Sexual practices

[Aau6x]

Hello, coming from a religious household I used to have certain beliefs about sex and everything related, after indulging, reading and experimenting in this specific topic, I've come to understand there's a whole world behind this, one way or another every human posseses this attributes, and almost like brainwashing we are shunned upon when even talking about the topic, we end up completely blind and ultimately waste our potential behind this powerful energy
What do y'all think?

 

[Robert Ramsay]

Anything that causes emotional intensity can be used for magic, and sex definitely convinces you that something important is happening. So sex is one particular path you can take, but with magic, the poles are not 'good' and 'bad' or 'weak' and 'powerful', they are 'suitable' and 'unsuitable'. Does magical system X click with you or not?

As for talking about sex, not everyone wants to talk or hear about it. This may cone over to you as 'shunning'.

 

[crooktooth]

Achieving gnosis or the magical trance can be done in innumerable ways.
Basically any activity that results in an altered state of mind be that exhaustion, a state of ecstasy or euphoria, or a feeling of emptiness/vacuity.
Chaos magickians have gone into great detail from the time of Austin Osman Spare into various ways to achieve the state and use that state to push personal desire or intention.

Sex is one of the most commonly used forms of gnosis simply because it is the easiest and fastest to achieve and provides, exhaustion, a feeling of euphoria, and vacuity. Personally I don't believe there is anything taboo about sex, either in the act itself or in discussion. Sex is a very natural thing that nearly every species on the planet engages in, in one form or another. A great unifier if you will.

 

[HoldAll]

Probably the most popular method for charging a chaos magic sigil is masturbation, it's very likely the most widespread use of sex for magical purposes. Being such an intimate issue, people have different attitudes towards sex, and I feel that any hangups can have an adverse effect on your magic. Unwanted thoughts like "I shouldn't be doing this" could interfere with the process. Some practitioners may not be comfortable with sex and prefer other methods instead. Additionally, I'd say sex magic isn't equally well suited for every purpose. For example, I would think twice about powering a curse by means of sex, it just would feel too weird.

 

[Therion]

Probably the most popular method for charging a chaos magic sigil is masturbation, it's very likely the most widespread use of sex for magical purposes. Being such an intimate issue, people have different attitudes towards sex, and I feel that any hangups can have an adverse effect on your magic. Unwanted thoughts like "I shouldn't be doing this" could interfere with the process. Some practitioners may not be comfortable with sex and prefer other methods instead. Additionally, I'd say sex magic isn't equally well suited for every purpose. For example, I would think twice about powering a curse by means of sex, it just would feel too weird.

You're right that psychological comfort and integration matter a lot. If someone is carrying shame, guilt, or internal conflict around sex, that tension usually leaks into the working and muddies the result. For a lot of people, especially early on, forcing sexual methods when they're not genuinely aligned can do more harm than good.

That said, I think reducing sex magick down to “masturbation as a charging method for sigils” misses most of its depth and danger. In the Thelemic and Babalon current especially, sexual energy isn’t just a battery you top up. It’s a current that can dissolve boundaries, open gateways, and create very real shifts in both the practitioner and the field they’re working in. Using it casually or mechanically (especially for things like cursing) often backfires precisely because the force being invoked doesn’t care about your surface intention — it responds to the whole state of the operator.

Different kinds of workings also call for different energetic approaches. Some things are better served by other methods entirely (breath, blood, art, invocation, etc.). The “best” method is usually the one that actually matches the nature of the work and the condition of the magician, not whichever technique is currently trending in chaos magic circles. However, what you described is precisely how I charge my Solomonic talismans.

 

[AbammonTheGreat]

Hello, coming from a religious household I used to have certain beliefs about sex and everything related, after indulging, reading and experimenting in this specific topic, I've come to understand there's a whole world behind this, one way or another every human posseses this attributes, and almost like brainwashing we are shunned upon when even talking about the topic, we end up completely blind and ultimately waste our potential behind this powerful energy
What do y'all think?

I think that "sex magick" is often confused and in groups abused. I am no puritan but we have to really think about the context of its development and inclusion in modern magic as it was largely a part of the 19th century and 20th century magicians who were drawing inspiration from the deepest recesses of Kabbalah and Kaula Tantra in which there is a specific and intentional inversion of taboo for transcendent experience. This got really muddy within the magical community during its initial inclusion as amongst the European population there was a reaction to the highly conservative and industrial cultural hegemony. Interest in mysticism, romanticism, and libertine lifestyles were very often comingled amongst the counterculture - and this extended into the more progressive and liberal attitudes in the United States amongst the counter-culture reacting to American Christian hegemony during the mid-20th century.

In these environments these practices WERE transgressive and could shock the magician just by the nature of their deeply engrained cultural biases. However, I think in modernity where sexuality and liberality are now the cultural hegemony the potency of this action loses most of its power. It may still hold true for a certain subsection of the population that are raised in very closed and strict religious households - but by and large when everywhere you look sex and sexuality is embraced, marketed, and infused in popular culture there really is no cultural inversion left in the west. And this is why these practices in modernity, especially in group settings and amongst the entry level of the occult become reinforcements of attachments to profanity deviating the practitioner from actualization. It is much harder and more transgressive to practice chastity in the West than reinforcing the animal passions. This is why in modern occult groups "sex magick" 99% of the time manifests as sexual abuse.

With this being said, energetically speaking, the usage of sex magick in asceticism I believe is very powerful. Structured ritual PMO with planned energetic release is a very potent way to harness magic. And amongst two consenting, informed, and well practiced magicians sexual rites can be carefully constructed to further both practitioners. But you really need to be able to identify where the sex magick is coming from, is it a reinforcement of attachments or is it being engaged in with full honesty and awareness.

 

[hoodoo17]

Hello, coming from a religious household I used to have certain beliefs about sex and everything related, after indulging, reading and experimenting in this specific topic, I've come to understand there's a whole world behind this, one way or another every human posseses this attributes, and almost like brainwashing we are shunned upon when even talking about the topic, we end up completely blind and ultimately waste our potential behind this powerful energy
What do y'all think?

All primitive religions, including Judeo-Christianity, viewed sex as something good, positive, and liberating because it brought life. Only when they became dogmatized, ideologized, and emptied of meaning did sex begin to be seen as something bad because it distracts from the dominant religious dogma. Although primitive religions did frown upon a lack of commitment to a partner because it destroys the family or potential family, if you didn't have a partner, you could be sexually free as long as it didn't involve falling into vice or lust, just like overeating or becoming obsessed with something.

 

[HoldAll]

There's also the idea of using sex in theurgic work with the aim of performing a unio mystica, physically and in a ritual context, for example in Tantra where the male becomes Shiva and the female Shakti. Since it's a closed and very secretive practice, accounts vary how and to what extent of intensity it's still being performed in India today but in any event, it should be seen as part of a radical yogic tradition that encompasses very much more than simple antinomism but of course people will inevitably latch onto that aspect of Tantra, just as the Karma Sutra isn't just about sex but is nevertheless seen exclusively as an erotic manual.

The practical difficulty is that both celebrants will start out as humans before becoming gods and godesses, with all their flaws, quirks, and preferences concerning potential sexual partners. When I was younger, I spent some time in the NeoTantra scene, went to numerous weekend workshops and even participated in a six-week program held over the course of a year. I can now see the similarities of NeoTantra and genuine Indian Tantra - the idea in both systems is to purify oneself to prepare for

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and for becoming one with the devine but while in India this is achieved by years of Kriya Yoga, Western NeoTantra takes a psychotherapeutical route with all sorts of ingenious exercises to get rid of any mommy-daddy issues, vestiges of religious hangups, bodyshame and whatnot first. 'Sacred sexuality' or not, the group setting will help you develop a more pragmatic attitude towards your body - I'm naked but so is everybody else, so what's the big deal? We got so used to it that we even came up with a jocular expression: "Dress code for today? The usual outfit!", i.e. none.

The workshops I went to were quite gentle, NewAgey, and vanilla but I can well imagine that such Tantra-style sex magic can become problematical in a magical order context. When it came to choosing partners for exercises, for example, the same man and the same woman always got left - he was weird, she was irascible and unlikable, both very unattractive; if I had had to practice divine sexual union with either of them, I'd probably run for the hills but then I had the choice and wasn't under any sort of duress or group pressure. Strictly religiously (or ideologically) speaking, their personalities or attractiveness shouldn't have made a difference since the divine resided in both of them, too, but in practice, it mattered a lot.

For this reason, theurgic sex magic may be probably best practiced within the confines of a relationship instead of a group setting. There might still be some real issues with your partner but at least you're dealing with a familiar person and will have time to work them out in everyday life.