Sexuality, Magic and Perversion (26 page)

“… We had a new member, a boy named Godwin, whom I had known in America. When he first wrote me, he was in Annapolis, an attendant in the naval hospital. The boy had amazing ability, backed by exceptional energy and other moral qualities such as the Great Work, or indeed any work worth the name, requires. Out of his scanty savings he had bought a set of
The Equinox
for a hundred dollars and several other expensive items. He grudged his time as little as his cash. He learnt by heart an astounding number of our sacred books, and when later on I asked him to compile a dictionary of Sanskrit roots for my use on a certain research, he went at it with a will and made good. As against all this, he was surly, mulish and bitterly rebellious. He raved against the injustice of being punished for breaking the regulations of the navy. I vainly showed him that when he signed on as he did of his own free will, he pledged himself to conform with the regulations and that in breaking them he blasphemed himself.

“Reckless in his ardour for knowledge, he injected himself with forty grains of cocaine. He had never tried it before. All he knew was that half a grain had been known to cause death. The record of his experiment makes interesting reading. He began trying to set a piece of glass on fire by the force of his will.

“The next act was plagiarized from Samson. He hung on to a pillar while the Philistines, some half a dozen husky sailor boys, tried to pull him off. They finally managed to sit on his head and control his frantic punches and kicks. They then got surgeons on the job who pulled him through. In a couple of days he was all right again. His experiment, if intended to escape notice, failed. They hauled him before the Lord High-Muck-Amuck, who told him, with the best respects and wishes of Uncle Sam for a prosperous passage to perdition, that after a careful consideration the Navy Department had unanimously decided that they could sweep the seas clear of the White Ensign without troubling themselves to put
him to the inconvenience of co-operating. Shaking the pipe-clay of Annapolis from his person, he favoured New York with a flying visit, dropped in on me, and—please could I find him a job? I did what I could, but before I found him work, he had got the Lafayette to try him as a waiter. I thought he might be of use to my ‘son’
⁵
in Detroit and wrote asking him to find an opening. He did so and Godwin went off.

“In all he said and did, one peculiarity obtruded itself—this violent reaction against any act of authority as such, however reasonable, however much to his own advantage. When he noticed the suggestion of discipline, he became blind with rage. His mental faculties were simply snowed under. Having habitually yielded to this impulse, it became a fixed form of his mind, so that even between spasms he would brood incessantly over his wrongs. I hoped the abbey would break up this complex. For a time he improved greatly, but in my absence the Ape,
⁶
in whose hands I had left the sole authority, had very ably established a routine, adherence to which minimized the time necessary to the prosperity of the household, and thus allowed each mentor the theoretical maximum of leisure for his own chosen work. Godwin rebelled. On two occasions he became, if not literally insane, at least so lost to self-control as to assault her murderously. In both cases, she cowed him by sheer moral superiority as wild beasts are supposed to shrink from the eye which is fearlessly upon their fury. After my return he improved. I recall only one outbreak. My experience was the same as the Ape’s, I stood up to him and made him obey, and he obeyed.”

Crowley’s dislike of Russell probably stemmed from a series of rows between the two that took place during Russell’s stay at Crowley’s Abbey of Thelema. Crowley gave an amusing account of these disagreements in his
Confessions
while Russell himself gave an almost totally different version of the same events in his privately printed and oddly entitled autobiography
Znuss is Znees
. Whatever the truth of the matter may have been the two parted company, and a few years later Russell founded his own magical order, the G.B.G.; according to Louis T. Culling, who was at one time a local official (a “Neighbourhood
Primate”) of the organisation, these initials stood for
Great Brotherhood of God
. In correspondence with me, however, Russell has denied that this was so—but as he has not informed me of the true import of the mysterious initials I am in no position to enlighten the reader as to the facts of the matter, in spite of the importance which some occultists clearly attach to the question. Culling has also stated that Crowley authorised the foundation of the G.B.G., but Crowley’s surviving diaries, letters and papers contain no indication that this was so. In any case the variations between the G.B.G. and O.T.O. systems of sexual magic make it extremely improbable that any such authorisation was given.

Members of the G.B.G. were recruited by means of advertisements (promising “a short cut to initiation”) inserted in occult magazines. Russell interviewed the more promising of those who replied to his advertisements and, if he found them suitable, appointed them as ‘Neighbourhood Primates’, in charge of local groups of the order. Only the Neighbourhood Primates were in direct touch with the headquarters of the G.B.G., their task being to personally recruit and train members of their local chapters in sex-magic techniques. This form of organisation was probably adopted in order to reduce to a minimum the amount of sexual instruction passing through the mails; at the time the U.S. postal authorities were applying a rigidly puritanical interpretation of the laws against sending obscene matter by mail.

The Neighbourhood Primates were given a financial incentive to build up the membership of their local groups; of the initiation fee of $5 paid by each new member $2.50 was retained by the Neighbourhood Primate and only $2.50 had to be forwarded to headquarters. This policy seems to have met with some success if Louis Culling is to be believed, for according to him there were local chapters of the G.B.G. in all large cities of the United States, in Los Angeles there were seventy-five members, and in Denver there were no less than one hundred and twenty-five—surprisingly large figures, never attained by the O.T.O. itself.

For his first few months of membership the initiate of the G.B.G. was kept in ignorance of its sexual-magical affiliations and these were only revealed to him (or her) after he had satisfactorily completed a course of occult training devised by Russell. Parts of this course were capable of comparatively easy performance (for example the injunction
to keep a record of dreams experienced) others were more difficult, particularly the “Magickal Retirement Ritual”. This was conducted in a solitary place, lasted for three days, and involved going without food and carrying out a complex ritual eight times a day.

In the G.B.G.’s first sexual-magical degree was taught a practice called Alphaism. This was nothing more than complete chastity in thought, word and deed; i.e. the initiate of this degree was not only obliged to eschew any physical expression of his or her sexuality but was not supposed to allow any sexual emotions, feelings or images to enter his consciousness.

The second degree initiates practised what Russell called Dianism— that is to say, prolonged sexual intercourse not culminating in orgasm. During copulation the practitioners built up “magical images” in their imaginations and invoked the gods in exactly the same way as initiates of the O.T.O. ninth degree. Russell could not have derived this variant form of sex-magic from Crowley, for the ninth degree workings of O.T.O. initiates always ended with male ejaculation, and it is probable that in spite of its resemblance to the sexo-yogic techniques of Buddhist Tantricism Russell evolved it quite independently of oriental influences. Nevertheless, it is clear that he was strongly influenced by
The Heavenly Bridegroom
, a book written by a certain Ida Craddock which not only advocated sexual relations without orgasm (a practice usually known as Carezza or Karezza and strongly disapproved of by most reputable sexologists) but claimed that the use of this method of sexual intercourse was the solution to all marital and emotional problems.

When the initiates had successfully proved their mastery of the practice of Dianism they were admitted into what the G.B.G. called “the Qadosh degree”,
⁷
identical in every respect with the O.T.O. ninth degree; even the instructional papers issued to Qadosh members seem to have been only slightly revised versions of O.T.O. material. The required proof seems to have been no mere formality and candidates for the Qadosh degree were submitted to severe testing. Thus the test in Dianism undergone by Louis Culling before his attainment of the Qadosh grade involved him in paying the travelling expenses of his female examiner from G.B.G. headquarters in Chicago to San Diego. I am glad to be able to report that he passed his test with flying
colours, engaging (according to his own account) in uninterrupted copulation with his examiner for three hours without orgasm!

9. Crowley,
circa
1925.

10. Crowley in O.T.O. insignia as
Baphomet
.

11. Crowley in old age.

In 1938 the G.B.G. either closed down or, at any rate, very much reduced the scope of its magical activities.

Shortly afterwards, however, Crowley’s O.T.O. resumed its activities in the United States and its Agape Lodge, situated in California and under the leadership of a brilliant young scientist named Jack Parsons, did its best to extend the influence of the sexual philosophy of the O.T.O. in the New World. For a time the Agape Lodge was comparatively successful, but it broke up in the ’fifties after Parsons’ death in a rocket-fuel explosion at his laboratory—curiously enough, the explosion coincided with the climax of a major magical experiment which Parsons was conducting and in conversation with me one occultist has described Parsons as “blowing himself up in a defective Babalon-working”.
⁸

Today the main group practising sexual magic in the U.S.A. is a small secret inner circle within what is usually regarded as an excessively publicity-conscious and rather “kookie” organisation—the San Francisco-based Church of Satan
⁹
first brought into prominence by press publicity resulting from Jayne Mansfield’s involvement with it and its leader Anton La Vey.

Exactly why enormous female bosoms were such a feature of the Hollywood star-scene of the ’fifties and early ’sixties is a question that has been much discussed by psycho-analysts. Sortie of them have suggested that occidental middle-class males born in the ’thirties are fascinated by large breasts as a result of infantile deprivation caused by the bottle-feeding and early weaning that were then in vogue with affluent parents. Another, either more perceptive or more cynical than his fellows, has claimed that the Hollywood emphasis on large-sized busts was a public-relations exercise on the part of the American dairy-industry, a cunning device aimed at increasing the consumption of milk and other dairy produce. Whatever may have been the unconscious motives of their admirers there is no doubt that these full-breasted
stars were popular with their public and that Jayne Mansfield was the Queen of them all.