Solve et Coagula: Attitudes toward the Ambrosial Aspects of Human Seed in Certain Yogic Traditions and in the Sexual Magick of Aleister Crowley

Abstract

There is a great deal of difference between the theory and practice of Indian Tantra and the sexual magick associated with Aleister Crowley.¹ Hugh Urban has suggested on several occasions that a curious outcome of Crowley’s influence on Western esoteric traditions lies precisely in the (re)interpretation of tantric teachings as being centered on the ritual use of sex. Contemporary Western “neo-Tantra” seems to be even more emphatically oriented toward the pursuit of prolonged orgasmic pleasure, an attitude that often provokes outright dismissals of this type of spirituality as inauthentic and based on misunderstanding. Nevertheless, there is an interesting parallel, a sort of mirroring, between ideas about the properties of human seed in certain traditions of tantric Yoga and in Crowley’s teachings. In both cases, the male seed is considered to have great magical power and, in the final instance, ambrosial attributes. But the reflected image is upside down: while the yogis attempt to sublimate the sperm by forcing it to traverse upwards from the genitals to the head, where it turns into elixir of immortality, in Crowley’s case the sperm moves downward, it is ejected, and is made use of as elixir in its material form.