The Magick of Sex Transmutation

Historical occultism whispers a secret: sexual desire is the master key to magick

Google Gemini AI image. Prompt terms: “sex transmutation, occult, magick.”

My search has led me to this truth: sexuality is the vital force behind most successful magick.

The harnessing of sexual desire—referenced historically in obfuscatory if elegant language—unites the Old World wizard to the contemporary occultist. Within magick, or causative ritual, the sexual urge, properly used, moves you toward a desired end.

For clarity, I adopt Aleister Crowley’s (1875-1947) spelling of magick, derived from early modern English, to distinguish occult working from stagecraft. The term magick itself is rooted in the Greek-Persian magus, meaning hereditary priest.

Within occult history, terms abound that whisper what I describe. Since I consider historical understanding critical to magickal working, I open with some background—followed by the simplest application I know.

Before I look to the past—and if you are not fascinated with thought history and want only the “goodies,” you are in the wrong place—I venture a clarification. There appears in the method I describe a quality of attainment or acquisitiveness, if I use the term that is toughest on me, as I believe every seeker should. I draw no distinctions in my search between higher and lower iterations of magick. I would not know where to draw such demarcations, as another’s needs or wishes may be decipherable only to self. In any case, in my system no one need qualify aims. At this stage of my search, I consider the purpose of life, and of exploring greater circles of life, self-expression, broadly defined.

“Astral Light”

Pioneering occult revivalist Eliphas Lévi (1810-1875), the nom de mystique of Alphonse-Louis Constant, posited existence of “astral light” as the vital energy behind magickal operations. This comports with near-contemporaneous references to invisible or vital forces such as Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s (1803–1873) “Vril” in his liked-­titled 1871 novel, Vril: The Power of the Coming Race; occult healer Franz Anton Mesmer’s “animal magnetism;” Aleister Crowley’s “True Will;” Austin Osman Spare’s “Kia;” and, most significantly, Arthur Schopenhauer’s view of imagination in his 1836 On Will in Nature*: “Man had not learnt to direct the light of speculative thought towards the mysterious depths of his own inner self” (emphasis mine).

In referencing “astral light,” Lévi was echoing but not exactly copying Schopenhauer’s “light of speculative thought.” The occultist metaphorically identified directed or transmuted thought; and yet it was not wholly metaphorical if one considers neurological pathways through which electrical impulses travel in the brain. Lévi, like Mesmer before him, dramatized a force that humanity had not yet come to understand: inner workings of mind and existence of a glacial subconscious or subliminal thought-­emotive center, or psyche.

In ways both profoundly affecting and dynamic, Lévi interpreted magickal operations as a means of arousing and enlisting this mysterious force, which he also compared to the “serpent of Genesis.” Such a force, Lévi reasoned, could be summoned through the sexual urge and directed via focused imagination.

Here is Lévi from his 1856 Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic translated by John Michael Greer and Anthony Mikituk, which I published at Penguin Random House in 2017. (Greer and Mikituk’s translation is the first full English rendering of Lévi’s work since Arthur Edward Waite’s 1896 Transcendental Magic; I consider it the flagship edition).

The astral light is the universal seducer symbolized by the serpent of Genesis. This subtle agent, always active, always luxuriant with life blood, always embellished with seductive dreams and sweet images; this blind force is subordinate to every will, either for good or for evil; this continually reemerging circulus of an uncontrolled life, which causes giddiness in the imprudent; this corporeal spirit, this fiery body, this impalpable and always present ether; this immense seduction of nature, how can it be completely defined and how can its action be qualified? Indifferent, in a way, on its own, it lends itself just as easily to good as to evil; it carries the light and propagates the darkness; we can also call it Lucifer or Lucifuge; it is a serpent, but it is also an aureole; it is a fire, but one that can as easily belong to the torments of hell as to the offerings of incense promised in heaven. To take possession of it, one must, like the predestined woman, place one’s feet on its head.

A name of uncertain origin, Lucifuge sometimes refers to the prime minister of Satan. In Latin, it is translated as one who flees light. The image of the woman treading on the head of a serpent appears on the Miraculous Medal, revealed in Paris in 1830 to Catherine Labouré. I have often worn this around my neck. I felt indelible attraction to Catherine’s vision for decades upon witnessing it in a bookstore run by the Paulines or Daughters of St. Paul, a Catholic media ministry. I have in my possession, thanks to a close friend and distinguished writer-­publisher Gary Jansen, a Miraculous Medal blessed by Pope Benedict XVI. One hangs from a leather jacket of mine—spotted at a reception by a Catholic priest who said, “Well, I’ll be damned.” I am not against Catholicism—I love Catholicism. As I plan to write in a future book, Catholicism saved my life. Those who hate or proffer conspiracy theories about Catholicism do so because it contains aspects of the Universal Religion, if there is such thing, and I believe there is. Again, Lévi:

Let us declare here without bandying about that the great magical agent, the double current of light, the living and astral fire of the earth was symbolized by the serpent with the head of a bull, of a goat, or a dog in the ancient theogonies. It is the double serpent of the caduceus; it is the ancient serpent of Genesis; but it is also the brazen serpent of Moses, interlaced with the tau, that is to say the generative lingam; it is also the goat of the Sabbath and the Baphomet of the Templars; it is the Hyle of Gnostics; it is the double tail of the serpent which form the legs of the solar cockerel of Abraxas; finally it is the devil of M. Eudes de Mirville, and it is actually the blind force that souls must conquer to break free of the chains of the Earth . . . All magical work thus consists of freeing oneself from the coils of the ancient serpent, then placing one’s foot on his head and driving him where one wishes.

This force could be termed emotionalized thought, sexually charged thought, willpower, psyche, or, as I see it, all these. Lévi believed that the ancient symbols—Tarot (in his reading), alchemical sigils, the pentagram, the serpent, Baphomet, the parabolic myths and ancient fables—were at once reflections of and methods toward arousing awareness and use of this elemental force: sexuality-­thought-­will, symbolized by the serpent and united toward a clarified end.

In an empowering innovation, Lévi explained how this élan vital, this vital force, for which the era had been searching, dwells within the individual where it is summoned by desire, symbol, ceremony, image, and allegory. Power is retained by reserve and focus; it is diluted by excess and dispersal, which is why the great magickian counseled abiding insight, wish, and occult operation in silence.

The Basics

Since my interest is reducing magick to its practical essentials, I approach methodology with the clearest, simplest, and most effective ritual I know to employ this universal force. Reflecting the title of this article, it is called sex transmutation. My personal iteration stems from success writer Napoleon Hill’s 1937 Think and Grow Rich and other references in his talks. I recognize Hill’s checkered reputation. I do not excuse it but rather consider it in context with the value of his work. I address this in a forthcoming article.

Hill’s concept of sex transmutation shares tantalizing commonalities with the works I have just cited along with classical Tantra, Taoism, and Kabbalah. Years ago, I knew an orthodox rabbi who struggled with being gay. He felt impossibly divided between the Jewish traditionalism to which he had dedicated himself and living out his sexuality with honesty. My friend privately approached an ultra-conservative rabbi in Israel and asked what do to. “My child,” the elder said, “you have been given the sexuality of both a man and a woman. Use it carefully.” Within this, I heard a subtle call to power.

Hill’s historical inspiration may appear in a passage from Plato’s Symposium, as translated by Victoriana’s great man of letters, Benjamin Jowett (1817–1893). Socrates recounts the mysterious prophetess Diotima describing the powers of Eros, deity of passion and eroticism:

He [Eros] is a great spirit (daimon), and like all spirits he is intermediate between . . . gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods the prayers and sacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies of the gods; he is the mediator who spans the chasm . . . For God mingles not with man; but through Love [Eros] all the intercourse and converse of God with man, whether awake or asleep, is carried on.

Hill’s method of sex transmutation is simplicity itself. Experience has taught me that it works. As Hill saw it, the force of life seeking expression is experienced as the sexual urge. The same outlook appeared in the correspondence of Christian mystic and psychic Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) who in December 1935 wrote to a cousin who also told him of being gay: “That your experience has brought you manifestations that have at times, or often, expressed themselves in sex is not to be wondered at, when we realize that that is the expression of creative life on earth.” As a side note, those who perceive occultism as a reactive social force in the twentieth century grossly oversimplify a social-spiritual revivalist movement that often proved personally liberating in the experience of the individual and gave expression to emancipatory social themes. There is no one-note understanding of occultism’s social impact.

Returning to sexuality, the sexual urge is the sensate experience driving our species toward procreation and self expression. As such, it is proves extremely, arguably overwhelmingly, powerful. Sexuality brings great joy and suffering, great harmony and conflict. It is above all the essential creative urge. It is the life force pursuing expansion. This holds true not only on a biological level but on all levels.

Humans are generative by nature. We build things, foster households, maintain commerce, solve problems, and create new ones. We devise technologies and seek, with greater and lesser success, to manage crises that accompany them. We raze old and erect new. All of these urges, Hill and others observed, are the force of life seeking expression. That force, experienced on the most primal level, is sexuality. Whenever you develop something, whether financial, artistic, architectural, craft-based, or product-­based, this same life force is replicating itself through you.

Hill taught that you can harness and direct this energy wherever you wish—and in a manner that contributes greater power, enthusiasm, perseverance, insight, intuition, logic, and acumen to any productive effort.

It works like this: Whenever you experience the sexual urge, at times of your private choosing, you mentally redirect your desire towards an expression other than the physical. You do this through the intellectual act of consciously rerouting your sexual impulse from physical to creative expression. This takes the shape of whatever your wish or effort is at the given moment. This act of transmutation is sexual alchemy.

Hill is not counseling sublimation or repression of the sexual urge. When I described sex transmutation to comedian and podcaster Duncan Trussell, he exclaimed, “Don’t tell me I can’t jerk off!” No worries. We can all jerk off. Hill noted there exists no greater tonic than sexuality for mood, stress relief, and physical relaxation. This reflected a liberated attitude in 1937. Rather, there exist channels through which sexual energy is expressed beyond physicality.

Sex Energy

Hill posits that greatly effective people in any area of life—the entrepreneur, the person who excels at a certain art, craft or science, the writer, the actor, the teacher, people who perform at a nuniquely high level in their field, and those who evince magnetism and charisma—all of them, often unconsciously, are using sexual energy.

They are channeling the sexual urge, at critical moments, into their outer efforts. This imbues work and persona with greater vigor, substance, and appeal. This is true of all great salespeople: you know you are being sold something; but you like (or feel subtly or overtly attracted) to him or her—and take the bait. That is sex transmutation, though often without conscious knowledge of the person wielding it.

Hill takes matters further and maintains that people widely considered geniuses, icons, and impresarios are able to rise to that level because sexual energy is at the back of their efforts; although, again, they may be unaware of the power under their command.

For the plural geniuses, Hill used the arcane genii. Genii dates to Roman-­Latin usage. It means not only intellectual prowess but also suggests the ancient Roman meaning that genius is a gift bestowed by spirits, genii, or daemons. (In the Middle Ages, the Latin daemon referred to worker-­bee spirits, neither intrinsically good nor bad.) The same term appears as jinn or genie in Arab folklore and culture, again as a spirit capable of bestowing supernatural power on the individual. This suggests the connection Hill rightly detected in ancient literature between higher forces of life or Eros and the individual’s capacity for accomplishment.

Toward the end of his life, pioneering psychical researcher Frederic Myers (1843–1901) similarly pondered the nature and origin of genius. The British scientist came to believe that genius, or remarkable inspiration and application, possessed origin beyond localized intellect. Myers called it the supraliminal mind. In his posthumous 1903 treatise Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, the scientist wrote:

Genius—if that vaguely used word is to receive anything like a psychological definition—should rather be regarded as a power of utilising a wider range than other men can utilise of faculties in some degree innate in all;—a power of appropriating the results of subliminal mentation to subserve the supraliminal stream of thought;—so that an “inspiration of Genius” will be in truth a subliminal uprush, an emergence into the current of ideas which the man is consciously manipulating of other ideas which he has not consciously originated, but which have shaped themselves beyond his will, in profounder regions of his being. I shall urge that there is here no real departure from normality; no abnormality, at least in the sense of degeneration; but rather a fulfilment of the true norm of man, with suggestions, it may be, of something supernormal;—of something which transcends existing normality as an advanced stage of evolutionary progress transcends an earlier stage.

In short, Myers saw genius as interplay of subliminal / subconscious mind—a concept he helped establish—and a supraliminal mind, or what Hill termed Infinite Intelligence, comparable to Nous in Hermeticism. In Myers’ view, this interplay produces genius, a perspective that jibes with Hill’s.88 practical magick

Beat author William S. Burroughs (1914–1997), who knew Hill’s work, advocated research into practical applications of the sex-­energy concept of orgone, pioneered in the 1930s by Austrian-American psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957). Although it can be reasonably asked whether Hill was aware of Reich’s ideas, especially given the corresponding timeline, I have found no such evidence. Indeed, I have pored over Hill’s life and work and discerned no definitive giveaway of his sources.

The Method Recapped

To leave no question regarding the steps of sex transmutation, I am recapping it. You can use this technique almost immediately.

When you experience sexual desire, at times and places of your own choosing, you mentally redirect the urge toward accomplishment of a valued task. Make the mental effort to channel sexual desire along different lines. Simply shift your thoughts away from physical sexual gratification toward another goal, e.g., completion of a piece of writing; pursuit of a client; design of a digital product; creation of your art; acing a job interview; achievement of a physical or athletic goal—whatever it is, you act with the redirected sexual urge focused on your task or aim.

The point is not creating another orthodoxy or “rule” around sex. Sometimes physical expression must be honored. Sexual activity, for pleasure or procreation, is critical for mental, emotional, and physical wellness, as well as for propagation. But in private moments that you alone choose, you can mentally redirect your sexual desire toward a specific task or activity. I have, for example, used sex transmutation in writing this very article.

Once you have successfully attempted this you may discover new and varying ways of employing sex transmutation. For example, you can use sex transmutation to cultivate a specific mood or personality trait, such as confidence, courage, or enthusiasm.

You may attempt this in the near-­term for help with a job interview or to face down a bully; or you may want to use this practice in the long­-term to remake an aspect of your personality, appearance, or to help someone in crisis. Set no fixed limits on what you may find.

As Crowley recorded in The Book of the Law: “Success is thy proof.”

____________

*I quote from the 1903 translation by Jessie Hillebrand aka Madame Karl Hillebrand (1827–1905).