Modern porn is chock full of the consumption of bodily fluids, sodomy, and other overtly hedonistic acts, and that’s only what goes on in the mainstream stuff. A century ago when Aleister Crowley included acts like these in his occultist writings about Sex Magick — and yes he insisted on the “K”— there was no mainstream for such things.

Crowley cultivated a public image that stoked the fires of fear in a culture entrenched in repressive, Christian-inspired social mores, and the result was Crowley being labelled as an evil lunatic doomed to an eternity in Hell for his blasphemy. He thrived on this notoriety. His ability to market himself was truly an otherworldly gift.

His name was synonymous with black magic, numerology, and spiritualism, but it seems his passion was Sex Magick — ritual involving sex to achieve a predetermined goal.

Some of Crowley’s writings indicate he might have been more of a man obsessed with the power of sex and the drug-like rush that accompanies a good orgasm than the hellbent lunatic who conjures spirits inside of creepy castles as the public imagined him to be.

That’s not to say his approach to Sex Magick wasn’t outrageous. Even when his writings are looked back upon with a century of social evolution in between, some elements of his approach were “out there” to say the least.

Porn is guilty of extremes on par with Crowley’s.

Perhaps the most viral, and seemingly bacterial, porn clip in Internet history is simply known as “Two Girls, One Cup.” The clip was so outside the norm of sexual behavior, even by porn standards, posting videos of the shock on someone’s face while watching it for the first time was the charge that triggered the clip’s explosion in popularity.

When it comes to Crowley, however, he didn’t bother using a cup .

Crowley’s Sex Magick in Brief

Crowley’s sex rituals involving the consumption of blood, semen, or feces, were allegedly intended to achieve a higher consciousness, to empower a talisman, or to simply empower ones self. Intense focus on the intended result during the ritual, especially during orgasm, were paramount to achieving the desired goal in Sex Magick.

Crowley saw in orgasm (as in drug experience) a means to create ‘breakages of consciousness’ by pushing the mind to a point of extreme exhaustion and so opening it to the ‘supersensual:’ ‘The technique…was that of excess; through pain or pleasure, sex or intoxication, it was necessary to attain a condition of exhaustion taken to the extreme limit.’

When he established his own spiritual community called Abbey of Thelema, he declared its philosophy to be one of, “Do what thou will,” where free experimentation with sex, drugs, and other self-gratification, were acceptable.

In his writings, he revealed some of the directions in which he took his anything-goes philosophy. For example, his involvement with an American who studied under Crowley:

Now I’ll shave and make up my face like the lowest kind of whore and rub on perfume and go after Genesthai [A man whose real name was Cecil Fredrick Russell] like a drunken two-bit prick-pit in old New Orleans. He disgusts me sexually, as I him, as I suspect…[T]he dirtier my deed, the dearer my darling will hold me; the grosser the act the greedier my arse to engulph him! – From Crowley’s 1918 Diary

Crowley found power in challenging the norms of society when it came to sexual satisfaction. Some even claim he intended to tear down the commonly repressed views on sexuality by directly attacking taboos with his actions and writings.

In his diaries, Crowley even wrote of his own Two Girls, One Cup experience involving a woman with whom he lived for quite some time:

My mouth burned; my throat choked, my belly wretched; my blood fled wither who knows …She stood above in hideous contempt…She ate all the body of God and with Her soul’s compulsion made me eat…My teeth grew rotten, my tongue ulcered, raw was my throat, spasm-torn my belly, and all my Doubt of that which to Her teeth was moonlight and to her tongue ambrosia; to her throat nectar, in her belly the One God. – From The Magical Record of the Beast: The Diaries of Aleister Crowley

Of course, these are just highlights of a much-deeper philosophy Crowley built with influences from various religions, occult organizations, mythology, and other sources. It was also something he continued to study and develop until his death in 1947:

If this secret [of sexual magic], which is a scientific secret, were perfectly understood, as it is not by me after more than twelve years’ almost constant study and experiment, there would be nothing which the human imagination can conceive that could not be realized in practice. —The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autobiography

Sex Magick vs. Sex Industry

More than likely porn performers have had sexual experiences on film where they too were disgusted by their partner, or partners, with whom they had to perform as Crowley was with Genesthai. Also, as we pointed out earlier, the consumption of bodily fluids is as common to the nearly ritualistic sexual performances in porn as Chevrolet Camaros are to the parking lot of a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. Most every act/ritual Crowley described that shocked the culture of his day, can now be seen on the Internet with a good search term and a few clicks of the mouse.

The split between porn makers and Sex Magick occultists like Crowley comes at the point where the desired goal of the actions is considered. The goal of porn makers is to simply make butt-loads of cash. In a perverse way, thinking about the “Benjamins” while being sodomized seems less pure than thinking about spiritual growth during the act.

When reading the works of Crowley, one can’t help but to draw connections between Sex Magick and modern pornography. There are just too many similarities in the acts to not make the connection.

Like Crowley in his day, porn makers often use extremes to lash out at social sexual mores to get headlines and titivate an audience open to exploring their own curiosity when it comes to taboo sexual acts.

The approach has certainly worked for both parties.

Here we are nearly 70 years after Aleister Crowley died, and we’re still talking about him, even if it is just when we hear Ozzy Osbourne sing about him on the radio, and porn is now more mainstream than ever.

Sex sells. It always has. It always will.

Outside of his desires to push the envelope of sexual acceptability and consumption of drugs, many of Crowley’s other philosophies might be appealing to a mass audience. Strengthening one’s character and empowering ones self, were often at the root of what he wrote and taught. The concept of empowerment is something often heard from porn stars, particularly female porn stars, for example, porn veteran Nina Hartley, when interviewed by mainstream sources. Performers like Hartley claim to love what they do and even draw self esteem from it.

So is there magic in sex? When it comes to the way our bodies react to it, and crave it, it is certainly something powerful, even when it comes to the seemingly hollow-sex world of pornography.

Crowley certainly believed.

Do you?