October
25
th 1962 and was succeeded by his Swiss follower; this succession was announced to the world in a floridly written manifesto dated Spring 1963:

“We, Grand Secretary General of the Sovereign Sanctuary of the Ordo Templi Orientis, hereby give due Notice to all Sovereign Sanctuaries and Bodies in friendship with the Sovereign Sanctuary of the Ordo Templi Orientis and to all Members of the said Rite, that the lamented Most Illustrious Frater Superior of the Ordo Templi Orientis, Frater Saturnus (Karl Johannes Germer) Outer Head of the Order, departed this earthly life and was called to the Grand East on October 25th 1962 E.V., and that a convocation of Prince Patriarch Grand Conservators of the said Rite on January 6th 1963 E.V. held in the Abbey of Thelema, Stein/App., unanimously elected the Very Illustrious + H. Josephus M., Fra., Paragranus, Grand Master X° of the Ordo Templi Orientis, Sovereign Grand Master General of Ordo Illuminatorum, Sovereign Grand Master General of Fraternitatis Rosicruciana Antiqua, and Sovereign Patriarch of Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae henceforth to be Sovereign Grand Master General, Outer Head of the Order of the Oriental Templars.”

Under its Swiss leadership the O.T.O. flourishes, publishing a magazine, the
Oriflamme
, and celebrating, each Sunday, the Gnostic Catholic Mass in the small Abbey of Thelema situated at Stein, Appenzell.

¹
Dr. Heimsoth was friendly with many of the more radically inclined members of the Nazi Party and amongst his acquaintances was Ernst Röhm, leader of Hitler’s Brownshirts, who wrote to Heimsoth; “you are obviously very skilled in judging horoscopes. Could you not have a look at mine … Then I might learn what sort of person I am … I suppose that I am homosexual.’ Heimsoth was murdered in the course of the Röhm purge of 1934. For further details of his career see Ellic Howe’s
Urania’s Children
(London, William Kimber 1967).

²
“Chakras” are believed by occultists to be psycho-spiritual centres of activity which operate as the vital organs of the so-called “subtle bodies” of the individual.

³
In astrology a square aspect is said to exist when two planets viewed from a geocentric position are at an angle of 90° to one another in the Zodiac.

⁴
This sentence clearly requires some explanation. In astrology an aspect “by transit” is formed when a planet (for the purposes of astrology the Sun and Moon are planets) is now in a position where it forms an aspect (i.e. a significant angle) with the position either the same or another planet was in at the moment of birth. Thus if I was born with Venus in 20° Capricorn and Mars was now, many years later, in 20° Aries a “square aspect by Transit” would be said to exist, or, as an astrologer would probably put it; Mars
t
square Venus
r
(radical). In this way one can talk about the Moon being square to the Moon.

⁵
The use of drugs as a means of obtaining magical experience was already something of a tradition in certain sections of the German occult movement. Thus Karl Kiesewetter, author of an important work on modern occultism, died of poison at Meiningen in 1895 after an attempt to develop clairvoyant powers by means of drug taking. Some thirty or so years later Bernd Unglaub’s
Sirius Pocket Album
(Berlin 1928) gave details of where the hallucinogenic drug mescaline could be obtained. It is also of some interest that Aldous Huxley was first introduced to mescaline in pre-Hitler Berlin by Aleister Crowley and one of his disciples. Curiously enough Huxley made no mention of this fact in his
Doors of Perception
.

⁶
In astrology an opposition exists when two planets are separated in the Zodiac by an angle of 180°.

⁷
After his release Germer described his experiences in a book,
I was a Prisoner
, for which he was unable to find a publisher. Several copies survive in typescript, however.

⁸
The Crowleyan concept of the Holy Guardian Angel, derived ultimately from S. L. MacGregor Mathers’ interpretation of the Mediaeval Abramelin magical system, must not be confused with the Guardian Angel of popular Catholicism. Originally Crowley took the Holy Guardian Angel as being identical with the Higher Self of the Theosophists and the Golden Dawn (see
Collected Works
, Volume I, p. 209) but later he changed his mind and came to regard the Holy Guardian Angel as a distinct personality in its own right. In this connection see Israel Regardie’s
Eye in the Triangle
(Llewellyn Publications 1970), p. 508 for Crowley’s later teaching on this matter.

⁹
Germer also inherited the Crowley copyrights and the ashes of his Master’s body; the latter were ceremonially transferred to him under a hundred-year-old fir tree that grew in the garden of his house at Hampton, New Jersey.

¹⁰
  A limited charter, later withdrawn, was given to a small English group. For full details of this interesting episode see my
Ritual Magic in England
, pp. 166–7.

¹¹
  See
Appendix F
“Crowleyanity in Switzerland”.

With the exception of Aleister Crowley and his followers I know of no western occultists—either “black” or “white”—who used homosexual acts as magical methods of gaining power, either material or spiritual. Of course there have been, and no doubt there still are, many homosexual occultists; but their homosexuality has been something apart from their occultism, not part of it.
¹
I have no doubt that those of my readers having some acquaintance with occult literature will be surprised by this statement, for they will be well aware that in the late ’twenties and early ’thirties the occult writer Dion Fortune
²
continually alleged, in lecture, article, and books, that there existed a group of male occultists who were engaged in building up what she called “a reservoir of dark astral power” by the use of homosexual techniques. Never, in print at any rate, did she go to the length of naming the members of this group, but from her frequent admiring references to the
O.E
. (i.e. Oriental Esoteric)
Library Critic
in this connection it is clear that she had in mind a small group of members of the Theosophical Society, the most notable of them being an ex-Anglican curate named Charles Leadbeater, against whom H. N. Stokes, the editor of the
O.E. Library Critic
, had for many years carried on a virulent campaign.