There isn't a lot of writing on the Internet about The Sex Magicians, but there is a post about the original version of the book, on a blog called Nocturnal Reveries, which is devoted to book reviews of horror and occult titles.
The Nocturnal Reveries post on The Sex Magicians suggests it was published by RAW as an act of sex magick, in an effort to get Iluminatus! finally published (it took a long time for it to come out and it went through editing by more than one editor.) The Nocturnal Reveries author (not easy to identify) writes:
" I believe that the publishing of the Sex Magicians represents an attempt (that was hugely successful) to get Illuminatus! published. Fnord
"Sex Magic as far as I understand it, is the harnessing of sexual energy for using in magical rituals." (More at the link).
The panelists in the Hilaritas podcast mentioned yesterday bring up the blog post but argue that it's probably wrong. If I understood correctly, the kind of sex magick identified in the blog post is identified with chaos magick, which largely developed after the publication of The Sex Magicians.
Noctural Reveries has an index of the many books it has covered. You can also read a blog post on Masks of the Illuminati, and a discussion of the Cosmic Trigger trilogy. The blog author also writes about Illuminatus!
3 comments:
I agree with NR.
I agree with the podcast panelists that The Sex Magicians likely wasn't intended as an operation to get Illuminatus! published though I don't know for sure. Generally speaking we see two kinds of magic – theurgic, intended to raise consciousness and thaumaturgic, meant to change the local environment or change the physical world. The boundary between the the two seems fuzzy. RAW, like most Crowley adepts it seems, appeared more prone to using magick to raise consciousness, less prone to using magick for personal gain. The one course I took in Chaos Magic appeared exclusively focused on thaumaturgy - nothing wrong with that. As the panelists noted, RAW didn't seem much into Chaos Magic although those Magicians were into him. Peter Carroll, a founder of CM, visited RAW. I heard they did a number of workings in their short time together. My sense, from the account given to me, is that RAW took the lead with more of the consciousness raising variety of magick.
I'd say TSM is "magickal" in so far as it was a conscious, intentional, creative act. And obviously RAW was trying to make a go as a full time writer and get Illuminatus! published, so no matter how conscious it was, the intention to establish himself as a writer had to have been there.
Post a Comment