Hugh B. Urban - Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism (1/e) (2006)

Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern Western

Esotericism (1/e)
Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (October 4, 2006)
ISBN-10: 0520247760
ISBN-13: 978-0520247765

Sexuality and the occult arts have long been associated in the western

imagination, but it was not until the nineteenth century that a large

and sophisticated body of literature on sexual magic—the use of sex

as a source of magical power—emerged. This book, the first history of

western sexual magic as a modern spiritual tradition, places these

practices in the context of the larger discourse surrounding sexuality

in American and European society over the last 150 years to discover

how sexual magic was transformed from a terrifying medieval

nightmare of heresy and social subversion into a modern ideal of

personal empowerment and social liberation. Focusing on a series of

key figures including American spiritualist Paschal Beverly Randolph,

Aleister Crowley, Julius Evola, Gerald Gardner, and Anton LaVey, Hugh

Urban traces the emergence of sexual magic out of older western

esoteric traditions including Gnosticism and Kabbalah, which were

progressively fused with recently-discovered eastern traditions such

as Hindu and Buddhist Tantra. His study gives remarkable new

insight into sexuality in the modern era, specifically on issues such as

the politics of birth control, the classification of sexual “deviance,”

debates over homosexuality and feminism, and the role of sexuality

in our own new world of post-modern spirituality, consumer

capitalism, and the Internet.