Tantric Sex

Part 2: Sex Magic

Special thanks to Phill R. for contributing much needed info and expertise.

One fine evening, you happen to catch a documentary about a woman who sails the ocean alone. Can a sailboat really go that fast? You are mesmerized as her 40-foot sloop slices so swiftly and majestically through the waves. At times, the wind comes from the side, and her craft’s speed is able to exceed that of the wind itself. At other times, she pulls the boom in tight, and she’s able to do the impossible: to use the force of the wind to sail against the wind. There are no oars. There is no motor. How does she do it? It must be magic.

Inspired by the captain’s example, you go out the next day and buy your own sailboat. You cast off and hoist the sail. You stand at the helm, imitating that same masterful pose, as though you might command the very elements themselves. You mimic the captain’s movements as best you can, but alas, your sail hangs flaccidly in the breeze. Your boat drifts into the shallows and runs aground. You’re not going anywhere. That TV documentary must have been fake. The art of sailing faster than the wind is just pseudo-science, right?

What is mastery? In the above example, the mastery of sailing is beyond our reach because there is something that we are not seeing. Mere imitation of what’s visible isn’t enough. There’s something invisible going on, and we can’t seem to grasp it. Perhaps it’s just magic, and our sea captain is blessed with special powers beyond those of us ordinary humans.

Nonsense, of course. The captain’s skill mystifies us because, well, it has something to do with “sensing which way the wind blows.” In sailing, there are both visible and invisible forces at work. And since we are newbies, we are, as yet, only aware of one side of the curtain. True mastery involves somehow penetrating the curtain so we can experience the complete phenomenon of sailing all at once. That elusive sensation of flow, vibration, and power. All elements coming together, not just the visible ones.

That tingle you feel when your lover brushes up against you is the same tingle that’s woven into the fabric of nature herself.

In this article, we explore sex-magic, the use of sexual energy to produce miraculous effects in one’s life. These techniques suffer from the same kind of misunderstanding as our sailing debacle above. Many of us think that we can simply imitate the visible, outward forms of Tantra and get results. Results can indeed happen that way. After all, when we hoist the sail on our new boat, it is remotely possible, if we’re lucky, to catch the wind from just the right angle and get a few seconds of “Wow!” In this way, success with Tantric techniques is usually just “hit or miss” — that is, unless we have developed enough life skill to sense which way the figurative wind is blowing.

Whether we are dealing with the mastery of sailing or the mastery of sex, the key is the same. We must explore the mystery of penetration. Penetration of the curtain between the visible and the invisible. And the method for penetrating into that mystery, the method that actually works, is not what we have been led to believe.

Why is Tantra Secret?

This kind of gross misunderstanding is the primary reason why the techniques of Tantra are kept hidden from the public. Many people like to think that Tantric rituals are secret because they are dangerous. Or perhaps because they are too sacred for our profane eyes. Or perhaps Tantra is just evil and it conjures up horny demons from Hell. Once again, all mostly nonsense.

The secrecy in Tantra doesn’t exist to protect you. It exists to protect the reputation of Tantra itself. To protect the art and science of sexual energy from disrepute — because those who can’t penetrate the curtain of outward appearances can’t help but make Tantra into something silly and grotesque. Something truly demonic to be leered at in a celebrity tabloid.

We needn’t worry about protecting the reputation of Tantra here, since Forbidden Realms is not really concerned with promoting how way-cool it is. Here we simply unpack biohacking techniques that work, as well as give you the secret keys for how to use them. We should warn you, however, that the techniques you find in this article will not necessarily work the way you want them to. Some readers will get instant results by imitating the outward forms. Some will not. Like our sea captain, you must already have cultivated the maturity and life skill necessary to harness the invisible wind: the generative energy that rises up through your torso. You must be able to work with both the visible and invisible powers of the body. More importantly, you must learn the secret inner workings of your upper and lower body.

“Love is the law, love under will.”

“Magick is the art and science of causing change to occur in conformity with Will.”

“I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union. This is the creation of the world, that the pain of division is as nothing, and the joy of dissolution all.”

— Aleister Crowley

In this article, we present a brief lesson and then two simple sex-magic techniques. Make of these techniques what you will. If they’re hard to understand or if they get no results for you, you may not have ripened enough, spiritually, to use them. But don’t worry! Continued practice with the second technique can initiate you to new levels of life intuition and skill so that you gain the maturity and freedom that’s necessary to penetrate from the visible to the invisible. Spend a few months using the second technique and maybe, just maybe, the curtain of reality will begin to open.

Sex Magic

A quote from Aleister Crowley: “Love is the law, love under will.”

Many advocates of magic (or the New Age Law of Attraction) have heard this famous quote from Crowley, but not many know what it means. Basically, it’s his covert way of saying that sex magic is the fastest way to enlightenment. It’s also Crowley’s way of dangling the most profound secret of magic right before the eyes of the public, hiding it in plain sight.

Crowley believed that magic, in order to work, has to be conducted in accordance with one’s “higher self” or with one’s true purpose in life. Or as he put it, in accordance with one’s “true will.” This “true will” he represents as “Will” with a capital W to distinguish it from the lesser will of ordinary human desire. “Will” with a capital W means divine Will —which human beings experience in their connection to God, a connection that’s supposedly buried somewhere deep within each of us, waiting to be discovered. The true mystery of penetration.

And as you might notice in the quote above, Crowley refers to “will” with a small w, as though he is suggesting that something as profound as love should be subjected to the lesser will of human beings rather than the greater Will of God. This seems subtly blasphemous, as much of Crowley’s writing tends to be. And it also represents one of the most subtle and most important secrets in Crowley’s teachings, as we will see.

When Crowley discovered sex magic, it replaced almost every other form of occultism for him. He started using it for operations that ranged from exploring the “astral plane” to conjuring up extra cash for the rent. Crowley grew up in Victorian England, and it should come as no surprise that he garnered an unsavory reputation in the sexually repressed society of his time. He openly enjoyed and brazenly wrote about carnal pleasures of many kinds, and he believed that sexual energy was the powerhouse behind his magic.

He was essentially correct. Sexual energy, as we will see, is a manifestation of generative energy, of the very life energy that creates the universe. It’s a manifestation of the invisible wind we’ve been talking about. That tingle you feel when your lover brushes up against you is the same tingle that’s woven into the fabric of nature herself.

Sex and Love

You may already suspect that it’s important for us to be free of moral inhibitions if we’re going to practice sex magic. Civilization’s taboos present a bit of an obstacle because the typical adult’s view of sex, even in the 21st Century, is immature. Our ignorance is woven into — or rather tangled up inside — our physical anatomy, and it can take a great deal of effort to undo the knots that have been sewn into us. It’s important that we address how our dysfunctional moral programming operates, before we continue…

Like most of us, you are probably identified with a false self. A thought-generating entity that pretends to live inside your head. This thinking/worrying mind, which you think of as you, appears to give you control over your life (and, let’s be fair, to some extent it does). When you believe yourself to be this mental entity, you tend to view the world on its terms.

The brain sits over the rest of the body, so you tend to believe that there really is such a thing as “mind over matter.” Love is up above, and sex is down below. Love becomes a “mind” activity, and therefore it is pure and good…while sex becomes a “matter” activity — gritty, impure, and morally troublesome. As a result of this imaginary up-and-down, good-and-bad dichotomy, sex is often considered a burden, a dead weight dragging your pure mind into “down and dirty” places.

Tantra shows us that this mind-over-matter way of looking at the world is false. It is a hasty generalization. In truth, we’ve gotten it all backwards. It is not the body that is impure but rather the mind that contains the true contaminants. The total human organism is inherently innocent. Utterly pure. But it has become “contaminated” by compulsive thinking. By habitual judgments, pronouncements, and condemnations. By an incessant attempt to chop reality into manageable bits so that we can control it. In the process of managing life in this way, we inadvertently create, maintain, and cling to a “manager,” a control-tower identity that takes up residence somewhere inside the head. This inner manager doesn’t actually exist — and it can’t stand being reminded of that!

Once you become aware of this fake self, you can begin to question the fake dividing line it tries to impose between sex and love. You can also, more importantly, begin to question the fake dividing line that it has drawn between the upper and lower parts of your body.

Many responsible adults, who pride themselves on using thought to keep life under control, are fond of saying that sex and love are two different entities, and that when you grow up and get more civilized, you learn to maintain a healthy distinction between the two. But the truth of the matter might be just a little bit more disturbing than our overprotective parents would have us believe.

When we explore love more deeply, we find that the generative energy in sex is also present in our Platonic relationships. In other words, both sexual love and friendship love share the same energetic foundation. Even familial love shares the same energetic basis as sex. A mother’s love for her child is fed by the same life stream as her love for her boyfriend. If she cannot accept this — if it makes her anxious about “incest” or “pedophelia,” or if it makes her worry about whether she is “infantalizing” her boyfriend—then the thought-entity in her head is interfering with her ability to experience her life just as it is. In other words, if we have too many moral hang-ups, we are not yet mature enough to utilize sexual energy in magic. We are not yet ready to practice Tantra. We might need a year or two of therapy first.

Lately, Western culture has been getting more comfortable with blurring the line between sex and love — that is, if the commonly known experience of the “bromance” is any indication. There doesn’t seem to be any clear dividing line between a generally loving relationship and a specifically sexual one. This is an important clue about sexual energy — its ability to break through the “civilized” psychological knots that keep us from operating at full power.

Is Love “Good”?

Let’s not be naïve. By civilizations standards, love is by no means a well-behaved creature. It is not always positive, constructive, and redeeming like Oprah would have you believe.

Ask the Romans whether Jesus was a good guy. Love is not a civilizing force. It is a force of nature, and as such it is both a saving grace and a destroyer. Love lurks behind every human behavior, no matter how troubling that behavior may be. It transcends all boundaries, and often violates them. It inspires us to make new laws, even as it compels us to break them. It incites the purest of angels to fight and fall, and burn. The great saints of love throughout history have always been troublemakers.

On some level, we all know that sex is a gateway to the heart of love itself. In other words, to enlightenment. Hence our eternal quest for love, for its ecstasy and union — not to mention the inevitable jealousy, the violence, and the fear of loss that result when we “fall in love with love.” We want it so badly that it drives us mad. And throughout all our adventures, love remains an elusive mystery. We can’t seem to bend love to our will and make it “put out” for us.

Or can we?

The Psychology of Sex Magic

Another, more famous quote from Crowley: “Magick is the art and science of causing change to occur in conformity with Will.” Notice that the word “Will” in this quote contains the capital W.

The noted occultist Dion Fortune later added the word “consciousness” to Crowley’s definition, and so we end up with “Magic is the art and science of causing a change in consciousness to occur in conformity with Will.” Fortune does not appear to acknowledge the importance of the lower- and upper-case W in the word “will,” but her commentary is still important for our purposes here.

What does Fortune mean by “a change in consciousness”? Well, first we have to acknowledge that about 95 percent of human behavior is dictated by the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind—the deeper level of imagination that you’re not immediately aware of — is vastly more powerful than your conscious mind. Using the metaphor of a computer, you can view the subconscious mind as your operating system and the conscious mind as the visible stuff on the surface: the dialogue boxes, windows, and icons that you can move around on your desktop. These mental boxes (conceptualizations) don’t really exist the way we think they do. They cannot truly contain chunks of reality. They just look like containers to help give us a limited amount of control over life. A very limited amount.

The subconscious mind resides behind the computer screen. It has a lot of invisible programming stratified within it. Most of that conditioning does not even come from your own life experience but was programmed into you in your “past lives” — or rather in previous generations. From older, less evolved “computer models.” From your millions of years of ancestors. Because of the shadowy past in our human evolution, your subconscious mind contains many programs that you don’t know about. And some of them are terrifying.

These programs, unbeknownst to you, dictate your “paradigm.” They tell you what to fear. They tell you what to desire. They tell you what to believe. And because most of these programs are based on traumatic events that happened deep in humanity’s past, they are never really 100 percent appropriate for handling anything that’s happening in the present moment. Hence human suffering.

Why is the subconscious mind important to sex magic? Well, in order for you to produce any real change in accordance with your will (small w), you’ve got to be able to stimulate a change in your operating system. It’s not enough just to chant an incantation and wave a wand in the air. That simply amounts to moving around an icon on your desktop. Instead, you need to generate a powerful spark of energy, strong enough to penetrate deep into your operating system and change some of its embedded programming.

Whether we believe in a mechanical, computer-like mind; a psychological, archetypal mind; or a magical, animistic version of consciousness, the opportunity for us here is the same. Sex offers a means for generating that spark of electricity. Yes, that’s right. You can use sex to change your subconscious programming on a fundamental level. To reprogram who you are. Or as Dion Fortune suggests: to cause “a change in consciousness in conformity with Will.”

Three “Layers” of Consciousness

But there’s more. Your conscious mind can create changes in the subconscious, sure, and that is where a lot of really cool magic happens. However, beneath the subconscious, there lies a still deeper level of your being: the vast ocean of the collective unconscious. This is an underworld of ancient computer programs that govern not only you but everyone in the human race. It is none other than the shamanic spirit world. The underworld. Your “Internet,” as it were.

If this is so, then theoretically, you should be able to force a change not only in your own operating system but also in the operating system that governs the lives of other people. And of all life on planet Earth. You can use your body’s sexual energy to affect your greater reality.

The Three Layers Personified

As shown in the diagram above, we can see these different aspects of consciousness as layers. That’s simple enough. But there’s more to learn, because there are other useful ways of looking at them.

To Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune, your conscious mind is your will (small w), and the subconscious mind is the imagination. In the previous article, we explored the conscious and subconscious as two numinous “substances”: Sulphur and Mercury (and suddenly the most obscure alchemical literature began to make sense!). We also discussed the eternal love affair between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind — in the form of Romeo and Juliet, or as Jack and Rose in the movie Titanic. Or as Shiva and Shakti in the Tantric traditions of India.

Computer programs. Stratified layers. Will. Imagination. Sulphur and Mercury. Shiva and Shakti. As you can see, these are all metaphors, essentially. It’s important for us to develop our literary skill with symbol and metaphor if any kind of Tantra is going to work. In particular, we must develop the literary skill of personification. When we personify these aspects of the mind, the conscious mind is usually considered male and the sub-conscious mind female. How is this so?

Look at the Lovers card of the traditional Tarot deck, below. The man in the card represents the conscious mind. He looks toward the woman, who represents the subconscious. The woman is not as distracted by outward appearances as much as the man is. She is able to see beyond the veil of the material world, and she can see the angel. The angel, of course, represents the collective unconscious.

These associations exist because of our current human condition. As biological beings, we are the products of sex, and we come into this world through our mothers. To incarnate literally means “to become meat,” and this literally happens to us through the agency of a woman’s body. Therefore, a woman’s body appears to be our gateway into this world. She is the doorway from the inner spirit world to the outer human world.

A woman’s vagina, therefore, becomes a sacred, magical symbol. It appears to be our gateway to and from the collective unconscious. And therefore, the mystery of penetration is simple, right? The conscious mind must penetrate into the subconscious, and penetrate deeply enough, to re-establish its lost connection to God. Correct?

Wrong. That is another hasty generalization. The true mystery of penetration is not so obvious. It is not the woman in the card who needs to be penetrated.

You let me violate you You let me desecrate you You let me penetrate you You let me complicate you….

I wanna fuck you like an animal I wanna feel you from the inside I wanna fuck you like an animal My whole existence is flawed You get me closer to God

— from “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails

Because of the symbolic association between the vagina and a gateway to God, mystics often conclude that women are inherently more spiritual than men because they are only one step removed from the divine. Whereas men are two steps removed, as it were. And so, men are not properly equipped to serve as their own gateways to the divine. Right?

More nonsense, of course. Do not take the language of magic symbols literally. A symbolic relationship is not necessarily a literal one. We would be fools indeed to believe that God is waiving at us from inside a woman’s vagina. The gateway between human consciousness and the collective unconscious is accessible everywhere in space. The hidden meaning of the Tarot card has to do with layers of consciousness, not with actual men and women and their body parts.

This is important in Tantra because it means that you don’t necessarily need to have an actual sex partner to practice sex magic. A man does not necessarily need to find a woman, and a woman does not necessarily need to find a man. It is also good news for gay couples. The true symbolism of “male” and “female” here shows us that there is a special chemistry between the conscious and subconscious mind, not so much between a literal man and a literal woman. Apparently, the conscious mind can penetrate the depths of the subconscious and stir up change.

I should probably repeat that. The conscious mind can penetrate the depths of the subconscious and stir up change. This is the catalyst of magic. However, it does not represent the true mystery of penetration. It’s only a precursor to the real thing.

In fact, Crowley dispenses with the necessity of the male/female symbolism altogether when he says that the Lovers card in the Tarot should be called “The Brothers.” The astrological correspondence of this Tarot card is Gemini — from the Latin geminos which means “twins.” The constellation of Gemini represents two men: Castor and Pollux. These guys are both born of the same mother, Leda. However, Leda (scandal of scandals!) has been impregnated by two different men. Her son Castor is the son of King Tyndareus, and her son Pollux is the son of the god Zeus. One of the twins is therefore mortal and the other is immortal. Crowley associates the conscious mind with Castor (the mortal) and subconscious mind with Pollux (the immortal).

As you may begin to suspect, personifying the levels of your consciousness does not necessarily require a male/female dynamic. Any scenario that produces sexual arousal will work. Personification of the conscious and subconscious levels of your mind gives you the means for encouraging chemistry between them. It generates that much-needed spark of energy necessary for creating deep and lasting change.

Head, Heart, and Gut

The conscious and subconscious minds can also be related to parts of your body. The conscious mind is often said to reside in your head, and not surprisingly, the subconscious mind is believed to lurk down below, in the gut. The heart is considered the place where these two minds meet (and hopefully harmonize).

These physical compartments of consciousness are not literally real, of course, but nevertheless, part of being human involves buying into the schematic of the head, heart, and gut. These associations get programmed into us from life experience, and each locus of identity appears to have its own character. Most modern adults identify exclusively with the head, but we still feel the powerful influences of the heart and gut in our decision-making.

Is all this stuff true? What does your gut tell you?

How to Become Unenlightened

How have these three imaginary compartments become real for us? It’s a long story. Over 3 billion years long. If you have children, pay special attention here. You will gain insight into how your children develop psychologically, as well as learn why sex makes humans suffer so much as they enter adulthood.

When the simplest biological creature first appeared on planet Earth, all it did was feed. It was essentially a single-celled organism, and it just floated around and absorbed whatever nutrients it happened to bump into. In such a state, unconcerned about chasing after food or running away from predators, it lived an untroubled existence.

As life evolved, however, this organism became sensitive to its own survival needs. It grew larger, and it developed a nervous system. Its nervous system formed a spinal column. The creature started to develop a sense of self-concern. It began to take care of its “self” and defend its “self.” It began to behave as though it was an autonomous, self-contained universe unto itself. This new sense of selfhood contracted. It shrank inwards and pretended to hide somewhere inside the organism’s body, in some kind of imaginary central command position.

The locus of this imaginary self appeared first in the gut, and as the eons passed, it migrated “upwards” from gut to heart to brain. A highly developed brain at the upper end of the spinal column tends to produce a strong, imaginary sense of separation from the gut. Notice how this creation of a spinal chord and brain also creates a “shaft” or a “tunnel”— and as such, it becomes subtly associated with an upright penis. Or with a vagina. Take your pick. The association of the human torso with a shaft of power offers an important clue to the true mystery of penetration in Tantra.

Today, our sense of separation from the gut is highly pronounced, and it is pretty much synonymous with our sense of separation from the entire universe. We have become “stuck up,” as it were. “Full of ourselves.” “Headstrong.” The human brain is so highly developed that it can produce a near-constant experience of an autonomous, surface-world personality “sitting on top of the world.” This is your conscious mind.

But of course, something went terribly wrong. This supposedly “conscious mind” isn’t really very conscious. It doesn’t seem to remember how it truly evolved into being. In most humans, it has forgotten that its sensation of selfhood is a mere evolutionary mechanism. An illusion.

In an unenlightened being, then, this supposedly conscious mind becomes a “dickhead.” It takes itself way too seriously. It clings fearfully to an illusory surface-world existence somewhere inside the upper body. This illusory entity is known as the ego. The fake self. The ego truly believes itself to be located in some kind of compartment, somewhere tucked away in space and time. It usually believes it occupies a seat of power inside the head, but it is capable of believing itself to reside just about anywhere.

Because of the imaginary head/heart/gut schematic that’s been conditioned into us over countless eons, something interesting happens to human beings as they develop from infant to adolescent to adult.

People are often awestruck by the vibrant glow and sense of peace that surrounds an infant. That’s because the energy of an infant’s awareness is suffused and free-flowing, almost seamlessly, throughout its entire body. A baby is one with the universe, as it were. But that oneness doesn’t last very long.

As the child develops, its psychic energy begins to specialize and compartmentalize. A sense of identity appears, and this identity begins to migrate up the spine. More and more of the baby’s psychic energy gets siphoned off into an effort to create a persona — which starts to occupy the upper body. Later in life, when puberty strikes, sexual energy intensifies down below in the abdomen, mainly due to the high concentration of mitochondria in the sex organs. This creates an uncomfortable sense of duality between the mind “above” and the body “below.”

As a result of this overall maturation process, young adults are often confused. They suffer intensely as they attempt to come to terms with the conflict between the head and the gut. They feel divided against themselves. The developing ego in the head struggles to gain control over the raging energies of sex in the abdomen. In the process, the ego tends to draw away more and more energy, creating habitual tensions and blockages that help it maintain its illusion of a control tower. This imaginary separation of mind from body, when we buy into it, intensifies our sense of separation from the entire world. Our unenlightened state. It also forms the chakras, which are essentially blockages — or knots — that help the ego maintain its make-believe position of dominance.

To maintain its futile existence, the ego often ties up and consumes so much of our psychic energy that we can become weak and vulnerable to illnesses. The supposed miracles of spiritual healing that people sometimes experience are simply the result of the ego momentarily relaxing and reducing its energy demands, freeing up enough energy to restore vitality to the whole body.

Sometimes the grip of the ego is so strong, however, and the illness so bad, that the ego effectively cuts off its own energy supply. It essentially collapses. Accidentally destroys itself. When this happens — and if the person survives the illness — the energy of the total organism once again floods the body like it did in infancy. This strange self-destruction of the ego appears to be a natural, spontaneous event, but it rarely occurs. When it does occur, it produces a shaman.

Whether one is a shaman or just an ordinary adult tied in knots, the energy of the body flows up from the abdomen to feed the brain. This rising energy is none other than the invisible wind that we’ve been talking about. In typical adults, this upward-flowing wind energy is resisted by the ego.

The human brain is highly evolved, and it uses — as well as generates — an enormous amount of energy. But the ego, in its attempt to maintain an imaginary stronghold, can block the rising energy and keep the brain from completely waking up. It even fantasizes that the sexual energy down below is female and that she is teeming with scary monsters — which is somewhat true, considering the evolutionary trauma that’s embedded in our subconscious programming…from countless eons of predators and other natural calamities. It should come as no surprise that in mythology, goddesses are notorious for giving birth to monsters.

In an enlightened being, the monsters have been set free, and they no longer exist. The monster-maker, the ego, has completely dissolved, and the fear is gone. The body’s energy has become uniform once again. This produces a perpetual state of joy and ease. Not to mention power! The body’s energy is permitted to flow upward smoothly, unimpeded, to the top of the head. The entire brain is permitted to wake up. This awakens greater intelligence and wisdom, as well as unusual abilities. The upward energy flow is sometimes so strong that we can sense it as a halo, a nimbus of light that appears to surround the head of an enlightened being.

How to Become Enlightened

As you can see, the ego is a false sense of self that keeps the full power of the brain and body from realizing itself. It blocks the energy and diverts it into habitual knots of tension and contraction. The ego is not truly your conscious mind. It only pretends to be. It is the impostor. It is not your Will with a capital W. It is your will with a small w.

Since your ego’s grip is not truly conscious, it tends to elude your conscious control, and its interference in your potential enlightenment is quite difficult to undo. In fact, it is quite common for a spiritual practice to become hijacked by the ego, as the ego simply uses spiritual concepts to maintain its belief in “mind over matter.” Most people’s “spiritual” efforts, therefore, tend to yield no results because most of us are too heavily identified with the ego to let go and wake up. The ego usually needs to be highly distressed, totally fed up with itself, in order for a true spiritual awakening to occur.

There is some good news about this predicament. We can use Tantric techniques to stimulate the energy of the body’s imaginary head/heart/gut compartments. Principally, the energy of the libido, which resides in the abdomen, is considered feminine, and it can be stimulated to rise up forcefully and overwhelm the masculine ego, momentarily wiping it out. When the ego dissolves, the energy of one’s total organism becomes like that of an infant again.

This is why the feminine energy in Eastern Tantra is sometimes depicted not as Shakti but as the goddess Kali, who cuts off the heads of her unworthy male lovers. This horrific image of decapitation is simply a symbolic representation of the destruction of the ego.

This is also why the personification of the conscious and subconscious minds becomes so important. In Indian Tantra, the conscious and subconscious minds are personified as male Shiva and female Shakti. The goal of the Tantric adept, then, is to be an excellent male lover. But not necessarily with a literal woman. He learns how to arouse the feminine Shakti entity that resides in his own abdomen. This is similar to how a man skillfully coaxes a woman to climax, but it happens within his own body. His goal is to produce an arousal so strong that it rises up through the central axis of his body and annihilates his ego. This is the true mystery of penetration.

“In Tantra, it’s not the man who enters the woman but the woman who enters the man.” — Lama Thubten Yeshe”

This annihilation removes the fake self so that Shakti can rise up to join her true love, Shiva, who is said to reside above the head (in the collective unconscious). In this schematic, your ego is an evil overlord who is holding Shakti in a dungeon down below. But this overlord can be rehabilitated. He can learn how to dissolve himself into Shiva. He can sacrifice himself. He can learn how to become a good lover, producing such an ecstasy in his partner, and in himself, that the energy ends up destroying him, transforming him into Shiva.

This process is the same for women. The energy in the abdomen is not literally female. It is simply passive. Sleeping. In contrast, the energy of Shiva up above need not be visualized as male, but simply as the active sex partner. These two lovers can be visualized in any form: male/female, male/male, female/female, or even as self/self.

And finally we come to the revelation of Crowley’s secret: the capital W versus the lower-case w. The true Will and the lesser will. Crowley’s principle of “love under will” acknowledges that the ego is currently in control of Shakti—but also that the ego is capable of transformation. Transfiguration. He can learn the proper techniques of love. How to properly arouse and penetrate his own subconscious mind. And in response, the subconscious sends a stream of power capable of penetrating him. As he gets better and better at doing this, the energy that he raises gradually dissolves him. Destroys him. Loosens his tyrannical grip on life. The lesser will disappears and dissolves into the greater will. His skillful techniques awaken the sleeping princess down below, and the princess responds to the true love of his affections by transforming him from an ugly frog to a handsome prince.

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn Is just to love and be loved in return” — Eden Ahbez

In this new, transformed state of being, sex magic is no longer necessary. He is now a fully formed adept. His lesser will has dissolved, and he now lives under the presidency of his greater Will. Magic is no longer something he does. Magic is something he is, and magic becomes truly, for the first time, the art and science of change in conformity with Will. Capital W.

Following, we present one lesser technique of sex magic and one greater one: (1) autoerotic congress and (2) consort practice. The first technique is a simple exercise in practical magic. Consort practice, on the other hand, is another matter entirely. It’s an enlightenment practice. Very intense. Some frightening experiences may result, especially if you practice it daily. Fear is actually okay, as some fear of letting go is inevitable. However, if technique #2 produces an overwhelming fear response verging upon panic, then discontinue it.

This is your life. As with any of the exercises found in Forbidden Realms, you must take complete responsibility for the results you get. Otherwise, do not do them at all.

1. Autoerotic Congress

This technique is the simplest and easiest to arrange. It relies on your tendency to imprint on your sex partner. Men and women often become obsessed with each other after making love. This is apparently an evolutionary mechanism. “Falling in love” after having sex offers evolutionary advantages because a couple that stays together after sex will, possibly, offer better care and protection for offspring. This tendency of people to imprint on each other can also be applied to new life situations. You can not only use sex to grow fond of your lover, but you can also use it to become fond of a new behavior or a new lifestyle.

This technique primarily involves masturbation and visualization. When you desire a change in your life situation, do the following:

Step 1: Abstinence

Do not engage in any sexual activity for at least two days. This means no sex and no masturbation. When it comes to social gatherings, the Internet, television, and other media, simply ignore any opportunities for titillation. Do something else.

Step 2: Construct a sigil.

Visualize yourself in the life situation that you desire. How does it look, feel, sound, smell, and so on? Begin doing free-form sketches of yourself immersed in that life situation. Do not draw yourself needing, seeking, achieving, or receiving that situation. Draw it as though it is simply your natural, already-existent state of pure being. When you get a sketch you like, extract elements from it to produce a super-basic line drawing. Simplify the line-drawing elements into an abstract, black-ink sigil that is capable of triggering the sensation of your desired life situation. Make sure the black ink is very bold and that it stands out starkly from the white background. Here’s an example:

Step 3: Prepare the setting.

Secure a dark, quiet room where no daylight or artificial light can enter. Use firelight or candle-light only. Either sit in a chair or lie back on a bed with a bath towel underneath you.

Step 4: Mindset

Gaze fixedly at your prepared sigil, and begin the following version of the four-fold breath. Breathe in through the nose for 4 seconds, breathe out through the mouth for 8 seconds, and then hold the breath (let the lungs hang empty) for 8 seconds. To breathe out, you can make a “Ssss…” sound or simply purse the lips to restrict airflow slightly. As you continue, you may want to extend the breath-hold by further units of four: to 12, 16, 20, and so on. The point is to breathe in only when you get the slight urge to breathe. This will keep you from hyperventilating. Do not look away from the sigil, not even for a second. It will begin to blur, or the black and the white will begin to change places. Eventually, after 10 minutes or more, you will enter a hypnotic state in which you and the sigil begin to merge. Once this happens, you can simply close your eyes.

Step 5: Stimulation

From the darkness behind your eyelids, you will be able to see a negative image of your sigil. See your fantasy lover emerge through the sigil , as though it’s a doorway. Do not use the image of someone you know personally. A celebrity or porn star is fine. Some people are extremely “autoerotic” and get off by visualizing their own bodies. That’s fine too. Notice that this fantasy lover has your sigil on his or her body — as a tattoo or as a talisman of some kind. Begin your imagined foreplay with the image and begin masturbating, keeping the eyes closed.

Step 6: Incorporate the life situation.

As the lovemaking escalates, incorporate elements of the desired life situation into your imaginal setting. For example, you could imagine you and your lover surrounded by stacks of money, opulence, and other signs of wealth.

Step 7: Climax into your new reality.

When you are just about to climax plunge your self into your new life situation completely as you orgasm. Disappear into that scenario completely. Alternately, you can simply plunge into the sigil itself. Merge with it. Become one with it. It may help to use a word or phrase to help you plunge in: “I am!” or “All mine!” might work for you. Or even a simple “Yes!” to your new life situation. The point is to see it as though all of it is already yours. As though it has always been yours.

2. Consort practice

Imagine you are a young man in Tibet, 100 years ago. Your family has sent you to be a monk in a chilly monastery high up in the mountains. You have been studying and practicing an austere form of Buddhism under the guidance of a strict master. Daily discipline has become your life.

For three years now you’ve been permitted very little sleep. At 4 a.m. every morning you must wake to a bell and spend three hours in meditation. At dusk, you must likewise do the same. During the day, there’s nothing but study and chores. The high altitude air is thin, icy, and dry. It’s a hard life. To top it off, you are now 17 years old, your hormones are raging, and you are expected to be celibate for the rest of your life.

One morning, as a chilly Himalayan breeze wafts through the meditation hall, you are sitting upright on your meditation mat, hovering in and out of half-sleep. Your body shudders involuntarily — but not because of the cold. You’re thinking of the young woman you saw making offerings yesterday. The curve of her thigh was evident beneath her gown. You settle into your meditation posture and attempt to resume one-pointed concentration, but the image of the girl comes back. She draws near and turns round and round, displaying herself. She unbinds her long dark hair and draws herself up against your chest. You can smell the sandalwood and jasmine volatilized by the heat of her body. Such intimacy! How are such feelings possible!

From your Buddhist studies, you know you are being tempted into a dualistic state of fear and desire, and that such a state will only serve to perpetuate human suffering. You know you should turn away from this apparition, as your master has instructed. But the image of the girl persists. She bares her breasts and presses them against you. Are you awake, or are you asleep? You enter a trance, hovering back and forth between the meditation and the lovemaking, between single-minded absorption and the dualistic fever of lust.

Suddenly, pins and needles begin dancing on your skin, rising up your body. There is a rushing, roaring sound. It must be an avalanche! It’s going to destroy the monastery! But wait. This avalanche is rushing upward from below. What? It engulfs you and obliterates you in a sea of white. Your awareness expands, leaping over all horizons. There is a fantastic light, and no boundary to who and what you are.

But the girl, she is still there! Pulsating against you like an ocean, and the energy continues to rise. As she straddles you, so do you straddle two different worlds: the world of absolute oneness and the world of this intimate, tremulous ecstasy. You have become both dual and non-dual at the same time. Both the movement and the stillness. Samsara and Nirvana locked in an intimate embrace. A wheel of fire with no boundaries, endlessly pouring through itself, discovering itself, loving itself, fulfilling itself. And this is what you have always been, though you had not the presence of mind to see it. The ecstasy is beyond belief. Your master never told you about this!

This is essentially a story about how young, horny Buddhist monks were so easily able to discover and rediscover sexual forms of Tantra, even as they were forced to live their austere, celibate lives. From this kind of experience, a new kind of meditation emerged. The practice of visualizing sex with a lover while you meditate is called karmamudra or “consort practice.”

When you look at illustrations of karmamudra, it’s pretty obvious that what’s being depicted is a visualization technique, not an actual sexual tryst. The female consort often looks like a tiny accessory, only present in the scene to help the male aspirant raise his energy. She’s not a real woman but merely a conjured spirit. Most Tantric practitioners were, in fact, celibate males.

Consort practice can be done with two actual partners, but you can easily see how it would be more conveniently done alone, giving the practitioner more control over his or her own fantasies and arousal mechanisms. Women can do it too, of course, and they usually imagine themselves sitting in the lap of their conjured lover.

Step 1: Abstain from sex.

This provision is not absolutely necessary, especially if you are young, but karmamudra practice is most powerful when you keep all sexual activity to a minimum. To keep those hormones raging.

Step 2: Pick the best time.

As in the above example, a man experiences the greatest arousal before sunrise. A woman tends to become the most aroused after sunset, before bed.

If you have already synchronized your body to the cycle of the sun, it is likely that you go to bed early and wake up before sunrise. This is how humans used to sleep before the advent of electric light. Furthermore, they would sleep in two shifts of about three or four hours each. This means they would often wake up in the middle of the night to tend to their campfires, to make love, or to practice magic. This midnight hour — or “witching hour” — is the best time for both men and women to engage in consort practice. In reality, the witching hour tends to happen between 1 and 3 a.m., not 12 a.m. on the dot.

Step 3: Establish atmosphere.

For one hour, keep your eyes shielded from blue light, such as the electric lighting in your home or your television screens and smartphone displays. Firelight and candlelight are best. The easiest way to stay clear of this light pollution is to wear blue-blocking glasses at night.

Light candles and incense. Why is firelight so romantic? Simple. It stimulates a deep archetypal memory of the “witching hour,” a time when our prehistoric ancestors had little else to do but stoke the fire, have sex, and practice magic.

Step 4: The posture of pure awareness

See Article #13 in Forbidden Realms for instructions. Your body can be visualized as a standing stone or as an erect phallus. Alternately, a woman can picture herself completely filled with an enormous glowing phallus from groin to crown.

Step 5: Love under will

Do one round of the Wim Hof method. Include 60 or more breaths of hyperventilation. See Article #10 for this method.

While you are holding the breath out, visualize your ideal lover approaching you, loosening clothing. Teasing you.

As you hold the breath in, visualize the fountain of light from Forbidden Realms Article #13. This fountain can be visualized as semen rising up through the center of the body, as though the whole body is a penis, pumping semen into the sky — or as though the semen is spurting up through a central channel of the body, out through the top of the head. The fountain of light visualization will eventually produce the sensation of the invisible wind. The invisible wind is the power of love that you are skillfully stimulating: “love under will.”

Do several more rounds of the Wim Hof method. Increase the number of breaths each time, and increase the amount of time the breath is held out (If you use a digital timer, make sure you use blue-blocking glasses to protect your eyes from blue light). During each breath-hold out, escalate and intensify the love making scenario in your imagination. During each breath-hold in, visualize the fountain of light. Maintain your upright posture, but it is acceptable to rock the pelvis. Women may want to adopt the half-lotus posture, and place the heel of one foot up against the vagina.

Continue alternating between the love-making scenario and the fountain of light until your meditation time is done. About 20 minutes per day is sufficient. If your muscles begin to twitch or cramp, stop the Wim Hof method and simply meditate as the fountain of light for the rest of your time.

The effects of consort practice may be overwhelming, or they may not be very pronounced during the actual exercise. It depends on your innate talent for magic (and improvement over time is possible). Establishing the right time of day and the right setting, combined with fairly rigorous sexual abstinence, can produce the most powerful results. And as you can see, consort practice requires imagination. Therefore, as part of your efforts to keep sexual activity to a minimum in daily life, it would be best to avoid using pornography for masturbation. Develop imagination instead. Consider this a challenge.

The true benefit of karmamudra comes from regular practice. It can bring about the infamous “letting go attack” described in Forbidden Realms Article #13. A “letting go attack” usually happens when you least expect it, usually as you hover between wakefulness and sleep. It’s an opportunity to experience enlightenment. Such moments of release are not usually possible to produce at will — unless you are a highly experienced Tantric adept.

Sexual tantra shows us something important about enlightenment: that unity with God might be supremely peaceful but that such a unity is not yet the most profound mystical experience possible. Such peace is not necessarily a state of divine ecstasy. The ecstasy comes when you combine the peace of stillness with the motions and frictions of daily life. When you combine Nirvana and Samsara. It’s a kind of sexual chemistry established between the visible and the invisible. Between light and darkness. Sound and silence. This combination we can naturally experience as a kind of penetration, but ultimately, it’s not the visible that penetrates into the invisible. It’s rather the other way around.

And so, this strange mystery of the human body in the form of a phallus comprises for us the ultimate secret — in the form of a mystical “dirty joke”: that the universe is using you to touch itself, to probe itself, and to pleasure itself. That you are a cosmic nerve ending designed for one thing: pleasure. Your very existence, right here and now, is an act of penetration. When you recognize this, you can not only see God within everything but also enjoy the circumstances embracing everything. The very act of touching the world is a divine thrust of self-pleasure. And the question is…. How good a lover are you?

“We aren’t just a way for the universe to know itself. We are a way for the universe to give itself pleasure.” — Greta Christina

In the Western mystery traditions, this phallic power that’s streaming through your body is also seen as coursing through everything in existence. It is known as LVX or “light in extension.” In Egyptian mysteries, it was known as the Osiris current or the Euraus serpent. In the Shaiva Tantra tradition, it’s called the divine tremor, or spanda. The true mystery of penetration.

Awareness of the invisible wind energies in your body may get you to start wondering where these energies come from. They seem to be universally present in nature: in the air, water, and sunlight. These energies even rise up from the Earth. You can sometimes feel them after morning dew has settled on the grass and you go for a walk, barefoot.

This energy is actually static electricity, and you not only absorb it from your environment, but you also generate it inside your body. Your body, in fact, acts like a kind of living battery. The better this battery functions, the better you are able to maintain a charge of sexual energy, as well as an overall good feeling of vitality. In the next article, we will explore the body as a living battery.

Stay tuned!