Books dealing with various aspects of queer spirituality seem to be becoming more popular at the moment, so for my first book review for the new year I thought I’d take a look at two books that use the title “Queer Magic”. Both titles are the Kindle editions.

First up is Tomás Prower’s Queer Magic: LGBT+ Spirituality and Culture from Around The World (Llewellyn Publications 2018). This approach to “Queer Magic” takes the form of a global expedition into the ‘hidden’ queer history of world religious cultures. Divided into seven sections, each focusing on particular regions, their cultural traditions, and some exploration of “queer deities, legendary figures, and mythic lore. There’s also a selected reading list for each chapter and each section closes with guest contributions from contemporary LGBT+ practitioners. This book very much reads like a personal journey, as the author says, “all the information I wish someone had given me when I began my quest” and that it is intended to be “your passport to worlds you never knew existed, populated by people and spiritual beings just like you, regardless of who you are.” As far as I can make out, ‘Queer’ in the sense that Prower uses it, is very much an umbrella term for LGBT+ identities.

The first Part of the book opens the “Cradles of Civilisation” – Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, to Judaism and Islam, which nods the reader in the direction of queer Sufi mystics and the controversy of how ‘queer’ Rumi may have been. The section closes with contributions from a contemporary devotee of the deities of ancient Mesopotamia, Dr Jacob Tupper; from Rev. Tamara L. Siuda, founder of the Kemetic Orthodox Religion; Keren Petito on growing up queer and Jewish and Saifuddin Mohammed, a gay Muslim from India.
Part Two of the book covers Sub-Saharan Africa and the lands of the African Diaspora – which may be a surprise for some readers, as Prower points out that many modern African states are openly hostile to queer communities. The two chapters in this section cover Eastern & Southern Africa, Western & Central Africa, the lands of the African Diaspora – with a focus on Vodou, Santería and Candomblé. The section closes with contributions from Sandra Zuri, a queer Yoruban practitioner, and the Rev. Tamara L. Siuda – who is also an initiated Vodou practitioner.
Part three of the Book examines Europe and begins with a look at sexual identities in Ancient Greece and Rome, and from then on into “Pagan Europe” with a look at the Celts, the Scandinavians, and following up with a chapter on Christianity. The section closes with a contribution on homoerotic love spells from Antinoan P. Sufenas Virius Lupus; Druid and Drag Queen Kristoffer Hughes; and Leah Gonzales on being a Blatina bisexual in the Catholic Church.
Part Four moves to the Indian Subcontinent, with chapters on Hinduism and Buddhism. I’m biased here, due to my own interests, but I thought these chapters were rather weak. Yes, trying to approach the complexities of contemporary LGBT+ politics in India is a huge subject, as is identifying potential queer elements in its diverse religious traditions, but uncritically repeating assertions such as that Ganesha’s trunk “is often seen as a phallic symbol” or that “The major cultural shift of Hindus condemning queerness as a social evil largely came about in the 1920s, 30s and 40s spearheaded by, of all people, Mohandas Gandhi” comes across to me, I’m afraid, as sheer laziness – particularly given the controversial nature of both statements. The section on the Indian Subcontinent ends with a Puja Ritual for “inner divine queerness” by Ganapati Kamesh of the Oklamoha-based Shri Ganapatikamesh Matha, and a contribution by Nikko, a gay Nichiren Buddhist.
Part five covers East Asia, with chapters examining China (Taoism and Confucianism and Mahayana Buddhism) and Japan (Shinto and Japanese Buddhism) and Shamanism. The section ends with Prower’s own reflections on Taoist thought and practice, and Nikko giving an example of a Nichiren Buddhist Mantra.
Part Six deals with Oceania, beginning with Aboriginal Australia, moving on to Polynesian Islands and the Maori, Samoa, the Tonga, Tahiti, and Hawai’i. In the absence of any direct contributions from Oceanic practitioners, Prower recommends the documentary film Kumu Hina – which won the GLAAD media award for outstanding documentary in 2016.
The seventh and final section of the book covers the Americas, beginning with Latin America and then moving to Native North America and, unsurprisingly, a discussion of the term “two-spirit” and its politics. The section closes with a Santa Muerte Protection spell from Anthony Lucero and a Southwestern Sage ritual from Brian Simpson, a gay Native American of the Dine/Navajo tribe.

The author also gives some space to “takeaway” summaries for how queer readers can implement a tradition’s wisdom into their own lives and spellwork – although he cautions, in his introduction, that “I highly discourage you from immediately and arbitrarily incorporating these cultures and deities into your own personal practice just because of capricious curiosity. Eclectic spirituality and cosmopolitanism are one thing, but appropriation and lack of cultural reverence are another. Many of these queer traditions and deities from around the world will call to you and speak to you on some intrinsic level, but do personal research before jumping into foreign waters.” That’s as close as we get to any discussion of cultural appropriation or similar issues.

It’s this emphasis on “personal research” which I feel, is the main strength of this approach to “Queer Magic”. The book offers an introduction to the examination of queer elements in different cultural, religious, and magical traditions. Prower makes it very clear that this is a starting point only, and not an attempt to be one of those “only books you’ll ever need”. Yet at the same time – in trying to cover the entire globe, and say something meaningful about cultures both contemporary and premodern, I cannot help but feel he has tried to pack too much into too little space.

Also, a problem with a book like this is that citing sources is all very well and laudable, but when those sources are outdated, or repeat ‘facts’ which are controversial, if not just plain “dodgy”, then that becomes all too clear, very quickly. Also, Prower tends to zoom into the realm of speculation. For example, in a discussion the Buddha’s attractiveness, he speculates that “one could argue that he directly marketed himself to the gay community in order to spread his message” – one could argue this, I suppose, but it rather begs the question of how far Nepal, in the 6th-4th century B.C. had much of a “gay community” in the sense we think of it nowadays. This tendency – all too common to queer spiritual writing – to slip into an easy equivalence between contemporary (Western) LGBT+ identities and those of other cultures and epochs runs throughout “Queer Magic” although the author does point out the differences, and that in some respects, modern readers might find aspects of premodern cultures – such as Greek pederasty – repugnant.

Sometimes, “Queer Magic” does come across as being over-reliant on dated textual sources, although the contributions from the various contemporary practitioners is a nice offset to this, and lifts the book away from being just another ethnocartographic work attempting to universalise western ideas of subjectivity. Having said that, there are also some interesting omissions – for example, almost nothing is said about contemporary Pagan traditions and their relationship with LGBT+ history.

In general though, Queer Magic is definitely worth a look, if only for the contributions of the contemporary practitioners.

The second book is Queer Magic: Power Beyond Boundaries edited by Lee Harrington and Tai Fenix Kulystin (Mystic Productions Press 2018). Power Beyond Boundaries is an anthology of contributions from forty-three contemporary practitioners and activists, many of whom are based in North America. The contents and approaches are highly diverse, including personal reflections, rituals, interviews, poetry, artwork and cartoons. I’m not going to examine each contribution in turn – which would take far too long, but instead will focus on some broad themes and highlights.

Several of the contributions deal with what we might think of as queer approaches to Wicca, Witchcraft, and neo-pagan practice. These include Yvonne Aburrow’s “Inclusive Wicca Manifesto”; Giariel Foxwood’s thought-provoking essay on what happens when the terms “Witchery” and “Queer” are brought together; Steve Kenson’s “Queer Journey of the Wheel”; Sam ‘Eyrie’ Ward’s “The Maypole and the Labyrinth: Reimagining the Great Rite”; and Ivo Dominguez Jr.’s “Redefining and Repurposing Polarity” which rethinks the concept of polarity beyond gender binary or opposites. There are also personal reflections on alchemy – one by occasional contributor to this blog Steve Dee, Almah LaVon Rice’s moving “Between Starshine and Clay: DIY Black Queer Divination” and Alex Batagi’s experience of Vodou. There is magic to support justice workers, queer ancestors, rites of rage, power, and healing.

There are some fascinating and moving interviews, featuring for example, Clyde Hall, Shoshone Two-Spirit Elder and one of the founders of the Gay American Indian Caucus in which he shares some insights into the modern construction of “Two-Spirit” as an identity.

One of the outstanding essays for me, is Aaron Oberon’s “A Drag Queen Possessed and other Queer Club Magic”; a joyous celebration of queer performativity which emphasizes “practice within the immediacy of the witch’s environment” – where “certain kinds of magic-such as glamour, protection, lust, and even possession-might be more potent in a queer night club than in other places throughout your landscape.”
Another outstanding piece is Abby Helasdottir’s “Umsnúa: Ergi and inversion in Old Norse magical practice”. An in-depth, scholarly essay on the Icelandic witch Ljót the Old Norse ergi with its multiple layers of abjection, and manages to cite Judith Butler, Carolyn Dinshaw and Kenneth Grant. Susan Harper, Ph.D gives a heartfelt reflection on her long involvement in Feminist Goddess Spirituality and directly addresses issues such as class privilege, race, the “appropriation” of Native American and African practices, symbols and deities, and the exclusionary practices. “Many of us never realized” she says “who “womyn born womyn” was leaving out. Harper, in her essay, makes an important distinction between inclusionory practices – inviting people into spaces which have already been created, and affirming practices – where the emphasis is on the co-creation of social spaces. She goes on to look at how transphobic or trans exclusionary practices/rhetoric can exist within spaces which are otherwise well-meaning, particularly in spaces where the gender binary is taken as the template for human relationships. She goes on to discuss a series of Best Practices for Creating and Facilitating Affirming Spaces which I think would be of great value to group and workshop facilitators.

Although I was initially wary of the American slant of Power Beyond Boundaries the sheer breadth and diversity of its contents and communicative styles make it easily one of best books on queer magic I’ve come across, and, I would say, sets a high benchmark for future projects. Having a wide range of contributors not only in terms of traditions but also of age and ethnicity gives the book a strong intersectional and historical perspective, and what also comes across is a clear commitment to queer activism and resistance.

It would be unfair to compare these two books with one another – although both are titled “Queer Magic” they are coming from very different perspectives and assumptions as to what Queer Magic’s entailments and potentials might mean, and so serve different purposes. The key difference, I think, is how you see queer subjectivity – as an identity which has always existed and can be recognised or refracted through cultures and epochs, or as a product of modernity and something that points beyond identities and desires. Perhaps there’s room for a bit of both.

Interview with Tomás Prower

Interview with some of the contributors to Power without Boundaries

When you kissed me, my world turned around.

1986. I’d come down for a coven meeting, but I don’t remember the ritual. I just remember the kiss. You walked me to the station but I don’t recall the conversation. I just remember the kiss. As I boarded the train, you reached up, threw your arms about me, and kissed me. No gentle peck on the cheek, it was full-on lips to lips. That kiss turned my world around.

You took your time, as though it was the most natural, the most normal thing in the world. As though the other people on the platform, on the train, weren’t there. Or didn’t matter. And whilst the station was not exactly heaving, it was not empty either.

It was a scene familiar from a thousand movies and tv shows – the parting of lovers. A script I never thought I could participate in, at least not with another man. We were not lovers – but that first public kiss, in the warmth and heat of a summer’s day, turned my world around.

I sat on the train. It pulled out of the station. There was a guy sitting opposite me, his eyes wide as saucers like he couldn’t believe what he’d just witnessed. The whole journey back he kept glancing at me, and I reveled in his shock. And the funny thing was, as it turned out, this guy was at the same college I was attending in York – albeit in a different department, and for the next few weeks, I kept catching him staring at me in horrified – or perhaps jealous – fascination.

I’d grown up kissing other boys. In school, playing at “Stingray” I usually got to play the part of Aqua Marina, the silent mermaid, which gave plenty of room for kissing. It seemed natural, until one day it wasn’t, and the kissing stopped, and the name-calling began. I came out to my parents at age 21, to have the whole thing wrapped in a blanket of frozen silence. I’d shared furtive fumblings in the darkness of clubs and alleyways; explored the fringes of polymorphous pleasures but was still not confident or comfortable with my self and my desires as they always seemed to escape or confound any attempt at being this or being that kind of person. I certainly wasn’t “out” to most of my friends, although I suspect some of them were more aware than I supposed. Most of my friends, at that time, were occultists of one kind or another, and I was just beginning to get angry about the sweeping generalizations that were everywhere at that time – the “we don’t want any kinks in our circle ho ho ho” kind of comments or the flat declarations that anyone who was gay, lesbian or bisexual “couldn’t be involved in magic”. I knew there was a gay world separate to the occult – I just didn’t feel ready to be part of it. I hid and sought consolation in esoteric obsessions and fantasies of power.

But I remember the kiss. And that chance meeting, after 25 years of distance, brought it back. So I just wanted to acknowledge that. Because when you kissed me that morning, my world turned around.

I’ve recently finished reading Owen Davies’ new book A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination, and Faith during the First World War (Oxford University Press, 2018).

As Owen Davies points out, the First World War has sometimes been termed the “the first scientific conflict” – a time punctuated by new technologies of warfare (tanks, warplanes, poison gas) as well as the emerging social and medical sciences. He then proceeds to lift the lid on the hitherto hidden aspects of the period – the appearance of magic, prophecy, divination and much more besides on both the battlefields and home fronts of Europe and America. And what a fascinating history this is – ranging from Spiritualism to battlefield mascots and talismans; from the activities of occult societies to fortune-tellers. Equally interesting is Davies’ account of the response of authorities in various countries to these manifestations of “superstition” – for example, he shows how authorities in both Germany and Britain sought to crack down on Fortune-telling, and gives several accounts of cases that came before the courts, and how practitioners sought to find loopholes in the law.

No book on the supernatural aspects of the Great War would be complete without a discussion of the Arthur Machen-inspired vision of the ‘Bowmen of Mons’. But Davies shows how widespread such battlefield visions actually were. There were visitations of angels, the Virgin Mary and ‘the White Comrade’ – a mysterious figure who appeared before wounded soldiers, who, like Machen’s bowmen, seems to have originated in fiction. Again, there were tensions over such manifestations. Religious authorities seemed to have eagerly endorsed heavenly visions but showed more wariness over reports of deceased relatives – which was the domain of Spiritualism. Although Davies pays close attention to non-orthodox beliefs, he does examine the influence of the major faiths, for example noting how many soldiers carried a bible with them. He also describes the activities of various esoteric societies during the war and offers the “tantalizing hint” that occult grimoires too may have been circulating in the trenches – citing a report that an officer had confiscated from one of his soldiers, a copy of the Clavicula Salomonis.

Davies also discusses how the anthropologists, folklorists and other social scientists of the period responded to the war, as an opportunity to research evidence of magic, ghosts, and beliefs in luck. He discusses the various attitudes soldiers had towards lucky objects or persons, and how talismanic objects were mass-marketed.

The book closes with a look at the survival of magic and related practices into the inter-war period and the Second World War – I hope this a preface to Professor Davies writing a larger treatment of magic practices and beliefs in the Second World War. Although there seems to be no shortage of sensationalist (and sober) treatments of Nazi occultism, there is always room for a fresh look.

All in all, A Supernatural War is a fascinating and enthralling book which should be of great value to anyone interested in the history of magic in the twentieth century. If anything, it’s another nail in the coffin of the so-called “disenchantment” view that the onset of modernity banished magic into the shadows.

In the first post in this series, I introduced the subject of armed yogis – a concept which does much to perturb the common representation of yogis as peaceful ascetics given to inward, spiritual pursuits and generally unconcerned with the trappings of the material world.

What prompted me to come back was a recent twitter discussion about Aleister Crowley’s understanding of the Yogasutra of Patanjali. As is well-known, Crowley brought together the practice (and to some extent the theory) of Yoga with Western Ceremonial Magick – arguing that Yoga and Ceremonial Magick are two sides of the same coin. What particularly struck me during my various random thoughts on Crowley though, was a quote from his 1943 work Magick Without Tears:

“…my system can be divided into two parts. Apparently diametrically opposed, but at the end converging, the one helping the other until the final method of progress partakes equally of both elements. For convenience, I shall call the first method Magick, and the second method Yoga. The opposition between these is very plain for the direction of Magick is wholly outward, that of Yoga wholly inward.”

What interests me here was the assertion that Magick is “outward” – that is to say, directed towards the world and Yoga “wholly inward”. This is a common enough interpretation of the apparent difference between magic and yoga – or magic and mysticism (as ‘Yoga’ often gets described as a mystical pursuit) and I think its easy to see the traces of larger, colonial-era distinctions between the active, outgoing West and the passive, unworldly “mystic East” implicit in the distinction between magic and yoga. It’s the figure of the armed yogi, the warrior-ascetic – even the yogi as magician or sorcerer – which disrupts this kind of binary distinction. As J. N. Farquhar put it (1925, p433): “The idea of Hindu monks becoming fighting men seems grotesquely absurd.”

In order to explore this further, let’s begin with a battle. The Battle of Buxar (October 22, 1764) is considered to be a major turning point in the British control of India. Against the forces of the East India Company, commanded by Hector Munro, were the combined armies of Mir Qasim, Nawab of Bengal, the Nawab of Awadh, and the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II. The forces of the East India Company carried the day. The outcome of Buxar was the Treaty of Allahabad, between the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II and Robert Clive of the East India Company. Alam granted the Company Diwani – the right to collect tax revenue from the peoples of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa – control over an eighth of South Asia’s population and territory. Among the troops defeated at Buxar was a force of between 5-6,000 described in accounts as gosains or nagas.

Who were these warriors? In East India Company reports and accounts there are a number of terms – often used interchangeably to denote these warriors – Bairagis, Sannyasis, Gosains, Nagas, Yogis, and Fakirs. In actuality, these were members of the ten orders of Daśānamī Sannyāsīs. For a full account of the Daśānamī order, see Matthew Clarke’s 2006 book “The Daśānamī-Saṃnyāsīs: The Integration of Ascetic Orders into a Lineage” (Brill 2006). A key distinction is that gosains refers to Daśānamīs who have adopted a sendentary lifestyle, are sometimes married, and lived in maṭhas – monastic settlements, and nagas refers to those Daśānamīs who went about naked or wearing only a loincloth, smeared their bodies with ashes, and lived in akhāṛās (“wrestling arena”) – military encampments (in some cases, actual fortresses) where they would train for fighting under the leadership of mahants. As I noted in the previous post, the general scholarly consensus is that the militarisation of the Nagas took place between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and there are many accounts of local regents employing troops of nagas as mercenaries. They were feared as much for their yogic powers as their martial prowess. When they were not fighting, they continued with their ascetic lifestyle, attending festivals along pilgrimage routes.

George Bruce Malleson (1914, p189) describes a encounter between East India Company forces and “5,000 naked fanatics” at the battle of Patna in May, 1764 in which “The fanatics rushed forwards, with great impetuosity, with wild shrieks and gestures, presenting a very formidable appearance; but the English received them with a volley so well-directed, that many of them were laid low and the remainder scattered in disorder.”

The Maṭhas were not only monastic settlements. Under royal and Mughal patronage, they became centres of trade and commerce. The Daśānamīs formed trading networks, doubtless aided by their military prowess. They also received land grants which were not subject to taxes and also, pensions.

In addition to the Śaiva Daśānamīs there were other militarised orders such as the Sufi Faqīrs (“Fakirs”), the Ram-worshipping Dādūpanthīs, and the Vaiṣṇava Rāmānandīs – also known as bairagis.

Historical records indicate that when these militarised orders were not fighting for patrons, they fought each other. Farquhar (1925, p29) cites an account from in which sannyāsīs of the Giri sub-order (of the Daśānamīs) took control of the Kumbh Mela at Haridwar and collected revenue from the pilgrims attending. In 1760, members of the bairāgīs fought a battle with the Giris for control of the festival, which according to this report, left 18,000 bairāgīs “dead on the field”.

What was the British attitude to these fighting ascetics? The activities of the Daśānamīs and other groups – participating in trade, money-lending, going about naked and engaging in military campaigns did not accord with European notions of what constituted appropriate religious practice. James Forbes, an eighteenth-century East India Company merchant says of them:

“These gymnosophists [ascetics] often unite in large armed bodies and perform pilgrimages to the sacred rivers and celebrated temples; but they are more like an army marching through a province than an assembly of saints in procession to a temple, and often they lay the country through which they pass under contribution.” ¹

Although there are some recorded instances of the British employing sannyāsīs as spies, mercenaries, couriers, translators and guides (see Sinha, 2008, pp15-18) they were generally seen as a threat to Colonial rule. Warren Hastings (the first de facto Governor-General of India, 1773-1785) described the militarised ascetics as “A set of lawless bandette [who have] infested these countries and under the pretence of religious pilgrimage have been accustomed to traverse the chief part of Bengal, begging, stealing and plundering whereever they go.”

In January 1773 Hastings issued a proclamation barring “all Biraugies and Sunnasses who are travellers strangers and passengers in this country” from the provinces of Bengal and Bihar, save for “such of the cast of Rammanundar and Goraak [Ramanand and Gorakhnath] who have for a long time been settled and receive a maintenance in land money . . . from the Government or the Zemindars of the province, [and] likewise such Sunasses as are allowed charity ground for executing religious offices.” ²

Hastings’ proclamation makes a distinction between travelling ascetics and those who are settled. The spectre of dangerous unregulated, wandering groups would recur again in the anti-thug campaigns of the early nineteenth-century, more of which in a future post.

In a letter of the same year, Hastings recounts an encounter between sannyāsīs and Company troops:

“About a month ago intelligence was received by the Collector of Rungpore that a body of these men had come into his District and were plundering and ravaging the villages as usual. Upon this he immediately dispatched Capt. Thomas with a small party of Pergunnah Seapoys, or those troops who were employed only in the Collections, to try and repress them. Capt. Thomas soon came up with them and attacked them with considerable advantage, but his seapoys imprudently expending their ammunition and getting into confusion, they were at length totally defeated and Capt. Thomas, with almost the whole party, cut off. This affair, although disagreeable on account of the death of a gallant officer, can have no other bad consequence, as we have taken proper steps to (subject) these people to a severe chastisement, and at all events to drive them from the country, and we hope from the precautions which we now find it necessary to take, of stationing a more considerable force on these frontiers, effectually to put an end in the future incursions of the Sunnasses.” ³

In a letter dated March 31, 1773, Hastings reports that “Four Battalions of Sepoys” are engaging in anti-sannyāsī patrolling, and complains that “it is remarkable that we meet obstacles every day in the superstition of the inhabitants, who in spite of the cruelties and oppressions which they undergo from these people are so bigoted in their veneration of them as to endeavour on every occasion to screen them from the punishment which they are exposed to from our Government” (Jones, 1914, p217).

Further proclamations effectively barred armed ascetic troops from moving at will through British-controlled territories, on pain of detention. Hastings also stated that such groups were to be considered enemies of the government. Hastings also banned public nakedness, apart from at religious festivals. ⁴ Not only were armed yogis seen as dangerous due to their martial prowess, they quickly came to represent those elements of Hinduism which were depraved and superstitious and required eradication or at the very least, control.

Other sources of tension came over the armed ascetics collection of “tribute” from villages. Dana (“giving”) is an important part of Hindu dharma. As itinerant ascetics passed through villages they would receive Dana in the form of money or food – an act which went far beyond a mere economic exchange but marked the mutual support and respect between religious specialists and the laity. However, the British tended to characterize these transactions in terms of spurious holy men preying on ignorant and gullible villagers. It also hindered the steady collection of revenue by the British. The authorities also clashed with the ascetic orders over their landholdings. British attempts to force ascetics into paying revenue was taken as an insult to their religious rights and privileges. Bhattacharya (2012, p90) cites reports of sannyāsī wounding themselves with knives as a form of public protest. Hastings also pressed regional rulers to rid themselves of any sannyāsī troops in their employ.

Eventually, the tensions between the East India Company and the armed yogis resulted in what has been called the ‘Sanyassi Rebellion’ – the events of which I shall examine in the next post.

Sources
Ananda Bhattacharya Reconsidering the Sannyasi Rebellion Social Scientist, Vol. 40, No. 3/4 (March-April 2012).
Matthew Clark, The Daśanāmī-Saṃnyāsīs: The Integration of Ascetic Lineages into an Order. Brill, 2006.
Timothy S. Dobe Hindu Christian Faqir: Modern Monks, Global Christianity, and Indian Sainthood Oxford University Press, 2015.
J.N. Farquhar The Fighting Ascetics of India The John Rylands Library, 1925.
Mary E Monckton Jones Warren Hastings in Bengal, 1772-1774, with appendixes of hitherto unpublished documents Clarendon Press 1918.
David Lorenzen Warrior Ascetics in Indian History Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol.98, No.1 (Jan-Mar., 1978), pp61-75.
George Bruce Malleson The Decisive Battles Of India From 1746 To 1849 Reeves & Turner 1914.
William Pinch Peasants and Monks in British India University of California Press 1996.
Nitin Sinha Mobility, control and criminality in early colonial India,1760s-1850s Indian Economic Social History Review 2008; 45; 1.

I am an unashamed urbanite. For many years now, I’ve been fascinated with the magical dimensions of urban life, with the encounters with the uncanny and strangeness that spring forth, unbidden, during a stroll to the corner shop, in a night walk through the wood. The way a city reveals its multiple hearts through flocks of starlings or in faded graffiti. So when offered the opportunity to review Wyrd Harvest Press’ recent publications, Folk Horror Revival: Urban Wyrd 1 & 2 I jumped at the chance.
What is ‘Urban Wyrd’ though? Just as Folk Horror as a modality for exploring the intersections of the wyrd is, to some degree, bound up with notions of the rural, so ‘Urban Wyrd’ explores the weirdness of the urban environment. As Adam Scovell (author of Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange) points out in his essay in to Urban Wyrd no.1 “It is the strangeness of the everyday”.

Folk Horror Revival: Urban Wyrd 1.Spirits of Time
Folk Horror Revival: Urban Wyrd 1.Spirits of Time is a 480-page black & white paperback consisting of over 40 different contributions devoted to the many possibilities invoked by this slippery concept of ‘Urban Wyrd’. Here are interviews, examinations of film and television shows, material objects (i.e. ouija boards), accounts of hauntings, wyrd photography, the use of technology (orgone accumulators, electronic voice phenomena), musical explorations and monsters – from the things lurking in the tube to Gorgo. There’s way too much for me to cover it all in the depth it deserves, so instead, I’ll pick out those contributions which caught my attention the most.
First of the highlights for me in this volume is Gray Malkin’s examination of Nigel Kneale’s classic “Quatermass and the Pit”. As a longtime fan of Nigel Kneale’s productions – and the Quatermass series in particular, it’s good to see an analysis of how this film works across multiple registers, unearthing anxieties of alien-ness and a distinctly dystopian spin on the SF trope that aliens have tampered with humanity’s evolution. Another high spot (if that’s the right phrase) is Andy Paciorek’s “Protect and Survive: Dystopian Drama – A Jolly British Apocalypse”. Like Andy, I grew up with this barrage of government media dispassionately informing the British public how it should conduct itself in preparation for a thermonuclear holocaust. Andy examines famous British films such as The War Game – made in 1965 but banned from being shown on television until 1985. I recall seeing it at a special showing in 1980, and just spending the next few days in bed in order to recover. He also looks at Barry Hine’s 1984 Threads – a tale of everyday working-class folk in Sheffield and how they survive (or not) an East-West Thermonuclear exchange of 3000 megatons. What’s truly chilling about Threads is the way it projects a post-nuclear future of blank-eyed children watching fires flickering in broken tv sets. There’s no room here for postnuke heroics as imagined in survivalist fantasies.
Next up is Darren Charles’ “Back to the Countryside: Urban Witchcraft” which does what it says on the lid, as it were – examining the intersections between the figure of the witch and the urban environment in history, in media (such as Morticia in The Adams Family, Vianne Rocher in Chocolate), teen witchcraft – bringing in of course both Buffy and Sabrina and witchcraft, horror and voodoo.
Also deserving of mention is Jim Moon’s look at “Ghostwatch” is an examination of how this classic piece of supernatural drama was brought about, the myths that it spawned, and the aftermath of its showing in 1992. SJ Lyall considers “Silent Invasions” – the perception that all is not right with the world and that those around you are subtly different – alien – in classics such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the American tv series The Invaders and the original V – which of itself spawned a whole genre of conspiracy theories.
In amongst all this media analysis Professor Phillip Hull’s “The Eternal Snicket” ( a snicket being, as anyone from Yorkshire, will know, a narrow passageway or shortcut) which treats the snicket as a kind spatial version of the wardrobe that leads to Narnia. Hull seems to have some truly weird experiences with treating shortcuts as opportunities for “not being present in the moment” (but I’m not giving away any spoilers). It’s this kind of willingness to be “deliciously lost” which I think marks the inhabitant of the Urban Wyrd.
Finally, William Redwood’s “Weird Rides: Taxis and Urban Uncertainty” situates the humble taxicab into the cartography of urban wyrd. I’m reminded of the narrator of Lord Dunsany’s “The Beggars” at this juncture: “taxicab (O marvelous, ill-made word, surely the pass-word somewhere of some evil order)”. Drawing in taxi journies (Dracula, Stephen King’s Crouch End to the cabbies themselves (for example, Chas in DC’s Hellblazer and the Efrit in American Gods) showing the apparent disorder and chaos that can lurk behind these seemingly everyday journies.

Folk Horror Revival: Urban Wyrd 2.Spirits of Place
And so to the second Urban Wyrd: “Spirits of Place”. Fifty-two contributions across 478 pages, focusing on “the strange histories of cities or particular forms of built space”. Once again, here is a cornucopia of essays, interviews ranging from the histories of particular spaces, thoughts on urban music, considerations of psychogeography and hauntology; strange photography, film and televisual explorations, microhistories and much more.
The opening essay is Stuart Silver’s “Urban Psychogeography in History, Theory and Practice” which neatly sets the tone for this volume. Silver documents the history of psychogeographical wanderings through urban spaces in its various manifestations – from the Situationists to Landscape Punk; from Baudelaire’s Flâneur to the works of Ian Sinclair and Peter Acroyd. When Silver writes “Let the graffiti, signage, buildings and that odd-shaped stain on the paving stone become your muse.” I find myself reminiscing of my years in Leeds, when that very stance became the bedrock of much of the urban magic I explored in that period.
Karl Bell’s “Through Purged Eyes: Folk Horror and the Affective Landscape of the Urban Weird” explores urban folk horrors – both historical and contemporary – and demonstrates how the denizens of the city are intimately bound up with the experience of urban living. He then goes on to consider the urban environment as an “affective landscape” both unsettling and liberating – a project of urban re-enchantment. Examining spectres as diverse as Spring-Heeled Jack, the ghosts of dead railway workers, and liminal urban spaces such as the Troll Market in del Toro’s Hellboy 2, the buried Martian spaceship in Quatermass and the Pit and the tensions in the work of fantasists such as Machen and Lovecraft, Bell shows how the urban weird can reinvigorate our perception of the urban space.
Another highlight for me is Andy Paciorek’s “Urbex, Haiyko and the Lure of the Abandoned” which explores the lure of derelict and abandoned places. Again, I reminded of a time, when I lived in Yorkshire, of wandering through an abandoned mill – imagining the ghosts of a forgotten industry all around me. Likewise, Howard David Ingham’s “Spontaneous Shrines” which examines the phenomena of tributes left for the dead at the roadside and in woods is something ordinary and every day which deserves more attention. Oz Hardwick and John Pilgrim’s “York: Albion’s Capital of the North” is a short, yet evocative tour through some of the hauntological currents which still flow through the city. I spent three years living in York, and reading this, find long-buried memories stirring. In much a similar vein there is Layla Legard’s “Sorcerer’s Apprentices and Industrial Witches: The Urban Wyrd as Magick in Leeds, West Yorkshire” – although I should ‘fess up, I have a walk-on part in Layla’s examination of the Leeds occult scene of the 1980s having been interviewed by Layla as part of her research. My final highlight pick is Anastasia Lipinskaya’s “The City that was not There: “Absent” Cityscapes in Classic British Ghost Stories” which examines the changing locations of ghosts stories, from gothic castles to country houses, to urban settings – and in particular in key works by Robert Hichens and Herbert Wells.

It’s difficult to sum up Urban Wyrd 1 & 2 as both volumes straddle a huge range of interests. If you’re at all interested in Folk Horror and the weirdness of urban living and its magical potentialities then these volumes are a must-read. Similarly, anyone with an interest in the varied eruptions of occult themes into contemporary visual media – and in particular the dystopian British tv and film of the 1970s will find much food for thought here. Many of the shorter pieces could be used as jumping-off points for further explorations. The editors of both volumes – Richard Hing, Grey Malkin, Stuart Silver & Andy Paciorek – have done a great job of bringing together a wide range of contributors which show the range to which the concept of the ‘Urban Wyrd’ can be applied. If there’s one criticism I would make, it’s that some sense of a contributor’s personal engagement with the urban wyrd is sometimes lacking – perhaps this could be the focus of a future volume?

Both volumes of Urban Wyrd are available direct from Lulu:

Folk Horror Revival: Urban Wyrd 1.Spirits of Time

Folk Horror Revival: 2.Spirits of Place

Other titles from Wyrd Harvest Press/Folk Horror Revival

All sales profits from all books in the Wyrd Harvest Press Lulu online bookstore are charitably donated at intervals to different environmental conservation projects undertaken by The Wildlife Trusts.

I’m very pleased to announce the forthcoming publication of a new book by Mike Magee, Yakṣiṇī Magic.

Yakṣiṇī Magic is the first extensive treatment of Tantric texts dealing with practices that relate to the Yakṣiṇīs, an ancient class of female spirit beings often described as “fertility deities” and said to inhabit wild places, plants, and trees.
Beginning with an examination of Kubera, the treasurer to the gods, who is often held to be the leader of the Yakṣiṇīs, Mike examines and elaborates on existing scholarly accounts of the Yakṣiṇīs, and traces their appearance from the earliest Indian textual sources—the Vedas through to Buddhist, Jain, and Tantric literature. He highlights the importance of astrological timing in Yakṣiṇī-related magical practices and discusses how the magical elements of the tantras have been sidelined.

Drawing on a wide range of tantric textual sources, many of which are presented here for the first time summarised into English, Mike examines the various practices through which a tantric practitioner could propitiate these powerful, fierce and sometimes jealous female spirits. Yakṣiṇī Magic affords us a fascinating glimpse into this hitherto unexplored aspect of the tantric world—a world populated by hosts of spirit beings whose favour was sought through offerings of mantras, as well as a wide variety of other substances.

Mike Magee has been providing translations and summaries of tantric materials for many years, earning him the respect of practitioners and scholars alike. He is the author of Tantric Astrology (Mandrake 1989) and Tantra Magick (Mandrake 1990). He has also translated key texts such as the Kaulajnananirnya Vamakeshvarimatam and Matrikabhedatantram.

With illustrations by Jan Magee and Maria Strutz. Foreword by Phil Hine.

This first edition of Yakṣiṇī Magic will be published by Twisted Trunk as a limited hardback edition of 108 numbered copies, priced £30 plus postage. To reserve a copy, contact phil@twistedtrunkbooks.com

Original Falcon Press has just published my new book, Hine’s Varieties: Chaos & Beyond. Its a selection of writings spanning 1985-2019, divided thematically into sections: Chaos Magic, Tantra, Sexualities, Practice, Paganisms, Histories, and Fiction, each section prefaced by autobiographical reflections and with some attempt at background context for each essay.
It is available direct from Original Falcon Press as a printed book, or ebook in Mobi or Epub format. With a foreword by David Southwell, and internal art by Maria Strutz

This post is an extract from a recent lecture at Treadwells Bookshop, entitled “Flying through the air, entering other bodies: Yoga and Magical Powers”. The lecture examined the relationship between yoga and magical or extraordinary abilities. When I began reading for the lecture, I was very familiar with the anti-Yoga views of 19th century scholars such as Max Muller or H.H. Wilson, but less so regarding how attitudes to yoga and yoga powers intersected with popular culture. So here is a brief examination of how yogic powers became associated with stage magic, duplicity and deception.

Over the course of the Nineteenth century, the wondrous powers of the yogi enter both popular culture and Western Esotericism, and the scientific study of yoga begins. This is the background to which our contemporary understanding of the powers of the yogi is situated. For the most part, commentators were scornful of yogic practices and viewed yogis with a mixture of suspicion and disdain. One reason that Yoga was seen as suspect in this period was its very association with magical or supernatural abilities. Whilst scholarly accounts reported feats such as the abilities of yogis to remain buried alive for weeks on end, such powers were invariably dismissed as mere trickery, self-deception – and the deception of a credulous and superstitious populace.

A common theme in orientalist representations of India was that of an immaculate past and a degraded present. As Max Muller put it, although Indians had, in their ancient past “reached in the Upanishads the loftiest heights of philosophy” Hinduism was “now in many places sunk into a grovelling worship of cows and monkeys.” Muller, in his study and translation of Vedic texts, believed that Indian religion had been originally, monotheistic, but later decayed into polytheism and magic. Like many of his contemporaries, he believed in an evolutionary progression of religion – that lower forms of religion evolve into higher forms. But religions could also decay and become corrupt. Indian religious practices were judged as promoting idolatry and superstition – and anything that smacked of “magic” was seen as demonstrating the truth of this argument.

This trope of India’s glorious past and degraded present can be seen – in varying degrees – in many 19th and early 20th century explanations of yoga. For example, it became a common tactic to separate the noble philosophy of Yoga from its actual practitioners. Muller, in his 1899 book The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy engages in a lengthy discussion of yoga philosophy, but dismisses the “postures and tortures” in Pātañjali’s Yoga Sutra, deeming them to be a corruption of the original philosophical tradition.

Yet at the same time that scholars were doing their best to distinguish a noble yoga philosophy from the degradations of yogi practitioners, the mysterious powers of the yogi were filtering into European and American popular culture.

In 1830, a story appeared in the Saturday magazine giving an account of one Sheshal, who was dubbed “the Brahmin of the Air” due to his apparent ability to sit cross-legged in the air, with one hand resting on a staff that touched the ground. The Air Brahmin excited much comment and newspaper coverage, and despite the eventual exposure of the trick continued to be a source of wonderment.

It was the fascination with these apparent powers which led to the formulation of the first “scientific” explanation for yogic abilities – hypnotism. In Lahore, 1837, a fakir was reported to have remained buried alive without food or water for an entire month. James Braid, the father of modern hypnotism, used accounts of this and similar incidents to argue, in his 1850 work Observations on Trance or Human Hibernation, that such feats were the result of self-hypnosis. The “hypnosis” explanation for yogic powers became very popular and indeed, continues today.

Naturally, these yogic feats quickly drew the attention of English stage magicians and conjurors. The first English conjuror to have performed in Indian guise was Charles Dickens! In 1849 Dickens, a keen amateur conjuror had blacked up his face and hands, dressed in exotic robes, and presented himself as ‘The Unparalleled Necromancer Rhia Rhama Rhoos’.

Over the course of the century, stage magicians performed various versions of Indian feats, either presenting themselves as fakirs or claiming that they had traveled to India to learn the secret arts. The French performer Renee Bernard, aka “Koringa” was billed as being raised by Fakirs and taught the arts of sorcery.

The most famous “yogic feat” is, of course, the so-called “Indian Rope Trick”.
The first report of this startling feat appeared in the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1890. A Yogi or Fakir raised a rope into the air using his mind power, then an assistant – a young boy, climbed to the top of the rope and disappeared! The Fakir then called to the boy, then, growing angry, followed him up the rope and disappeared too! Then body parts of the boy rained down from the top of the rope. The Fakir then reappeared, climbed down the rope and placed the body parts into a basket, out of which the boy sprang, unharmed. This feat of illusion – usually performed far less elaborately, became popular across Europe and America. Some months after the original account was published, the editor of the Tribune admitted that it was a hoax. But by that time, the story had been widely repeated and it wasn’t long before witnesses appeared who had claimed to have seen it performed.

In 1899 a British Stage Magician, Charles Bertram, traveled to India, offering a reward of £500 to any Indian Fakir who could perform the trick to his satisfaction. Apparently no one could. Explanations for the trick included mass hypnotism, mesmerism, or the idea that the witnesses had imbibed too much hasheesh.

Some British stage magicians embarked on a campaign to discredit Indian tricks and their association with magical powers. In 1878 the conjurer John Nevil Maskelyne wrote an article on “Oriental Jugglery” complaining of fakirs who deluded innocent Englishmen into believing that their tricks were due to some element of the marvelous. He went on to reveal the methods by which some famous tricks had been accomplished. Other conjurors followed suit – the general tone being that Indian tricks were inferior to those performed by European conjurors. Maskelyne went on to expose fraudulent mediums in a similar manner.

Over the course of the Nineteenth century, yogic abilities were increasingly taken as evidence of both “the mystic east” and Indian duplicity, superstition and fraud. What interests me, in particular, was how far these popular representations shaped the negative view of Yogic powers which can be seen in the writings of Western Esotericists such as Madame Blavatsky and Aleister Crowley.

Sources
Sarah Dadswell Jugglers, Fakirs, and Jaduwallahs: Indian Magicians and the British Stage (New Theatre Quarterly / Volume 23 / Issue 01 / February 2007, pp 3 – 24).
Peter Lamont and Crispin Bates Conjuring images of India in nineteenth-century Britain (Social History Vol. 32 No. 3 August 2007).
Arie L. Molendijk Friedrich Max Müller and the Sacred Books of the East (Oxford University Press 2016).
Mark Singleton Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (Oxford University Press 2010).
Sharada Sugirtharajah Imagining Hinduism: A postcolonial perspective (Routledge 2003).

In the previous post in this series, I briefly sketched out the orientalist position on yoga & yoga powers before outlining how the extraordinary abilities attributed to yogis became associated with stage magic and deception. Now I will take a look at how yoga powers were represented in the writings of the leaders of the Theosophical Society.

“Theosophical Orientalism”
The basic premise of orientalism is that of an essential divide between “the West” and “the East” – sometimes expressed in terms of a polar opposite between the dynamism and rationality of the West and the frozen passivity and “mystical quietude” of the East.

Scholars such as Christopher Partridge have coined the useful phrase “Theosophical Orientalism” in order to distinguish Theosophical discourse from other forms of orientalism. Here are some key features.

Theosophical Orientalism in part drew on earlier forms of romantic orientalism which saw India as the repository of timeless wisdom combined with a general view of its populace as quiescent and spiritual. The work of comparativists such as William Jones and Thomas Colebrook led to a rise of interest in viewing India as the cradle of civilization. Gradually the image took root of India as a culture which had seemingly rejected the ills of modernity (such as rationalism or materialism) in favor of the spiritual life, existing in a kind of unchanging, Rousseauean dream. Blavatsky was excited by the possibility of locating the roots of all esoteric knowledge – the hidden wisdom tradition of which she was the sole representative – in the Orient.

Blavatsky, as with scholarly orientalists such as Max Muller believed that contemporary India had lost touch with its wisdom traditions (see this post for some related discussion). Although initially enamored of movements such as Swami Dayananda Sarasvati’s Arya Samaj, cordial relations did not last, and Blavatsky soon began to claim a superior authority in providing an initiated perspective on Indian esoteric traditions:

“But we may find worse opponents than even the Western Scientists and Orientalists. If, on the question of figures, Brahmins may agree with our teaching, we are not so sure that some of them, orthodox conservatives, may not raise objections to the modes of procreation attributed to their Pitar Devatas. We shall be called upon to produce the works from which we quote, while they will be invited by us to read their own Puranas a little more carefully and with an eye to the esoteric meaning. And then, we repeat again, they will find, under the veil of more or less transparent allegories, every statement made herein corroborated by their own works.” ¹

In a similar way that scholars such as Muller and Horace Hayman Wilson sought to distinguish between a noble philosophical tradition of yoga and its degenerate practitioners, Blavatsky made a distinction between esoteric truth and exoteric practice.

Another feature of Theosophical Orientalism is the optimism that science was on the verge of demonstrating the truth of the perennial wisdom-tradition. Drawing on theories of physics, magnetism, and psychology – as well as more contested disciplines such as Mesmerism, Theosophical authors strove to assert that their metaphysical premises operated according to natural laws:

“For Asiatics this magnetic revival has a paramount interest. Every advance made by Western Science in this direction brings out more clearly the grandeur of Indian Philosophy … It cannot be denied that modern magnetism makes it easy to understand ancient Yoga Vidya.” ²

As Karl Beier points out (2016), Theosophical Orientalism established an intercultural space – in particular with respect to journals such as The Theosophist where European and South Asian Theosophists could participate in creating new understandings of ancient wisdom according to scientific principles. For South Asian Theosophists in particular, this became an important space for forging a new identity beyond British dismissal of indigenous traditions.

On Yogis

“A Yogi in India is a very elastic word. It now serves generally to designate a very dirty, dung-covered and naked individual, who never cuts nor combs his hair, covers himself from forehead to heels with wet ashes, performs Pranayam, without realizing its true meaning, and lives upon alms. It is only occasionally that the name is applied to one who is worthy of the appellation.” ³

The attitude of Madame Blavatsky and other senior Theosophists to yoga and yogic powers is perhaps most easily expressed as a linking of binary oppositions between lower and higher forms of praxis. In a similar way that Theosophical discourse made a distinction between “black magic” and “true Occultism”; or between Mesmerism and hypnosis – Blavatsky was stridently anti Haṭhayoga.

For Blavatsky, a true yogi was that rare individual who had entirely renounced the world and joined with the Universal Soul. As Elizabeth de Michelis points out(2004: 178), Blavatsky makes a distinction between an inferior Haṭhayoga and a superior Rājayoga and identifies the latter with the Yogasutra of Patañjali – an association which was later continued by Vivekananda and continues to circulate today.

Senior Theosophists frequently issued warnings about the dangers of pranayama and attempting yogic postures. William Quan Judge, in his 1890 “interpretation” of the Yoga Aphorisms of Patañjali states that Raja Yoga is “spiritual” whilst Hatha Yoga is not, and only produces psychic development at the expense of the spiritual.

This antipathy to Haṭhayoga was picked up later by Vivekananda. In his 1896 work Raja Yoga he says of Haṭhayoga: “we have nothing to do with it here, because its practices are very difficult, and cannot be learned in a day, and, after all, do not lead to much spiritual growth”.

A key figure in the translation and dissemination of yoga-related texts is Rai Bahadur Srisa Chandra Vasu. His translations of the Śiva Saṃhitā (1893) and Gheraṇḍa Saṃhita (1895) were published by Theosophical Presses. ⁴

In his “Introduction to Yoga Philosophy” (1915) Vasu makes a distinction between “True Yoga” and false yogis, in other words:

“In India, many understand by the word Yogi, those hideous specimens of humanity who parade through our streets debaubed with dirt and ash – frightening the children, and exhorting money from timid and good-natured folk by threats, abuse or pertinacity of demand. Of course, all true Yogis renounce any fraternity with these. If these painted caricatures by any stretch of language can be called Yogis, surely their yoga (communion) is with ash and dirt, mud and money.”

He is also critical of Hatha Yogins “those strange ascetics who by inflicting tortures and exquisite pains to their flesh, hope to liberate their spirits.” He also hits out at those yogis who “think that it is impossible to practice Yoga in household life” and that “one must leave father and mother, wife and children, and run to deserts or high mountains.”

Real Yogis, for Vasu, can be discerned “by that inexpressible serenity of his countenance… It is impossible to see a Yogi without being pleasantly influenced by him. … In short, a Yogi carries his credentials on his face.”

Yoga Powers

Blavatsky recognized that the siddhis or powers existed but again makes a clear distinction between “higher” and “lower” siddhis. The lower siddhis could be brought about by drugs, “paralysis of the physical senses” or manipulating the breath – but were akin to sorcery and were harmful. Blavatsky, of course, was held to have demonstrated siddhis, but these were spiritual and taught to her by her inner plane masters, rather than mere psychic tricks. The improper development of “psychism” or the lower siddhis could only, in her view, result in “dangerous delusions and the certainty of moral destruction.” ⁵

An essay on “Yoga Vidya” by F.T.S. ⁶ appearing in the November 1879 edition of Theosophist discusses the Siddhis in some detail. The author stresses that some siddhis apply to the astral, rather than the physical body, and goes on to discuss how powers such as levitation are not miracles, but “a very simple affair of magnetic polarity.”

One of Blavatsky’s first encounters with claims of yogic powers was a meeting between her, Colonel Olcott, and one Śrī Sabhāpati Swāmī in Lahore on November 8, 1880. It seems that both Blavatsky and Olcott had held Sabhāpati in some regard, but when they met for the first time, the Swami told them of an experience whereby he had flown to Mount Kailāśa to commune with Mahādeva. According to Olcott, neither he or Blavatsky would accept that this had been an actual experience (perhaps an astral flight would have been more palatable to them) and they ceased to give any support to Sabhāpati’s work. ⁷

In the February 1880 edition of the Theosophist, Blavatsky comments on a piece entitled “An Indian Aethrobat”, by Babu Krishna Indra Sandyal, in which the author is discussing yogic siddhis such as Anima (reducing the body in size to the smallness of an atom) and proposing a scientific rationale for their existence. In her editorial note, Blavatsky opines:

“”The Babu is also mistaken in supposing that this body of flesh can be separated into atoms and made to fill the whole void of space, or compressed into one infinitesimal atomic point like a diamond-grain. Let him reflect but one instant upon the nature of bioplastic matter and he will see the fact as it is. It is the inner self which, by virtue of its ethereal nature and its relationship to the all-pervading “Anima Mundi” or World-Soul, is capable of exhibiting the properties of Anima and Mahima. Anything in Aryan literature seeming to convey a contrary idea may be at once taken as figurative language intended to be understood only by the wise. The sages who wrote these books were adepts in psychological science, and we must not take them to have been ignorant of its plainest laws.” (italics as in original)

In a not too dissimilar move to those western orientalists who propose that apparent yogic powers are down to hypnotism or hallucination, Blavatsky states that one should not accept statements about these powers as being literally true – but rather, statements about the inner self. To take the existence of yogic powers at face value runs counter to her notions of scientific acceptability – and in arguing that “the sages” were masters of such science, reinforces her dismissal of the possibility of accepting such powers at face value.

Blavatsky’s attitude to the powers of yoga is thus somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand, the presence of these abilities in texts such as the Yogasutra and the Bhagavad-Gītā proved that the ancient sages were masters of an esoteric natural science – which current exoteric scientists were inexorably moving towards; a science which would validate the ancient wisdom which was the root of all sciences, religions, and philosophies. However, such powers could not be taken at face value when they seeming flew (sometimes literally) in the face of established “physical laws”. Moreover, the powers, like any other facet of the secret wisdom, required careful interpretation, and more often than not, this took the form of Blavatsky enlightening Indians on the proper interpretations of their sacred texts.

Sources
Karl Beier “Theosophical Orientalism and the Structures of Intercultural Transfer: Annotations on the Appropriation of the Cakras in Early Theosophy” in Julie Chajes and Boaz Huss (eds) Theosophical Appropriations: Esotericism, Kabbalah, and the Transformation of Traditions (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press 2016).
Keith E. Cantú Śrī Sabhāpati Swami: The Forgotten Yogi of Western Esotericism (Paper delivered at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas, November 2016).
Elizabeth de Michelis A History of Modern Yoga: Patañjali and Western Esotericism (Continuum, 2005).
Christopher Partridge, “Lost Horizon: H.P. Blavatsky and Theosophical Orientalism” in Olav Hammer & Mikael Rothstein (eds) Handbook of the Theosophical Current (Brill 2013).
Mark Singleton Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (Oxford University Press 2010).
Sharada Sugirtharajah Imagining Hinduism: A postcolonial perspective (Routledge 2003).

I have for some time been interested in how representations of India – particularly those related to sexuality – emerged out of the Colonial period and went on to influence twentieth-century stereotypes of India in a wide variety of ways. The ready association made between Tantra and sex, for example, is something I would argue, has its roots in this period, as does much of the romanticism about India as a land of enlightened sexuality. It is this interest that led me into a murky territory which is sometimes called ethnopornography – a shadow zone where a piece of erotic writing can disguise itself as a scholarly work – or a scholarly work can be read as erotica. Where the body of the native is portrayed as alluring or threatening – sometimes both, and colonial territories become both zones of sexual adventure and hearts of darkness.

In investigating this territory I encountered Edward Sellon (see earlier posts) – a man who produced both anthropological papers and wrote pornography, some of which is set in India. Sellon is notable as he was one of the first Europeans to write approvingly of Tantra, and – and, portraying himself as an “expert” in Phallicism, helped to popularise the theory that all religions are rooted in fertility or Phallic Worship – a theory which was highly influential in cross-cultural anthropology, and became a key theme in the works of occultists such as Gerald Gardner, Dion Fortune, and Aleister Crowley, as well as both Freud, Jung, and early sexologists.

Sellon belonged to a dining club of elite influencers known as “the Cannibal Club” – an inner cabal of the Anthropological Society of London – a group of men who shared common interests – in politics, religion, and the investigation of the sexual customs of other countries and times. Many of them combined these interests with collecting – and producing – erotica.

In this series of posts (based on a lecture given at Treadwells Bookshop earlier this year) I will take a look at the circumstances that led to the formation of the Anthropological Society and the Cannibal Club and their interconnected activities. I will then go on to examine some aspects of Edward Sellon’s writing – his erotica, his anthropological essays, and his interest in Phallic religion, and close with some considerations for how to assess the influence of Sellon and his fellow cannibals. First though, some general background to the period.

Britain in the 1860s. The Engines of the Industrial Revolution run at full tilt. Britain produces a third of the world’s output of manufactured goods and two-thirds of the world’s output of coal. Britain, massing no more than 0.16% of the world’s landmass, rules much of India, Canada, Australia, Africa, Large chunks of Africa, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Gibraltar, several islands in the West Indies, and Ireland.

This is a period of great controversies. The literal interpretation of the Bible and biblical narratives of history is being questioned.
Matters of public health is also being debated such as the national birth rate, the breeding habits of the poor, infanticide and prostitution. Questions of education and in particular, moral guidance were being considered. It is also a period of rapid social and technological change.

the “Obscene”
The invention of the steam-powered printing press led to a rapid rise in the production of journals, newspapers and novels, and cheap pornography. Concerns over the rapid spread of cheap and available obscene literature and its effects on the morality of the lower classes led to the Obscene Publications Act of 1857. Lord Campell, who introduced this Act, famously commented that the ready availability of cheap obscene material was “the sale of a poison more deadly than prussic acid”. There was particular concern that London – the heart of the Empire – should have become such a centre of immorality.

How did the Victorians view pornography? Although the term pornography came into common usage in the 1860s, the most popular descriptive category was the “obscene” – and what counted as “obscene” was hotly debated. It could for example, include libel, and refer to politically inflammatory works too. Also included were medical works dealing with sexual matters, and books that described the sexual customs of foreign peoples. Lord Campbell’s view was his bill was “intended to apply exclusively to works written for the single purpose of corrupting the morals of youth and of a nature calculated to shock the common feelings of decency in any well-regulated mind.” The ensuing campaigns and legal actions in the wake of the Act tended to focus on the problem of obscene material almost entirely among the urban poor. There was a widespread view that those who were educated would be able to view obscene material without becoming morally corrupted.

The Act made publishers and authors cautious over what could be publically distributed and affected everything from illustrations of scientific textbooks to artistic portrayals of nudes. In 1870 for example, Henry Evans, a supplier of photographs of nude models to artists, was sentenced to two years hard labour despite a petition in his favour made by artists such as Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. This period in British history is often portrayed as one of general repression and prudery about sexual matters. The truth is rather more complex.

The trade in obscene material – books, prints, French snuffboxes, and playing cards was widespread. The foremost campaigning group – the Society for the Suppression of Vice – recorded that one of the most notorious areas in London for the trade – Holywell Street – had 57 bookshops selling obscene literature, until the Obscene Publications Act forced them to close down. There was also the so-called “sham indecent street trade” whereby street hawkers would loiter near the shops on Holywell Street, Wych Street (Holywell Street was demolished in 1902) and the Haymarket which displayed in their windows “shameless publications” for five shillings – and offer to sell these items for a mere sixpence or less in sealed packets, which turned out to be religious tracts, Christmas Carols or newspapers.

The Indian Mutiny
Another major event, of course, was the Indian Mutiny of 1857-1858, which sent shock waves throughout the Empire and led to something of a crisis of confidence. Whilst Indians were generally portrayed as religious fanatics attempting to overturn benevolent British rule, some commentators began to wonder if the immorality found in the metropole was somehow related.

One of the effects of the Indian Mutiny was an increased focus on the abhorrent practices of the natives which began as the Mutiny unfolded. As it took six weeks for letters to come from India to Britain, many newspapers printed lurid background stories about India, representing it as a mysterious and barbaric land, inhabited by fanatical religious devotees with obscene practices. As Francis Hutchins comments:

“Until 1857… India had seemed remote, its depravity little more than theoretical. At a stroke, the Mutiny made India both grimly real and relevant … and the English public followed with horrified fascination the unveiling of every minute detail of Indian perversity.” ¹

The Mutiny also led to a shift in attitudes towards the natives of the colonies – and the development of new ideas about race. This brings us to the birth of the Anthropological Society of London and its inner circle, The Cannibal Club.

to be continued…

Sources
Francis G. Hutchins The Illusion of Permanence: British Imperialism in India (Princeton University Press, 1967)
Andrew C. Long Reading Arabia: British Orientalism in the Age of Mass Publication, 1880-1930 (Syracuse University Press, 2014)
Natalie Pryor The 1857 Obscene Publications Act: Debate, Definition and Dissemination, 1857-1868 (the University of Southampton Thesis for the degree of Master of Philosophy May 2014)

Following on from the previous post in this series, I will now examine the activities of the Anthropological Society of London and its “inner cabal” – The Cannibal Club.

The Anthropological Society of London
The Ethnological Society of London (ESL) had been founded in 1843. It had emerged from the Aborigines Protection Society – social reformers who had provoked Britain to ban the slave trade in 1807 – and Christians who sought the uplift of “uncivilized tribes” via conversion and encouraged the collection of ethnographic data in order to shape enlightened policies. The Ethnological Society’s aim was to create a forum where scientists could investigate the habits and customs of different cultures, examine historical records, and debate theories of human origin.

The leading lights of the ESL tended to follow the biblical narrative that all of humanity had descended from Noah’s family and that they and other survivors of the Flood had dispersed to populate the globe. Any variations were products of circumstances – that racial variations resulted from different environments. This theory came to be known as Monogenism.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, a competing theory arose – that of Polygenism. The polygenists believed that humanity consisted of separate species. Race, for the polygenists, was not a feature of God’s will or a product of environmental differences, but biologically fixed and moreover, something which could be scientifically measured, using techniques such as craniotomy or anthropometry.

One of the staunchest proponents of polygenism was James Hunt (1833-1869). Initially, a member of the ESL, Hunt, together with Richard Burton, founded the rival Anthropological Society of London (ASL) in 1863. Burton shared Hunt’s polygenist views. Both men believed, for example, that Africans were racially inferior to Europeans, for example, and because of this, it was useless to try and “uplift” them via conversion to Christianity or education. They were opposed to the notion of the “civilizing mission” – the idea that the British presence in Africa or India was fundamentally a benevolent one, bringing progress or improvement to the uncivilized. ¹

Both Hunt and Burton also chafed against the biblical doctrines of the ESL. Another key reason for the break was that the ESL had proposed to allow women to attend meetings, and both Hunt and Burton felt that the presence of women would prevent the free and frank discussion of sexual customs of the different races.

Hunt saw the task of the Anthropological Society was to bring together all related disciplines into a unified “Science of Man”. But he also saw the work of the Society as being of political significance. In his first address to the ASL, he stated:

“…do I exaggerate when I say that the fate of nations depends on a true appreciation of the science of anthropology? Are not the causes which have overthrown the greatest of nations to be resolved by the laws regulating the intermixture of the races of man? Does not the success of our colonization depend on the deductions of our science? Is not the composition of harmonious nations entirely a question of race? Is not the wicked war now going on in America caused by an ignorance of our science? These and a host of other questions must ultimately be resolved by inductive science.” ²

The Anthropological Society was less concerned with the history of humanity’s origins than with demonstrating and proving racial distinctions through techniques of measurement such as craniotomy. The human body became fixed and immutable – a more reliable source of evidence than confused and contested traveler’s accounts.

Within two years of its founding, the Anthropological had attracted over 500 members, sponsoring a vigorous programme of debates and lectures, and producing a steady stream of transactions and translations of anthropological works from European writers.

The Cannibal Club
The Cannibal Club was the “inner cabal” of the Anthropological Society, meeting at Bartolini’s dining rooms in London, this group of men met to drink, dine, discuss politics, religion and sexual customs, swap outrageous stories and indulge in what Burton called “orgies” – although not of the sexual kind.

Who were the members of the Cannibal Club? In addition to James Hunt and Richard Burton, some of the more well-known Cannibals included:

Charles Bradlaugh, Liberal MP, atheist, founder of the National Secular Society. (It was Bradlaugh who in 1877 was sent to trial along with Annie Besant for their distribution of a birth control manual, “The Fruits of Philosophy.”)

Conservative MP Richard Monckton Milnes, later Lord Haughton.

Colonel – later General – Studholme John Hodgson, military adviser to the Governor of Ceylon.

Charles Duncan Cameron, later British Consul in Ethiopia.

Decadent Poet and playwright – and all-round bad boy Algernon Swinbourne.

The bibliophile and noted collector of Erotica Henry Spencer Ashbee.

The painter Simeon Solomon whose promising career was cut short in 1873 when he was arrested for attempted Sodomy in a public convenience.

Foreign Correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, George Augustus Sala.

Pornographer and translator, James Campbell Reddie.

And of course, Edward Sellon.

The Cannibal’s symbol was a mace carved to resemble an African head chewing on a thigh bone. Swinbourne wrote a Cannibal Catechism:

“Preserve us from our enemies
Thou who art Lord of suns and skies
Whose meat and drink is flesh in pies
And blood in bowls!
Of thy sweet mercy, damn their eyes
And damn their souls.”

Sex Rebels
The Cannibals saw themselves as “sex rebels” and outsiders, and this is how they are sometimes treated by historians, but many of the Cannibals were members of the Establishment – members of parliament, diplomats, the legal profession, academia, and the Army. They had a wide range of influential contacts – both formal and informal – with respected bodies such as the Royal Geographical Society and the government. It was through these contacts that they were able to acquire some of the erotic literature that they prized. On one occasion, erotica from Europe was brought into Britain via a Foreign Office diplomatic bag containing dispatches for Lord Palmerston. This was arranged by Frederick Hankey, an ex-guards officer of sadistic tastes who, on one occasion, asked Richard Burton procure for him the skin of a young African woman which he could use to bind one of his volumes of erotica. Their “rebellion” was for the most part enacted within a privileged all-male homosocial space, free from the prying eyes of bodies such as the Society for the Suppression of Vice.

The MP Richard Monckton Milnes was known amongst his cannibal peers for having amassed one of the largest libraries of Erotica in Europe – so much so that his friends referred to his house as “Aphrodisiopolis”. Swinburne credited Milnes for having introduced him to the works of the Marquis de Sade. Another Cannibal, successful textile magnate and travel writer, Henry Spencer Ashbee, was probably the most dedicated erotic bibliophile of the period. Between 1877 and 1885 he produced three large bibliographies of “forbidden literature” written under the pseudonym of “Pisanus Fraxi”. He is also sometimes tagged as the author of the eleven-volume My Secret Life – one of the most famous works of Victorian erotic literature.

Some Cannibals held the view that erotic literature was a form of truth-telling; a form of anthropological reportage. The pleasure of reading about sex could then, be seen as a form of scientific investigation, and frankness about sexual matters was a mark of scholarly accuracy.

Ashbee for example writes:

“Erotic Novels … contain, at any rate the best of them, the truth, and “hold the mirror up to nature” more certainly than do those of any other description … [T]heir authors have, in most instances, been eyewitnesses of the scenes they have described … themselves enacted, in part, what they have portrayed. Immoral and amatory fiction … must unfortunately be acknowledged to contain … a reflection of the manners and vices of the times—of vices to be avoided, guarded against, reformed, but which unquestionably exist, and of which an exact estimate is needful to enable us to cope with them.” ³

The idea of the fictional erotic narrative as a “case study” is something that crops up later in the writings of early sexology.

A key figure in the erotic output of the Cannibals was James Campbell Reddie. Reddie was a skilled translator of Latin, Italian and French, and put his skills to work translating European and Classical texts for the obscene books trade, writing for The Exquisite, a risque journal published by one of Britain’s most notorious publishers of pornography – William Dugdale. Dugdale had a shop on Holywell Street – and later, on the Strand, where he sold both politically radical titles as well as works such as The Adventures of a Bedstead, The Mysteries of Whoredom, and the ever-popular Fanny Hill: The Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. Dugdale died in prison in 1868, whilst serving two years hard labour for selling obscene material.

Reddie’s most famous work is The Amatory Experiences of a Surgeon. Some scholars have suggested that he co-authored, together with fellow Cannibal Simeon Solomon, Sins of the Cities of the Plains – Britain’s first exclusively homosexual pornographic novel, published in 1881. Sins is supposedly the memoirs of Jack Saul, a Mary-Anne or crossdressing male prostitute (a real person btw – he gave evidence during the trial following the 1889 Cleveland Street Scandal). Reddie was himself a homosexual and apparently made no secret of this to his fellow Cannibals. In a letter to Henry Spencer Ashbee in 1877, Reddie writes:

“There has also been the matter of a falling out with that damned dago who owned the house at Camden where I lived. I believe you met him on one of your visits to my rooms there. I will not weary you with the details; suffice it to say that my undoing may be laid to the credit of a weakness I conceived for the son of a Margate landlady at whose house I stayed for a few days last summer. Although an enthusiastic party to the proceedings himself, Pedroletti sought to extract money from me by threatening to inform the authorities.” ⁴

A letter purporting to be from Reddie’s Camden Landlord describing the goings-on in Margate in lurid and graphic detail appears in the November 1880 issue of The Pearl – the most famous of the Victorian erotic journals.

Reddie apparently knew all the major players in London’s smut trade, and he soon began bringing the writings of his fellow Cannibals to the attention of Dugdale. It is through Reddie that Edward Sellon began to publish obscene works for Dugdale.

Several of the Cannibals shared a taste for flagellation. For example, Daily Telegraph journalist George Augustus Sala, assisted by Reddie, wrote a flagellatory novel – The Mysteries of Verbena House, which was published in 1882 in a limited edition of 150 copies, priced at 4 guineas – a high price which effectively put it beyond the reach of working-class readers. MP Richard Monckton Milnes composed a poem extolling the delights of flagellation called The Rodiad, which was anonymously published in 1871. Colonel Studholme Hodgson was known amongst his cannibal peers as “Colonel Spanker” and later wrote under that sobriquet a book titled Experimental Lecture which was published in 1878 by William Lazenby.

For the most part, the Cannibals escaped prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act by publishing their erotic efforts anonymously, or as being “Privately Printed” – works which were circulated only to subscribers or amongst a clique of friends, rather than being sold over the counter. This restricted circulation was a way of getting around the Obscene Publications Act. Burton used this approach in his productions of the Kama Sutra and The Arabian Nights. In a letter to The Academy in 1885 concerning his translation of The Arabian Nights he writes:

“One of my principal objects in making the work so expensive [. . .] is to keep it from the general public. For this reason I have no publisher. The translation is printed by myself for the use of select personal friends; and nothing could be more repugnant to my feelings than the idea of a book of the kind being placed in a publisher’s hands, and sold over the counter.” ⁵

In the next post I will take a closer look at the life and works of Edward Sellon; libertine, atheist, orientalist, anthropologist, pornographer.

Sources
Sarah Bull Reading, Writing, and Publishing an Obscene Canon: The Archival Logic of the Secret Museum, c. 1860–c. 1900 (Book History, Volume 20, 2017, pp. 226-257).
Collette Colligan The Traffic in Obscenity from Byron to Beardsley: Sexuality and Exoticism in Nineteenth-Century Print Culture (Palgrave MacMillan, 2006).
Roberto C. Ferrari From Sodomite to Queer Icon: Simeon Solomon and the Evolution of Gay Studies (Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 11-13).
J Holmes Algernon Swinburne, Anthropologist (Journal of Literature and Science vol. 9, no. 1. 2016).
Patrick J. Kearney (ed.) Five Letters from James Campbell Reddie to Henry Spencer Ashbee (Scissors & Paste Bibliographies, 2019)
Dane Kennedy The Highly Civilized Man: Richard Burton and the Victorian World (Harvard University Press, 2005).
Deborah Lutz, Pleasure Bound: Victorian Sex Rebels and the New Eroticism (W.W. Norton & Company, 2011)
Andrew P. Lyons and Harriet D. Lyons Irregular Connections: A History of Anthropology and Sexuality (University of Nebraska Press 2004).
James McConnachie The Book of Love: In search of the Kamasutra (Atlantic Books, 2007)
Denise Merkle “Secret Literary Societies in Late Victorian England” in Maria Tymoczko (ed) Translation, Resistance, Activism (University of Massachusetts Press, 2010)
Catherine J. Rose A Secretly Sexualized Era: Pornography and Erotica in the 19th Century Anglo-American World (The Atlas: UBC Undergraduate Journal of World History |2005).
Vanita Seth Europe’s Indians: Producing Racial Difference, 1500-1900 (Duke University Press, 2010).
Lisa Z. Sigel Filth in the Wrong People’s Hands: Postcards and the Expansion of Pornography in Britain and the Atlantic World, 1880-1914 (Journal of Social History, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Summer, 2000), pp. 859-885).
Arno Sonderegger, “A One-Sided Controversy: James Hunt and Africanus Horton on The Negro’s Place in Nature” in Ulrich Pallua, Adrian Knapp and Andreas Exenberger (eds) (Re)Figuring Human Enslavement: Images of Power, Violence and Resistance (Innsbruck University Press, 2009)
George W. Stocking, Jr. Victorian Anthropology (The Free Press, 1987).
John Wallen The Cannibal Club and the Origins of 19th Century Racism and Pornography (The Victorian, Vol.1, Number 1, August 2013).

Online
William Dugdale A Checklist [By Title] of Works Published
Scissors & Paste Bibliographies

Here’s a short extract from my new book, Hine’s Varieties: Chaos & Beyond which deals with how I became engaged with Tantra as a subject and a means of practice. It’s a section of the introduction to three essays in the book which deal with tantra-related themes. Hine’s Varieties: Chaos & Beyond is available direct from Original Falcon Publications as both print and ebook.

My engagement with Tantra began with a dream—a dream of Kali. In 1982, I was living in rural Lincolnshire, cut off from occult friends and contacts, and decided that this was an ideal opportunity to take a break from magic for a while. Although I thought I was done (for the moment) with magic, it seemed that magic was not done with me. One night I dreamt of meeting the Indian goddess Kali in a cremation ground. It was vivid. I woke with the memory of her eyes burning into me. The following night I had the same dream, and this continued for another three nights. I wouldn’t say that I had never heard of Kali, but at that time I felt no attraction towards anything Indian. Of course, many occult books were peppered with references to mantras, chakras, and various Indian deities, but I certainly did not expect to have such a direct, intense, and recurring dream-encounter. At the same time it felt significant in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

Lacking anyone to talk to, I wrote the dream down, and turned it into a kind of pathworking, which I would run through before going to sleep. Unsurprisingly, the dream came back, and if anything, intensified. It was this recurring dream of Kali that first put the hook in me, but without anyone to talk to about it—to help me make sense of it—I did not focus on it.

A year or so later I moved to Nottingham to train as a psychiatric nurse and became involved with an experimental drama group. During this period, I was able to reconnect with many of my occult friends. Some of my Wiccan friends “explained” my newfound interest in Kali in terms of having had a past life in India, but I was rather skeptical about such assertions. It was around this time that I first started to try to read up on the subject of Tantra. There didn’t seem to be much available. There were some New Age and “Sacred Sex” books, as well as one or two works written by Western Occultists who tended to treat Tantra as a variant of the Qabalah, but nothing which dealt with ritual or how one might begin some kind of practice—which, of course, was what I wanted. I did read some of the writings of Sir John Woodroffe (aka “Arthur Avalon”), but found these largely incomprehensible.

My first big break came when I moved to York, having made the decision to switch from Psychiatric Nursing to Occupational Therapy training. This three-year diploma was, in itself, a major influence on my later approach to magic, as it included intensive training in both group dynamics and drama-therapy, as well as a multi-disciplinary approach to therapeutic techniques which later influenced my take on Chaos Magic. One of the students in my intake was a woman—Raven—who had spent some time in a Siddha Yoga Ashram in India. Raven seemed to me to be very knowledgeable when it came to Tantra and Yoga (she was a qualified Yoga Teacher), and she was also interested in Wicca. We formed a magical partnership, and she attended some meetings of the covens I was then involved with (one in York, and another in Macclesfield). It was an intensive, and rather a stressful relationship because we felt we could not share our mutual occult interests with other friends. It was through Raven’s influence however, that I was able to make sense of my Kundalini experiences in 1984.

Kundalini is a difficult subject to write about at the best of times, as just about every occult author seems to have their own views on the subject and its significance as a magical or spiritual experience. At the Autumn Equinox in 1984 I was given my second degree initiation in Wicca. A few weeks later I began to experience bouts of vertigo, a sense of bodily dislocation, and odd sensations at the base of my spine. On more than one occasion, these feelings became overwhelming to the point where I was almost having a fit of sorts—my teeth chattering, feeling both hot and cold, and experiencing involuntary muscular contractions. I did not know what was happening, but Raven calmed me down and told me that these sensations were related to the awakening of “the fire-snake” Kundalini. These intense experiences seemed to occur with increasing frequency.

“It began as a scream in my head—Kali’s scream, I thought. It echoed on and on until I no longer ‘heard’ it. I felt it like a white light that shot down my spine, coiling around muladhara, which opened with a blaze. A cold fire, like every nerve was alight, spread around my body. I could feel it glowing from my fingertips. I began to tremble and twitch and felt a very jarring disorientation which worsened to a whirling if I closed my eyes. These unpleasant sensations lasted well over an hour and I struggled to remain in control.”

It’s hard to communicate how scary and discomforting these experiences were for me, having very little in the way of a framework with which to make sense of them. I had read some books that dealt with Kundalini and chakras and so forth but had come away with the definite impression that this kind of experience only happened to advanced magicians, and whatever pretensions I had about myself, I did not think of myself as being an advanced practitioner. Raven was the only person that I could really turn to, and her interpretation that this was a ‘kundalini experience’ seemed to me to be appropriate, given what I’d read and my recent initiation. She felt that milestone, together with the intense ritual and personal work I’d been doing, had triggered the rising of the snake.

This led me to rethink my relationship with the authority of occult texts. Up until that point, I had more or less taken what I’d read in occult books at face value and not really questioned them. I’d begun to be skeptical of some people’s pronouncements of occult fact, but I still had a kind of reverence for text, particularly some of the older authors. I began, from this point, to gain a sense of discrimination—and perhaps a healthy skepticism—towards the pronouncements of occult authorities. Rather than just passively absorbing and internalizing what I was reading in occult texts, I started to gain confidence in my own opinions and ideas. As the years have passed, I’ve been more and more inclined to treat these experiences as just something weird that happened to me, which had, at the time, quite a profound effect on me, but no more than that. Were they “authentic” kundalini experiences? In some ways that doesn’t really matter. One can generate a great deal of spiritual social capital in staking the claim to have had a kundalini experience, but this has never really interested me. It seems to me that intense experiences are simply par for the course if one is pursuing an occult trajectory, and it doesn’t do to read too much into them or interpret them as indicating having attained any degree of proficiency.

And so to Edward Sellon; libertine, atheist, orientalist, anthropologist, pornographer. For this post, I’m going to focus on Sellon’s pornographic productions and then will turn to his anthropological excursions in the next post. To some extent, this is a repeat of the approach I took in my first two essays on Edward Sellon (here and here) but I shall endeavour not to repeat earlier material too much.

Edward Sellon (1818-1866) entered military service in the East India Company at the age of 16 and rose to the rank of captain at the young age of 21. His ten years serving in India seems to have been not without incident, as he was arrested at one point and charged with “scandalous and infamous behavior” towards fellow officers in 1836. He was nearly discharged, but the president ruled that he was “insane” at the time of the offenses, and he was acquitted. Sellon’s own account of this incident is that he fought a duel with a fellow officer over a native woman.

In 1844 he returned to London and married Sarah Ann Wilds, the daughter of prominent Brighton surveyor and architect Amon Henry Wilds. The marriage, by all accounts, was not a happy one. Not only was Sarah not as rich as Sellon had initially supposed, but she also disapproved of his numerous affairs with other women, including his seduction of a parlor-maid and some of the pupils of a girls’ school where he worked for a while. The couple frequently broke up and made up, and had four children together. Sellon held down a number of jobs, including driving the London to Cambridge coach for two years and running a fencing school. The growth of the railways put his coach-driving out of business and the fencing school does not seem to have been a success either.

In 1848 he produced his first literary effort – Herbert Breakspear – a historical novel of the Maratha Wars. It does not seem to have been a hit. The influential literary journal The Athanaeum pronounced it “a tale excessively commonplace and excessively dull.”

Sellon’s Erotica
In 1860, Sellon left his family in the country and moved back to London, where he began writing erotica for William Dugdale. In a letter to Henry Spencer Ashbee written in 1877, James Campbell Reddie says that it was he who sold Sellon’s work to Dugdale:

“Towards the end poor Eddie was in desperate financial straits but I was able to help him a little by selling his memoirs to Dugdale. … I am sorry to say that he paid far less for the memoirs than for another of Eddie’s manuscripts I sold him a few years before, a novel that true to his practice he printed up as two separate works, one stated to be a sequel to the other.” ¹

Sellon’s first efforts for Dugdale were The New Epicurean (1865) and Phoebe Kissagen (1866). Phoebe Kissagen is presented as a series of letters between the female narrator, and a series of unlikely characters such as the Earl of Cadland, Sir Felix Fuckington, Admiral Lord Soddington, Lady Pokingham and Mr. Hezekiah Birchem relating their sexual adventures – the seduction of young women; flagellation, and lesbian cross-dressing. Some of these characters, such as Lady Pokingham, are stock figures in Victorian erotica, turning up in journals such as The Pearl. Sellon also illustrated James Campbell Reddie’s homosexual novel, The Adventures of a Schoolboy.

His final work was The Ups and Downs of Life (1867) – an erotic autobiography – which he also illustrated. It is a chronological account of his search for sexual pleasure, beginning with his setting out for India at the age of 16, and his exploits with Indian women. As an autobiography, it provides a good deal of insight into Sellon’s perspectives on life. He hates his marriage, has no fatherly feelings for his children – seeing them as rivals for his wife’s affection.

Sellon is proudly atheistic and anti-clerical. He abhors any person or institution which places restrictions on his libertine – Epicurean – lifestyle, calling the Society for the Suppression of Vice “blasted humbugs”. There is a hierarchy of women within the text. Firstly, there are servants, Indian and European prostitutes who are simply fair game for the untrammeled enjoyment of the masculine libertine. Then there are women who represent the repressive forces of monogamy and respectability and attempt to curb the libertine’s freedom – notably Sellon’s mother and wife. Thirdly, there are women who Sellon respects as fellow libertines – women who are either married or independent but share the virtue of being economically well-off, who whilst maintaining the façade of respectability, lead their own life of pleasure.

Sellon, unlike some of his Cannibal Contemporaries, had no inclination towards same-sex love. In Ups and Downs he writes:

“Gentlemen, I leave such illicit pleasures to the clergy; as for me, I’m a mere fuckster. I like women, and I have them. Go along, you damned, old sodomitical b–rs, and have your boys; but in common honesty, leave honest men to fuck their women in peace, and be damned to you!”

As for ‘that most voluptuous Sapphic love’ he admits that as a young man he was initially prejudiced against it, but later came to ‘fully understand and appreciate’ it as a spectacle for male enjoyment.

Sellon’s principal motive for his erotic writing seems to have been as a way of making money – he seems to have been perpetually short of funds.

Sellon’s Suicide
In March 1866 Sellon agreed to accompany one of his “epicurean” friends – a man called Scarsdale, on a trip to Egypt as a paid advisor. The journey came to an abortive end at Vienna. Sellon, Scarsdale, and Scarsdale’s fifteen-year-old mistress were traveling in the same railway carriage. Scarsdale woke from slumber to catch Sellon in the act of seducing the mistress. Sellon parted ways with Scarsdale, and after remaining in Vienna for a while until what little money he had ran out, he returned to London. Taking a room at Webb’s in Piccadilly, he shot himself with his service revolver on the 17th of April ². His suicide note ended, characteristically:

“Vivat Lingam/Non Resurgam’ – ‘Long live cock, I shall not rise again.”

James Campbell Reddie described the scene of Sellon’s suicide in a letter to Henry Spencer Ashbee:

“That was a dreadful event. The night before, which would have been sometime in April 1866 I think, Eddie wrote me a letter announcing his intentions, but by the time I received it the deed was done. I arrived at Webb’s [Hotel] in Piccadilly and went straight to his room and found him lying on the floor beside the bed. For some reason, the poor fellow had wrapped his pistol in a towel which presumably muffled the report and accounts I imagine for why nobody had found him before I got there. I don’t believe you ever met him, Ashbee, but it was a terrible shock to me to see his once handsome features so brutally destroyed.” ³

Reddie also claims that he paid the medical examiner, one Albert Styles (an associate of William Dugdale) to keep Sellon’s suicide out of the papers. The coroner’s report described Sellon as having ““no occupation, formerly in the Madras Army” and recorded the cause of death as “Pistol shot in the side, suicide when insane, found dead”. One of the witnesses at the inquest, a cousin of Sellon named Marmaduke Hornidge, described him as “a hot-headed, uncontrollable man.” ⁴

India as “pornotopia”
In Ups and Downs, India appears as a zone of sexual opportunity, not only due to the ready availability of native courtesans but the bored wives of fellow British officers that Sellon seduces, making it one of the few nineteenth-century pornographic texts to use India as a location. Although John Cleland, author of the infamous Fanny Hill (1748) spent thirteen years in Bombay working in the legal department of the East India Company, and William Potter allegedly wrote the bulk of Romance of Lust (1873-76) whilst in India ⁵ the subcontinent is not a favoured location for Victorian erotica. Henry Spencer Ashbee’s 1877 Index Librorum Prohibitorum (see previous post) – which acts as both catalogue and critique of pornographic texts of the period gives only four titles which relate to India: Sellon’s Ups and Downs and his 1865 ‘anthropological’ work Annotations on the Sacred Writings of the Hindus (more of which in the next post) plus Kama-Shashtra, or The Hindu Art of Love and, oddly enough, Karsandas Mulji’s 1865 History of the Sect of Maharajas (see posts tagged libel case for some related discussion on this latter). ⁶ Apart from Ups and Downs, these texts are treatises – possibly “obscene” but certainly, they could be read as reinforcing the widely-held belief that India was a hothouse of sexual perversity.

The section of Ups and Downs dealing with Sellon’s Indian exploits is set prior to the Indian Mutiny (1857) and evokes the image of Sellon having unrestrained access to the pleasures to be had from Indian women:

“The usual charge for the general run of them is two rupees. For five, you may have the handsomest Mohammedan girls, and any of the high-caste women who follow the trade of courtesan. The’fivers’ are a very different set of people from their frail sisterhood in European countries; they do not drink, they are scrupulously cleanly in their persons, they are sumptously dressed, they wear the most costly jewels in profusion, they are well educated, and sing sweetly, accompanying their voices on the voila da gamba a sort of guitar, they generally decorate their hair with clusters of clematis or the sweet-scented bilwa flowers entwined with pearls or diamonds. They understand in perfection all the arts and wiles of love, are capable of gratifying any tastes, and in face and figure they are unsurpassed by any women in the world.

It is impossible to describe the enjoyment I experienced in the arms of these syrens. I have had English, French, German and Polish women of all grades of society since, but never, never did they bear a comparison with those salacious, succulent houris of the far East.”

As Anjali Arondekar notes, ⁷ Indian males, when they do make a rare appearance in a pornographic narrative, usually do so as enablers or facilitators of Anglo-Indian encounters, but never as participants. In Ups and Downs, Sellon’s Indian butler assists him in arranging his assignations. After his seeming praise of the charms of Indian women, the rest of Sellon’s time in India is spent in his enthusiastic pursuit of the wives of fellow-officers.

Ups and Downs’ rather nostalgic portrayal of untrammeled sexual freedom can be contrasted with the post-Mutiny work Venus in India, or Love Adventures in Hindustan (1889) which recounts the sexual exploits of one Captain Charles Devereaux – a British army officer stationed in India. The act of travel entails the loosening of British self-control, and Devereaux’s passions are excited by some ‘French’ literature he purchases to relieve the tedium of his first railway journey across India. He is further tempted in Allahabad, at being offered the sexual services of a ‘very pretty little halfcaste’ although he demurs, remarking that “I felt no desire to see the pretty little half-caste! I put this self-abnegation down to virtue, and actually laughed, in my folly, at the idea that there existed, or could exist, a woman in India, who could raise even a ghost of desire in me!” Much of the travelogue is devoted to the Captain’s marathon-like affairs with English women. As with Ups and Downs, Indian men only appear as enablers or panderers. The captain’s servant, Soubratie prostitutes his wife to British troops for extra income, and sometimes advises Devereaux as to the availability of English women. Indian women are held up to be seductresses or corrupters of English womanhood. Mrs. Selwyn complains that “Children learn about things which girls sixteen and seventeen know nothing of at home.”

The specter of sodomy is raised on two occasions. Firstly, in learning that an Englishwoman – a Mrs. Searles – prostitutes herself for considerable sums of money, is told that her husband – Major Searles – has “the Persian taste for boys” after a long stay in Persia and that he tried to force these unnatural attentions on his wife. “he tried to get Mrs. Searles to acquire a taste for it herself, but she, like a proper woman, indignantly refused to comply. It might have stopped there, but one night Searles, full of zeal and brandy, actually ravished his poor wife’s—hem—hem—well!—bum! and from that day she hated him—quite naturally, I think!” Far more abhorrent though, is the shocking scene where two Afghan men, in an act of revenge for the rape of two Afghan girls by British troops, steal into the quarters of Colonel Selwyn, drug Mrs. Selwyn and her younger children, and proceed to rape the older girls – Fanny and Amy – both of whom Devereaux has designs on. Devereaux intervenes, and after finding one of the Afghans in the very act of buggering Amy, kills him. Indeed, Devereaux is threatened with the same fate by the Afghan, who cries out “I have fucked and buggered your sister—I will now bugger thee also!” Devereaux is relieved to find that Amy’s maidenhead remains intact – “Buggered she had been, but not ravished.” Devereaux eventually succeeds in seducing both the girls – a natural act in contrast to the unnatural propensities of the Afghans, who Devereaux remarks are “addicted” to sodomy – a fact widely attested by his fellow officers.
The Afghan’s act of horrific sodomy is literally unimaginable: “‘‘The Colonel did not wish to think of a daughter of his could be buggered, therefore she had not been buggered.’’

Pradhan (2019) points out that as a text, Venus in India is “keenly conscious of its cultural and racial contexts, and reaffirms many of the race, class, and gender hierarchies of Victorian England, of Britain’s empire in India.”

In the next post, I will examine Sellon’s contributions to the Anthropological Society of London and his influence on nineteenth-century theories of Phallic Worship.

Sources
Stefania Arcara The autobiography of a Victorian pornographer: Edward Sellon’s The Ups and Downs of Life (Porn Studies, Vol 5, Issue 4, 2018).
Anjali Arondekar For the Record: On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India (Duke University Press, 2009).
Stephen Carver The 19th Century Underworld: Crime, Controversy and Corruption (Pen & Sword History, 2018).
Collette Colligan The Traffic in Obscenity from Byron to Beardsley: Sexuality and Exoticism in Nineteenth-Century Print Culture (Palgrave MacMillan, 2006).
Lavender Jones Here also lies the body… (Regency Review, Issue 20, February 2008).
Patrick J. Kearney (ed.) Five Letters from James Campbell Reddie to Henry Spencer Ashbee (Scissors & Paste Bibliographies, 2019).
Francis King Sexuality, Magic and Perversion (Citadel Press, 1974).
Andrew P. Lyons and Harriet D. Lyons Irregular Connections: A History of Anthropology and Sexuality (University of Nebraska Press 2004).
Anubhav Pradhan ‘Raped, outraged, ravaged’: race, desire, and sex in the Indian empire (2019, Porn Studies, DOI: 10.1080/23268743.2019.1597639).
Florentine Vaudrez Venus in India, or Love Adventures in Hindustan, Volumes I and II (Duke Classics, 2012).
John Wallen The Cannibal Club and the Origins of 19th Century Racism and Pornography (The Victorian, Vol.1, Number 1, August 2013).

Online
Text of The New Epicurean
Text of Phoebe Kissagen
Dr Stephen Carver The Real Harry Flashman

Copies of Mike Magee’s new book Yakṣiṇī Magic can now be purchased from my Twisted Trunk website. There are less than thirty copies left, so act fast!

With apologies to the shades of Kenneth Horne, Kenneth Williams, and Hugh Paddick.

I’ve been doing Pagan workshops for some time now but recently attendance has dropped off. It’s as though Pagans aren’t interested in finding out about the role of the semicolon in the 300 laws of witchcraft anymore. So I thought I’d catch the current wave and reinvent myself as a Shaman. Picking up a copy of “Mystic Muscles” – I buy it for the gardening section – I saw, between notices for Aura Massages and Tantric Hand Shandy therapy, a small advert for Bona Shamans of Islington. So I thought I’d pop along and see what they could do for me.

——–“Hello is anybody there?”

“Hello I’m Julian and this is my friend Sandy.” “Oh hallo Mr. Hine. How lovely to varda your dolly old eek again. What can we do you for?”

——-“Well I’m interested in shamanism. What have you got?”

“We’ve got it all. From the top to the bottom of the sacred tree. Jules and me are trollers between the worlds, aren’t we Jules? Cruising the length and breadth of infinity in search of the inner mysteries. In and out of the latties of the gods we are.”

——-“Well What does this do? (picks up tubular object)”

“That’s a didg. A didg. A didgeridoo. And that’s yer actual Aborigine that is.”

——-“Well what “doo” you do with it?”

“You blow it silly. Go on Jules. Show him how you blow it. No one blows like Jules Mr Hine. He’s famous for it. They come from miles around to see Jules blow, don’t they Jules? Famous for his technique he is. Go on Jules Give it a good blow. Go on wrap your lips around it. get a good grip on it.”

———– “And what happens after you blow it?”

“We-ell, you become occupied by mystic forces. Jules is always getting occupied aren’t you Jules?
“Yes. Frequently.”

———-“Well perhaps not. But what kind of shamans are there?”

“Well there’s your Celtic Shaman. Very butch they are. All bulging lallies and blonde riah. Wait I can see a few problems there. Well, there’s yer New Age Dolly Mixture. .. Wait I’ve got it – the Horny god priest. Very popular yer horny god priest. Vada the scene. You sitting around, surrounded by dolly palones all hanging on your every word as you beat the sacred drum and toss the mystic rattle and call upon the Queen of the Faeries. Oh yes. very popular with faeries everywhere, yer basic horny priest. They come flocking as soon as they see one, don’t they Jules. Yes. Flocking. You have beat them off … Faeries.”

——–“Maybe I’ll give that a go.”

“Oooo innee bold Jules? Yes. Very bold.
“Very.”

“Well you sit over there and shake your rattle and Jules will be the Queen of the faeries.”

——–“What? I find that difficult to visualize…”

“Well it might be difficult for you ducky but it’ll be easy for Jules. O yes. Go on, just think of Jules all diaphanous and floating.”

“OOoooOOOooo…OOoooOOOooo…OOoooOOOooo.”

“Ooh there ‘e goes mr. Hine. He’s being occupied by yer actual mystic forces”.

“OOOoooOOO.. oooOOaah… aaAAAh…”

——–“What’s happening?”

“I am Titania the fairy queen
Don’t be so bold, I may just scream,
In these wild woods we’ll mince and play
We’ll trade and troll until the break of day
In bijou bowers we’ll palare gay
and wallop zhooshy ’til lilly chases us away.”

“OOOoooOOO.. oooOOaah… aaAAAh…”
… aaAAAh…Ahh”

[long pause]

“Ooh I’ve come over all strange.”

“Don’t worry Jules, you were possessed. Ridden you were. By Titania.
The great Dona Dolly herself.”

“Yes. Titania.”

——–“Well this all seems very fine. Could I book Titania – er – Jules for my Samhain workshop?”

“OOh no we can’t possibly do that!”

——–“Whyever not?”

Well, I’m washing my riah that night.”

fin.

Interest in witchcraft seems to be at an all-time high at the moment, and over the last few years, there has been a steady stream of books examining the history of witchcraft in its various manifestations. The latest work I’ve had the opportunity to read is Thomas Waters’ Cursed Britain: A History of Witchcraft and Black Magic in Modern Times (Yale University Press, 2019, Hdbk).

Cursed Britain sets out to examine, as Waters puts it “black witchcraft, curses, hexes, jinxes, damaging esoteric influences and harmful spells.” The focus of the book is the examination of the belief in the possibility of magical harm, particularly in respect to witchcraft and other kinds of magic – including evangelical Christian Deliverance ministries and their relationship to phenomena such as “child witches.” It is an accessible, engaging work, which attempts to cover a vast field of those practices and beliefs which cluster around what Waters refers to as “mystic interpersonal harm”. Beginning in the 1800s and moving gradually to the present day, Waters explores accounts of witches, cunning folk, wizards and other magical practitioners and their activities. Also, he examines those who argued against their practices and indeed, sought to counter their presence in a more forceful manner – suspected witches were occasionally mobbed or subjected to ducking or scratching across the nineteenth century. His main argument is that the popular belief in Witchcraft did not – as previous scholars have argued – die out in the nineteenth century, but did not fade away until the early decades of the twentieth century.

Drawing extensively on Victorian newspaper archival sources, Waters spends the first few chapters examining cases of belief in witchcraft – including “unwitching” and anti-witchcraft vigilantes – throughout the nineteenth century. He also examines how the belief in witchcraft was treated by Victorian folklorists, the growth in popularity in fortune-telling, and the influence of the rise of Spiritualism.

Chapter Six moves the discussion onwards by focusing on the Victorian occult revival, examining more esoteric movements such as the Theosophical Society, the Esoteric Order of the Golden Dawn, Christian Science and Satanism. I thought the discussion of Theosophy’s relationship to harmful magic was a bit weak – there is certainly more work to be done on how Theosophical views of occultism related to popular beliefs in “Black Magic” during the period. Theosophical ideas about thought-forms and mental contagion for example, could be viewed in relation to popular ideas of malefic magic (see this post for some related discussion). Also, the discussion of the Golden Dawn focuses almost entirely on the activities of Anna Kingsford and the work of A.E. Waite, but omits to mention the time Mathers cursed his enemies using a packet of dried peas – surely the most infamous bit of “malefic magic” associated with the Golden Dawn?

Chapter Seven takes a look at witchcraft in “the British Empire”. Opening with an argument that demolishes the idea that the more educated a person is, the less likely they are to place any credence in the supernatural, Waters examines the experiences of British citizens encountering indigenous witchcraft beliefs in the colonies – and in particular, individuals who came to accept, to varying degrees, a belief in the reality of harmful witchcraft. Again, this is an interesting chapter, and hopefully, it will inspire other scholars to step forwards and research the intersection between colonialism and magic. Having said that though, I do think there is a slight problem with Waters’ analysis, which relates in part, to his periodization. His discussion of witchcraft and witch-hunting in India focuses, for the most part, on a few rare instances where the East India Company had, in the Nineteenth Century, sought to curb the killing of people (mostly women) accused of being witches. This, he asserts, was part of the EIC’s project to “remodel Indian society and culture, purging it of superstitions and barbarisms, refashioning Asia in the image of modern Europe.” ¹ This statement is somewhat surprising, given the EIC’s general “hands-off” non-interference policy when it came to native affairs. The Company had, until 1813, refused to allow missionary activity in Company-controlled territories, and had forbidden any attempts to foster religious education. This policy had ceased with the Parliamentary Charter Act of 1813, and the Company’s independence from the British Government by the Government of India Act of 1833. Hence the EIC’s activities which Waters is discussing here is a somewhat different entity to the original corporation. British beliefs in native superstition – in India at least, is further complicated as it could be argued that – rather than the English adopting native superstitions (which seems to be the general thrust of this chapter) they brought their own beliefs about witchcraft with them. For example, the East India Company’s settlement of Bombay (founded in 1665) possessed a scaffold where witches could recant before their execution, and there is documentary evidence of at least two witch trials of Europeans taking place at Bombay. ²

Chapter 8 deals with one of Waters’ central arguments – that the decline of witchcraft and belief in the black arts occurred much later than is generally thought – specifically, he argues, between the 1900s and the 1960s. He begins with an example of how the occultist Dion Fortune, in her book Psychic Self-defence (first published in 1930) put a new, psychological spin on the old idea of black magic. Again, this example fits well with Waters’ thesis regarding the idea that occult practitioners effectively instill a belief in the efficacy of their practices by educating the reader – providing them with a framework in which their problems – and of course an offered solution – could be understood. Fortune’s Psychic Self-defence has, of course, spawned an entire subgenre of texts devoted to “Psychic Self-Defence” and again, this suggests a rich field for further investigation.

Moving onwards, Waters examines cases of surviving witches and cunning-folk and the persistence of a general belief in ‘black magic’ in the early decades of the twentieth-century beliefs which received a general boost during the First World War (see my review of Owen Davies’ A Supernatural War for related discussion). Waters attributes the decline of witchcraft to a number of factors such as changes in standards of living, the decline of oral storytelling and the decline of crafts such as fishing and the horse trade which had magical lore entwined around them. The key deciding factor he argues though, was state power – in the form of the regulation of the health care market, which made life very difficult for the cunning-folk and other ‘alternative’ health practitioners to ply their trade. He mentions, for example, the Midwives Act of 1902 and the Pharmacy and Medicines Act of 1941 as instances of the state’s regulatory measures designed to shut out unlicensed practitioners.

This period also saw the growth in popularity of the understanding of witchcraft as a survival of a pre-Christian, pagan religion – and Waters examines the influence of Margaret Murray in scholarly circles, and how her theories entered popular discourse due to her intervention in the murder of a farm labourer in 1945. He briefly reviews the rise of Wicca in the mid-1950s and how it differed from traditional witchcraft.

Chapter Nine, titled “Multicultural Magic” examines the period 1970-2015 and argues in part, that Britain experienced a revival of interest in magic due to immigration, and also the growth of New Age beliefs and alternative therapies – which, he says, impelled some Christians to embrace “fundamentalist worldviews that saw the hand of God and the handiwork of the devil in everyday events.” ³ Waters spends several pages discussing the Victoria Climbé case in relation to both Deliverance Ministries and African beliefs concerning child witches. It was the Victoria Climbé case, the subsequent Laming Enquiry, and other cases that led to the new investigatory category of “Faith-based Child Abuse”. ⁴

Opening the concluding chapter, Waters writes:

“This book’s broadest conclusion is that witchcraft, understood as black magic, is an enduring, erratic belief system. It can be therapeutic, but it’s also apt to be fraudulent and dangerous. If it’s not properly controlled, witchcraft will certainly do damage. Social activism and intellectual criticism are unlikely to help. Instead, the best way to control the weird world of black magic is by targeted government legislation.” ⁵

For someone like me, who remembers all too well the Satanic Panic of the 1980s: the calls by MPs for legislation against occultists, the children forcibly removed from their families in dawn raids by social workers, and intense campaign of articles in the popular press – this is a rather ominous opening. Fortunately, perhaps, Waters does not offer any real solutions as to what form this “targeted government legislation” might take apart from suggesting that a “campaign could be mounted today, against the most unscrupulous spiritual healers operating in Britain”. ⁶ Nor does he really address the wider issue here – whether or not existing laws are sufficient to deal with cases of “mystic interpersonal harm”? In June 2018, Josephine Iyamu was jailed for 14 years under the UK’s Modern Slavery Act for trafficking Nigerian women into Germany to work as prostitutes. Dubbed the “voodoo nurse”, much was made of her use of “voodoo rituals” to subjugate and humiliate the women and coerce them into obeying her. Would focusing on the “voodoo” aspects of the case rather than the slavery aspect have helped the prosecution? Somehow, I doubt it.

Attempting to “control” the belief in Witchcraft through the law is hugely complex. In 2013 for example, in response to international outrage over a series of brutal murders of women accused of being witches, Papua New Guinea repealed its 1971 Sorcery Act, which had criminalized the practice of sorcery and recognized the accusation of being a sorcerer as a defense in murder cases. It was argued that the codification of black magic as a legal issue legitimized violence against those accused of being sorcerers. That same year, the President of Cameroon, Paul Biya, used the army to forcibly shut down Pentecostal churches following the death of a nine-year-old girl during a witchcraft deliverance ceremony.

Distinguishing between harmful and beneficial forms of witchcraft would be, I think, enormously difficult – as difficult as distinguishing between helpful and harmful religion. After all, much of what Waters says about the harmful vs the beneficial aspects of witchcraft could easily be applied to more mainstream religions.

Waters ends with the equally ominous declaration that: “Indulged and ignored in the West, witchcraft – both black and white – is already undergoing a revival. How far that revival progresses, and what shape it assumes, depends in large part upon the way we elect to be governed.” ⁷

“in view of the indelibility that is characteristic of all mental traces, it is surely not surprising that even the most primitive forms of genital worship can be shown to have existed in very recent times and that the language, customs, and superstitions of mankind today contain survivals from every phase of this process of development.”
Sigmund Freud, Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo Da Vince, 1910

Before I move onto an examination of Edward Sellon’s anthropological and “phallic” works, I want to first discuss the wider context of phallic theories of religion in the nineteenth century.

As I explored in my series on Richard Payne Knight it was in the eighteenth century that the idea arose that all religion was rooted it primitive fertility rites. It was an idea that had wide-ranging consequences, from the beginnings of cross-cultural anthropology to the exoticization (and eroticization) of other cultures.

Not all scholars supported this view of course. Connop Thirwall (1797-1875), for example, managed an eight-volume history of Greece which managed to be entirely silent on the subject of Priapus, and Thomas Keightley (1789-1872) wrote a series of textbooks aimed at students dealing with ancient Greece, Rome, and India, without once mentioning phallic worship. The kind of tensions generated by this theory can be seen in the case of a work entitled The Royal Museum at Naples, being some account of the erotic paintings, bronzes, and statues contained in that famous “Cabinet Secret. This book, first published in 1816 by a French antiquarian, César Famin, was given the blessing of the Royal Museum of Naples. But the work was seized by the French authorities, who destroyed most of the print run. In 1871 the book was republished in England using the byline “Colonel Fanin” – and it became a famous work of erotica (see The Royal Museum at Naples.)

Phallic Worship and Anti-Catholicism
Theories of Phallic worship were also drawn upon to express anti-Catholic, and anti-Indian sentiments, and commentators frequently drew parallels between the idolatry of Rome and the “paganism” of India. A tract published in 1858 – Idolmania: Or, the Legalised Cross Not the Instrument of Crucifixion, Being an Enquiry into the Difference between the Cross Proper and the Symbol of Heathen Processions made much of the apparent similarities between Roman Catholicism and Hinduism. In the preface, the pseudonymous author – “Investigator Abhorrens” asserts that:

“…the female object of their idolatry, whom they vainly attempt to impose upon the intelligent as the Mary of Scripture, is the universal goddess still worshipped in India as Sakti, or the energy of female nature. The popish goddess, so recently proclaimed by Pio IX. to be the heiress of the Roman Diva Triformis, and the Grecian Endonié Theos, commonly called Hekaté, agrees in every respect, the most minute, as she is found in Breviaries, Rosaries, legends, and other trumpery, with the character of the last in Hesiod (Theog. 404-452). And no wonder, for Hekaté and Sakti are etymological cognates, and denote the same powers of capacity and production of female nature, whose worship leads, as it ever did, to the practice of gross immorality, as will be seen in a subsequent account of the secret rites of the Saktas. ¹

The core of Abhorrens’ argument is that the Cross represents nothing less than ‘the phallus of universal antiquity’ and that Catholicism had been corrupted by pagan phallic worship. Drawing on etymological proofs, and learnedly discoursing on pagan rites of antiquity – and referencing the work of Richard Payne Knight, the author warns of the dangers of the acceptance, in Britain of the practice. He refers to European (presumably Catholic countries) where ‘precisely as the cross or phallus is more or less revered, there the illicit intercourse between the sexes is most unrestrained, and there the crime of murder is the most frequent’. ² He compares Catholic processions with the “bacchanals” of the ancient Greeks and Romans and asserts that “Murderous disposition, malice to persons, manifested by wilful destruction of property, habitual faithlessness, and commerce with beasts, are characteristics of idolatrous nations.” The candles placed in stands found on Catholic altars are ‘the upright lingga, worshipped by the Hindus’, and the author elaborates on the vileness of such worship by drawing on the accounts of ‘the adorers of the Linga’ by Colebrook and H.H. Wilson. The ‘Popish Mass’ he asserts, is a copy of ‘these mysteries as they were performed in the temples of Isis throughout the empire’ and he speculates that a ‘midnight mass inside of a nunnery might throw light on whatever is obscure in old authors respecting the Eleusinian mysteries, and concealed by the Saktas of the present day.’ ³ This latter comment could almost be a veiled reference to anti-Catholic erotica such as the infamous Venus in the Cloister (1683) or Female Convents: Secrets on Nunneries Disclosed which was published in England in 1829 – the year that the Catholic Emancipation Act received royal assent. ⁴

Abhorrens was clearly worried that, by bringing such distasteful topics to public attention, that he was encouraging the kind of carnal interests he was at such pains to dispel, so Idolomania ends with copious notes and references from a wide range of sources, and occasionally the author makes nods in the direction of the British Museum, where artifacts from ancient Egypt or contemporary India could be viewed to confirm his views.

In the next post, I’ll take a look at other phallic enthusiasts such as Henry O’Brien, and how phallic origin theories were taken up by Freemasons and other esotericists.

Sources
Investigator Abhorrens Idolmania: Or, the Legalised Cross Not the Instrument of Crucifixion, Being an Enquiry into the Difference between the Cross Proper and the Symbol of Heathen Processions (Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, 1858)
Sarah Bull Reading, Writing, and Publishing an Obscene Canon: The Archival Logic of the Secret Museum, c. 1860–c. 1900 (Book History, Volume 20, 2017, pp. 226-257).
Jocelyn Godwin The Theosophical Enlightenment (State University of New York Press, 1994)
Dominic Janes Victorian Reformation: The Fight over Idolatry in the Church of England, 1840-1860 (Oxford University Press 2009).
Andrew P. Lyons and Harriet D. Lyons Irregular Connections: A History of Anthropology and Sexuality (University of Nebraska Press 2004).
Helen Wickstead Sex in the Secret Museum: Photographs from the British Museum’s Witt Scrapbooks (Photography & Culture Vol 0 Issue 0 2018 pp1-11)

Something I find fascinating – and at times infuriating – is how a great many people claiming to be advocates, teachers, or representatives of “authentic” Tantric lineages or practices continually recirculate tropes that effectively erase any recognition that Tantra has any historical or cultural specificity.

One of the commonest tactics is to stake the claim that Tantra is “thousands of years old” – anything from 3,000 to 30,000 years. Like the Monolith in 2001, it was there at the “beginning” and Tantra existed well before the rise of the Vedas, Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism. In fact, it’s often asserted, Tantra has “no beginning” because no one can say exactly how it got started. Yet curiously, it’s also asserted that Tantra has no – or at least very little – written history. I came across that latter assertion most recently in an anthology of Queer Magical essays. My jaw dropped. I imagined for a moment, the translations of tantric texts on my bookshelves suddenly popping out of existence, the scholarly accounts of the history of the Tantric traditions disappearing into the void, the keepers of the thousands of digitized online manuscripts suddenly finding their servers empty.

Something that goes hand in hand with this disavowal of any kind of written history is that Tantra is “experiential” – you can only really understand it by experiencing it – which is apparently unique. A related claim is that Tantra should not be considered a “religion” but rather, is a set of “techniques” which can be repurposed towards whatever aim an exponent wants to endorse.

Another standard move is that, whilst admitting that Tantra, originally, may not have been all about sacred sex, there’s usually not much discussion of what that non-sexual teaching may have been about, as it is “sacred sex” that the writers want to talk about. Moreover, because we can look around the world and see other traditions which look a bit like Tantra, particularly if they are deemed to be sex-positive, then Tantra isn’t really that unique, is it? Furthermore, because there are so many varieties of Tantra – and because of its global spread, and a multitude of opinions, styles, approaches, and brands, if anyone does try and make unequivocal statements about any aspect of Tantra then they can be safely dismissed as arrivistes or parvenus. Because no one “really” knows and no one can say for sure where it all comes from. Well okay, it comes from India, but it’s not only Indian. It sort of comes from everywhere – and simultaneously, nowhere.

I sometimes feel that that there’s a kind of rhetorical version of the Roman principle of res nullius going on here – the legal principle that things deemed to be without an owner (wild animals, lost slaves and abandoned buildings) could be seized by anyone and taken as property. I’ve nothing against people producing their own practice modalities – after all, I’ve spent many years hyribidizing, for example, western ceremonial magic with dramatherapy. My own tantra practice is hybridized. What I do find difficult to understand is why, in staking out a claim to be taken as an authority; to represent Tantra to others, it is necessary to erase its history.

Someone asked me recently if I thought this was just down to ignorance or lack of awareness – that people simply aren’t aware of Tantra’s history or literature, or think it is just too complicated to get into. I don’t know, is the short answer, but I don’t believe it’s just a matter of education and access to resources, if only because the kind of rhetorical processes that I’m describing here, are not new.

There’s a very similar pattern discernable in the reception of ideas about the Chakras in nineteenth-century Theosophy. It begins in the middle of the nineteenth century with European Theosophists encountering early descriptions of concepts such as the chakras and kundalini – and they are really excited by this, and ask their “Indian brethren” for more information. But very quickly, they come up with their own views on chakras, and as their views on the chakras are coming out of a kind of liminal esoteric wisdom space which is privileged over any kind of mere exoteric historical record, they become ‘superior’ to the Indian perspectives, and thus commentators start pointing out that Indian textual sources themselves are not consistent on the subject and in any case Indians have lost contact with the “real” esoteric tradition. And it is a short step from there to looking around the world and finding other analogous schemas which became evidence that the Indian system of Chakras was just one of many, and anything that disagreed with the Theosophical ‘esoteric’ view could be dismissed, discounted, or re-explained. By the early twentieth century, Theosophist Charles Webster Leadbeater is presenting himself as an authority on the chakras because he had seen them – which I read as an early analog of the “experiental” claim which surpasses merely reading about something in a book.

It would be easy to dismiss these representations of tantra as egregious errors or to dismiss the entire conundrum as a contest of truth-making claims between, say, those who take a scholarly or historically-based approach to the subject and those who are suspicious of academia. I think a more fruitful approach would be to examine these representations within their wider cultural context – to try and think through them and ask what they are actually doing – by what logic they operate. My contention, which I will try and expand on in a future post, is that despite sharing the term “Tantra” and to an extent, an overlapping field of discourse, the exponents of Tantra as “sacred sexuality” and practitioners of the historically-grounded traditions such as “classical Tantra” are coming from entirely different perspectives.

The archaic authentic
For the remainder of this post I want to call attention to the importance of authenticity in these representations. That this is of importance is highlighted by the trademarking of the term “Authentic” Tantra or of websites such as true tantra. I don’t know of any contemporary tantric teacher who is distinguishing themselves from their competitors by saying that they are deliberately making stuff up.

Authenticity is highly valued in contemporary culture. It’s associated with notions of the real, of the natural, the essential, the proper, the expression of the ‘real’ self in contrast to cultural conditioning, or parental upbringing. To be recognized as an authority within a field of relations, in order to acquire social and cultural capital, an individual needs to be recognized and accepted as “authentic”. The identification of forms of exotic religious practices with a purely individual experience is itself a common and normative rhetorical strategy.

Tantra no matter how it is presented is authentic because it is held to be “archaic” – even if that archaic quality is only vaguely nodded at, as within these discourses, the notion of the archaic has a much wider valence – bound up with notions of the primitive, the universal, and the individual, and at the same time, a kind of experience which surpasses or transcends external sources of authority, such as religions:

Above all, tantra does not prescribe answers: unlike a religion, it does not tell you what to think and believe. It gives you structures to explore these themes experientially and personally, and then to come to your own conclusions based on these experiences. The only authority in tantra is your own heart, your own sense of what is true for you and what your spirit needs to follow.

John Hawken ¹

Contrast this with a “definition” of Tantra from tenth-century Saiva, Rāmakaṇṭha:

“A tantra is a body of teachings, constituting the revealed command of the Lord, which establishes the obligatory injunctions and prohibitions for His worship, preceded by the exposition of the special consecrations of those eligible for the higher and lower aims of human existence.” ²

Sources
Véronique Altglas From Yoga to Kabbalah: Religious Exoticism and the Logics of Bricolage. (Oxford University Press. 2014.)
Charles Lindholm Culture and Authenticity. (Blackwell Publishing. 2008.)
Hugh Urban Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics and Power in the Study of Religion. (University of California Press. 2003.)
Christopher Wallis Tantra Illuminated: The Philosophy, History, and Practice of a Timeless Tradition (Mattamayūra Press. 2013.)

Anyone interested in the passage of South Asian esoteric traditions into Western occultism can’t really ignore the influence of Aleister Crowley. I recently had to re-acquaint myself with Crowley’s work as part of my research for my lecture at Treadwells last year on Yoga and Magic, and just after the lecture, picked up a copy of Tobias Churton’s new book Aleister Crowley in India: The Secret Influence of Eastern Mysticism on Magic and the Occult (Inner Traditions, 2019, Hdbk with dustjacket).

Anyone familiar with Tobias Churton’s other books (i.e. Aleister Crowley in America or Aleister Crowley The Beast in Berlin) will know that he combines thorough research with a bright, breezy, accessible writing style and that unlike some previous chroniclers of Crowley’s career, has more than a little sympathy for the Great Beast. Aleister Crowley in India covers Crowley’s various adventures in South Asia, as well as doing a masterful job of showing how various strands of South Asian esoteric traditions – particularly Yoga and Buddhism – influenced Crowley’s works, both magical and poetic. After a brief introduction sketching out the influence of the Theosophical Society and Crowley’s career in the Golden Dawn, Churton opens with Crowley’s first trip to Colombo in 1901. It is at this point that Crowley’s early practice of Yoga begins, thanks to his friendship with Alan Bennet. Drawing on both published and unpublished diaries, Churton methodically explores Crowley’s yoga experiences and his struggles with unfamiliar practices, his growing enthusiasm for Buddhism, and his seeming desire to shoot at least one example of every animal species on the subcontinent. He also provides thorough accounts of Crowley’s mountaineering expeditions to K2 and the ill-fated Kangchenjunga, as well as the shooting incident in Calcutta, 1905.

Something I found particularly interesting in Aleister Crowley in India is that in this period, the Beast has yet to become “beastly” at least in public, so it is fascinating to read of how famous and (at least outwardly) respectable Crowley is in this period. Churton, for example, reproduces a respectful interview with the twenty-seven-year-old Crowley which appeared on the front page of the Parisian newspaper La Presse. entitled “Retour de L’Himalaya”. ¹ Churton also examines Crowley’s stay with the maharaja of Moharbhanj – another hunting expedition – and his seemingly cordial relations with various members of British officialdom.

Also of particular interest to me is Churton’s examination of the work of Śrī Sabhāpati Swāmī (see this post for some related discussion) and its influence on Crowley’s ideas and practices. It is largely thanks to Keith E. Cantú that contemporary interest in Sabhāpati’s 1879 book on Chakras – “Om, a Treatise on Vedantic Raj Yoga Philosophy has arisen. ²
Churton analyses the key components of Sabhāpati’s twelve-chakra schema and notes its similarity to the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. He points out that Sabhāpati refers to kuṇḍalinī as the “Mother” which leads him to draw an analogy between kuṇḍalinī and the Gnostic Sophia – a common enough interpretation, but one which did not immediately strike me when I first read “Om”. There’s more work to be done on Sabhāpati’s writings, so it is good to see Churton bringing them to wider attention.

Chapter 22: “The Coiled Splendour” deals with the knotty issue of whether or not Crowley’s ideas about sexual magick et al came from Tantra. The short answer, of course, is no. Instead, he points the finger at Persian sources accessed by Crowley’s hero, Richard Burton, the writings of Pascal Beverley Randolph, and perhaps a sprinkling of Hargrave Jennings. Along the way, Churton goes into an exploration of the relationship between Crowley, Kenneth Grant and David Curwen, and the “Holy Order of Krishna”. I am pleased to note that I am cited a couple of times in respect of this subject, albeit as a “blogger” (see East meets West: New Thought, Thelema, and The Holy Order of Krishna for related discussion).

All in all, Aleister Crowley in India is a thoroughly engrossing and enjoyable read, featuring a great deal of previously unpublished material – diary extracts, photographs, and even a letter from Crowley’s mum! If you’re at all interested in the Great Beast or the intersection between occidental and oriental occultisms, then this is definitely a must!

Current circumstances have disrupted my lecture plans for 2020, but I have contributed a number of lectures to a new venture from Treadwells of London – their online subscriber lectures.

For £12.99 a month subscribers gain access to all uploaded illustrated lectures and seminars, and they receive immediate access to all new uploads. You can also cancel your subscription at any time. There are fourteen lectures currently available, with more to be added each month. There are three lectures from me so far available – my lecture on Edward Sellon and the Cannibal Club, and two parts of a three-part series exploring the early origins of the Tantric Traditions. The first part is a general introduction to Tantric historiography – exploring some general issues and exploding some myths, and the second is a look at the traditions of ascetic Śaivism – the atimarg.