Aleister Crowley and D. H. Lawrence: The Great Beast Versus The Priest of Love

Messrs. Crowley (1875 - 1947) and Lawrence (1885 - 1930)  

I. 

 

The great English occultist Aleister Crowley and the great English novelist D. H. Lawrence never actually met in person. 

 

And that's probably just as well; for whilst they both had scandalous reputations [1], it's almost impossible to imagine they would have become pals.

 

Despite never crossing paths, however, Crowley and Lawrence were certainly aware of one another and had several friends and acquaintances in common [2]. 

 

What's more, not only did Crowley and Lawrence move in similar bohemian circles, but they also lived in some of the same places, including Cornwall [3] and Sicily [4], for example.    

 

 

II.  
 

I'm not a Crowley expert, but my understanding is that, essentially, he viewed Lawrence's work as naive and unrefined. 

 

Thus, whilst he approved of Lawrence's pagan sensuality, for example, at the same time he felt it overly romantic; capable of arousing adolescent passions, but not of satisfying the more mature tastes of the sophisticated libertine. 

 

Further - and this is rather surprising, coming as it does  from a practitioner of sex magick - Crowley thought Lawrence exaggerated the importance of sexual relationships (in much the same way as Jung criticised Freud) and that this ultimately has fatal consequences [5].      

 

 

III.

 

What then did Lawrence think of Crowley? 

 

To answer this we must turn to his letters, although even here the references to Crowley are few and far between and Lawrence's interest in pagan occultism and the magical arts was inspired more by the writings of Madame Blavatsky, James Frazer, and J. M. Pryce [6] than by The Great Beast, even whilst conceding that the latter was one of those esoteric wonder-freaks whom people think it marvellous to name-drop [7]. 

 

In July 1910, Lawrence read a volume of selected poems by Crowley entitled Ambergris (1910), borrowed from Grace Crawford, an acquaintance of his whom he had met through Ezra Pound. But he soon returned the book, simply stating that he "didn't like it" [8], having anticipated his own likely response in an earlier letter to Miss Crawford, writing that if Ambergris "smells like Crowley [...] Civet cats and sperm whales" then it will be "pretty bad" [9]. 

 

Fast forward a few years, and Lawrence again mentions Crowley in his correspondence ...

Writing to his Australian friend, the writer and publisher, P. R. Stephensen, in September 1929, Lawrence expresses his concern that the Mandrake Press - which Stephensen had co-founded with Edward Goldston earlier that year - was too heavily committed to publishing Crowley's work, saying that, in his view, the latter's time "was rather over" [10] (the implication being that the day belonged more to him and Stephensen should therefore concentrate on publishing more of his work).   

 

 

IV.

 

Ultimately, we can say that Lawrence had an ambivalent relationship to occultism and to the individuals who studied or practiced the magical arts.    

 

Thus, on the one hand, he would mock those such as Meredith Starr and his wife [11] as herb-eating occultists who "descend naked into mine-shafts, and there meditate for hours and hours, upon their own transcendent infinitude" [12]. 

 

But, on the other hand, Lawrence was excited by Starr's knowledge of the subject and the latter's fine collection of rare books "opened up ideas and images" [13] that Lawrence was able to incorporate into his own philosophy. 

 

In a letter to the American author Waldo Frank, Lawrence attempts to clarify his position:

 

"I am not a theosophist, though the esoteric doctrines are marvellously illuminating, historically. I hate the esoteric forms. Magic has also interested me a good deal. But it is all part of the past, and part of the past self in us: and it no good going back, even to the wonderful things. They are ultimately vieux jeu." [14]

 

In the same letter, Lawrence adds: 

 

"There should be again a body of esoteric doctrine, defended from the herd [...] a body of pure thought, kept sacred and clean" and argues that a new earth and heaven will only come about through "the sanctity of a mystery, the mystery of the initiation into pure being" [15]. 

 

This is surely a view that Crowley would endorse (and a sentiment he would share) and I think Ronald Hutton is right to suggest the Priest of Love and The Great Beast have more in common than either cared to admit [16]. 

 

Finally, we might mention a letter to the artist Mark Gertler, written in the spring of 1918, in which Lawrence again opens up about his continuing interest in all things esoteric, whilst taking the opportunity to have a pop at a friend-turned-enemy with whom he had even once planned to collaborate on a lecture series:

 

"I have been reading another book on occultism. Do you know anybody who cares for this - magic, astrology, anything of that sort. It is very interesting, and important - though antipathetic to me. Certainly magic is a reality - not by any means the nonsense Bertie Russell says it is." [17] 

 

 

Crowley self-portrait (1918) / Lawrence self-portrait (1929)

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] In 1923, the British weekly magazine John Bull branded Crowley the wickedest man in the world. Five years later, it characterised the author of Lady Chatterley's Lover as a diseased sex maniac who prostituted art to pornography.   

 

[2] Both Crowley and Lawrence were friends with the composer Philip Heseltine (aka Peter Warlock), for example; as they were with Cecil Gray, another composer and music critic with a strong interest in occultism. 

     

[3] Lawrence and his wife Frieda lived in the small village of Zennor, in Cornwall, from March 1916 until October 1917, when they were evicted from the county by the authorities. Cornwall, of course, had longstanding connections to witchcraft and attracted a number of individuals keen to explore what we now term alternative lifestyles.   

      Aleister Crowley visited Zennor on many occasions, both before and after the Lawrences lived there, and he is believed to have had connections with Carne Cottage, where Katherine (Ka) Cox - Rupert Brooke's lover and Virginia Woolf's bestie - died in mysterious circumstances, in May 1938.

 

[4] Lawrence and his wife Frieda lived at the villa Fontana Vecchia, in the hilltop town of Taormina, on the east coast of Sicily, from March 1920 to February 1922. 

      Crowley, meanwhile, and some of his followers - including his Scarlet Woman Leah Hirsig - were setting up house during this period 130 miles down the road at the so-called Abbey of Thelema, in the small fishing town of Cefalù (from where they were eventually evicted by Mussolini, in April 1923).   

 

[5] Crowley's critical dismissal of Lawrence is not uncommon for its time, but it is unfair. For whilst agreeing with Freud that an element of sex enters into all human activity, Lawrence nevertheless insists that this is only half the picture and that it is mistaken, therefore, to say that all is sex: "All is not sex. And a sexual motive is not to be attributed to all human activities." 

      For Lawrence, as for Crowley, there is something else "of even higher importance and greater dynamic power" than sex, and that is the religious or creative motive: "This is the prime motivity. And the motivitity of sex is subsidiary to this: often directly antagonistic." 

      See Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 66-67.

 

[6] Lawrence gleaned a lot of his ideas from Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine (1888), Frazer's Golden Bough (1890), and Pryse's Apocalypse Unsealed (1910), and was more influenced by the mystical and sexual radicalism of Edward Carpenter (Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure, 1889), than by Crowley's philosophy.  

 

[7] See the letter to his friend Ernest Collins (22 March 1914) in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II, ed.George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 157. 

      Thanking Collins for sending him a newly published book of his drawings, Lawrence writes: "You are a queer man. I think if you persist you will one day have a real boom. Because people will think you are an esoteric wonder-freak, and it will be a kind of aesthetic qualification to know you, as it was to know Bearsley, and is rather now, to know Alastair." 

      Despite the misspelling, the latter is understood to have been a reference to Aleister Crowley.     

 

[8] See the letter from Lawrence to Grace Crawford (24 July 1910) in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 171.  

 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Grace Crawford (9 July 1910), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, p. 169.   

 

[10] D. H. Lawrence, letter to P. R. Stephensen (5 Sept 1929), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VII, ed. Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 469.

      The Mandrake Press were contracted to publish five titles by Crowley, including a book of short stories (The Strategem and Other Stories, 1929), a novel (Moonchild, 1929) and an autobiography (The Spirit of Solitude, subsequently retitled The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, of which the first two volumes were published in Nov-Dec. 1929). 

      Mandrake had also published The Paintings of D. H. Lawrence in the summer of 1929, so Lawrence had a vested interest in seeing this small press succeed. Unfortunately, however, the company soon ran into financial problems and a consortium led by Aleister Crowley took over. But this consortium was unable to turn things round and the company was dissolved in December 1930. It seems that even having the world's most powerful worker of magick on board can't stave off bankruptcy or keep tax officials and debt collectors from the door.

      See also Lawrence's letters written in November 1929 to his literary agent Laurence Pollinger, in the first of which he complains about Stephensen's lack of business sense and the fact that he has "spent far too much of Goldston's money" (VII 564) by printing 3000 copies of Crowley's novel and only sold 200 copies. 

      And in the second of which Lawrence can't resist passing on the latest literary gossip and having another dig at Crowley: 

      "I hear that Stephensen wants to float off the Mandrake into a limited company, as they have £6000-worth of stock to sell. Well it's none of it me. But it seems as if there was quite a definite breach between Stephensen and Goldston, so perhaps the Mandrake is already a withered root. Too bad!  but no wonder, with half a ton of Crowley on top of it." (VII 573) 

[11] As Jane Costin reminds us: "Meredith Starr and his wife Lady Mary Stamford [...] moved to Zennor after their marriage in 1917 and lived just a short walk away from Lawrence. Starr came from a wealthy family and, in the early twentieth century, wrote for Crowley’s publication The Equinox and also for The Occult Review which published articles and correspondence by many leading occultists". Starr regarded Crowley as the 'only real modern genius' and 'by far the greatest living artist in England'. 

      See Costin's excellent essay 'Lawrence and the "homeless soul"', in Études Lawrenciennes 56 (2024), which covers in detail much of the ground we have briefly touched upon in this post. Click here to read online.  

 

[12] D. H. Lawrence, writing to Lady Cynthia Asquith (3 Sept 1917) in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 158.

 

[13] Mark Kinkead-Weekes, D. H. Lawrence: Triumph to Exile 1912 - 1922, Vol. II of the Cambridge Biography (CUP, 1996), p. 386.  

 

[14] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Waldo Frank (27 July 1917), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, p. 143.  

 

[15] Ibid. 

          

[16] Ronald Hutton is an English historian specialising in early British folklore, pre-Christian religion, and modern paganism. A professor at the University of Bristol, Hutton has written over a dozen books, including The Triumph of the Moon: a History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, (Oxford University Press, 1999). A second, extensively revised edition of this work was published in 2019. 

      According to Hutton, Lawrence and Crowley shared the same desire for a religious revolution and a revaluation of all values (even if they wouldn't have agreed on what form this should take or how to proceed).           

 

[17] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Mark Gertler [28 April 1918], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, p. 239.

      Re the Lawrence-Russell relationship and the planned lecture series in London, see chapter five of Mark Kinkead-Weekes, D. H. Lawrence: Triumph to Exile 1912 - 1922. See also the astonishing series of letters that Lawrence wrote to Russell between February 1915 and March 1916 in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II op. cit.    

 

 

This post is for Christina Harrington of Treadwell's (London). 

 

For a sister post to this one on The Battle of Blythe Road: The Great Beast Vs. W. B. Yeats (23 June 2025): click here.   

 

 

Three Extracts from The Whip and the Wand (Paper VI in the 2005 Treadwell's Series Sex/Magic)

Artwork by Stephen Alexander for the Treadwell's Paper 

'The Whip and the Wand' in the Sex/Magic series (2005)

 

 

As an essay over 7000 words in length, 'The Whip and the Wand' is unfortunately too long to reproduce in full.

 

However, following publication of a recent post in which I mentioned this text [1], I thought it might be a good idea to offer three extracts from the opening sections on the perverse nature of witchcraft ... 

 

Extract 1: The Malleus Maleficarum is clear on one thing above all else: Witchcraft results from insatiable carnal lust and is a form of sexual depravity as well as religious heresy. 

 

 

It was widely accepted in the early modern period that witches consorted and copulated with demons and that their rituals involved obscene and unnatural acts including naked dancing, masturbation, bestiality, anal sex, and feasting on the flesh of infants. Via a combination of sodomy and sorcery, the witch threatened to subvert the very foundations of the moral and political order of society and this made her not only sinful, but dangerous. 

 

But what of twentieth century witchcraft à la Gerald Gardner and company? Alas, if Doreen Valiente is to be believed, then it has become a depressingly tame affair in comparison: "There is no doubt that witchcraft has evolved considerably […] Few covens now insist upon ritual nudity, or practice the more controversial rites involving sex or flagellation". [2] 

 

Thus, far from being an opportunity to form an erotic relationship with the divine and daemonic and indulge in a wide range of perverse pleasures, witchcraft is now merely the chance for personal development and an exploration of the "hidden powers of the human mind" [3]. 

 

Whether Valiente really believes this, I cannot say. But, happily, it's not quite true. In fact, modern pagan witchcraft remains inherently perverse, involving as it does many elements that the masochist and fetishist would instantly understand and appreciate ... 

 

 

Extract 2: The Erotic (and Kinky) Aspects of the Great Rite

 

Any list of the essential activities performed during the Great Rite would have to include the following: undressing, scourging, binding, kissing, dancing, chanting, touching, drinking, feasting, and fucking. And any list of the necessary paraphernalia involved would have to include: an altar, a whip, a wand, a length of cord, a knife, a sword, a bowl of water, a chalice of wine, a dish of cakes, some salt, and some incense to burn. 

 

If these objects have magical symbolic significance, then, likewise, the above activities in which they are used are invested with great ritual importance. But here, however, I'd like to examine some of the more erotic (and kinky) aspects of the Great Rite ...

 

To begin, all members of the coven - with the exception of the high priestess and the high priest - position themselves around the perimeter of the magic circle, each facing the centre; the priestess and priest stand facing each other in the middle of the circle. The latter then proceeds to give the former the five-fold kiss, which is actually a series of eight kisses beginning with the feet and then working up the body to the lips, via the knees, genitals, and breasts. 

 

The high priestess then lies down on her back, her arms and legs outstretched in order to form the pentagram, whilst the priest fetches a veil with which he covers her naked body. He then kneels between her ankles and delivers an invocation that begins: 

 

Assist me to erect the ancient altar, at which in days past all worshipped ... 

And the sacred place was within the centre of the Circle, 

the origin of all things. 

 

Following this hymn to her - or more precisely, to her reproductive organs - the rest of the coven leave the circle so that the high priest and priestess can fuck in what the Farrar's call "the dignity of privacy" [4], thereby betraying the bourgeois morality not only of their own vocabulary, but at the heart of modern pagan witchcraft. 

 

As for the idea of the body of the priestess serving as a living altar, I must confess I rather like this; it reminds me of Minski's furniture in Sade's Juliette, or the sculptures by Allen Jones. But it's not really an ancient idea, so much as one developed by 17th-century occultists as part of their Black Mass and simply borrowed by Gerald Gardner who, of course, made a fetish of nakedness and insisted upon it within his own neo-paganism. 

 

The Farrar's, unsurprisingly, are having none of this, however; they insist that whilst the Great Rite invocation "specifically declares that the body of the woman taking part is an altar, with her womb and generative organs as its sacred focus […] this has nothing to do with any 'Black Mass'" [5]. They continue: "The Black Mass was a Christian heresy, using perverted Christian forms […] in which the living altar was used to desecrate the Christian Host. Such obscenity is of course utterly alien to the spirit and intent of the Great Rite." [6] 

 

To which we can only say - what a pity! 

 

But there you go; Wicca, say the Farrar's, belongs to a tradition of "sincere and honourable pagan religions" [7] and is not performed by sophisticated degenerates who only know how to corrupt forms, symbols, and rituals. So concerned are the Farrar's that pagan witchcraft and its practitioners not be thought of as in any way perverse, that they call upon dear old Doreen Valiente in order to defend the fact that the Great Rite culminates in an act of ritual sexual intercourse. 

 

Such an act, asserts the latter, is "'obviously […] the very opposite of promiscuity'" [8], because it takes place between carefully selected partners at the right time, in the right place, and in the right way. "'It is love and only love that can give sex the spark of magic'" [9], dribbles Valiente in a manner which surely would have left witches of old helpless with laughter. 

 

 

Extract 3: The Whip and the Wand

 

Apart from the act of intercourse, Gardner's Great Rite also, crucially, involves plenty of ritual scourging and bondage as the following description makes clear: 

 

The priestess sits on a throne holding a knife in one hand and a whip in the other. The priest kneels before her and begs purification. The priestess then fetches a cord and ties his hands securely behind his back. The ends of the cord are tied in front of the throat and the priest is led by this around the circle like a slave. Following this, the priest kneels facing the altar once more, to which he is tied by his lead. His knees and feet are also firmly bound. If he complains of too great a level of discomfort, his bonds may be loosened slightly, whilst remaining tight enough so as to ensure absolute helplessness. 

 

Next, "the priestess fetches the scourge and gives him three light strokes with it" [10] before the roles are reversed; i.e. the priest ties and whips the priestess. Then, for good measure, she ties and whips him once more. Finally, once both parties have been purified in this manner, they are ready to engage in sexual intercourse.

 

As described earlier, this involves the priestess lying down and allowing the priest to adore and to kiss her body, whilst masturbating himself to erection. Following the act of intercourse, post-coital thanks to the Lords of the Watchtowers are offered and the rest of the coven rejoin their high priestess and priest for a celebration. 

 

What, then, are we to make of this? 

 

Firstly, I must say that the ludicrously affected language used throughout the ceremony is neither convincing, nor poetic as intended. To describe the phallus, for example, as the miraculous spear or lifted lance, is absurd and betrays a level of humiliating coyness rather than a sense of mystery. But what it also reveals is just how fetishistic and masochistic modern pagan witchcraft is. The above scene between high priestess and priest is replicated in bedrooms and dungeons all over London between the Illicit Lover and his Mistress. 

 

Ronald Hutton rightly points out that Gerald Gardner gave great importance to flagellation and it soon becomes obvious to any reader of the Book of Shadows that the whip "represents the essential component of the rituals" [11]. Even the Farrar’s cannot deny this, although it is clearly something that makes them uncomfortable and, claiming to never use the whip themselves during their own rituals, they then seek to justify Gardner's usage: 

 

"Some witches hold that Gardner was too fond of ritual scourging and many of his detractors maintain that he had a psychologically unhealthy addiction to flagellation. Quite apart from the fact that such a […] gentle person as Gardner is most unlikely to have had such leanings, all this is based on a complete misunderstanding. The technique of not-too-tight binding and gentle monotonous scourging is not even a symbolic 'suffering to learn' as it is in the first and second degree rites; it is a deliberate and traditional method […] to 'gain the Sight' by influencing the blood circulation." [12]

 

Now, I don't deny the second part of this at all; scourging undoubtedly has a stimulating effect on the blood and I've no doubt that visions can be induced via a wide range of ascetic techniques involving discipline and punishment. Even Christian mystics and penitents know this. 

 

However, it's what is said in the first part of the above passage - and the manner in which it is said - that troubles me. The Farrar's seem to share the same virulent hatred of dissident sexuality and fear of queerness that is found in Dion Fortune's writings of the 1920s, where she described masturbation as an activity which undermines health and "condemned homosexuality, sadism, and masochism as perversions" [13] - branding the first of these in particular as an infectious mental disease. 

 

Obviously, Gardner was not a typical flagellant: "Nor are the operations involved in the rituals standard acts of sado-masochism" [14]. But Gardner does at least admit the erotic aspect of what he calls the virtue of bonds. He writes: "'It has been found that this practice doth often cause a fondness between aspirant and tutor, and it is a cause of better results if this be so … [15]'" 

 

They may not like it, but the Farrar's are reluctantly obliged to admit that the longest non-ritual passages in the Book of Shadows concern ritual bondage and scourging, all carefully explained in meticulous detail (a sure sign of the ardent fetishist). Nevertheless, they repeat their by now familiar line: 

 

"The purpose of the not-too-tight binding and the deliberately light scourging is plain: to help bring about [… an] expansion of consciousness […] or communion with the Goddess […] To distort this into an allegation that Gardner himself had an unhealthy urge to flagellation, whether sadistic or masochistic […] is nonsense." [16] 

 

Actually, it's this denial of the perverse aspect of sex magic which is the only nonsensical thing. To deny the sado-masochistic elements of ritual witchcraft is almost in itself perverse. But the Farrar's are not alone in making this denial and Doreen Valiente is ever-on-hand to support them in this: "'The reason we used the scourge is a very simple one - it works!'" she exclaims, before adding: "'Perhaps it has become associated with kinky sexual matters; but long before that it was part of ancient mystical and magical practices'" [17]. 

 

Personally, I cannot understand this determination to make an absolute distinction between the erotic and the sacred and it seems at odds with Wicca's own philosophy; doesn't the Goddess demand ecstasy both of the spirit and of the flesh? Even Starhawk, to her credit, declares the relationship between witches and the divine to be "erotic, sensual [and] carnal" [18] - even if she mistakenly suggests this to be a perfectly natural relationship, rather than a perverse one. 

 

The fact is, in all the great pagan cultures of the past, sex is esteemed as a sacrament and the orgy is the great religious festival and celebration par excellence. Prostitution, too, was a sacred institution; in the Babylonian temples of Ishtar, for example, young girls known as the ishtaritu devoted themselves to the service of their goddess by indulging in sexual congress with any male worshipper who wished for the blessing of the latter (and was able to make the necessary financial offering). Why then do the Farrar's find the inherent kinkiness of modern pagan witchcraft so difficult to accept? 

 

It's left to Ronald Hutton to admit that Gardner's rituals "possess certain idiosyncrasies which seem particularly suited to his own tastes and views" [19], and by this we assume he refers to Gardner's own sexual dispositions. I would argue that these are crucial to Wicca and should be accepted, affirmed, and developed as such; not shamefully glossed over, explained away, or rejected outright. Better Gardner and his love of naked women, sharp knives, and bondage than the moral fanatics who have come after him and turned witchcraft into a form of therapy, or just another liberal theology. 

 

Gardner - the pervert and religious fanatic who declares that to do magic, one must be in a state of frenzy - is an infinitely more interesting figure than either of the Farrar's. And the magic circle as a sacred space in which to consort with demons and dance naked round the bonfire, is a much more exciting prospect than the coven as self-help centre for the disappointed and disillusioned.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The post to which I refer is 'On the Whip and the Wand: A Response to Joanne Pearson' (17 Sept 2023): click here.

 

[2] Doreen Valiente, An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present, (Robert Hale, 1994), p. xi. 

 

[3] Ibid. 

 

[4] Janet and Stewart Farrar, The Witches' Bible, (Phoenix Publishing, 1996), p. 49. 

 

[5] Ibid. 

 

[6] Ibid. 

 

[7] Ibid., p. 50. 

 

[8] Doreen Valiente, quoted by Janet and Stewart Farrar in The Witches' Bible, p. 49. 

 

[9] Ibid. 

 

[10] Janet and Stewart Farrar, The Witches' Bible, p. 36. 

 

[11] Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon, (Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 234-35. 

 

[12] Janet and Stewart Farrar, The Witches' Bible, pp. 34-5. 

 

[13] Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon, p. 182. 

 

[14] Ibid., p. 235. 

 

[15] Gerald Gardner, quoted by Janet and Stewart Farrar in The Witches' Bible, p. 58. 

 

[16] Janet and Stewart Farrar, The Witches' Bible, p. 60. 

 

[17] Doreen Valiente, quoted by Janet and Stewart Farrar in The Witches' Bible, p. 60. 

 

[18] Miriam Simos (aka 'Starhawk), Dreaming the Dark, (Beacon Press, 1982), p. xii. 

 

[19] Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon, p. 239. 

 

 

Gymnosophy 3: Ye Shall be Naked in Your Rites (Redux)

The original poster for the fifth paper in the 

Treadwell's Sex/Magic series (2005)

I. Opening Remarks

For this third entry in the gymnosophy series of posts, I thought it would be nice to (re-)examine the role of nudity played within modern pagan witchcraft - and to do so by offering an edited version of a paper first given at London's finest occult bookstore, Treadwell's, way back in March 2005.*

The essential argument of the paper was that truth doesn't, in fact, love to go naked - despite what many witches insist on believing, and that there is nothing natural or authentic about nudity. Indeed, working skyclad, very often exposes more than the flesh; not least a lack of style which, like culture, is ultimately founded upon cloth.

Having said that, ritualised nudity as practiced within Wicca isn't simply a naive exhibitionism. It is, rather, a symbolic gesture rich in philosophical and political meaning, involving as it does questions to do with power, freedom, and the body. Whatever it might signify, taking your underwear off in a public space is never simply an innocent act.      

II. Five Good Reasons to Get Naked According to A Witches' Bible

The Wiccan penchant for performing ceremonies naked is often justified on the grounds that it's an ancient pagan practice. However, whilst it is certainly the case that ritual nudity does have a long tradition within magic, it should be noted that it was extremely rare within a religious context until it was assigned as a central feature of the witches' sabbat by Christian writers keen to imagine all manner of transgressive activity taking place within the woods at night.

According to Janet and Stewart Farrar, however, this doesn't really matter - "whether or not the widespread Wiccan habit of working skyclad is mainly a phenomenon of the twentieth century revival […] or the continuation of a secret custom […] is hardly important […] what matters is its validity for witches today" - and there are, they claim, at least five good reasons for working naked:

The first is that it challenges the metaphysical division between mind and body. In other words, by working naked and affirming the beauty and potency of the flesh, witches are making a quasi-deconstructive gesture.

Whilst I'd probably not describe this mind/body division as the cardinal sin of the patriarchal period,  I’d agree, as a Lawrentian, that it has been modern man's fate to be self-divided in this manner, so that the upper centres of consciousness dominate and exploit the lower centres of sensual and intuitive feeling. I'd also support any attempt to counter this which values nakedness as something positive and pristine and helps us overcome the bad conscience that has attached itself to the body and its forces and flows.

Secondly, according to the Farrar's, a naked body is far more sensitive and responsive than a clothed one and trying to work magic whilst dressed is "like trying to play the piano in gloves". There is, therefore, a sound practical reason to disrobe.

Unfortunately, never having attempted to raise psychic energy whilst naked - nor play the piano whilst wearing gloves - I cannot personally vouch for this. Neither can I confirm or deny their additional claim that "the naked body gives off pheromones far more quickly and efficiently than a clothed one, so it may well be that [...] a skyclad coven is exchanging unconscious information more effectively than a robed one", though this seems reasonable (if, that is, human pheromones actually exist).

The third reason for working skyclad, say the Farrar's, is because it allows one to be oneself.

This psychological claim leaves me profoundly depressed: to suggest that undressing is a "powerful gesture of image-shedding, a symbolic milestone on the road to self-realization" reveals naivety at almost every conceivable level. The Farrar's also assert that when naked we are able to see others for what they really are and to relate at a truer level; one that is entirely unmediated and closer to universal nature.

Of course, they are not alone in believing such nonsense. Indeed, the idea of nudity as a way to reach (and/or liberate) an essential self regarded as the origin of all truth and goodness, is common within Western culture. Our society is filled to bursting with intellectually challenged and emotionally disturbed people striving to achieve authenticity and to create identities in which their deepest selves are expressed.

The fourth reason for witches to get naked is a political consequence of the above. Subscribing as they do to the untenable hypothesis that modern man is sexually repressed and, therefore, in need of sexual liberation, it comes as no surprise to find the Farrar's insisting that people are fearful of nakedness in much the same way that the slave is fearful of throwing off their chains and embracing freedom.

However, whilst the moral prohibitions of Judeo-Christian culture have undoubtedly shaped our thinking and behaviour, it's not in the straightforward and simplistic - not to mention entirely negative - manner that the Farrar's imagine. And couldn't it be that our fear of the naked body is as much due to an aversion for corpses and animality, as it is a sign of our repression ...?

Finally, the Farrar's argue that nakedness is a way of overcoming personal vanity and teaches those who would otherwise be seduced by "the appeal of splendid robes" to realise that "psychic effectiveness comes from within". 

I have to admit, it's particularly disappointing to discover just how many witches seem to have a puritanical mistrust of fine clothes and expensive make-up. Do they not know the etymology of the term glamour? Historically, hasn't the witch always been a woman dressed in a striking fashion, with her pointed hat, full-length cloak, cat-skin gloves, and long-toed shoes? Hasn't she always understood the magic of colourful cosmetics and exotic perfumes?
 
So hostile are the Farrar's to the idea of wearing clothing during a ceremony that it is only with great reluctance that they make one small concession: menstruating women may, if they wish, keep their knickers on - providing they are of a plain cotton variety and nothing too frilly, colourful, or seductive. I'm afraid that as Nietzsche said of 19th-century feminism, we might say of 20th-century pagan witchcraft:

"There is an almost masculine stupidity in this movement [...] of which a real woman [...] would be ashamed from the very heart."

Today's witch should, in my opinion, revolt into style and dare to look splendid; not only delighting in her own appearance, but actively striking a blow against the drabness of the secular world with its blues and browns and sensible footwear. If she risks being thought a whore in her emerald-green stockings as she struts through town, better that than to be identified as just another office worker or shop assistant on her lunch break.

III. Closing Remarks

It's ironic, as Ronald Hutton points out, that in the ancient world pagan goddesses were most often associated with the city and with the arts and learning; i.e. with culture and society, not nature.

The goddess as Earth Mother is essentially a post-Romantic notion, created by poets like Swinburne and James Thomson. The latter, for example, published a verse in 1880 entitled 'The Naked Goddess' in which the heroine, Nature, comes to town only to be told by the local authorities to cover herself up immediately in either the habit of a nun, or the robes of a philosopher. Only the children appreciate her innocence and the beauty of her nakedness and, when she leaves the town, they return with her to the woods.

This is a nice story. But to make it into a kind of foundation myth, as neo-pagans seems to have done, is, I think, mistaken. Ultimately, whilst it may be magical to go wild in the country - swinging from the trees / naked in the breeze - so too is it a blessing to have a new pair of shoes and a warm place to shit.

Notes

* This and other papers from the series can be found in Vol. 1 of The Treadwell's Papers, by Stephen Alexander, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010).

Jane and Stewart Farrar, A Witches' Bible, (The Crowood Press, 2002), pp. 195-98.

Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, (Oxford University Press, 2001). 

Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1990), VII. 239. I have slightly modified the line quoted here. 


Readers interested in part one of this post on naked philosophers of the ancient world, should click here.

Readers interested in part two of this post on naked body culture in modern Germany, should click here. 

Readers interested in part four of this post on streakers, should click here.