Abstract
This chapter examines the complex mix of influences that gave birth to Gerald Gardner’s modern Wicca tradition. While most of the scholarly attention so far has focused on the influence of Western literature and esoteric traditions on Gardner’s Wicca, this article explores a much less understood but perhaps equally important influence: namely, Hindu Tantra, which was directly known to Gardner through the writings of Aleister Crowley and his associate, Gerald Yorke. While the similarities are many, they are most obvious in Gardner’s view of the female body as an embodiment of divine power and in his description of the central Wiccan sexual ritual, the Great Rite. It proposes that Hindu Tantra is by no means the only or most important influence in Gardner’s early movement but should instead be understood as one of many elements that comprise the rich bricolage or hybrid synthesis that is modern Wicca.
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Notes
- 1.
See especially Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Henrik Bogdan, Western Esotericism and Rituals of Initiation (Albany: SUNY Press, 2008); Hugh B. Urban, Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
- 2.
See Hutton, Triumph, 171–240; Bogdan, Western Esotericism, 145–168.
- 3.
On the O.T.O.’s influence on Gardner, see Hutton, Triumph, 205–240; Urban, Magia Sexualis, 166–168; Bogdan, Western Esotericism, 148–150.
- 4.
Hutton, Triumph, 231. See John Woodroffe, Shakti and Shakta (New York: Dover), 597; Urban, Magia Sexualis, 176–177.
- 5.
See Gerald Yorke, “Tantric Hedonism,” The Occult Observer 3 (1949): 177–183. This essay is cited in Gardner’s Meaning of Witchcraft, with direct comparisons to Wicca.
- 6.
Doreen Valiente, Witchcraft for Tomorrow (Blaine, WA: Phoenix Publishing), 151ff.
- 7.
See Hugh B. Urban, Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics and Power in the Study of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 1–72.
- 8.
See R. A. Gilbert, The Golden Dawn and the Esoteric Section (London: Theosophical History Centre, 1987); Dion Fortune, The Mystical Qabalah (Newburyport, MA: Weiser Books, 2000 [1935]), 3–8.
- 9.
On the concept of bricolage, see Hugh B. Urban, The Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religious Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), Chap. 1; Hugh B. Urban, “The Occult Roots of Scientology? L. Ron Hubbard, Aleister Crowley and the Origins of a Controversial New Religion,” Nova Religio 15, no. 3 (2012): 91–116.
- 10.
For good critiques of Orientalist discourse and these categories of “East” and “West”, see Urban, Tantra: 1–71; Richard King, Orientalism and Religion: Post-Colonial Theory, India, and the “Mystic East” (New York: Routledge, 1999); Kennet Granholm, “Locating the West: Problematizing the Western in Western Esotericism and Occultism,” in Occultism in Global Perspective, eds. Henrik Bogdan and Gordan Djurdjevic (New York: Routledge, 2015), 17–36.
- 11.
See David Gordon White, “Tantrism,” in Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Lindsay Jones (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), Vol. 13, 8984; Urban, Tantra, 1–43.
- 12.
Madeleine Biardeau, Hinduism: The Anthropology of a Civilization (Paris: Flammarion, 1981), 149–150; see André Padoux, Vac: The Concept of the Word in Selected Hindu Tantras (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), 40; Hugh B. Urban, The Power of Tantra: Religion, Sexuality, and the Politics of South Asian Studies (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2010), 19–25.
- 13.
Wilson, Religious Sects of the Hindus (Calcutta: Susil Gupta, 1858), 140; Monier-Williams, Hinduism (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1894), 122–123; Barnett, quoted in John Woodroffe, ed., Principles of Tantra: The Tantratattva of Sriyukta Siva Candra Vidyarnava Bhattacarya Mahodaya (Madras: Ganesh and Co., 1960), 3–5.
- 14.
See Urban, Tantra, 44–72.
- 15.
On Woodroffe’s life and relation to Tantra, see Kathleen Taylor, Sir John Woodroffe: ‘An Indian Soul in a European Body?’ (New York: Routledge, 2013); Urban, Tantra, 134–164.
- 16.
Woodroffe, Shakti and Shakta, xvii, 356.
- 17.
Ibid., 407. See also Shakti and Shakta, 95: “A glorious feature of the Shakta faith is the honor which it pays to women. And this is nature for those who worship of the Great Mother, whose representative all earthly women are.”
- 18.
Woodroffe, Shakti and Shakta, 611.
- 19.
Ibid., 596–603.
- 20.
Woodroffe, 597.
- 21.
On the O.T.O., see Marco Pasi, “Ordo Templi Orientis,” in Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, ed. Wouter J. Hanegraaff (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 898–906; Urban, Magia Sexualis, 81–108.
- 22.
The connection of Kellner with Tantric teachers was asserted in the journal Oriflamme in 1912. See Urban, Magia Sexualis, 81–108; Joscelyn Godwin, Christian Chanel, and John Patrick Deveney, The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1995), 422–428. Some authors claim that Kellner engaged in a form of Tantric practice. See Peter R. Koenig, “Ordo Templi Orientis Spermo-Gnosis,” http://www.parareligion.ch/spermo.htm. Others, however, claim that his knowledge was limited to Hatha Yoga and that the Tantric elements were introduced by Reuss. See Josef Dvorak, “Carl Kellner,” Flensburger Hefte 63 (December 1998).
- 23.
Reuss, “Von den Geheimnissen der okkulten Hochgrade unseres Ordens,” in Historische Ausgabe der Oriflamme (Berlin: Verlag von Max Perl, 1904), 31.
- 24.
Reuss, Jubilaeums-Ausgabe der Oriflamme (1912), 21; Reproduced in R. Swiburne Clymer, The Rosicrucian Fraternity in America (Quakertown, PA: Rosicrucian Foundation, 1935–1936), 614.
- 25.
Reuss, “Parsifal und das Enthüllte Grals-Geheimnis” (1914), in Peter Koenig, Der Kleine Theodor Reuss Reader (Munich: Arbeitsgeschaft für Religions- und Weltanschauungsfragen, 1993), 71.
- 26.
Ibid., 72.
- 27.
On Crowley’s influence, see Urban, “The Beast with Two Backs: Aleister Crowley, Sex Magic and the Exhaustion of Modernity,” Nova Religio 7, no. 3 (2004): 7–25; Djurdjevic, India and the Occult.
- 28.
See Henrik Bogdan and Martin P. Starr, eds. Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Lawrence Sutin, Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley (New York: St. Martin’s, 2002); Urban, “The Beast with Two Backs”; Djurdjevic, India and the Occult.
- 29.
See Urban, “Unleashing the Beast: Aleister Crowley, Tantra and Sex Magic in Late Victorian England,” Esoterica: The Journal of Esoteric Studies 5 (2003): 138–192.
- 30.
Crowley, The Book of Lies (York Beach: Samuel Weiser, 2012), 5–6.
- 31.
Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography (New York: Penguin, 1989), 767.
- 32.
Crowley, Eight Lectures on Yoga (Las Vegas, NV: New Falcon Publications, 1985).
- 33.
See Crowley, Liber Agape, De Arte Magica (Rochester, UK: Kadath Press, 1986), XVI: “[T]he wise men of India have a belief that a certain particular Prana, or force, resides in the Bindu, or semen. … Therefore they stimulate to the maximum its generation by causing a consecrated prostitute to excite the organs, and at the same time vigorously withhold by will. … [T]hey claim that they can deflower as many as eighty virgins in a night without losing a single drop of the Bindu. Nor is this ever to be lost, but reabsorbed through the tissues of the body. The organs thus act as a siphon to draw constantly fresh supplies of life from the cosmic reservoir, and flood the body with their fructifying virtue … (see almost any Tantra, in particular Shiva Sanhita).”
- 34.
See Urban, “Unleashing the Beast.” Grant recounts Crowley’s correspondence with David Curwen, who studied left-hand Tantra in South India. According to a letter from 1946, Crowley was rather annoyed that Curwen seemed to possess much greater knowledge about Tantra and sexual magick; as Crowley himself admitted, “Curwen knows 100 times as much as I do about Tantra”, cited in Grant, Remembering Aleister Crowley (London: Skoob Books, 1993), 49.
- 35.
See Crowley, Liber XV: Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae Canon Missae (CreateSpace, 2014); Urban, “Unleashing the Beast.”
- 36.
See Bogdan, Western Esotericism, 153; Bogdan, “Transgressing the Morals”; Urban, “Unleashing the Beast.” Two of the most important texts for the IX degree rituals are Liber Agape and De Arte Magica and the magical diaries based on his sexual operations; see Symonds and Grant, eds. The Magical Record of the Beast 666 (London: Duckworth, 1972). The IX degree rite was also published in censored form as “Two Fragments of Ritual.” See also Francis King, ed., The Secret Rituals of the O.T.O. (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1973).
- 37.
See Urban, “Unleashing the Beast”; Urban, “The Power of the Impure: Transgression, Violence and Secrecy in Bengali Sakta Tantra and Modern Western Magic,” Numen 50, no. 3 (2003): 269–308.
- 38.
Yorke, “Tantric Hedonism,” 177.
- 39.
Ibid., 179.
- 40.
Ibid., 179. On this point, see Woodroffe, Shakti and Shakta, 332.
- 41.
See Philip Heselton, Witchfather: A Life of Gerald Gardner, Volume 1 (Loughborough: Thoth Publications, 2012), 47–102.
- 42.
See Hutton, Triumph, 236ff. Heselton, Witchfather, 83–95.
- 43.
Gardner, “Notes on Two Uncommon Varieties of the Malay Keris,” The Keris and Other Malay Weapons (Kula Lumpur: MBRAS. Reprinted from The Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, December 1933).
- 44.
Peter Levenda, Tantric Temples: Eros and Magic in Java (Lake Worth, FL: Ibis, 2011), 178.
- 45.
Hutton, Triumph, 222.
- 46.
Mir Bashir, “The Book of Shadows,” The Occult Observer 1, no. 3 and 4 (1949–1950). See Doreen Valiente, The Rebirth of Witchcraft (London: Robert Hale, 1989), 51–52.
- 47.
Farrar and Farrar, The Witches’ Way (London: Robert Hale, 1984), 3; see Hutton, Triumph, 209–212; Urban, Magia, 170.
- 48.
See Crowley, Liber XV, 27; Gardner, The Gardnerian Book of Shadows (London: Forgotten Books, 2008), 16.
- 49.
See Farrar and Farrar, The Witches’ Bible: The Complete Witches’ Handbook (Custer, WA: Phoenix Publishing, 1996), 48–49: “It can be enacted in either of two forms. It can be … purely symbolic—in which case the whole coven is present the whole time. Or it can be ‘actual’—that is to say, involving intercourse. … But whether it is symbolic or ‘actual’, witches make no apology for its sexual nature. To them, sex is holy—a manifestation of that essential polarity which pervades and activates the whole universe, from Macrocosm to Microcosm. … The couple enacting the Great Rite are offering themselves, with reverence and joy, as expression of the God and Goddess aspect of the Ultimate Source.”
- 50.
Gardner, Book of Shadows, 16. This directly quotes Crowley’s Gnostic Mass: Crowley, Liber XV, 27.
- 51.
Gerald Gardner, Witchcraft Today (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel, 2004 [1954]), 114–115.
- 52.
Ibid., 115.
- 53.
Ibid., 17.
- 54.
Hutton, Triumph, 231.
- 55.
Gardner, Meaning of Witchcraft, 65.
- 56.
Ibid., 39.
- 57.
Gardner, Witchcraft Today, 149; for use of phrase “skyclad” see Farrar and Farrar, Witches’ Way, 195ff.
- 58.
Gardner, Meaning of Witchcraft, 8.
- 59.
Ibid., 85.
- 60.
See Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962 [1921]), 190–191.
- 61.
Valiente, Witchcraft, 44.
- 62.
Ibid., 136.
- 63.
Ibid., 136–137.
- 64.
Ibid., 23: “The image of a horned head with a light between the horns survives in the secret Tantric worship of India to this day. In the Mahanirvana Tantra, which describes the worship of the supreme goddess, Adya Kali, by means of the Panchatattva ritual, which includes the offering of wine, meat, fish, grain and sexual intercourse within a consecrated circle, we are told how a male horned animal should be sacrificed to the goddess.”
- 65.
Ibid., 44.
- 66.
Ibid., 138.
- 67.
Ibid., 140.
- 68.
Ibid., 151.
- 69.
Gilbert, The Golden Dawn.
- 70.
See Urban, Tantra, 44–72.
- 71.
See Urban, Magia Sexualis, 170.
- 72.
See Wouter Hanegraaff, Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Bloomsbury Press, 2013), 43–44.
- 73.
On this point, see also Granholm, “Locating the West,” 17: “in a late modern globalizing world, solid distinctions between ‘West’ and ‘non-West’ are becoming increasingly difficult and problematic to sustain.”
- 74.
See King, Orientalism and Religion; Urban, Tantra.
- 75.
See Djurdjevic, India and the Occult; Granholm, “Locating the West”; Urban, Magia Sexualis, 81–161; Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).
- 76.
These last comments are based on Urban, “Subtle Bodies: Cartographies of the Soul, from India to ‘the West’ and Back Again,” keynote lecture at the Association for the Study of Esotericism Conference, University of California, Davis, 18 June 2016.
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Urban, H.B. (2019). The Goddess and the Great Rite: Hindu Tantra and the Complex Origins of Modern Wicca. In: Feraro, S., Doyle White, E. (eds) Magic and Witchery in the Modern West. Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15549-0_2
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