Welcome to the Joy Spot. I’m Dr. Joy Davidson. I’m an advisor for the Health and Science Advisory Board, I’m an expert for Love and Health, and I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist and sex therapist based in New York.

Today we’re going to be talking about an absolutely fascinating topic: sex magic. In contemporary Western society, the term “magic” conjures up images of Penn and Teller, childhood fairy tales, or maybe an episode of charmed. But sex magic – well, that sounds like something you do to make plucking the petals off daisies come out the right way. But really, sex magic is a lot more than that. In fact, it’s so complex that practitioners of it often debate its history, its intentions, and its methods. But no matter how you choose to look at it, the pairing of sex and magic is a provocative and controversial topic. So today, I’m going to offer a short review of the subject and acquaint you with some excellent resources for you to pursue it further if you’re so inclined.

The term “sex magic” actually refers to a form of erotic spirituality with deep roots among the ancient Tantric mystics of India as well as the ancient Hebrews and Cabalists of Europe and the Middle East. It can be traced through the Knights Templar and, if you read the Da Vinci Code, you know who they are, to many well-known historical figures, including the poet William Blake, and the infamous master of magic, Alistair Crowley. Alistair Crowley is credited with resurrecting and bringing to the West a knowledge of Tantra. On its journey to the West, Tantra was transformed from a highly esoteric tradition, centering around secrecy and power, to a popular form of spirituality and liberated sexuality that you can read about in any bookstore in America on the sexuality or Eastern religion shelves. Despite what some would consider his superficial understanding of Tantra, Crowley became the key figure in this transformation and is widely cited as a modern pioneer of Tantric sex magick. It was Crowley who added a “k” to the work magic to separate it from the acts of stage performers. So “magick” in “sex magick” is spelled m-a-g-i-c-k. Most recently, sex magick has taken on a decidedly New Age gloss, and the esoteric traditions have been watered down for mainstream tastes. But they are much too interesting to lose sight of, even if you have no intention of practicing it yourself.

Apropos of that, I want to share a brief story with you. A few weeks ago I received a call from an editor at a major women’s magazine who was writing a feature story on transcendent or “soulful sex.” She wanted to give readers some tips and techniques for having esoteric, or magical, sexual experiences. I think she wanted two minute Tantra. Now, tips and techniques are great if you’re talking about things like how to stimulate a particular body part, or how to be a better kisser, or how to use food in conjunction with sex. But when you’re speaking of top ten tips for “soulful” sex – as far as I’m concerned, no way. Of course, I did my best to explain these contradictions to her and I said that if merely gazing into your partner’s eyes and deep breathing for 60 seconds could give you an out of this realm experience of magic – well, it would indeed be magic – the fairy tale kind.

Real magic – if that’s not an oxymoron itself – requires intensive study and long years of practice. There’s nothing immediate about it at all. However, some traditions do promise quicker results than others. There are varied interpretations and crosscurrents to sex magic. On the most basic level, there are eastern traditions and western traditions. There are traditions which focus on using the power of sex magic to attain earthly goals and there are traditions that focus on spiritual enlightenment through ecstatic union.

In the book “Modern Sex Magick: Secrets of Erotic Spirituality,” author Donald Michael Kraig takes us through the fundamentals of western sex magic. According to Kraig, body, mind, and soul and the bond that unites them form an unbreakable matrix which creates human experience. Western sex magick is a system which sees the physical and nonphysical as an interweaving continuum. This type of sex magick uses techniques that are physical and metaphysical simultaneously, and the magical work is based in certain key principles, the most important of which I find to be these:

1) Magick requires the creation, manipulation and direction of magical energy.

2) Magical energy is psychological, sexual and spiritual. The sexual energies run through our bodies and are strongly affected by sexual urges and activities. These are, of course, what we know as the yang and yin, or the electrical and magnetic, or the masculine and feminine – masculine being yang and electrical, feminine being yin and magnetic.

3) Ritual sex magic is used to control the energies raised during sexual activity to further one’s greater will or purpose in the world.

Now that’s a mouthful. However, because in magical disciplines whatever you put out is believed to come back to you three times, furthering your will really means furthering your highest purpose in the world – not doing bad things, not doing selfish things, not doing cruel things. In this kind of sex magick it’s also believed that the thoughts held at orgasm are magical triggers. It’s believed that there is power in the sexual fluids – either singly or when combined as an elixir. The yin and the yang merge in the sexual fluids, in the bodily fluids, and this creates an empowered substance. The elixir is used in various ways – it may be taken into the body orally or in other ways; it may be used to draw magical or other symbols on the body; or it may be used to anoint a talisman and charge it with magical properties. Even though the blending of masculine and feminine energies is crucial to sex magic, modern traditions don’t require male and female literally. What matters is the energies themselves, whether embodied in a man and woman, in two women, or in two men. Either way, so long as you are utilizing the essence of the yin and yang energies, you can do this kind of magic.

If Western sex magic is primarily goal oriented, then Eastern sex magick is primarily consciousness raising. Like eastern meditative practices, these rituals are dedicated to transcendence of the ego, of the self, and attaining higher levels of spiritual awareness. The esoteric practices using sexual methods are referred to as the left hand path – or as Nikolas and Zeena Schreck call it – the sinister path. The Schrecks offer a comprehensive exploration of the left hand path in their book, “Demons of the Flesh.” This is a complete guide to the left hand path of sex magic.

They explain that erotic ecstasy produces an altered state between two magnetically attracted opposite energies – as in the Western methods, the yang and yin energies – with the potential to create a third power which, they say, transcends the human. Sexuality is the expression in the material world of the metaphysical concept of polarity – of the union of transcendent opposites. The left hand path creates a numinous space, they say, in which very different energies of male and female can communicate and see beyond the limits of gender.

The couple that unleashes the power of the left hand to its full intensity will supposedly find returning to the “real world” very difficult. However, the Schreks also admit that it takes dedication to the process to achieve such transpersonal bliss. No quickie, magazine shortcuts for the Schreks!

The roots of the left hand page – known as the Vama Marga – are in goddess worshipping ancient India, at least 2500 years ago. The practice was repressed by Aryan occupiers and then reawakened among certain sects about a thousand years ago. Only with the coming of Tantra to India were the traditions of the left hand path shaped into a specific sacred teaching. They took on more exact form in the secret doctine of medieval Tantra, but were wiped out again during the British occupation in India. Many people who live in India are unfamiliar with the sexual magic history – with the history of sexual Tantra. Only in its more modern permutations, more mainstream permutations, have they become aware of it once again. At base the Vama Marga was a liberating force that has fought to survive the hostility of repressive authorities made uneasy by a sexual approach to spiritual awakening.

We could also say that the left hand path is a revolutionary path, particularly because it venerates the female sexual principle. The limitation of sexual power – specifically female sexual power – has historically been a tool of political and social control. The Shrecks quote George Orwell, who in his classic book 1984, writes of his heroine, Julia, when she realizes the secret of Eros. And I’m going to read this passage to you.

“She had grasped the inner meaning to the Party’s sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party’s control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desireable because it could be transformed into war-fever and leader-worship.”

Hmmm…something a little familiar about that? Abstinence – sexual privation – war fever – doesn’t this sound alarmingly like 2005, not 1984?

Refusal to play by the rules dictated by others is one of the universally definitive factors separating the left hand path from other, milder forms of sex magic. The Shrecks don’t seem to think too highly of the Western sex magic traditions as described by people like Michael Kraig or of using sexual energy to generate magical results. As an offshoot of the Indian tradition of Tantra, the left hand path, they write, is dedicated to – “reshape consciousness to supernal levels of realization that entirely transcend the puerile wishing well model of pop sex magic.” Well, they told us, didn’t they?

If there is a left hand path, is there a right hand path? And yes, there is. Practitioners of the right hand path of Tantric methods seek enlightenment and awakening of consciouness through slow, meditative and postural methods without using sexuality or socially transgressive means. They expect that their spiritual awakening will take many lifetimes. The right hand path takes a long, slow time, while the left hand path is more like waking the system up to consciousness with an alarm clock. In the left hand path, it is the same mortal flesh that the majority of religions condemn as an obstacle to spiritual development that is experienced as the living gateway to the divine.

So if I were to narrow the left hand path down to its core elements, here is what you’d see:

1) The transformation of human consciousness through erotic rites.

2) An exaltation of the female principle of sexual power, known as Shakti in Sanskrit.

3) Initiation through the deliberate violation of external social and internal personal taboos – meaning, turning convention on its head.

4) You’d see a chosen path, a highly individualized path.

5) You would see veneration of this life, this body, this world, this realm – not an escape into another, better world. Not a search for multiple lifetimes or heaven. The idea that spiritual enlightenment exists right here, right now, in your own body.

Interesting stuff. I think these resources are phenomenal. I can’t wait to learn more, and I hope you feel the same way. Thank you for joining me on this very unusual journey.