Review: Vere Chappell, Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic: The Essential Ida Craddock, San Francisco, Red Wheel/Weiser, 2010, ISBN: 9781578634767

by Gordan Djurdjevic

Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic: The Essential Ida Craddock (San Francisco: Red Wheel/Weiser, 2010) by Vere Chappell is a welcome contribution to a growing body of literature related to Craddock (1857–1902). After a long period of neglect, the life and writings of this amazing woman are finally emerging from obscurity. The interested reader may also wish to take a look at Craddock’s Lunar and Sex Worship, edited by Vere Chappel (York Beach: Teitan Press, 2010) and Leigh Eric Schmidt’s Heaven’s Bride: The Unprintable Life of Ida C. Craddock, American Mystic, Scholar, Sexologist, Martyr, and Madwoman (New York: Basic Books, 2010). The story is tragic, as Craddock was to take her own life rather than face imprisonment in a jail or a mental asylum. Craddock’s publications and activities, aimed to enlighten in particular young marital couples about healthy sexual practices, together with her claim that she had an angelic husband with whom she had regular intercourse, cast over her a suspicion of being both immoral and mentally ill. For an unmarried woman to talk openly about the pleasures of sexual life was extremely controversial within the social context of late 19th century America, and the assertion that the sexual impulse has a religious dimension at its core was considered blasphemous to say the least.

Ida Craddock died for her beliefs as a martyr in the struggle for sexual enlightenment, women’s liberation, and freedom of speech, while the esoteric and occult aspects of her intellectual legacy are equally important. Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic provides a well-informed overview of the major aspects of Craddock’s life and work.

The book itself is structured in such a way that it reads both as a biography and anthology of Craddock’s writings. Chappell has selected representative texts in a chronological manner, and each selection is introduced by his exposition, which tells the story of Craddock’s life and provides social and intellectual context to the selections. Chappell’s writing is erudite and clear and he provides numerous and helpful references to people, organizations, and ideas that formed the background of Craddock’s life and work. Despite his obvious sympathy towards the subject of his book, Chappell is careful and objective enough to point out a certain amount of paradox and – from a contemporary point of view – inconsistency in Craddock’s outlook. Although very much liberated in many respects, Craddock shared some of the prejudices of her time and place, insisting for example on the necessity of marital commitment as a context of sexual activity and rejecting not only homosexual but also extra-vaginal intercourse. O tempora, o mores!

The most interesting aspect of Craddock’s work arguably relates to her exploration of the esoteric aspects of sex, and in particular to her controversial claim of the possibility of erotic liaisons between humans and spiritual beings. This subject is most prominently treated in her text “Heavenly Bridegrooms,” included in toto in this book (pp. 33-140). “Heavenly Bridegrooms” is known, among other things, for having received a glowing review by Aleister Crowley in The Equinox, vol. III, no. 1 (Detroit, 1919). The contentious nature of this issue has led some skeptics, such as Craddock’s first biographer Theodore Schroeder, to claim that the story of an ‘angelic husband’ was Ida’s blind for a clandestine human lover. The elaborate treatment of the subject matter, however, leaves no doubt that Craddock was serious in her assertion. She argues that the practice is both historically and geographically widespread and draws attention to the fact that, among other things, the birth of Christ was occasioned by a similar encounter between an ‘heavenly bridegroom’ and an earthly bride, and she points out that similar stories are told about the birth of Buddha, Lao Tzu, Osiris, Pythagoras, Plato, Emperor Augustus, Genghis Khan, Merlin, and many other less known personalities. In her interpretation, the ultimate goal of such liaisons lies in the experience of spiritual union, or a union with God. She concludes her work with the statement: “In my own case, Paradise – the Kingdom of Heaven – has come into my life, and it has come through my heavenly bridegroom” (p. 137).

It is obvious from her writings that Craddock maintained that it was mostly women who had angelic partners and not the other way around. She attributed this to a greater moral purity of woman. Interestingly enough, she mentions one exception to this rule and this concerns people of India, “where the attempt to obtain a spirit wife is said to be of common occurrence” (p. 74). Craddock explains this by the fact that Indian people are “a nation singularly gentle and peaceable in disposition, unaccustomed to drunkenness until taught it by outside people” (ibid.). These statements call for some comments. Firstly, it is evident that Craddock draws a strong parallel between ethical disposition and occult activities. It could be argued that what she proposes as a moral requirement for a spiritual practice represents an analogy with the yama and niyama of classical Yoga. This ethical requirement singles out Craddock both from her own detractors and, arguably, from many contemporary post-modern practitioners who often reject any mutual correlation between ethical standards and magical practice. (Crowley is often misunderstood in this regard, but in reinterpreting yama and niyama as “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” – for which, see “Mysticism” in Liber IV – he was not arguing that morality is unimportant; the argument was that morality is not an objective standard of behaviour and that it must be tied to a personal ethos based on the nature of one’s Will.) And secondly, an interesting and important comparative work could and should be done by correlating Craddock’s ideas with the yogic/tantric practice of offering one’s blood and/or sexual fluids to a host of yoginis, understood as spiritual entities who provide yogis with magical powers. This latter subject is treated extensively and eruditely in David Gordon White’s book The Kiss of the Yogini (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).

More than a full century stands between us and the time of Ida Craddock’s life and work. We don’t share some of her views. But it is worth remembering that she was martyred for some ideas and attitudes which we take as self-evident. Her memory deserves to be kept alive. Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic is a worthy contribution in this regard and it is highly recommended.