The Dark Lord: H.P. Lovecraft, Kenneth Grant, and the Typhonian Tradition in Magic - Peter Levenda 2013

Sons of God, Daughters of Men

... Sophia's focus on her desire and passion to “know” the Father resulted in an amorphous nasty miscarriage.¹⁵⁴

It was in the township of Dunwich ... that Wilbur Whateley was born at 5 a.m. on Sunday, the second of February, 1913. This date was recalled because it was Candlemas, which people in Dunwich curiously observe under another name ... Less worthy of notice was the fact that the mother was one of the decadent Whateleys, a somewhat deformed, unattractive albino woman of 35, living with an aged and half-insane father about whom the most frightful tales of wizardry had been whispered in his youth. Lavinia Whateley had no known husband ...¹⁵⁵

The incursion of extra-terrestrial influences into the human life-wave, unconsciously or consciously attracted to the individual embryo, would be a means of incarnating such mutants. The intense magical operations which Crowley performed (especially those which occurred between 1920 and 1924) could, and probably did, engender strange and “unearthly” children.¹⁵⁶

THE SUBJECT OF THIS CHAPTER concerns the most controversial and perhaps most titillating aspect of the Grant ouevre: his focus on sexuality within the context of magic. We have touched on it briefly here and there in the pages that precede this one, but the author would like to dwell a bit more deeply on this issue since it is so critical towards an understanding of Grant's Typhonian Tradition and many readers possibly would find it difficult to reconcile such material with Lovecraft's known reluctance to discuss sexuality at all in his own work.

In order to do justice to this difficult subject, we will be reverting from time to time to Gnostic texts and interpretations since it may come as a surprise to some readers that the early Gnostics were very concerned with human sexuality and its place in the universe. There were probably as many different versions of “spiritual sexuality” among the Gnostics as there were Gnostic sects. Our sources for this material are unfortunately restricted to Christian commentators who were notoriously hostile to Gnosticism and whose data is thus suspect, as well as the surviving Gnostic fragments themselves such as the Nag Hammadi scrolls. What we will find in this discussion is a justification for much of what passes for “sacred sexuality” in the Thelemic framework, but also an elaboration of Lovecraft's own fears—perhaps unconscious—concerning the potential disasters of “liberated” sexuality and especially of intercourse—carnal and otherwise—with discarnate entities, gods, demons, and ... others.

We will also have recourse to Tantra, as Grant relies more heavily on Tantra than on Gnosticism for an understanding of the inner workings of magic and the relevance of sexual practices to Thelema. Like the Gnostics before them, Thelemites are concerned with sexuality as a form of worship and/or magical power. In this they are no different from the Tantrikas of India, Nepal and Tibet and indeed they share many ideas and concepts in common. To Grant, this was a genuine revelation and he saw a broader context for Thelema in the occult practices of Asia and Africa as well as within the framework of the Necronomicon Gnosis which is not bashful about confronting the nastier bits of occult praxis.

The Celibate and the Hedonist

One of the antipodes in this study concerns the weird polarity of H. P. Lovecraft and Aleister Crowley. The former was notoriously sexually ambivalent, virtually asexual. He lived most of his life as a celibate, married for only two years and even then did not live with his wife for much of that time. The latter was notorious in an entirely different way: Crowley had sex with anyone and it seems anything within reach. Male or female, young or old, of whatever race, whatever degree of physical health or actual physical deformity (like poor Lavinia Whateley, above, who would have made a perfect partner for the English magician, but who had to settle for her “half-insane” wizard of a father).

Their approach to magic was similarly opposite. Crowley enthusiastically engaged in sexual magic for the purpose of creating spiritual offspring who would carry out his various tasks. Lovecraft found such behavior revolting, but in his stories there is a tacit acknowledgement that the system worked, just not in the way Crowley would have anticipated. To Lovecraft, human sexual intercourse with gods, aliens, demons, etc. could only result in hideous monsters out to destroy all of humanity. To Crowley, such intercourse would produce servants who would be more capable than the human version, “You can't get good help nowadays” being the operative principle.

In Lovecraft's stories there are no “good” magicians except for those who become battlefield trained in order to undo some other magician's work, to close the Gate and to send Wilbur Whateley's twin back to where it came, etc. To Lovecraft the person, magic was superstition and at least one cause of humanity's distress, so his position was relatively consistent: no matter how you looked at it, either as a believer or as an atheist, magic was bad. At best it was a waste of time, at worst it was an unholy practice designed to enslave humanity.

Thus, in Lovecraft and Crowley we have two oppposing points of view and two very different personalities. We especially have two very different approaches to sexuality, as well. Then how were these two men somehow “picking up” some identical information?

We can say that Lovecraft was a natural sensitive—as are many true artists—and that regardless of his ideology he was nevertheless in tune with the occult currents of the day. In this he was different from Crowley in that Crowley's art was always in service to his ideology; his novels are occult romans-a-clef his poetry is designed to be used as keys to his magical worldview. Crowley used his novel Moonchild to attack and ridicule those he despised, such as Arthur Edward Waite and MacGregor Mathers. Lovecraft used his stories to praise and recognize his friends, such as Clark Ashton Smith.

In fact, Lovecraft had friends: a wide circle of friends with whom he pretty much stayed in contact for most of his life, usually through his voluminous correspondence but also in visits out of the State of Rhode Island where he lived to New York City, Florida, and other parts of the country. Crowley, on the other hand, alienated many of his friends over time and those who stuck by him were few and far between. It's hard to be chummy with the Prophet of a New Age.

So for all of Lovecraft's sexual timidity he had more consistent social contacts than the man who would engage in any form of sexual intercourse with just about anyone. They were opposite poles, indeed, and their common interests kept them on the same axis. Both Lovecraft and Crowley wrote of contact with extra-mundane forces, of ancient races, lost temples, bizarre occult practices, and strange, devil-worshipping cults. It is in the tension between their two, diametrically-opposed, points of view that we find the most valuable information and inspired insights.

Lovecraft's most notable discussion of how magic might be used to create hideous beings when coupled with sexual practices is in his famous short story “The Dunwich Horror” which was made into a film back in 1970. It concerns the “half-insane” old wizard Whateley and the unnameable rites he performed on his deformed, albino daughter Lavinia. There were two genetic Whateley lines, the decayed and the undecayed lines according to Lovecraft and, of course, Old Whateley belonged to the decayed line. Thus there was the implication that this particular genetic strain was already tainted and the pattern of abnormal births was an indication either that something was amiss with the wizardry since long ago, or that the genetic abnormalities were somehow necessary to the effectiveness of the rites.

Wanted: Dwarfs, Hunchbacks, Tattooed Women, Harrison Fisher Girls, Freaks of all sorts, Coloured women, only if exceptionally ugly or deformed, to pose for artist. Apply by letter with a photograph.¹⁵⁷

Crowley was not averse to having sexual relations with women of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, as well as with women who were physically different in some obvious way. He was also not averse to having homosexual relations, and often as the “bottom” or receiving partner in acts of anal sex. There is no indication that Crowley received much in the way of sexual satisfaction from these acts, and his Confessions and other writings tend to support the view that he approached virtually all sexuality from a magical standpoint which was inextricable from a psychological one. As it is almost certain that Lovecraft did not enjoy sexuality (at least, not enough to seek out sexual opportunities with any degree of passion or determination) we might say that these two men shared a common approach. Neither Crowley nor Lovecraft engaged in sexual activity with the primary intention of obtaining sexual satisfaction or gratification. For Crowley, sexual activity was subordinate to the demands of the Great Work: it was ritual and a pragmatic utilization of his psycho-biological apparatus, a method to be used to plumb the depths of his psyche as well as to make contact with other forces in the universe. For Lovecraft it just wasn't an issue at all. For both men, it could be claimed that sexuality was not about physical satisfaction or even need. It was about something else entirely.

Hideous Marriage

The conflicts now raging in the world are due to the birth-pangs of the Aeon of Horus. Sexual methods of establishing contact with entities more evolved than man will be perfected and there are already signs of their development.¹⁵⁸

As mentioned previously, there are several similarities that can be noted between the sexual mysticism of Thelema and the Gnostic conception of sexuality and marriage as represented by the Valentinians. We have already seen that the Aeons of Valentinian Gnosticism have their parallels to the Thelemic Aeons. In the case of human sexuality, there are even deeper connections and they can be used as a prism through which to understand Grant's preoccupation with Tantra as a means of reinterpreting Thelemic magic.

The Christian commentator Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-c. 215 CE) wrote extensively on Gnosticism in order to refute it. The Valentinians, alone among the various Gnostic sects, attract his approval because of their positive view towards marriage as the attempt to bring down the divine emanations. The Valentinians—according to Clement—saw human marriage as the earthly representation of the syzygies: the male-female pairs that were the first emanations of the Father and which eventually resulted in the Creation as we know it.

But some of Clement's objections to other Gnostic groups are very revealing.

Clement contrasts the Valentinians with the Carpocrations, who he thinks participated in licentious sexual acts because they believed that by doing so they were imitating the primordial powers who had intercourse with one another in order to create the universe.¹⁵⁹

This is as good a brief explanation of Tantra as any.

Instead, as Gnostic scholar April D. DeConick tells us, Clement was interested in a specific form of human sexual expression that would result in divine offspring:

Human marriage was procreative, but one form of it produced more perfect offspring than the other. The higher form of marriage included some sort of consciousness-raising during sexual relations to insure that the children would resemble God. Physical intercourse was not driven by lust, but was a matter of the will or intention.¹⁶⁰

In other words, the Crowleyan imperative “love under will.” To make this point more precisely, Clement writes that Christians should:

... do nothing from lust (epithumia). Our will is to be directed towards that which is necessary. For we are children not of lust but of will (thelematos).¹⁶¹

Thus, Clement of Alexandria insists that Christians are children of Thelema!

According to Clement, human sexual intercourse that was not directed towards the divine—sexual relations that were the result of the lustful feelings of the partners—produced “defective” offspring.¹⁶² Lovecraft would take this idea much further, for he raises the possibility of sexual relations between humans and non-human creatures that result in “defective” offspring, to say the least. Lovecraft also identifies what he sees as defective races, ethnicities and bloodlines representing genetic groups that are more prone to worship or summon the dark forces from beyond the stars. This is obvious in such stories as “The Horror At Red Hook,” and “The Dunwich Horror,” and certainly is implied in “The Call of Cthulhu.”

But the Valentinian Gnostics—according to Clement and amplified by DeConick—believed in spiritual intercourse:

Through contemplative sexual practices, the Valentinians hoped to conceive children whose souls would contain an elect or morally-inclined “seed” of the Spirit. Sacred marriage was essential for giving birth to such children, who in turn would bring about the redemption of the fallen Sophia and the psyche.¹⁶³

This belief is quite similar to that of the Kabbalists of the Middle Ages who held that it was the duty of pious Jews to engage in sexual intercourse on the Sabbath in order to help the “shards”—the broken pieces of the sephirot, the result of an oddly-failed attempt at the Creation—reunite and redeem themselves and by extension the whole world so that the Shekinah herself can reunite with her Bridegroom. These shards are known as the qlippot, and Crowley devoted one rather strange document to their study, Liber 231. It attracted the attention of Kenneth Grant in the Typhonian Trilogies because it seemed to offer a kind of blueprint to the Tunnels of Set: the darkside of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and the pathways that connect its various power zones, a subject to which we will return in the next chapter.

While sacred marriage is a staple of alchemical literature and appears in the theological adumbrations of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), it is not as emphasized in traditional ceremonial magic. The iconic figure of the ceremonial magician is of a man who either works alone, or with several (male) assistants. This is evidenced by the grimoires themselves, which contain formulas for evoking the right spirits or demons to make a woman fall in love, or to seduce a woman, etc.—thus leading one to speculate that the average ceremonial magician was probably the medieval version of a geek: lacking in social graces and silently lusting after the girl next door. Probably the best example of this meme is that of Goethe's Faust the magician who similarly lusts after a woman, the beloved Gretchen, and who uses the Devil's powers to obtain her.

This was not Crowley's problem, obviously. By the time Crowley had appeared on the scene the field of ceremonial magic had undergone quite an overhaul. Beginning with the romantic notions of Eliphas Levi and extending to the Golden Dawn, magic was being redefined as a spiritual practice equivalent to a Western version of yoga and Tantra, with a complex and internally-consistent worldview. Crowley extended this impulse to make of magic an all-encompassing spiritual movement, fueled by the revelations contained in the Book of the Law.

In addition, such intellectual luminaries as Carl G. Jung would elevate the study of alchemy to a serious field of psychological importance, and Gershom Scholem would bring Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism into the mainstream of academic research and analysis. Mircea Eliade introduced the world to shamanism, and his brilliant student Ioan Couliano would focus his knowledge of many languages both ancient and modern on medieval spiritual texts and ascent literature. The influence of these academic writers on the field of magic cannot be over-emphasized, even as they criticized occult authors such as A. E. Waite and Aleister Crowley by name.¹⁶⁴

The theory and practice of magic was undergoing a sea-change, buffeted by forces both within and without, a process that continues to this day (especially with the outstanding work on Western esotericism coming out of the Amsterdam school led by Wouter Hanegraaf, and that of the late and much-lamented Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke of England). But the aspect of modern magic that received the most attention—and the most confusion—was the constant references to sex as an element of the process. This began with Crowley, as far as can be determined.

While the African-American mystic Paschal Beverly Randolph was undoubtedly a major influence where the sexual aspect of occultism and spirituality was concerned, through his writings and his connections to the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light and eventually to the Ordo Templi Orientis, sacred sexuality was still very much a dark little secret among the Western occultists until Crowley began publicizing it rather openly. The Golden Dawn had its rituals based on the Rosicrucian allegories, and used both male and female participants in its ceremonies (unusual for a secret society at the time), but Crowley took the whole thing much further. As we have noted previously, the Golden Dawn provided much of the theoretical and ritual framework for Crowley's system and, indeed, his AA is a refinement of the Golden Dawn degree structure with the additional three degrees at the top of the Tree of Life. Thus it would seem that a mystique of sexuality had no real place in a system that was so perfectly symmetrical to begin with but the OTO changed all of that for Crowley.

There is no doubt that the Book of the Law contains many passionate verses and lusty exhortations, written long before Crowley made the acquaintance of the OTO. This rather startling text might have made Crowley more receptive to the later instructions on sexual magic received from that German order. However Crowley's approach was not informed by a specific program of theory and practice; instead, he tried to incorporate sexual techniques within the context of the Golden Dawn system of magic he inherited and this was not always fruitful. He used various forms of sexual experimentation for every kind of purpose, from charging talismans to attract money or knowledge to using sexual intercourse to attain altered states of consciousness. He was aware that sexual fluids were important, but had to invent ways to use them.

By the time he met David Curwen, who had considerably more knowledge in this area than he, Crowley was already quite old and only a few years from death. Kenneth Grant, however, did not let the opportunity pass to learn from someone more knowledgeable in Tantra and began to understand the realm of possibilities that this new data represented. It is the combination of ceremonial magic, Crowley's own Thelemic denomination, Tantra, Afro-Caribbean magic, the art of Austin Osman Spare and the Surrealists, and the over-arching worldview of H. P. Lovecraft that informs the entire Typhonian Tradition. These quanta seem unrelated and arbitrarily chosen, but in Grant's hands they become indispensable elements of a symphony of occult praxis. The deeper one looks into any of these disparate traditions the more one finds important commonalities.

The Valentinian Gnostics believed that they could create divine offspring through some process of “consciousness-raising” as DeConick puts it. Obviously the reverse would also be true: by a different form of “consciousness-raising” one could create demon children. By fine-tuning the process, one could also create “offspring” that would have whatever characteristics were specified by the ritual. This means that the act of sexual intercourse would take place within a magical context. Clement of Alexandria believed that sex acts that resulted from pure lust would produce children that were somehow “defective”; how much more so children that were produced from acts of sexual intercourse that were specifically designed to attract demonic or otherworldly forces.

The Gnostic marriage was undoubtedly a spiritual one, the act of intercourse elevated to a higher plane; but it was nevertheless a ritual act. It was not motivated by pure lust or emotional or sexual attraction between partners. Oddly, this is the same approach that needs to be taken regardless of whether or not the purpose is to create divine offspring or demonic ones: the concentration of the sexual partners must be focused on the spiritual or magical goal and not on the satisfaction of sexual desire. This is a requirement that effectively eliminates most dilettantes who become involved in the practice of magic because they seek excitement or arcane thrills.

The sexual rituals described by Grant in his Typhonian Trilogies are never explained in full, but there is enough detail to enable the educated or dedicated reader to fill in the blanks. The Gnostic Marriage example of a High Priest or King mating with a High Priestess or Queen becomes the template onto which a series of variations is mapped. In order to deconstruct the Tantric rituals employed by Grant and by the members of his Nu-Isis Lodge it becomes necessary to deconstruct the sex act itself, to reduce it to its various psycho-biological components. The grosser physical aspects of the sex act—the bodily fluids especially—are understood to be place-holders for their more ethereal counterparts.

None of this is helpful, however, if the individual participants are not themselves completely prepared for the ritual. This means that the operators must be demonstrably well-trained in various yogic-type exercises, from pranayama and asana and the basic forms of yogic meditation up to and including the ability to raise Kundalini. While it is not necessary for the participants to be adepts at Kundalini yoga, it is required that they have some basic ability in this regard otherwise the rituals are empty gestures with no force behind them. The ability to meld mental concentration with physical, psycho-sexual response is the key towards successful completion of this type of ritual. It is a balancing act between the body's normal processes and reactions and the exertion of mental control over the same processes, made more difficult because the same requirement is demanded of the partner. In the case of a male and female operator both must be capable of at least the basic level of mental and physical control; it is not useful that only one member of the couple have this ability unless the goal of the ritual is to “vampirize” the power of the less-advanced partner.

As mentioned earlier, one of the essential aspects of the type of training required for Tantric-type operations is the ability to take conscious control of the autonomic nervous system, represented by the reptilian or serpent brain. In Tantric terms, however, this is considered raising the serpent from the base of the spine—the Goddess Kundalini—until it reaches the brain where it meets the Lord Shiva and the alchemical wedding or Gnostic marriage takes place. There are inherent dangers in this type of practice, whether you use Western or Asian terminology to describe it, and the image of the serpent—one of the most venomous creatures on earth but also the one that sheds its skin and becomes a symbol of transformation—is instructive in this regard. It was the serpent who told Eve to eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree, to become “as gods.” Yet it was the Gnostics who believed that the serpent in the Garden of Eden was actually the True God, and that the Creator of the world was a demi-urge, a lesser being who intended to enslave Adam and Eve for his own purposes. In this complicated mixture of images and myths we can discern the outlines of sublime truths.

Human sexuality has always been the touchstone for a whole host of tabus in virtually every culture. Society—whether as secular or sacred government or both—has arrogated to itself control over the sexual impulses of its members. Certain types of sexual activity are approved, others are condemned. This is as true in preliterate societies as in literate and so-called “advanced” civilizations. As in all things, the magician takes back this control—albeit usually secretly—and denies himself or herself nothing in the pursuit of knowledge and personal perfection. In other words, in this scenario, society becomes the demi-urge and the magician is Eve listening to the Serpent. If it is ever discovered that the magicians have listened to the Serpent, society would banish them from its borders: arrested, imprisoned, burned at the stake or hanged. Traffic with the Devil—the Serpent, the Dark Lord—includes not only rituals and beliefs that are contrary to that of the Church or State, but which also involves sexual activity that has been proscribed. This is as true in medieval India with the rise of Tantric sects (in particular the Kaula circles and the practices of Vama Marg Tantra) as it was in the Europe of the Middle Ages.

Control of the human body and its products—especially its offspring—has been a focus of modern societies. Sexuality that does not result in the conception of children often has been banned, such as homosexuality, masturbation, sodomy, etc. Further, the children must be conceived within a legally-acceptable environment, i.e., the parents of the children in question must be legally bound in the eyes of the State so that the children are legal inheritors of any property. Bloodlines and real estate are inextricably linked in this way, and marriage is just a means of providing the right documentation to ensure a smooth transition from one property owner (the parent) to the next (the child).

In the degree structure of the OTO, however, sexual practices are given spiritual analogues. It has been popularly—and somewhat erroneously—understood that the VIIIth degree of the OTO concerns auto-erotic practices (what the cynics refer to as “magical masturbation”), the IXth degree refers to heterosexual intercourse, and the Xlth degree concerns homosexual intercourse. Thus the VIIIth degree and the XIth degree would automatically be considered tabu by the established Church and State for the reasons mentioned above. They represent the intentions of the magicians to ignore the strictures of society in order to grasp more fully the potentiality of sexuality in general, and to extend the knowledge and power of the individual magician through an understanding of the capabilities of the human body and the human psyche.

The IXth degree represents more specifically what we have been referring to as the Gnostic Marriage or the Alchemical Wedding. While it is nominally a degree concerned with heterosexual intercourse (if viewed purely clinically) it has ramifications far beyond what New Age Tantra practitioners would imagine.

As Grant claims:

The obloquy attached to the Yezidi as devil worshippers arose from the notion of congress between human and non-human entities; the angelic Being is the issue of a hideous marriage.¹⁶⁵

And not only among the Yezidi. The union of male and female Tantrikas in the rites of the Kaula circle, for instance, is not a union of human partners. The union cannot take place until each of the two participants has become identified with a god and goddess, respectively. That means that the individual male must be consciously united with his deity, and at that point see the female partner as a goddess; the same is true for the female partner who must be in the same state of exalted trance, identifying herself with the deity perceived by the male and perceiving the male as a god. Thus the two individuals performing the maithuna—the sexual embrace, if the physical act is required by the ritual or by the guru in charge—are no longer human, and the “hideous marriage” may result in angelic offspring.

Ideas about the mating of humans with non-humans are quite ancient and we find examples of this concept in Sumerian and Babylonian religion (specifically in the case of the lillitu), in Greek and Roman mythology, and more recently in the fears associated with succubi and incubi in the Middle Ages. According to Saint Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica, succubi and incubi were male and female demons respectively (or a single, genderless demon who could take on either gender depending on the circumstances), who stole semen from a sleeping male and then impregnated a sleeping female with it. Nocturnal emissions were believed to be evidence of the activities of the succubus; unmarried women who became pregnant were believed to be victims of the incubus.

Gods could also assume human or animal form and have sexual relations with humans, as in the tales from Greek mythology involving Zeus and his many incarnations for the purpose of seducing women. The offspring from these unions were always remarkable, and became gods, goddesses and semi-divine beings in their own right. All things being equal, it would be logical to assume that the offspring of any such union between human and non-human (whether divine or demonic or simply extra-terrestrial) would be remarkable and would partake of characteristics of both parents.

Like Wilbur Whateley:

The boy was not talkative, yet when he spoke he seemed to reflect some elusive element wholly unpossessed by Dunwich and its denizens. The strangeness did not reside in what he said, or even in the simple idioms he used; but seemed vaguely linked with his intonation or with the internal organs that produced the spoken sounds. ... He was, however, exceedingly ugly despite his appearance of brilliancy; there being something almost goatish or animalistic about his thick lips, large-pored, yellowish skin, coarse crinkly hair, and oddly elongated ears.¹⁶⁶

(This was the human twin. The other twin was somewhat ... less attractive.)

A look at the illustrations in most grimoires and books on demonology will reveal that the horrific images to be found therein seem to be those of what appear to be deformed human beings: humans with extended limbs, heads of animals, crooked or misshapen arms, legs, torsos. It was as if demons were associated with genetic abnormalities, evolutionary dead ends. But according to Grant—and, to a certain extent, Lovecraft—these “dead ends” are, like Cthulhu himself, merely dreaming. They represent sections of human DNA that have lain dormant for millions of years, no longer required for human survival, but which may be switched on in the future as the human environment changes. They may be potentialities, which is why they have not disappeared from the genetic code and are often overlooked as “junk” DNA, a designation that has been challenged of late. According to Grant, cited below, these genetic anomalies may already be manifesting and may have been switched on through the rituals of Crowley, Jack Parsons, and others beginning in the early-to-mid twentieth century.

Dangerous Liaisons

There are vocal qualities peculiar to men, and vocal qualities peculiar to beasts; and it is terrible to hear the one when the source should yield the other. Animal fury and orgiastic license here whipped themselves to demoniac heights by howls and squawking ecstasies that tore and reverberated through those nighted woods like pestilential tempests from the gulfs of hell. ... Void of clothing, this hybrid spawn were braying, bellowing and writhing about a monstrous ring-shaped bonfire; in the center of which, revealed by occasional rifts in the curtain of flame, stood a great granite monolith ...¹⁶⁷

The hybrid forms, though monstrous to modern eyes, commemorate man's descent from the stars via a system of totemic symbolism suggested necessarily by the fauna of the terrestrial environment wherein the images were first minted. The beasts indicated, also, another line of evolution which did not have its beginnings on earth.¹⁶⁸

It's necessary to understand Grant's insistence that the type of hideous creatures of which Lovecraft writes so hauntingly only appear that way to the uninitiated “modern” eye. It follows that the methods employed to create these hybrids would also seem “monstrous” to modern eyes, involving non-traditional forms of sexual intercourse with non-traditional sexual partners in non-traditional contexts.

The practices assumed under the umbrella designation of Tantra represent much that is non-traditional, and much that involves intercourse with non-human beings. I have written at length about Tantra elsewhere,¹⁶⁹ but for now we can concentrate on those rituals and concepts that preoccupy Grant in the Typhonian Trilogies, for these are the rituals that have attracted so much interest and criticism.

Throughout the Trilogies, Grant makes constant reference to Vama Marg or “left hand” Tantric rituals, to the bodily fluids excreted by both the male and female practitioners, and to the importance of the menstrual cycle to the correct performance of the rituals. He hints that these sexual rituals open gates to other dimensions, other pathways on the Tree of Life. He also emphasizes the need for the participants to be adepts of a certain level: mastery of the practices required by Crowley in his AA is essential, such as pranayama and the other yogic techniques. Otherwise, instead of a ritual capable of causing changes to occur in the environment of the ritual operators all that is left is play-acting.

Additionally, we may add the importance of timing.

Traditionally, any type of ritual in Asian countries takes into account the calendar and the astrological conditions, Auspicious times are chosen for either the beginning of a ritual or for the central act of the ritual. This is the same in Western traditions as well, but the calendar used is normally an arbitrary one that does not take into consideration actual astronomical conditions. At the very least, a lunar calendar is employed by the type of Tantric cults of which Grant writes. As in the Necronomicon, stellar positioning is not a mere gesture but is critical to the success of the operation. This is not astrology per se; the heavens are a vast clockwork when viewed from the earth, and the planets have greater and lesser distances from the earth depending on their locations as seen against the backdrop of the Zodiac. The stars themselves rise and set at certain times and the circumpolar stars (which never rise or set) revolve around the Pole Star and occupy different positions relative to an observer on the earth according to the day, hour and season. Sensitivity to these issues involves the magician in the macrocosm: it forces the magician to be aware of his or her role and position within the larger universe (a breathing and living organism from the point of view of magic, with obvious parallels and analogues to the human organism; to the Tantrika, the universe is the body of the Goddess). This sensitivity is translated back into the microcosm as the ritual progresses, in accord with the ancient Hermetic axiom: “As above, so below.”

As Grant writes:

It is therefore possible to equate the force-fields (the Kundalini in the chakras) with planetary and stellar powers.... It is possible to draw off stellar or transmundane energy by using the human organism as a condenser. This is achieved by tapping the appropriate power-zone, after Kundalini has animated and magnetized it.¹⁷⁰

With this in mind, let us take a look at the form of the central rite in Grant's work.

Tantra in Theory and Practice

The coven of thirteen represents the true chakra or Kaula Circle.¹⁷¹

The Kaula Circle is legendary among afficionadoes of Tantric traditions. It is the one most referenced when the more exotic forms of Tantra are mentioned, such as worshipping in cemeteries or having ritual sexual intercourse in a group. In fact, the word kaula means a “group” or a “family” or a “clan,” and it refers to the group of initiates who are led by a guru or teacher. When Lovecraft writes about groups of people having orgies in the swamps outside New Orleans as part of a religious ritual in “The Call of Cthulhu,” he could as easily have been referring to popular notions concerning the Kaulas.

The approach of the Kaulas—and related Tantric groups such as the Nath Siddhis—towards the human body, sexuality, and even bodily excretions of all types is a positive one: to the Kaula Tantrika, nothing is disgusting or obscene in-and-of-itself. It is the level of awareness in an unadvanced Tantrika that categorizes something as hideous or ugly. In this type of Tantra, nothing can be considered filthy; it is only our attitude towards certain objects or ideas that makes them seem filthy. Thus, nothing is forbidden: no action, no idea, no substance. However, that does not mean that the Kaula initiate may act freely.

The authority of a guru is necessary for the Kaula circle to function, for the guru has the technical knowledge as well as the experience and the discipline necessary to lead the group. While nothing is ugly or forbidden among the Kaulas, the individual members must go through training and preparation before the most infamous of the Tantric rituals—the pancatattva or ritual of the five substances—can be performed.

The Pancatattva is also known as the “ritual of the five M's.” One important aspect of the rite is the breaking of the Vedic tabus, one by one, which involves eating and drinking various forbidden substances (such as wine) which all begin with the letter “M” in Sanskrit, leading up to the fifth M which stands for maithuna or the “embrace,” a euphemism for sexual intercourse.

The Kaula circle may have only one male-female couple engage in maithuna as part of the ritual: two people who have gone through sufficient initiations and ritual preparation to enable them to embody the deities, Shiva and Shakti, or there may be multiple couples depending on the circle and its guru. Shiva and Shakti are the archetypal deities of Tantra, and there are Shiva Tantras and Shakti Tantras depending on whether the focus is on the male aspect—Shiva—or the female aspect—Shakti. Shakti represents power, and the word is sometimes used as a synonym for the feminine aspect of power such as when a particular god is said to “have his Shakti” or is “provided with his Shakti.” The female partner in a Kaula circle will represent Shakti just as the male will represent Shiva. Shiva could be said to represent potential energy and Shakti, kinetic energy or the energy of motion.

The Goddess Kundalini, said to reside at the base of the human spine, may also be referred to as Shakti. When Kundalini is raised correctly it will reach the cranial vault where Shiva is believed to reside in solitude. When Kundalini/Shakti meets Shiva in this “chamber” they are said to be in marital embrace. This can be viewed as the Tantric version of the Alchemical Wedding or the Gnostic Marriage. It even has analogues with the concept of the Shekinah reaching upwards from Malkuth to attain union with the Divine in Kether and thus redeem all of Creation.

But before Kundalini can reach her Beloved Shiva she must pass through seven gates or power-zones kmown as chakras, or wheels. (The Kaula Circle is called Kaula chakra.) These are found in the body, ranging from the base of the spine or the muladhara chakra, to the groin, the stomach, the heart, the neck, the head (at a spot between and behind the eyes) and finally to the last and seventh chakra which is the “thousand-petalled lotus” at the very top of the head which, when opened, rains down the elixir of life—the amrita (a Sanskrit word that means “deathless”)—into the body. It would be a mistake to localize these chakras as actual bundles of nerves or other physical attributes, for they are believed to reside in the ethereal, or subtle, body. If one imagines there is a kind of electromagnetic field surrounding the body, then the chakras would be found there rather than in the body itself. However, the result of awakening these chakras is a physical as well as an emotional or psychological sensation.

This idea of the chakras and their individual awakenings is central to the rituals described by Kenneth Grant. He places great emphasis on the necessity for the magician to manipulate the energy passing through the chakras of the priestess, for instance. Each of the seven chakras possesses a different set of atttributes and siddhis, or occult powers, and it is up to the Thelemic magician to understand these powers and to be able to “switch on” those required by any specific ritual.

According to Grant's understanding of the ritual, as the chakra in the female magician has been “activated” her entire body undergoes a subtle change. It is thought that the excitation of a specific chakra will trigger the release into the bloodstream of a specific hormone from one of the glands associated with that chakra. This will, in turn, affect the characteristics of her bodily secretions, which are then collected by the magician for use in this—or another—ritual.

How this is done, and the steps to be taken to effect these changes, is the subject addressed in the following pages. While Grant utilizes many Sanskrit and other terms in his descriptions of the magical rituals he and his group employed in London in the 1950s and 1960s, some of what he describes may be unfamiliar to those already schooled in Tantra, even of the Kaula or Nath variety. It is to be understood that Tantric rituals and concepts were incorporated by Grant into a Western-style ceremonial magic system already developed by Kabbalists and those interested in Egyptian religion, etc. He never claimed to be a Tantric adept himself, and he shamelessly used whatever Tantric techniques and ideas came his way in his own form of bricolage. Then, as his group progressed even further, Lovecraftian concepts were added to the mix: a step which would, of course, be wholly objectionable to orthodox Tantrikas. Thus, just as Crowley cannot be used as a source for Egyptian religion, Kenneth Grant cannot be referenced as a source for Tantra. However, his contribution to the field of Western magic and particularly Thelema is not appreciated until one realizes that Grant did more to explain Tantric principles and rituals than any other Western occultist to that point, and to show how important they were towards a deeper understanding of Thelema. Today, we have an embarrassment of riches where translations of Tantric texts are concerned, and many knowledgeable scholars in the field who are excellent sources for more solid information. Grant, however, gives us Tantra within the context of Thelema and Western ceremonial magic—something the academics are not, as yet, able to do with any degree of authority.

One further note on the chakras:

The alert reader will have noticed that there are seven chakras (traditionally; some texts and practitioners claim fewer or greater as the case may be). These seven are approached, one by one, in an ascent up the human body from the base of the spine to the top of the head. This is obviously analogous to the “stairway to heaven” as represented in the Egyptian Pyramid Texts, Sumerian and Babylonian religion, the ascent literature of Jewish mysticism, shamanistic ascents, the “Walking” ritual of the Necronomicon, etc. It is also analogous to the Chinese system of “walking” on the seven stars of the Big Dipper (part of the Great Bear constellation). These are all cognate ideas that represent something basic and central to the human condition where spiritual evolution and the quest for immortality is concerned. What the concept of Kundalini—and the Grant systems of magic associated with it—offers us is the ability to re-interpret these magical and mystical systems as taking place within the confines of our own, individual bodies.

The seven stars of the Dipper are thus within us as the seven chakras, just as the seven “planets” are present as the chakras, and the seven chariots in merkavah mysticism. The genius of Crowley (and later Grant) was in identifying these analogues and realizing that they represented something tangible and real: secret knowledge and a workable technique for attaining that knowledge. And while traditional Kundalini yoga is an internal practice, Crowley and Grant externalized the process so that it became possible to engage in the practice in groups such as the OTO and other occult cells or—as Grant calls them—“power-zones” of dedicated adepts scattered across the earth (like chakras in the body of the priestess). The Gnostic Mass, for instance, is just such an externalization of the process of Kundalini yoga and in the hands of genuine adepts can become a powerful engine of spiritual transformation or, as Lovecraft would have it, a terrible device for summoning hideous creatures to visible appearance.

Only when mind and body are thus in accord, and when the mind concentrates the image or “child” that the body is to bear, is an act of magical creation possible. This child is rarely a human child, but it is physical in the sense that it influences the material plane.¹⁷²

In Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God—only the second of the nine volumes that comprise the Typhonian Trilogies—Grant lays out the general program of the ritual, in the chapter entitled “Dream Control by Sexual Magick.” While many variations on this ritual appear in his later works, the basic format is the one to be found here.

He first introduces three states of consciousness, the dream state, the dreamless state, and the waking state. Later, he will identify the dream state as being analogous to the Mauve Zone: an intermediary state between that of waking and deep, dreamless sleep. Grant claims that all activity has its origin in the dream state, whether the activity is conscious and willed or instinctual and reactive. The dream state is the plane on which both mental and astral activity takes place. It is also, remember, the state in which—according to Lovecraft—the High Priest Cthulhu communicates with his followers. In the Grant system, this is not a purely fictional device.

Grant credits the German occultist Eugen Grosche (“Frater Saturnus”) with having discovered part of the secret of using sexual ritual to induce a trance that would provide an entrance to the same state as that experienced in dreams, with the obvious advantage that one can then control the dream. This is done by the male magician—in this case—making the equivalent of mesmeric passes over a female priestess in a state of sexual excitement with the goal of accumulating and then collecting her heavily charged secretions.¹⁷³ Grant expanded on this technique considerably, aided by his receipt of important Tantric texts from mysterious sources and through his own study and practice leading the Nu-Isis Lodge.

There are a few Tantric terms it would be wise to introduce at this point since they will come up frequently in discussions of Grant's sexual magic.

The first is prana. This means “breath” and is the basis for the term pranayama, which is a form of breath control. As mentioned previously, breathing is one of the bodily functions that occurs automatically: we don't have to remember to breathe, and can breathe in our sleep. But conscious control of breathing is easy, and it is the gateway to control over other the autonomic functions which then gives us a degree of control over the reptilian brain, the part of ourselves that is easily more than 500 million years old and which is the physical pathway to the unconscious mind.

The second important term is kala. In Grant's usage the kalas are units of time and refer specifically to the days of the menstrual cycle and to the “essences” that are secreted on each of those days. Each day of the lunar (and menstrual) fortnight has its own kala, and each kala is different from every other in certain ways. There are fourteen or fifteen kalas, depending on how they are defined and divided. The fifteenth kala is sometimes considered the day when the menstrual flow begins, or the day of the heaviest menstrual flow. The association of the lunar calendar with the menstrual cycle and, in particular. with the onset of the menstrual flow gave rise to the concept of the Goddess Fifteen, which is one way of referring to Kali, the Bloody Goddess who is often thought of as an avatar of Shakti. The Goddess Fifteen is also analogous to the Scarlet Woman, for obvious reasons.

However, one form of the word kala symbolically represents the number sixteen, and the sixteenth kala is considered a great secret and the sum total of the values of the other fifteen. Sixteen is also the number of vowels (known as the matrikas or “little mothers”) in the Sanskrit alphabet and they are used along with the consonants to form the all-important Sri Cakra (a diagram of many interlocking triangles, very popular in Indian religion and Tantra) to which Grant also refers—as it is a map of the power-zones with which he is most concerned. (See page 259.)

There is a lot of confusion over the word kala, for depending on how it is written, it may refer to a unit of time (as we have seen) but also the number sixteen, and is related to ideas about the goddess Kali and even the demon Kali. In a system of transliteration used by many scholars today, the word kAla means “black” and also “death,” while the word kalA means “menstrual discharge,” and the word kala means “semen.” KalA also means one-sixteenth of the moon's diameter which thus gives us the kalas as understood by Grant, and kAla gives us the planet Saturn. While a Sanskrit scholar will be aware of these differences and not confuse or conflate them, Grant uses the phonetic similarities between these words the same way he uses gematria and other word-play in his writings, to show deeper connections where a scholar would most likely object. (Imagine equating the words “week” and “weak” because of their homophony, or “feet” and “feat.” To an English-speaking person, such an equivalence is ridiculous, yet there is evidence of this type of cavalier approach in many of Grant's works, of which equating kAla and kalA are just one example. To give him credit, he does admit that this is more in the line of stream-of-consciousness analysis than a literal Kabbalistic approach.) Yet, even in this short list of possible meanings for the phoneme “kala” we have ideas that are related in Grant's thesis: black, death, menstrual discharge, semen, a unit of time, and a sixteenth of the moon's diameter, as well as Saturn (planetary representative of the Dark Lord) itself. The appearance of Saturn in this list is interesting because the Greek word for Saturn is Chronos, from which we get the word for “time” such as in “chronology.” Thus Saturn and time are linked in English, and Saturn and time are linked in Sanskrit as well. Whether this is reason enough to use Grant's method is debatable, however.

There are many variations in the kalas (as vaginal discharges) depending on the relationship between the actual lunar cycle and the menstrual cycle of the priestess. In addition, the secretion of specific hormones from specific glands during the ritual will influence the quality of the kalas. Thus, the body of the priestess is a kind of laboratory and when the priestess has herself attained more advanced levels of initiation then she becomes both a laboratory and a temple: the biological functions have psycho-spiritual analogues which are under (conscious or unconscious) control of the priestess during the rituals; i.e., the priestess may be in a trance at the time of the ritual, and uttering oracular statements all the while, but her training and initiation have given her the ability to respond appropriately—even instinctively—to the magician or priest who is performing it. We will return to the concept of the kalas as we examine the ritual itself.

The next term which comes up frequently in Grant's work is ojas. In Sanskrit it means vigor, strength, power, energy, light, and related ideas.¹⁷⁴ Grant uses it in the sense of magical energy, and ojas may be thought of as the natural result of properly charging the kalas during the ritual. The kalas by themselves are considered magically inert until they have been subjected to the ritual attention of the priest. Once they have been successfully charged, they are then carriers of the ojas, or magical energy. The normal menstrual cycle (i.e., the kalas in their normal physical state) is linked to normal human reproduction, but when the kalas have been charged then the possibility of super-human reproduction has been attained.

The term mudra is also important in yoga and in Tantra. Mudra means “seal” and is a gesture, a sign made with the hands and fingers in different positions (similar to asanas, which are positions involving the entire body). These gestures “seal” openings in the subtle body, as well as transmit information to others. Each mudra has a specific characteristic attributed to it, a power inherent in the positioning of the fingers and the palm. We are familiar with Western forms of the mudra, such as holding one's hand with the palm out, signifying “stop,” or with both hands held up with empty palms signifying “surrender.” In yoga, the mudras have similar associations but all on the spiritual level rather than the secular one. One mudra may mean the union of male and female, for instance, while another mudra indicates the outpouring of blessings. And while the positioning of hands in Western culture carries information only, in yoga and in Tantra the mudras are themselves not only carriers of data but are also carriers of magical power. A mudra performed the right way can be imbued with force by the Tantrika so that it functions much as the magical gestures of fictional sorcerers and magicians. A mudra also forces the practitioner to be acutely aware of the force being generated as the awkward positions of the hands communicate a level of stress back to the initiate which reinforces the original intent. In Grant's work, the Mahamudra—or “Great Mudra”—is represented by the Stele of Revealing: the Goddess Nuit arched over the earth which he sees as the Thelemic counterpart to the Kailasha Prastara, or the sexual position in which the woman is over the man.¹⁷⁵ This position is analogous to that usually shown in icons of the Goddess Kali who stands upon the corpse-like body of Shiva; this is the depiction of Shakti—of feminine Power—in its most blatant and extreme form, and is also a warning to those who desire to practice the rite we are discussing without being fully prepared, for the Shakti can become unmanageable and wild in inexpert hands. This is also the position most effective for the collection of the kalas from the genital outlet of the priestess, a topic to which we will return shortly.

The asana is a yogic position which places a degree of stress on the human body, again forcing concentration but also manipulating the body in such a way as to activate certain of its subtle centers, its chakras. Asanas are used in meditation, and are also used in such practices as Kundalini yoga or hatha yoga in which the body is contorted through different levels of difficulty which results in the yogin becoming aware of the inner workings of the body and the interrelationships that exist between different parts of the outer and inner corpus. They also impact the autonomic nervous system, especially when paired with pranayama exercises and the recitation of mantras, and facilitate higher states of spiritual and psycho-sexual awareness.

Prana as already mentioned is usually translated as “breath” but in Tantra there are multiple pranas. Normally when speaking of bodily functions the Tantrika is not referring to those with which we are familiar, the visible emblems of these functions, but with their subtler aspects. Thus, prana is not simply “breath” the way we understand it, but subtler aspects of the same. There are at least five “breaths” or five pranas recognized in yoga and Tantra: prana is the breath of inhalation, the breath that nourishes life, and enters through the nostrils; udana is the exhalation, most noticeable in the act of speech; samana is the breath that aids digestion; apana is the breath involved in peristalsis and excretion; and finally vyana is the breath that moves internally through the body and which stimulates motion and movement of the body through space.

Mantras are syllables or words that have specific associations with deities or spiritual qualities. They can be as short as a single syllable (a bija or seed mantra) or as long as a sentence or a verse. Their value lies in the manipulation of sound.

Sound is vibration, and different mantras—because of different combinations of vowels and consonants—vibrate at different rates when spoken, and these levels can be adjusted through the use of volume and pitch. They also help to quiet the mind by replacing chaotic inner voices and random thoughts with a string of seemingly meaningless syllables, thus essentially short-circuiting the language centers of the brain.

Mantras, asanas and mudras, and pranayama all are designed to counteract the normal functions of the mind and the body. Obviously, occultism is not about reinforcing our basic instincts for survival, but in violating them as much as possible without actually damaging either the mind or the body, stretching the capabilities of both in ways that are initially uncomfortable and unnatural but which in the end open the doors of perception.

We have presented the basic Sanskrit terms and concepts that are used quite freely by Grant in virtually every volume of the Trilogies. There are many more, as well as references to specific Tantric texts, but we will not list them all here. Rather, as we come to a relevant citation we will pause to ensure that the reader is completely informed ... or as informed as possible under the circumstances. In order to read Crowley, one should have a good general education in Kabbalah, Egyptian religion, and the Golden Dawn system of initiation; to read Grant, one needs all of that plus a deep background in Indian religion, especially Tantra, some Afro-Caribbean concepts and terms, and of course the basic reading in Lovecraft's ouevre. It is a daunting task for the general reader, to be sure, and it is hoped that this study will facilitate greater understanding of the writings of this important occult author as well as encourage wider reading in the topics covered.

The Collection of the Kalas

It should be noted that Grant's preoccupation is with the magical aspect of Tantra. Even though he does acknowledge its basic theological premises and the Hindu and Buddhist formulas for withdrawing from the world of illusion to attain the ultimate level of enlightenment, he is still quite distracted by the practical uses to which Tantric principles may be applied. This is due at least partly to his Thelemic allegiance, otherwise why not simply become a Tantrika and abandon Thelema (and by extension Western occultism) entirely? Tantra represents a collection of texts, practices, and a peculiar worldview; Thelema on the other hand pretends to be a global spiritual movement with the aim of liberating all peoples in the New Aeon. The pursuit of Tantra is a highly individual one, even though small groups may be involved. The pursuit of Thelema, on the other hand, requires a broader social perspective. Grant, as much as he admires Tantra, still sees it as a tool—among many in the Thelemic workshop. He interprets much of Thelema in Tantric terms and this may be because at times he sees Thelema as a “Tantra for the West,” and at other times he senses that both disciplines are discussing the same basic principles and he cannot resist pursuing those links and associations as deeply as possible because the one may help explain the other ... or enrich the other through the additional correspondences. In other words, he must find Tantra lacking in something, a something that Thelema can provide.

It is certain that Tantra is Indo-centric. All the terminology and references are to Indian religion, culture and language and require a knowledge of what is popularly known as Hinduism, and Buddhism. This would be ideologically unpalatable to a follower of Thelema who may recognize—intellectually—the contributions of the sub-continent to world religions but who would reject Hindu and Buddhist belief systems.

Thus, Grant's project is to strip away as much of the Indian component of Tantra as he is able and to replace it with Western occult and magical references. (It is a re-interpretation of Tantra, which is why it would be rejected by Tantrikas in Asia and most likely by Tantra scholars in the West.) In order to accomplish this, Grant needs to look at the technology of Tantra—the rituals themselves—and peel away the objectionable theology as much as possible. What he is left with should be a system of universal applicability, interpreted within the Thelemic context. And this, of course, is feasible.

In recent years this approach has been made somewhat easier by the works of scholars in Jewish mysticism and alchemy who have speculated that Tantra may very well be the fons et origo of the Sepher ha-Zohar, for instance, and who use Tantric references to help expand upon Kabbalistic and alchemical themes.

In addition, Tantra has always been a controversial field and even the definition of Tantra eludes most scholars, Asian and Western, so an eccentric British magician's point of view may be as legitimate as anyone else's.

That said, we will now look at how Grant understands the intensely sexual rituals he describes in the Trilogies. We will take as our starting point and template the brief description of those rituals he provides in Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God.

This basic form can be characterized as an initiated version of Crowley's Gnostic Mass. It involves a priest and priestess, or a magician and a “witch” (in the popular, not the Wiccan, sense). There may be others in attendance, but the prime operators are a male and a female couple.

The goal of the ritual is the collection of kalas, the magically-charged vaginal secretions of the female partner before they become ojas. We will ignore for the moment the timing issue, as it is a bit complex, but will return to it later on. There is also a appended to this volume a list of the kalas—as lunar digits—and their associated characteristics (probably the first time this has been presented to a Western, occult-oriented readership).

The priestess should be an initiate capable of raising Kundalini. That does not mean that she should be able to raise it perfectly through all six chakras to reside in the seventh, but she should be capable of stimulating the rise of Kundalini to a certain level. The priest may assist in helping her raise it to higher and higher chakras during the ritual, but only as long as there is no danger to the priestess.

The intention of the ritual must be clear from the outset, plainly stated so that all participants are in agreement. This must reflect an act of will from all parties, otherwise the ritual degenerates into a form of “vampirism” with the magician using the priestess for his own ends, or vice versa.

In the Thelemic context we have been discussing, the ritual space must be created according to the understanding of the magician, perhaps using the Star Sapphire or Star Ruby rituals to cast a circle: a sacred space, a chakra. The design of the altar and the space may be purely Thelemic, or it may also incorporate Tantric elements such as the Sri Chakra which represents interlocking power-zones based on triangles, the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, etc. and is a form of the yoni—or vulva—of the Goddess.

Perfumes should be chosen with care, to reflect the nature of the ritual.

Lighting should also be carefully designed before hand. It is common in Western ceremonial magic to use candles of a certain number, a certain color, etc. and this may be employed. Or oil lamps may be used instead.

The altar should be provided with a mat or some soft covering for that is where the priestess will be located during the most intense portions of the ritual. The altar should face the north, or the head of the priestess should be in the north, for that is from where the amrita will descend. This is especially so if the ritual is being performed at midnight on the night of the Full Moon, for at that time the Moon is directly overhead (i.e. in the south) and the Sun will be directly opposite, in the north. In the case of Tantra, and the collection of amrita, the Moon is male and the Full Moon is full of the nectar of immortality (the semen of the God Chandra), and the Sun is female, red and pulsing with heat and fire. If it is desired to incorporate Lovecraftian elements in the ritual (as Grant's cultus was known to do) then the appropriate times may be chosen according to the position of the Big Dipper, but always with further reference to the position and the quarter of the Moon.

The deities should be invoked into the priest and priestess, so that they identify with their respective godforms. They may partake of alcohol at this time, both in homage to the original pancatattva ritual of the Kaula Circles but also because this was a method Crowley also used in order to release inhibitions in his assistants. Naturally, only a sip of alcohol should be employed.

The central part of the ritual now takes place, which involves the priestess raising Kundalini. According to Grant, this transpires as she is being sexually aroused by the magician who is performing certain mudras over her body, not necessarily touching her but making passes directly over her erogenous zones (with a wand or with his hands) and raising her to a fever pitch. The goal of this process is to activate Kundalini, to raise it gradually to the higher chakras so that they may be “burned” by the power of the Serpent Goddess and thus release their potencies into the bloodstream of the priestess. These chakras should have been previously opened by the priestess through Kundalini yoga or some other technique, otherwise opening them for the first time this way can be dangerous to her. The magician should bring the priestess to the point of orgasm, but stop just before orgasm is reached. The magician may have sexual intercourse with the priestess if it is considered necessary to bring the priestess to the desired pitch of excitement, but neither priest not priestess should achieve orgasm at this point because it is premature to “ground” or “earth” the energy before it has been fully utilized. (This is in contradistinction to much normative Tantra which requires the orgasms of both parties and even the ejaculation of the male in order for the rite to be “perfect.”) It is necessary that there is a flow of secretions from the female genital outlet. These kalas will be collected by the magician—either orally, as in cunnilingus, if the intention is to increase the occult power of the magician or to bring him into contact with supramundane forces, etc.; or on a specially constructed talisman of metal or parchment, or on the leaf of a sacred plant, or some other way if the intention is to store it for future use. The magician will then energize them magically so that they become ojas.

In an operation described in Beyond the Mauve Zone, the magician can also use disks of some metal, placed ove the chakras of the priestess in order to become magnetically charged by the ritual. This occurs as an operation of what Grant calls “stellar magic” and involves the sixth, or ajna, chakra. The idea is to charge this chakra—what Grant calls the “sixth power-zone”—so that it magnetically attracts the Fire Snake, causing it to rise from the muladhara chakra up the sushumna (the “middle pillar” of the body) to reach the ajna chakra. The metal disks collect the ojas that are generated this way and are then kept in a closed jar for later use, when they may be drenched in the kalas of the priestess to activate them further.

What is the goal of this type of magical ritual? A predictably Lovecraftian one:

In due course is born a being that is adapted perfectly to existence on a chosen star.¹⁷⁶

This is an extremely delicate operation. If either the priest or the priestess becomes distracted by lust and by the need to satisfy themselves in orgasm ahead of time then concentration has been lost and the rite loses all its efficacy. The kalas become “earthed” in their usual way, and all that is left is two persons having sexual intercourse. That both participants remain in a heightened state of concentration and focus is critical to the success of the ritual. From the magical point of view, there is nothing particularly powerful in semen and vaginal secretions if they have not been charged previous to being released. The object is not to create a human child (most people can manage that), but something else entirely (as the above quotation from Grant illustrates).

As we have seen, the Valentinians concentrated on the Divine during sex so that they would produce Divine offspring. The method seems strangely similar. Old Whateley was concentrating on incarnating one of the Old Ones on earth. Crowley's quasi-fictional magicians in his most famous novel were pretending to create a Moonchild. Magic is the creation of forms, of illusions, of whole new realities. In Tibetan shamanism, this is known as creating tulpas: homunculi designed for specific purposes, as was most famously recounted by Alexandra David-Neel. And in Jewish mysticism, we have the Golem.

Thus, what is needed is not two sexually-active people who will have intercourse surrounded by weird diagrams and sandalwood incense. Instead, we need two intelligent and mature—and dedicated—magicians who will push the envelope of sensation as far as it will go, realizing that their sexual energy is more than a metaphor for the primal act of creation—and that it contains power of an incredible nature if taken beyond the normal methods required for human reproduction.

This brings us to the question of initiation. In the Shakta tradition, the female is the more important partner and the emphasis is placed on her secretions. Tantra in this tradition is a very refined, very highly-articulated form of Goddess worship. Women can initiate men into this tradition, which is the reverse of what even Crowley would approve. At the same time, the selection of the appropriate partner was an all-consuming endeavor for Crowley and he went through many women in his quest for the perfect soror mystica, or “sister of the mysteries,” probably due to his reluctance to take women seriously as advanced adepts. To many Tantrikas, the female kalas are the focus of the rites and the yoni—the vulva—is the object of veneration.

The reverse is obviously true for those who favor the Shaivite tradition which elevates the male principle above the female. However, the solution to this problem—as Grant rightly points out¹⁷⁷—is the fact that Crowley's New Aeon is the Aeon of the Child: the offspring of the two principles of male and female, of Shiva and Shakti. The Child partakes of the combined essences and natures of each and represents a new focus, a new paradigm, for not only magic but for the social order in general. It is, in fact, this Magickal Childe that troubles Lovecraft so much that he castigates the concept as the deformed and dangerous creature conceived by poor Lavinia Whateley, but it is nevertheless the focus (expressed or implied) of all New Aeon magical ritual.

Thus, in this case, the kalas are not the only important secretion as the seminal fluid of the magician is also required to effect the “magical birth.” This substance is to be charged just as carefully as the kalas in order to be effective, which requires the magician to practice a form of seminal retention and “recirculation.” Like the priestess, he must postpone or completely avoid orgasm in order not to “earth” the fluid before it has been charged. He must practice raising Kundalini and sealing the chakras in the same manner as the priestess. In many Tantric traditions it is completely unnecessary (and moreover undesirable) for the male practitioner to achieve orgasm, and especially forbidden for him to ejaculate and thus waste the seminal fluid and its associated subtle essence. Such methods as that known as karezza were employed to keep the male Tantrika in a constant state of sexual excitement and arousal during the ritual. If ejaculation did take place, there were methods for limiting the damage.

One to which Grant refers is the practice known as the vajroli mudra, which is a way of halting ejaculation in pre- or mid-ejaculation. This involves a great deal of preliminary work in contracting the urethral sphincter (a practice which is also beneficial in curing premature ejaculation). Advanced practitioners are said to be able to use this method to “vacuum” ejaculated semen from the vagina back into the penis where its subtle essence can be drawn up the spine and to the cranial vault as the Kundalini rises. The Shiva Samhita—a venerable Tantric text which discusses the vajroli mudra—claims that the loss of semen leads to death and that the Tantrika should never lose his semen under any circumstances. Other Tantric texts are more lenient, but insist that it takes at least a fortnight to replace the semen expended in an act of sexual intercourse and enormous quantities of food to produce even a single gram of the substance. The mention of a fortnight in this regard is due to the lunar association once again, for the Moon is restored—i.e., the semen of the Moon is replaced—over a fourteen-day period from New Moon to Full Moon.

As David Gordon White points out:

... semen is the raw material and fuel of every psychochemical transformation the yogin, alchemist, or Tantric practitioner undergoes, transformations through which a new, superhuman and immortal body is “conceived” out of the husk of the mortal, conditioned, biological body.¹⁷⁸

To Crowley and his system, the semen is just as important to the creation of the Elixir—the amrita or nectar of immortality—as the female kalas. Indeed, it is the combination of the two that is required and this would seem to be consistent with European alchemical traditions as well. Obviously, in order to produce the magical offspring we have been discussing at length there must be a contribution from both partners, either in the “earthed” physical sense or in the occult, astral sense. As the emphasis in the New Aeon is said to have switched from the pure male-female (Shiva-Shakti) polarity of the old Aeons to their product as a divine offspring, this would seem to make sense and would require the use of such new “grimoires” as the Crowleyan Book of the Law as well as some of the received texts published in Grant's works.

To the magician, the priestess is no longer the priestess. She is a goddess, a Scarlet Woman, a Shakti. To the priestess, the magician is no longer someone she knows in the “real” world, but a god, a Beast, a Shiva. They are drawing down the powers that existed since the Creation—the aptly-named Big Bang—by identifying themselves with the forces that started it all (like Clement's lust-crazed Carpocrations). They are traveling along the 500 million years of their reptilian brains to enter a space and time that is otherwise unknowable by living, breathing human beings ... and they are going further and farther than that.

And as they do so, their physical bodies undergo transformative changes. These changes begin with the secretion of glandular substances into the bloodstream so that their breath, their saliva, their perspiration, their seminal and vaginal fluids vibrate with this new life, this new potency.

At the same time, visions are obtained. One of the effects of this type of ritual is that such intensive concentration during a time of sexual arousal leads to a tremendous amount of psychic stress. The body is used to releasing itself in orgasm and ejaculation. If this normal pathway is blocked—“sealed”—through mental control and focus, then the body reacts in such a way that it seeks alternate pathways, thus opening a Gate that is normally closed.

A slight shift of focus will result in a shift of vision, of waking trance. If the goal was to open a Gate, and the focus of both parties is maintained on this goal, then a Gate will open. The power of the unreleased sexual energy will see to it; and the kalas that are secreted at this time will enable the operators to more easily open the Gate at a future time.

It is to increase the psycho-sexual tension that the Necronomicon itself states:

Know that thou must keep purified for the space of one moon for the Entrance to the first Step, one moon between the First and the Second Step, and again between the Second and the Third, and so on in like manner. Thou must abstain from spilling thy seed in any manner for like period of time, but thou mayest worship at the Temple of ISHTAR, provided thou lose not thine Essence. And this is a great secret.¹⁷⁹

The reference to the Temple of Ishtar may be an allusion to temple prostitution, and the provision that one not lose their Essence should be self-explanatory by now. Prostitutes are not anathema to the Tantrika; far from it. As we already know, Crowley's soror mystica was known as the Scarlet Woman or the Whore of Babalon. To the Tantrika, nothing is ugly or hideous or forbidden, thus prostitutes (proscribed by society even as they are secretly tolerated) are as much representatives of the Goddess as any other woman.

The lunar periods are important here, just as they are in Tantric practice. The application is different, of course. The basic theme of the Necronomicon system known as “the Walking” is celestial ascent; at the same time, there is a level of paranoia concerning evil spirits and the evil cults that worship them. Opening the celestial Gates during the Walking is a core element of the process and it shares much in common with the Chinese magical system known as the Pace of Yü which involves proceeding up the seven stars of the Big Dipper, “opening” each of these astral gates along the way. The Walking can be interpreted from the point of view of raising Kundalini up the path of the chakras ... and of course the Tantric process can be interpreted in terms of the Walking. It should be remembered that these seemingly different systems are analogues of each other; that the language used to describe one system is essentially the same as the language used to describe the other.

The goal of celestial ascent traditions as well as the raising of Kundalini in yoga and Tantric traditions is the same: to approach a secret or hidden chamber from which immortality can be attained. In celestial ascent literature this is normally viewed as a temple or palace at the top of a ladder of lights—stars or planets—in which God dwells. In the type of ritual traditions we have been discussing this chamber has a physical, microcosmic analogue: the cranial vault.

Within the brain there is a space that is often referred to as the “bridal chamber.” It is in the region of the hypothalamus (the Greek word thalamos means “bed chamber”) located somewhat between—and behind—the eyes, what is popularly known as the “Third Eye.” This is the realm of Shiva in Indian tradition: it is where this iconic recluse and hermit waits in silent meditation until he is roused by his wife Parvati or Uma to take part in an extended session of intercourse. It is at the culmination of this sexual embrace that Shiva's semen rains down as amrita: the elixir of immortality. This is sometimes described as the crescent Moon overturning and spilling down the seed as a gentle but rejuvenating rain. In Kundalini terms, the Serpent Goddess is raised through the six preliminary chakras to mate with Shiva in an embrace that triggers the opening of the seventh chakra at the crown of the head. In either case, the result is the same: the flow of life-giving nectar begins at the top of the head and continues down through all the subtle pathways—the nadis—of the human body. This is the Alchemical Wedding and its result, the nectar of immortality and elixir vitae, is the Sixteenth Kala.

While the sexual rite above described seems to focus exclusively on the male as the active partner, this is not really or always the case. The priestess can control the outcome of the ritual through her own powers of concentration and control over the psycho-biological processes taking place in her body. As the magician manipulates her sexual response so that she is near orgasm, she can duplicate what the male Tantrika is able to do in similar circumstances: transfer the complex of sensations (visualized as Kundalini) from the groin level to the brain, i.e., from the muladhara chakra to the ajna chakra at the level of the Third Eye. This can be done in real physical terms—the way it is taught in Kundalini yoga—or it can be accomplished through visualization alone, which is the safer (although somewhat less powerful) route. The end-result of the ritual—whatever it may be—is visualized as taking place in the cranial vault, in the ajna chakra or the thalamus, the “bed chamber,” and it is there that the Magickal Childe is conceived. The term Magickal Childe is used here to refer to the desired result of the operation—to charge a talisman, to obtain secret information, etc. etc.—visualized as the offspring of the ritual. Certain Chinese adepts use the same processes to create an immortal body, visualized first in embryonic form extending from the crown of the head (and thus the seventh chakra) and then gradually becoming mature.¹⁸⁰

Crowley was aware of the possibility of opening the spatial gateways and of admitting an extraterrestrial Current into the human life-wave. In Moonchild the incarnation was effected in and through the normal sexual formula, and although the full impact of the moonchild's advent is not described, the reader is left with the impression that, whatever it may have been, it was some sort of a monster in human form endowed with superhuman powers. But no entity incarnating via the usual channels of sex, no physical intrusion of another dimension into the ambience of humanity could possibly exercise power in any but a terrestrial sense. This is because the “power” has been earthed or enfleshed.¹⁸¹

The above statement by Grant eloquently sets forth the parameters of the sexo-magical rite, even to the extent of introducing the possibility that a monster with superhuman powers could be incarnated using these techniques. He also reminds us that the usual channels of sex are not capable of introducing the extraterrestrial Current into our own dimension. Control of the body's automatic sexual responses begins with control of the reptilian, or serpent, brain until the entire organism is an instrument to be played by the initiated magician. Once this occurs, according to Grant, the Gates may be opened and the realms beyond the visible, tangible, illusory world can be explored.

And, as Lovecraft warns us, these same Gates, once opened, allow traffic in both directions.

154 April D. DeConick, “Conceiving Spirits: The Mystery of Valentinian Sex,” in Wouter J. Hanegraaf and Jeffrey J. Kripal, Hidden Intercourse: Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism, Fordham University, New York, 2011, pp. 23-48. The reference is to the Aeon Sophia, as described in Chapter One of the present work.

155 H.P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror.”

156 Kenneth Grant, Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God, p. 52.

157 A newspaper advertisement by Aleister Crowley in the New York press. Many miss the humor of the inclusion of “Harrison Fisher girls” in the list of “Freaks of all sorts.”

158 Kenneth Grant, Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God, pp. 150-151.

159 April D. DeConick, op. cit., p. 36.

160 Ibid., p. 40

161 Ibid., p. 36

162 Ibid., p. 40

163 Ibid., p. 23.

164 Gershom Scholem himself, in his Introduction to Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941) cites Crowley's writings on the Kabbalah as one reason why he felt motivated to write his ground-breaking study.

165 Kenneth Grant, Outer Gaterways, p. 105.

166 H. P. Lovecraft. “The Dunwich Horror.” It is unfortunate that Lovecraft's apparent racism permits him to use terms that are common among those who denigrate other ethnicities to describe a being that is only half-human.

167 H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu.”

168 Kenneth Grant, Outer Gateways, p. 34

169 Peter Levenda, Tantric Temples: Eros and Magic in Java, 2011.

170 Kenneth Grant, Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God, pp. 97-98.

171 Ibid., p. 87

172 Kenneth Grant, Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God, pp. 82.

173 Kenneth Grant, Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God, pp. 84-85. Grosche had fallen away from the German OTO and created his own occult order based on the sexual mysteries at the heart of the OTO, the Brotherhood of Saturn. He also had developed a lifelong enmity with Karl Germer of the OTO. (Germer was also known as “Frater Saturnus.”) This unpleasantness led to Grant—who was friendly with Grosche—being ostracized by Germer, with Grant eventually forming his own OTO, etc. The whole sordid tale is unfortunately typical of the way many modern occult societies function, or dysfunction, when it comes to a focus on personalities and not the Work.

174 David Gordon White renders it as “vital fluid.” The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1996, 2007. p. 183.

175 Kenneth Grant, Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God, p. 30.

176 Kenneth Grant, Beyond the Mauve Zone, p. 131.

177 Kenneth Grant, Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God, p. 50.

178 David Gordon White, The Alchemical Body, p. 27.

179 Necronomicon, p. 37.

180 See the works of Charles Luk for greater detail on this fascinating subject.

181 Kenneth Grant, Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God, p.41.