My review of Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic: The Essential Ida Craddock, by Vere Chappell (Weiser, 2010) is up on SpiralNature.com here.

Craddock was indeed a remarkable person, but some of her notions about what was proper are… Well, here’s a quote from her 1900 treatise, “The Wedding Night”:

To approach a woman’s genitals with the finger for the purpose of excitation, is distinctly masturbative, and therefore wrong. The only lawful finger of love at her genitals is his sexual love organ.

It’s almost cute.

Actually, Craddock’s forthright approach to sex was fairly unique for its time, though much of what she wrote seems antiquated today it’s still a fascinating read. Continue reading »

Thelema NOW! is a new podcast put out by the OTO’s US Grand Lodge. It was launched a few weeks ago, and is, as far as I’m aware, the first Thelemic podcast since John Crow‘s Thelema Coast to Coast closed shop in 2007.

In the first episode the host, Frater Puck, interviews Richard Kaczynski, whose latest book is The Weiser Concise Guide to Aleister Crowley.They also discuss other recent projects, including an upcoming an edited and annotated edition of Aleister Crowley’s Sword of Song, a fifty page article on the Thoth Tarot which will be included in an upcoming anthology titled Tarot and Culture, an expanded edition of Perdurabo which will include another 50-100 pages of material based on new research since the book was first published, among others. Continue reading »