Male Sex Education:  A Rethinking 

Young men in our modern society are no more informed about their own sexuality than beast in the field.  While even the beast of the field only mate when the female is prepared for such mating demonstrating a consideration for the larger group and within environmental constraints when resources are available.  And when the herd's numbers exceed the environments ability to support their numbers in health and vitality nature provides predators to cull those numbers.  Animals seem to have more innate connection to the appropriate application of sexual union then we humans. And many so-called primitive pagan peoples have instructed their men about their responsibilities to both the satisfaction of women as well as the need to apply sexual union for the betterment of the group.

 

Recently I was informed by a young man that he was questioned in a somewhat intimidating manner as to why he wasn't exercising is prerogative and had not been "hitting it" with the females lately.  He told them that he was practicing celibacy for a while.  They were somewhat shocked and alarmed and went on to inform him that it was normal and natural to "get all he could".   Actually he lied to them because his real motivation for cooling his jets was that he had been noticing for some time that he had been feeling depleted after sex and wanted to have a period of abstinence to conserve whatever it was that had been depleted.  He also told me that he had noticed that since practicing abstinence his thoughts seem to have greater clarity while his ability to concentrate had improved.  I asked if he had considered "making love" to a women and to commit to satisfying the women without ejaculation; thereby preventing this lose of nervous energy.  He told me he thought it was impossible to stop himself from ejaculating!  I wondered out loud how prevalent this limitation was for many of us men, and how this contradicted our all-powerful myth of patriarchy. This same young man also told me that while he was being lambasted for failing to "sow his wild oats" there were women present to hear this inquisition who were absolutely mute on the subject.  I suspect that many women humor us knowing how frail and vulnerable we are in the face of this simple truth:  Generally speaking, we men in modern "civilized" society are almost never taught to control a very simple and profoundly important biological function, - ejaculation.

The barbarity of the sex act was quite prevalent before the 20th century when women were viewed as strictly chattel and the marital union was a sad affair.  Women were not expected to know anything about their bodies and a so-called decent women was generally a virgin.  Most women were literally "taken" on their wedding night with little foreplay or arousal involved. Sex was seldom done face-to-face and decent married couples copulated from the rear expressly for the purpose of procreation.  For most men, sex education consisted of a visit to a prostitute.  And within a marriage only the male was expected to be sexually sophisticated, although how and where he obtained this experience was never discussed in polite company.  A women was not expected to get pleasure from the sex act and her husband generally entered into each conjugal visit seeking only to relieve some pent-up nervous tension characterized as horny.  Even today, it  is generally believed by both men and women alike that men have sexual urges that if not satisfied, well, we will burst.

Today in the 21 Century we consider ourselves more sophisticated then 19th or early 20th Century people but are we really?  Certainly since the advent of the Playboy generation and the sexually-liberated 60s we are able to at least discuss sex without nervous giggling.  But I'm afraid that our sex education today is no more than a discussion of anatomy and the proverbial what-goes-where-and-when.  Young men are not instructed nor are they trained to control their parts as for example as we are taught to control our bladders.  Women who take Lamaze classes in preparation for child birth are taught Kegel exercises to strengthen the perineal muscles but men have no equivalent event requiring such development.  And certainly this sort of sexual education would not be provided even today; less our educators be accused of encouraging our young to go out and have sex.   Consequently young men have no more control of their sexual functions then they have of their bladders as a 2-year old.  And although most parents would consider themselves derelict in their parental responsibilities if they let their children attend public schools without being potty trained at 5 years old, they think nothing of turning them out in the world to sow their wild seeds; unable to control their dispersal at 16, 17, or 18 years old.  In fact many parents proudly await the day when it becomes apparent that their youngster has "gotten it" on with the opposite sex as a symbol of male virility.  But do these parents dare inquire whether their young man has bothered to satisfy their female conquest?  Or does this so-called conquest only involve penetration and the inevitable ejaculation.  Parents today are merely concerned that their young man has deposited his seed in a safe receptacle and worry that his body part was protected from unwanted disease.  The more liberated parent might ask whether their son "had a good time"; but that's pretty much the extent of their perceived responsibility.  Other than being taught to  wash their hands after a visit tot eh lavatory, is it  not time to teach our young men a little more then what we do today.  I thing the clear and obvious answer is......., YES.

Ida Craddock

Ida Craddock was born in Philadelphia on August 1, 1857. Her father died when she was four months old. Her mother had been very interested in spiritualism and the occult, but following the death of Ida's father she became a fundamentalist Christian and raised Ida with an extremely puritanical discipline. Ida received intense religious training, and learned to read the Bible from a very early age. The result, of course, was that this repressed young woman grew up to be intensely      interested in the very subjects which were most forbidden to her in childhood: namely, sexuality, occultism, and freedom in general.  But even before she began actively pursuing these forbidden subjects, Ida was ahead of her time. She was very intelligent and ambitious, not exactly qualities that were admired in women of the late 19th century. She campaigned to allow women to be admitted to the University of Pennsylvania, and would have been its first female graduate if the decision hadn't been eventually reversed. She went on to teach stenography to women at Giraud College in Philadelphia, and wrote a standard textbook on the subject which was published when she was just 18. By teaching this marketable skill to other young women, she was giving them a chance to become employed for themselves, thereby affording them greater opportunities for independence and self-sufficiency. This, in itself, was a radical idea for America in the 1880's.

Ida became involved in occultism beginning around 1887, about the time she turned 30 years old. At this time the Theosophical Society (founded in 1875) was the pre-eminent promoter of occult teachings, and Ida started attending classes in Theosophy at a local Unitarian church. She also began reading and studying a tremendous amount of material on occult subjects, judging from the sheer breadth and depth of the knowledge exhibited in her own writings. She cites everything from biblical and ecclesiastical sources to Hindu and Greek philosophers to contemporary academics and occultists. The recently translated Raja Yoga by Vivekananda was also drawn upon in many of Ida's works, and at one point she listed herself as "Priestess and Pastor of the Church of Yoga", a theosophical offshoot.

According to Schroeder, between 1889 and 1891 Ida had ongoing "illicit" sexual relations with two different men (that is, she had sex with men to whom she was not married). The first man was younger than she, and apparently not a very satisfying lover. The second man, never named by Schroeder but described as an ex-clergyman and "heretical mystic" (probably introduced to Ida through Theosophical circles), was somewhat older than Ida, and was reportedly well-versed in the technique of Karezza, or the ability to withhold ejaculation. His lovemaking prowess brought Ida to hitherto-undiscovered heights of sexual ecstasy, in contrast to her other lover who made love in the "normal", conventional way.

To overly repressed Ida, this discovery was nothing less than a divine revelation. She began studying esoteric sexuality, combining her extensive knowledge of folklore and mythology with various sources from the occult world including P. B. Randolph and Alice Bunker Stockham. During this period there was a growing trend of increased sexual awareness and open discourse of sexuality in society. Burton had brought back translations of the Kama Sutra and Ananga Ranga from India, and Havelock Ellis had begun applying scientific principles to the study of sexuality. This was the first sexual revolution, long before the 1960's, as the western world emerged from its Victorian prudery to start openly and objectively examining sex for the first time.

In her massive study of religious sexuality entitled "Lunar & Sex Worship", Ida argued that "the moon was a more ancient deity than the sun, and that she was therefore recognized as the superior of the sun-god, who, as being the exponent of a later religion, could triumph only after receiving her sanction." This theory resembles remarkably Crowley's description of the Aeons of Isis and Osiris. Her development of the argument cites a tremendous range of sources, including Assyrian, Babylonian, Hindu, Irish, Greek, Norse, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Chinese, Egyptian, African, but to name a few. It goes on and on, for over 100 typewritten legal-size pages.

In another work entitled "Sex Worship (Continued)", Ida contends that the symbol of the cross, not only that featured so prominently in Christianity but those found everywhere throughout the cultures and religions of the world, is fundamentally a symbol of sexual union, and its ubiquitous worship reflects a universal worship of the sex instinct as the underlying quintessence of all religion.

Ida's second lover was coincidentally the head of the National Liberal League, an organization prominently associated with the Free Thought movement around the turn of the century. Ida got a job as the League's secretary, and subsequently took up the cause, promoting social reform through freedom from oppressive moral codes and strictures. In particular, she sought to address the plight of America's married women, whom, as her own experience had taught her, were most likely not achieving their full potential of wedded bliss; or, worse yet, were suffering at the hands of their husbands who cared not in the least about the feelings or needs of their wives when it came to sex. Ida cited the following story as told to her by a nurse attending a young wife who had just had her first baby:

The patient had been greatly lacerated in delivery. On the second day after delivery, while the nurse was attending to the baby, the husband entered, and requested the nurse to leave the room. "For God's sake, nurse, don't leave me!" exclaimed the sick woman. But a look from the husband caused the nurse to obey him, nevertheless. Shortly after, she heard her patient scream, "Oh, he'll murder me!" Whereupon the nurse rushed in and found the husband in the act of committing a rape upon his wife. The nurse seized his arm, and endeavored to pull him away; but he did not yield until he was ready, when he allowed himself, sullenly, to be led from the room, covered with blood. The wife meanwhile had fainted. When she recovered, she cried, "Oh God, would that my baby girl and I would die! That man promised on our wedding-day to honor, love and protect me; but every night since then he has used my poor body!"

Ida was convinced that ignorance of basic sexual facts was to blame for much of the ills of society. (I, for one, wholeheartedly agree with her. I also believe that this is as true today as it ever has been.) She traveled to Chicago, Washington, Philadelphia, Denver, and New York, giving lectures with titles such as "Survivals of Sex Worship in Christianity and in Paganism" and "What Christianity has done for the Marital Relation." She also provided sexual counseling in a small office on Dearborn Street in Chicago. Those who were too modest to come to her personally could enroll in her courses sent through the mail.

She then wrote a series of pamphlets which were essentially marriage manuals, with titles like "The Wedding Night", "The Marriage Relation", and "Right Marital Living". In these manuals, she emphasized sexual self-control, and asserted that to force intercourse on one's wife without her desiring it amounts to rape--quite a radical notion for the time. (Unfortunately, even in these modern "enlightened" times this concept is still by no means universally accepted.) Ida recommended that intercourse should last at least 1/2 to 1 hour in order to allow enough time for the female orgasm; undoubtedly this was pretty alarming to the majority of husbands to which her pamphlets were targeted! Quoting from "The Wedding Night", here is her advice to the newly-wed couple on their honeymoon:

The very first thing for you to bear in mind is that, inasmuch as Nature has so arranged sex that the man is always ready (as a rule) for intercourse, whereas the woman is not, it is most unwise for the man to precipitate matters by exhibiting desire for genital contact when the woman is not yet aroused. You should remember that that organ of which you are, justly, so proud, is not possessed by a woman, and that she is utterly ignorant of its functions, practically, until she has experienced sexual contact; and that it is, to her who is not desirous of such contact, something of a monstrosity. Even when a woman has already had pleasurable experience of genital contact, she requires each time to be aroused amorously, before that organ, in its state of activity, can become attractive. For a man to exhibit, to even an experienced wife, his organ ready for action when she herself is not amorously aroused, is, as a rule, not sexually attractive to her; on the contrary, it is often sexually repulsive, and at times out and out disgusting to her. Every woman of experience knows that, when she is ready, she can cause the man to become sexually active fast enough.

If this be so with the wife who has had pleasurable experience in genital contact, how much more must the sight or touch of that apparent monstrosity in a man shock and terrify the inexperienced young bride!

Yet, if you are patient and loverlike and gentlemanly and considerate and do not seek to unduly precipitate matters, you will find that Nature will herself arrange the affair for you most delicately and beautifully. If you will first thoroughly satisfy the primal passion of the woman, which is affectional and maternal (for the typical woman mothers the man she loves), and if you will kiss and caress her in a gentle, delicate and reverent way, especially at the throat and bosom, you will find that, little by little (perhaps not the first night nor the second night, but eventually, as she grows accustomed to the strangeness of the intimacy), you will, by reflex action from the bosom to the genitals, successfully arouse within her a vague desire for the entwining of the lower limbs, with ever closer and closer contact, until you melt into one another's embrace at the genitals in a perfectly natural and wholesome fashion; and you will then find her genitals so well lubricated with an emission from her glands of Bartholin, and, possibly, also from her vagina, that your gradual entrance can be effected not only without pain to her, but with a rapture so exquisite to her, that she will be more ready to invite your entrance upon a future occasion.

Obviously, this approach was squarely opposed to the prevailing culture of male-dominated attitudes concerning the marital "rights" of husbands and the marital "duties" of wives. Furthermore, Ida's direct and open discussion of sexual matters was offensive to the moralists who sought to control the proliferation of vice by suppressing any frank treatment of sexual subjects. Nevertheless, orders for her pamphlets poured in from grateful wives, progressive couples, and many doctors who reported marked improvements in their married patients' psychological well-being.

There was a further problem as well: how could Ida teach and write so knowledgeably about sexual subjects, when she herself was not married? After all, if she was to be regarded by society as a respectable woman whose opinion was worthy of consideration, never having been married must mean that she had never had sex. Ida dealt with this question directly in Heavenly Bridegrooms, written in 1894. In this work she admits that she is sexually experienced, but insists that she is married--just not to any living person. Her husband is an angel named "Soph" who visits her at night to have sex, and to teach her enlightenment through a divinely-inspired system of sexual initiation as detailed in her subsequent paper entitled "Psychic Wedlock". Most of the paper is devoted to justifying this arrangement as perfectly plausible and morally acceptable; after all, wasn't the Virgin Mary herself impregnated by a "heavenly bridegroom"?

The paper entitled "Psychic Wedlock" is of particular interest to us in the O.T.O., as it describes a three-degree system of initiation by sexual means. The first degree, which Ida dubs "Alphaism", calls for the development of self control. In particular, "sex union is forbidden, except for the express purpose of creating a child." In the second degree, called "Dianism", "sex union is enjoined in absolute self-control and aspiration to the highest". This is accomplished in two phases: first, by learning to delay ejaculation and prolong the union indefinitely; and second, after mastering the first phase, acquiring the ability to go through the ecstasy of orgasm without ejaculation. She describes similar practices of self-control on the part of the female as well. Finally, the third degree inculcates "communion with Deity as the third partner in marital union." This degree also has two phases: the first is to fulfill the duty to aspire to communion with the "Great Thinker" during sexual ecstasy; and the second is to attain the state of joy which accrues to both the "Great Thinker" and to the partners through such communion. To me this is reminiscent of the lines "I am above you and in you. My ecstasy is in yours. My joy is to see your joy." from the Book of the Law.

Some of you may recognize these terms from Louis Culling's book "Sex Magick". Culling does mention Craddock in his introduction, although he doesn't appear to give her the credit that she deserves for essentially providing him with the entire system!

Ida's conflicts with our puritanical society began in 1893, when she attended a performance at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The show was called "Danse du Ventre" ("Belly Dance" in French) and was the introduction of this art into America. Naturally, it became wildly popular, and attracted the attention of a man named Anthony Comstock, founder of a self-ordained moral police squad called "The Society for the Suppression of Vice." Comstock demanded that the show be shut down. Curious to see what the fuss was about, Craddock attended the show and decided that the belly dancer's "indecent undulations" were actually an expression of sexual self-control, and as such ought to be taught and encouraged to married women to enhance their sex lives. (Craddock would later report in her diary that she used various "Danse du Ventre" techniques in her lovemaking with her angelic husband Soph). Ida wrote an article defending the show along these lines, and published it in the journal "the World". Comstock immediately pounced on Craddock's article, declaring it obscene and banning its dissemination through the U.S. Mail.

In 1894 Ida's mother conspired to attempt to have Ida committed in an insane asylum. She promised that if she was successful, she would have all of Ida's diaries and manuscripts burned. This prompted Ida, in 1895, to send her papers to an editor of a journal in England named W.T. Stead. (This is fortunate for us, because this is how Theodore Schroeder managed to recover them in 1914 when he became interested in Ida Craddock's case, and this is how they eventually ended up in Special Collections at the University of Southern Illinois). At one point in 1898 her foes did manage to have Ida admitted to the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, but she was released after 3 months without ever being judged to be legally insane by the court.

Meanwhile, after failing to shut down the Danse du Ventre (it was way too popular) and embarrassed that he had been ultimately ineffective against Ida's efforts to defend it, Comstock began to pursue a vendetta against Craddock and set out to have her prosecuted for distributing obscenity. His first attempt came in 1899, when Ida was arrested and charged with sending copies of her "Right Marital Living" pamphlet through the mail. She managed to stay out of jail only because the famed criminal lawyer and free-speech advocate Clarence Darrow posted her bond. (Darrow is best known for serving as defense counsel in the Scopes Monkey Trial which outlawed the teaching of Darwinism in public schools).

Soon after this, Ida moved to Comstock's home turf of New York City, and continued to provide her services and mail her pamphlets to her clients. She seems to have wanted to deliberately challenge Comstock, as she wrote: "I have an inward feeling that I am really divinely led here to New York to face this wicked and depraved man Comstock in open court." On March 5, 1902, Ida was arrested under New York's anti-obscenity law for sending copies of The Wedding Night through the mail. The judge refused to allow the jury to even see the offending document, calling it "indescribably obscene." The jury took his word for it and found Craddock guilty, as it was reported, "without leaving their seats." She was sentenced to three months in the city workhouse, in which she endured inhumane conditions and harsh treatment. All the while, support was pouring in from free-speech advocates, publishers, doctors, and clients, but to no avail. Upon her release from prison, she was immediately re-arrested under the federal Comstock law. She refused an offer to escape a prison sentence by pleading insane. On the morning she was to be sentenced, she committed suicide by slashing her wrists and inhaling natural gas.

Ida left a letter to the public which read, in part: "I am taking my life because a judge, at the instigation of Anthony Comstock, has declared me guilty of a crime I did not commit--the circulation of obscene literature. Perhaps it may be that in my death, more than in my life, the American people may be shocked into investigating the dreadful state of affairs which permits that unctuous sexual hypocrite Anthony Comstock to wax fat and arrogant and to trample upon the liberties of the people, invading, in my own case, both my right to freedom of religion and to freedom of the press." In a long note to her mother, she wrote: "I maintain my right to die as I have lived, a free woman, not cowed into silence by any other human being."

In the end, the negative publicity generated by Comstock's hounding of Ida to her death marked the beginning of the end of the influence of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. The newspapers condemned Comstock, and contributions to the society fell off sharply. One by one the Society's founders died off, and Comstock's influence from then on became less and less significant.

Enter Theodore Schroeder, a free-speech lawyer from New York with an amateur interest in psychology. He became interested in Ida Craddock's case approximately 10 years after her death. He began researching her life, and managed to locate and collect a large amount of her letters, diaries, manuscripts, and other printed materials.

Biography of Pascal Beverley Randolph by Prof. Carl Edwin Lindgren, Member, Royal Historical Society (London)  and Fellowship of Catholic Scholars

Randolph, Paschal Beverly ( 8 Oct. 1825 - 29 July 1875), physician, philosopher, and author, was born in New York City , the son of William Beverly Randolph, a plantation owner, and Flora Beverly, a barmaid. At the age of five or seven Randolph lost his mother to smallpox, and with her the only love he had known. Randolph later stated, "I was born in love, of a loving mother, and what she felt, that I lived." His father's devotion is questionable. In 1873 Randolph hinted at his own illegitimacy, stating that his parents "did not stop to pay fees to the justice or to the priest."

Randolph 's mother possessed a strong temperament, unusual physical beauty, and intense passions, characteristics that Randolph inherited. Later many, especially his enemies, perceived Randolph as being of "Negro descent," which he denied. Sent to live with his half-sister, Randolph was ignored, unloved, and abused and eventually turned to begging on the streets.

Uneducated, receiving only one year of formal education, Randolph attempted to train himself. At the age of fifteen he left home and spent the next five years as a sailor, traveling around the world. This period was a lonely and bitter one. Forced to leave the sea by an accident incurred while chopping wood, he learned the dyer's and barber's trade. During this interval (1845-1850), he also became interested in medicine and arcane science.

In 1850 Randolph married Mary Jane (maiden name unknown); they would have three children. That same year he befriended Colonel Ethan Allen Hitchcock, who had for some time been interested in alchemy and pantheistic philosophy. With Hitchcock's support, Randolph was admitted in 1850 to a meeting at Frankfort on the Main , Germany, of the Fraternitas Rosæ Crucis. The Fraternitas then, as in its foundation in 1616, was a brotherhood of esoteric enlightenment that brought together alchemists, magi, Hermetists, Phtonists, Paracelsians, and Gnostics in search of soul consciousness.

Returning to the United States in 1851, Randolph for a short time was active in the Reform party. While in the party movement, Randolph met and befriended Abraham Lincoln, a friendship that would continue until Lincoln 's death. Randolph 's political and educational views also extended to the plight of African Americans. In a letter to educational reformer Horace Mann in 1851, he asked whether the best way for them to achieve full rights as citizens were not "by cultivating their minds . . . fitting them for self-government."

In 1854 Randolph returned to Europe to continue his esoteric works. While in France , he finished studies in skrying (mirror or crystal gazing) and met with several occult magicians, including Eliphas Lévi, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and Kenneth MacKenzie.

In 1856 Randolph again visited England and France, preparing for induction as Supreme Grand Master of the Fraternitas. Two years later, in Paris at a meeting of the Supreme Grand Dome, Randolph became Supreme Grand Master of the Fraternitas for the Western World. Randolph was also inducted as a Knight of L'Ordre du Lis.

Returning from Paris in 1859, Randolph became active in building the Fraternitas by researching, lecturing, and writing. In September 1861 he toured California, delivering a ten-week series of lectures in San Francisco in an attempt to establish the Fraternitas on the Pacific Coast.

As Supreme Grand Master, Randolph was also a member of the Council of Three, a position he shared with General Hitchcock and President Lincoln. This group was known as "The Peerless Trio" or "Unshakable Triumvirate."

Leaving San Francisco in November 1861, Randolph traveled to London , where he was inducted by Hargrave Jennings as a knight of the Order of the Rose. From there, he traveled to East Asia , returning to America via France in 1863.

In 1864 Randolph, while living in New York, was requested by President Lincoln to educate the recently freed slaves in Louisiana. While in New Orleans, he served as an officer for the Freedmen's Bureau until July 1866, at which time he resigned to write After Death; or, Disembodied Man. . . . During his stay, Randolph taught many, black and white, to read and write. For this act, Randolph states "I was obliged to sleep with pistols in my bed, because the assassins were abroad and red-handed Murder skulked and hovered round my door." Randolph also delivered many lectures on black rights and Spiritualism at Economy Hall in New Orleans .

Upon the assassination of Lincoln in 1865, Randolph traveled with the train carrying the president's body back to Springfield , Illinois . Several procession members brought up his alleged Negro heritage, and he was asked to leave the train. This disappointment was to hurt him deeply. Never once, however, did he seek revenge or retribution.

The following year in Philadelphia, Randolph attended the Southern Loyal Convention. As a delegate from Louisiana, he advocated the African-American vote. Later, joining in a pilgrimage to Lincoln 's tomb, he endured such cruelty from fellow delegates that upon leaving the convention, he swore never again to engage in politics. He then settled in Boston, where he practiced medicine until early 1873.

During the 1860s and 1870s many of Randolph's writings concerned the occult (secret) aspects of love and sexuality. Randolph, as a physician, also counseled patients on family relations, marital bliss, and the physical, emotional, and spiritual art of love. These acts of concern and kindness were interpreted by many as condoning free love. In February 1872 he was falsely imprisoned for promoting immoral sex. Randolph was acquitted of all charges, as the court determined that the allegations were made by former business partners to obtain book copyrights

Shortly before his death Randolph had moved to Toledo, Ohio. While there he continued his writing and his speaking engagements. Generally, however, Randolph led a peaceful and at times secluded life, with his wife Kate Corson and their son Osiris Budh. No official records appear to exist regarding either this marriage or the end of his first marriage; however, Randolph 's first wife was still alive during this time.

Many questioned the coroner's finding that Randolph died in Toledo from a self-inflicted wound to the head, for many of his writings express his aversion to suicide, and the evidence was conflicting. R. Swinburne Clymer, a later Supreme Master of the Fraternitas, stressed that years later, in a "death-bed confession," a former friend of Randolph conceded, that in a state of jealousy and temporary insanity, he had killed Randolph .

Randolph produced, under his name, anonymously, or under various pseudonyms, more than fifty books and pamphlets on love, health, philosophy and the occult. Some of his works are Waa-gu-Mah (1854), Lara (1859), The Grand Secret (1860), The Unveiling (1860), Human Love (1861), Pre-Adamite Man (pseud. Griffin Lee, 1863), A Sad Case; A Great Wrong! (anon., 1866), Seership! The Magnetic Mirror (1868), Love and Its Hidden History (pseud. Count de St. Leon , 1869), Love and the Master Passion (1870), The Evils of the Tobacco Habit (1872), The New Mola! The Secret of Mediumship (1873), and The Book of the Triplicate Order (1875). Randolph also edited the Leader ( Boston ) and the Messenger of Light ( New York ) between 1852 to 1861 and wrote for the Journal of Progress and Spiritual Telegraph.

Randolph is to be remembered for his philosophical works on love, marriage, and womanhood. He provided new and unique insight into the then taboo world of sexual love. He aided the education, rights, and equality of both women and blacks. He foresaw the evils of tobacco and drug abuse. Finally, Randolph, through his position as the Americas' first Supreme Grand Master of the Fraternitas Rosæ Crucis, directly or indirectly touched the lives of more than 200,000 neophytes (students) comprising the Fraternitas and other Rosicrucian orders.

Bibliography

Randolph 's works, including some of his manuscripts and documents, are located at Beverly Hall Corp. (Fraternitas Rosæ Crucis), in Quakertown , Pa. This arcane collection also houses the "K" manuscript referring to Randolph 's personal life, accomplishments, and honors, which was written either by Kate Randolph or by Randolph himself (1873). Randolph's Wonderful Story of Ravalette (1863) and Curious Life of P. B.  Randolph are important autobiographical sources for providing insight into his life and beliefs. Randolph's concerns about slavery and the role of newly freed African Americans are presented in a letter of 5 Mar. 1851 in the Horace Mann Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society and newspaper clippings from the New Orleans newspapers including the New Orleans Tribune (1864-1866), the Era (1864-1866), and the Daily Independent (1864-1866). Material on his well-publicized trial are in his work, The Curious Life of P. B. Randolph. The most complete historical analysis of Randolph's life, works, and personal views, with an extensive chronological bibliography of Randolph's works, is John Patrick Deveney's Paschal Beverly Randolph: A Nineteenth-Century Black American Spiritualist, Rosicrucian, and Sex Magician (1997). R. Swinburne Clymer, Book of Rosicruciæ II (1947), also provides a rather extensive biographical sketch. Bibliographical details are in O. F. Adams, A Dictionary of American Authors (1897; repr. 1905), and S. A. Allibone, A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors (1871). An unflattering obituary is in the Toledo Blade, 29 July 1875 . Evidence relating to Randolph 's possible murder was taken from Clymer's pamphlet The August Fraternity in America (c. 1933). -- Carl Edwin Lindgren 

ON LOVE

By Alfred R. Orage

FREELY ADAPTED FROM THE TIBETAN

You must first learn to distinguish among at least three kinds of love (though there are seven in all): instinctive love, emotional love, and conscious love. There is not much fear that you cannot learn the first two, but the third is rare and depends upon effort as well as intelligence. 

Instinctive love has chemistry as its base. All biology is chemistry, or perhaps we should say al-chemistry; and the affinities of instinctive love, manifesting in the attractions, repulsions, mechanical and chemical combinations we call love, courtship, marriage, children and family, are only the human equivalents of a chemist's laboratory. But who is the chemist here? We call it Nature. But who is Nature? It is difficult to see her just as the 2 types of flowers that are joined together does not see or even suspect that must have been a gardener. Yet there is a gardener. ON Instinctive love, being chemical, is as strong, and lasts as long, as the substances and qualities of which it is the manifestation. . . . These can be known and measured only by one who understands the alchemical progression we call heredity. Many have remarked that happy or unhappy marriages are hereditary. So, too, are the number of children, their sex, longevity, etc. The so-called science of astrology is only the science (when it is) of heredity over long periods.

Emotional love is not rooted in biology. It is, in fact, as often anti-biological in its character and direction. Instinctive love obeys the laws of biology, that is to say, chemistry, and proceeds by affinities. But emotional love is often the mutual attraction of disaffinities and biological incongruities. Emotional love, when not accompanied by instinctive love (as it seldom is), rarely results in offspring; and when it does, biology is not served. Strange creatures arise from the relationships based on emotional love, mermen and mermaids, Bluebeards and des belles dames sans merci (Lit: “the no thank you ladies”).

Emotional love is not only short-lived, but it evokes its slayer. Such love creates hate in its object, if hatred is not already there. The emotional lover soon becomes an object of indifference and quickly thereafter of hatred.  These are the tragedies of love emotional.

Conscious love rarely obtains between humans; but it can be

illustrated in the relations of man to his favourites in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. The development of the horse and the dog from their original state of nature; the cultivation of flowers and fruit—these are examples of a primitive form of conscious love, primitive because the motive is still egoistic and utilitarian. In short, Man has a personal use for the domesticated horse and the cultivated fruit; and his labour upon them cannot be said to be for love alone. The conscious love motive, in its developed state, is the wish that the object should arrive at its own native perfection, regardless of the consequences to the lover. 'So she become perfectly herself, what matter I?' says the conscious lover. 'I will go to hell if only she may go to heaven'. And the paradox of the attitude is that such love always evokes a similar attitude in its object. Conscious love begets conscious love. It is rare among humans because, in the first place, the vast majority are children who look to be loved but not to love; secondly, because perfection is seldom conceived as the proper end of human love—though it alone distinguishes adult human from infantile and animal love; thirdly, because humans do not know, even if they wish, what is good for those they love; and fourthly, because it never occurs by chance, but must be the subject of resolve, effort, self-conscious choice. As little as Bushido or the Order of Chivalry grew up accidentally does conscious love arise by nature. As these were works of art, so must conscious love be a work of art. Such a lover enrolls himself, goes through his apprenticeship, and perhaps one day attains to mastery. He perfects himself in order that he may purely wish and aid the perfection of his beloved.  Would one enroll in this service of conscious love? Let him forswear personal desire and preconception. He contemplates his beloved. What manner of woman (or man) is she (or he)? A mystery is here: a scent of perfection the nascent air of which is adorable. How may this perfection be actualised—to the glory of the beloved and of God her Creator? Let him think, is he fit? He can only conclude that he is not. Who cannot cultivate flowers, or properly treat dogs and horses, how shall he learn to reveal the perfection still seedling in the beloved? Humility is necessary, and then deliberate tolerance. If I am not sure what is proper to her perfection, let her at least have free way to follow her own bent. Meanwhile to study—what she is, and may become; what she needs, what her soul craves and cannot find a name, still less a thing, for. To anticipate today her needs of tomorrow. And without a thought all the while of what her needs may mean to me. You will see, sons and daughters, what self-discipline and self-education are demanded here. Enter these enchanted woods, ye who dare. The gods love each other consciously. Conscious lovers become gods.  Without shame people will boast that they have loved, do love or hope to love. As if love were enough, or could cover any multitude of sins.  But love, as we have seen, when it is not conscious love—that is to say, love that aims to be both wise and able in the service of its object—is either an affinity or a disaffinity, and in both cases equally unconscious, that is, uncontrolled. To be in such a state of love is to be dangerous either to oneself or to the other or to both. We are then polarized to a natural force (which has its own objects to serve regardless of ours) and charged with its force; and events are fortunate if we do not damage somebody in consequence of carrying dynamite carelessly. Love without knowledge and power is demoniac. Without knowledge it may destroy the beloved. Who has not seen many a beloved made wretched and ill by her or his 'lover' ?  Without power the lover must become wretched, since he cannot do for his beloved what he wishes and knows to be for her delight. Men should pray to be spared the experience of love without wisdom and strength. Or, finding themselves in love, they should pray for knowledge and power to guide their love. Love is not enough.  'I love you', said the man. 'Strange that I feel none the better for it', said the woman.  The truth about love is shown in the order in which religion has been introduced into the world. First came the religion of Power, then came the religion of Knowledge, and last came the religion of Love. Why this order? Because Love without the former qualities is dangerous. But this is not to say that the succession has been anything more than discretion: since Power alone, like Knowledge alone, is only less dangerous than Love alone. Perfection demands simultaneity in place of succession. The order is only evidence that since succession was imperative (man being subject to the dimension of Time which is succession), it was better to begin with the less dangerous dictators and leave Love to the last. A certain prudent man, when he felt himself to be in love, hung a little bell round his neck to caution women that he was dangerous. Unfortunately for themselves they took too much notice of it; and he suffered accordingly.  Until you have wisdom and power equal to your love, be ashamed,

my sons and daughters, to avow that you are in love. Or, since you cannot conceal it, love humbly and study to be wise and strong. Aim to be worthy to be in love.  All true lovers are invulnerable to everybody but their beloved. This comes about not by wish or effort but by the fact of true, i.e. whole, love alone. Temptation has not to be overcome: it is not experienced. The invulnerability is magical. Moreover, it occurs more often than is usually supposed. Because 'unfaithfulness' is manifested, the conclusion is drawn that invulnerability does not exist. But 'infidelity' is not necessarily due to temptation, but possibly and often to indifference; and there is no Fall where there is no Temptation. Men should learn to discriminate in themselves and in women real and assumed invulnerability. The latter, however eloquent, is due to fear. Only the former is the fruit of love. Another prudent man, desiring, as all men and women do in their hearts,invulnerability in himself and in the woman he loved, set about it in the following way. He tasted of many women and urged his beloved to taste of many men. After a few years he was satisfied that nothing now could tempt him. She, on the other hand, had had no doubt of herself from the beginning. She had been born invulnerable; he had attained it. The state of being in love is not always defined in relation to one object. One person has the talisman of raising another to the plane of love (that is, of polarising him or her with the natural energy of love); but he or she may not be then either the sole beloved or, indeed, the beloved at all.  There are, among people as among chemical substances, agents of catalysis which make possible interchanges and combinations into which the catalysts themselves do not enter. Frequently they are unrecognized by the parties affected, and usually by themselves as well. In the village of Borna, not far from Lhassa, there once lived a man who was such a catalyst. People who spoke to him instantly fell in love, but not with him, or,  indeed, immediately with anybody in particular. All that they were aware of was that they had, after conversation with him, an active spirit of love which was ready to pour itself out in loving service. The European troubadours were perhaps such people.  There is no necessary relation between love and children; but there is a necessary relation between love and creation. Love is for creation; and if creation is not possible, then for procreation; and if even that is not possible, then for creations of which, perhaps fortunately, we are unconscious. Take it, however, as the fundamental truth about Love: that it always creates. Love created the world: and not all its works are beautiful!

The procreation of children is the particular function of instinctive love: that is its plane. But above and below this plane, other kinds of love have other functions. Emotional love is usually instinctive love out of place; and its procreations are in consequence misfits in the world. The higher forms of

love, on the other hand, either exclude procreation, not artificially but naturally, or include it only as a by-product. Neither the purpose nor the function of conscious love is children; unless we take the word in the mystic sense of becoming as little children. For briefly, the aim of conscious love is to bring about rebirth, or spiritual childhood. Everybody with perceptions beyond those of male and female must be aware of the change that comes over the man or woman, however old in years, who loves. It is usually instinctive; yet it symbolizes the still more marvelous change occurring when a man or woman loves consciously or is aware of being consciously loved. The youth in such cases has all the air of eternity; and it is, indeed, the divine youth. The creations of such a spiritual child in each of the two lovers is the peculiar function of conscious love; and it depends neither upon marriage nor upon children. There are other creations proper to still higher degrees of love; but they must remain until we have become as little children.  We are not one but three in one; and the fact is represented in our physiological make-up. The three main systems, cerebral, nervous, and instinctive, exist side by side, sometimes appearing to co-operate, but more often failing, and usually at cross-purposes. In relation to the external world it depends upon the system in charge of the organism at the moment what the response to any given stimulus will be. If the cerebral system is on duty—that is temporarily in charge of the organism—the response will be one. If the nervous or instinctive system is alone awake, the replies will be different. Three quite different people, each with his own ideas of how his organism should act, exist in us at once: and usually they refuse to cooperate with each other, and, in fact, get in each other's way. Now imagine such an organism, tenanted by three squabbling persons, to 'fall in love'. What  has fallen in love; or, rather, which of the three? It seldom happens that all three are in love at the same time or with the same object. One is in love, the  others are not; and either they resist, or, when the lover is off guard, make his organism unfaithful (driving the poor lover to lies and deceit or self-reproach); or they are forced into   submission, battered into acquiescence. In such circumstances, which every candid reader will recognize, what is a lover?  You imagine that you are continent because you have refrained from sex-relations; but continence is of the senses as well as of the organs, and of the eyes chiefly. From each of the senses there streams energy—energy as various as the man himself. It is not only possible but it is certain that we can expend ourselves intellectually, emotionally or sexually through any one of the senses. To look with lust is much more than simply to look: it is to expend one of the finer substances of which complete sex-energy is composed: something passes in the act of vision which is irrecoverable; and for the want of it the subsequent sex-life is incomplete. It is the same with the other senses, though less easily realized. In short, it is possible to become completely impotent by means of the senses alone—yes, by the eyes alone—while remaining continent in the ordinary meaning of the word.

The chastity of the senses is natural in a few people; but by the many it must be acquired if it is to become common. Under the greatest civilization human history has yet known, the capital of which was the city whose poor remains are Bagdad, the chastity of the senses was taught from early childhood. Each sense was carefully trained; and exercises were devised to enable pupils to discriminate the different emanations arriving from the sense perceptions intellectually, emotionally, instinctively or  erotically motivated. From this education people acquired the power of directing their senses, with the result that chastity was at least possible, since it was under control. Eroticism thereby became an art, in the highest form the world has seen. Its faint echoes are to be found in Persian and Sufi literature today. Bluebeard and La Belle Dame are the male and female types respectively of the same psychology—inspirers of hopeless because unrequitable passion. The decapitated ladies who hung about Bluebeard's chamber were really about his neck; and they had only to let go to be free. Similarly the pale warriors and princes in the cave of La Belle Dame were there by choice; if an irresistible attraction can be called choice. The legends present Bluebeard and La Belle Dame from the point of view of their escaped victims, that is to say, as monsters delighting in erotic sacrifice. But both were as much victims as their titular victims; and both suffered as much, if not more. In such cases of uncontrolled attraction, power passes through the medium, who thus becomes formidably magnetic; and men and women in sympathetic relation are drawn towards him or her like filings towards a magnet. At first, no doubt, the experiences of a Bluebeard or La Belle Dame are pleasant and fortifying to self-pride and self-vanity. The other sex is at their feet. But when, having realized that the power is neither their own nor under their control, they discover that they too are victims, the early satisfaction is dearly paid for. The cure for all parties is difficult. It consists in the reeducation of the body and the senses. Love without divination is elementary. To be in love demands that the lover shall divine the wishes of the beloved long before they have come into the beloved's own consciousness. He knows her better than she knows herself; and loves her more than she loves herself; so that she becomes her perfect self without her own conscious effort. Her  conscious effort, when the love is mutual, is for him. Thus each delightfully works perfection in the other.  But this state is not ordinarily attained in nature: it is the fruit of art, of self-training. All people desire it, even the most cynical; but since it seldom occurs by chance, and nobody has published the key to its creation, the vast majority doubt even its possibility. Nevertheless it is possible, provided that the parties can learn and teach humbly. How to begin? Let the lover when he is about to see his beloved think what he should take, do, or say so as to give her a delightful surprise. At first it will probably be a surprise that is not a complete surprise: that is to say, she will have been aware of her wish, and only delighted that her lover had guessed it. Later the delightful surprise may really surprise her; and her remark will be: 'How did you know I should be pleased, since I should never have guessed it myself?' Constant efforts to anticipate the nascent wishes of the beloved while they are still unconscious are the means to conscious love.  Take hold tightly; let go lightly. This is one of the great secrets of felicity in love. For every Romeo and Juliet tragedy arising from the external circumstances of the two parties, a thousand tragedies arise from the circumstances created by the lovers themselves. As they seldom know the moment or the way to 'take hold' of each other, so they even more rarely know the way or the moment to let go. The ravines of Mount Meru (i.e. Venusberg) are filled with lovers who cannot leave each other. Each wishes to let go, but the other will not permit it. There are various explanations of this unhappy state of affairs. In most instances the approach has been wrong: that is to say, the parties have leapt into union without thought of the way out. Often the first five minutes of the lovers' first  meeting are decisive of the whole future of the relations. In some instances the original relation has been responsible for the subsequent difficulty of' 'letting go': it should never have been; or not have been in the precise circumstances of its occurrence. Mistimed relations always cause trouble. In other cases the difficulty is due to difference in age, education, or 'past'. One is afraid to 'let go' because it appears to be the last hope,

or because too much time has already been spent on it, or because it has been the best up to date, or because his 'ideal', created by education, demands eternal fidelity even where it is not possible, because it is not desired by both; or because one is over-sensitive from past experience and cannot face another failure, or because the flesh being willing the spirit is weak, i.e. neither party can use a knife; or because circumstances are unfavourable, i.e. the parties must continue to see each other; or because of imagination, as when one or the other pictures the happiness of the other without him or her. There are a thousand explanations, and every one of them, while sufficient as a cause, is quite inadequate as reason, the fact being that when one of the parties desires to separate, the other's love duty is to 'let go'. Great love can both let go and take hold.  Jealousy is the dragon in paradise; the hell of heaven; and the most bitter of the emotions because associated with the sweetest. There is a specific against jealousy, namely, conscious love; but this remedy is harder to find than the disease is to endure. But there are palliatives of which the first therapeutic condition is the recognition of the disease and the second the wish to cure oneself. In these circumstances let the sufferer deliberately experiment. Much may be forgiven him or her during this process. He may, for instance, try to forward the new plans of his former beloved—but this is difficult without obvious hypocrisy. Or he may plunge into new society. Or he may engage himself in a new work that demands all his energy. Or he may cast a spell on his memory and regard his former beloved as dead; or as having become his sister; or as having gone away on a long journey; or as having become enchanted. Best, however, if he 'let go' completely with no lingering hope of ever meeting her again.  Be comforted. Our life is but one day of our Life. If not today, tomorrow ! Let go !

PSYCHIC WEDLOCK By Ida Craddock

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

Marital union takes place on three planes - body, mentality and spirit. In the perfect union, the amount of energy expended on any one plane is in exact equation with that expended on either of the others. But when the reverse occurs, the union is imperfect; and when the inequality is marked, the union has no claim to be called true wedlock.

Thus, when the energy expended upon bodily union is greatly in excess of that expended upon the mental and spiritual planes, it is called lust, and right-thinking people turn from it with a shudder.

When intellectual and artistic tastes are the chief basis of union between man and woman,we have a partnership in which mentality is in excess. Such unions are usually helpful and bettering, for the two are then intellectual and artistic comrades. But if, as is too often the case, the body be ignored or despised, it is not wedlock, but Platonic friendship which really unites the two.

Union upon the plane of spirit in excess of either body or mentality is perhaps very rare. Like mental union per se, it has its peculiar raptures; but no mood of spiritual ecstasy can be permanently helpful if it fail to translate its raptures into an expression of energy upon the mental and bodily planes.

It is to suggest the duties and the joys of union in an exact equation upon all three planes that this little essay on Psychic Wedlock has been written.

There is a great deal of misapprehension today, (Note to reader: Ida wrote this during the Victorian era however I found universality easy to  sort out) among intelligent and refined people, regarding the relation which should exist between husband and wife. Sex union upon the bodily plane is too often deprecated as a concession to a degrading appetite; those who thus deprecate it tacitly following in the footsteps of St. Paul, who advised marriage as an outlet for uncontrollable passion, saying, "It is better to marry than to burn." The early Christian fathers almost universally chorused this idea, insisting that that perpetual virginity in man and woman is the state which those should seek who wish to live the ideal life. Marriage was looked upon as impure; and the idea crops up in the Church and among the laity for several centuries, and is bearing fruit today in our social and religious customs. Christianity, so far as the writer is aware, is the only religion in the whole world which fails to give some teaching to its young people concerning their sex capacities and duties, so as to prepare them for the sacredness of the marital union. From whom, let us ask, do the prospective fathers of the race acquire their knowledge of sex powers? Usually from prostitutes, from gross-minded schoolboys, or from depraved men of the world. From who do the prospective mothers of the race acquire their knowledge? Perhaps, at most, from French novels, or in the unhealthy atmosphere of girls' boarding schools, or from married women scarcely less ignorant than themselves. But usually their knowledge is acquired from the aforesaid prospective fathers, upon the wedding night. Can we wonder that the offspring from such parents tend more and more, as successive generations are born, to differentiate into two widely opposing types - on the one hand, the ascetic and prude, who loathe the body as impure in all its sex relations, and on the other hand, the carnal-minded man or woman, whose thoughts about marital union relate chiefly to the body?

It is the prudish silence of the Christian churches and of those whom they influence, which we in Christian lands have largely to thank for the marital unhappiness in our midst.  In savage tribes today,

however ignorant, and in the old days of Paganism at its best - before Paganism had sunk into refined sensuality - we find a very different state of affairs. We find the dignity and holiness of the sex relation upheld by symbol and rite, by mythic tales an sacred dances. We find the medicine-man instructing young men and maidens in the marital duties which they are about to assume - crudely, indeed, but with a mingled frankness and reverence for sex mysteries which we today should be a purer-minded people for imitating.

The ancient medicine-man has disappeared in civilized lands, having split up into three beings: the priest, the physician and the schoolteacher. But the old wisdom still survives in out-of-the-way places, and can be restored by the learned. And our wise men possess what the ancient Pagans and the modern savages did not and do not - a detailed knowledge of embryology, of many laws of sex physiology, and of certain aspects of psychology. Why should not the modern heirs of the old medicine-man - the priest, the physician and the school teacher - resume the position which is naturally theirs, of instructors of the young in that which all need to know who are likely to enter the marital relation?

The times are ripe for such a movement. People on all sides are eagerly seeking knowledge which shall lead them up, and not down, in sex matters. Will the churches, the medical fraternity and our academies of learning continue to neglect their duty?

Let us hope that all three will erelong awake to the vital necessity for some organized and systematic teaching to the people upon sex - teaching which shall treat frankly of those physiological matters which are expunged from our school-books; teaching which shall set forth in its true light the hygienic value of sex union for every normally constituted man and woman; which shall show the moral obliquity of those who, whether legally married or not, create children by accident, and not by intention; which shall insist upon the sacredness of the wife's person; which shall uphold the duty of union in self-control and aspiration to the highest, and which shall not blush to frankly add that such self-control and aspiration will result in increased pleasure to both husband and wife. Last, but not least, let us have teaching which shows how the path to that ideal life which we all of us hope and mean to live lies through the senses to the Highest whom we variously term God, the Unknowable, the Ideal, Unconscious Energy, Law, Force, etc.

Meanwhile, however, since our natural teachers, the physician, the priest and the schoolteacher, remain silent on this vital question, we of the laity must do what we can to enlighten each other. And the present essay on Psychic Wedlock is an attempt to do this, in a small way. Such truth as I have discovered, I desire to share with my fellow-beings, hoping that they will add thereto, and pass our joint knowledge along to others.

It will be observed that this essay treats of three Degrees of initiation into psychic wedlock. These three Degrees seem to be bound up with the inner mysteries of pagan religions everywhere; but the Second and Third Degrees in special appear to have been jealously hidden from the people, and to have been imparted only to those who had passed certain ordeals, and had thereby proved themselves worthy. These things were also bound up with Borderland occultism under certain aspects. In ancient times, the people had not the public school; they were more ignorant of the natural sciences than is the merest schoolboy of today; so that there was a good reason then for keeping advanced sex mysteries carefully hidden from the masses. Moreover, the science of psychology (which we may here use as a convenient term to include all effects of mind upon mind) was then in its infancy. What Dr. Carl du Prel terms "the displacement of the psycho-physical threshold of sensibility" through dreams, hypnotism, drugs, insanity, anger, strong emotion, etc., was in those days studied and understood only by the learned few, mainly the priests. The latter produced the "temple sleep" (nowadays known as the hypnotic sleep) in which the inner sensibilities of the hypnotized subject, exalted to an unusual degree, brought about remarkable results in prophecy, medical prescriptions, clairvoyance, telepathy, etc. Today, however, the science of hypnotism is exploited in medical and lay journals, so that any nonprofessional reader may inform himself of its wonders in detail; and the Society for Psychical Research has carefully collated hundreds of well-attested cases of thought-transference which indicate that the faculty of telepathy is a common property of humanity.

But even today, the realm of psychology contains vast unexplored tracts.

One of these as yet unexplored tracts is the psychic effect of mind upon mind during the marital union. People who would shrink from drugging themselves with liquor or opium, and who hold that yielding to so-called "spirit mediumship" is dangerous, will, nevertheless, recklessly abandon their self-control during the sex ecstasy. It is well established that a child conceived when the father is drunk will be mentally unbalanced, usually to the borders of idiocy. If intoxication - i.e., lack of self-control - at the moment of conception be produced by other means than by alcohol, is it likely that the resulting offspring will not be tainted thereby?

Now, the keepers of the ancient mysteries probably did not know what we in modern days know about physiology, embryology, and similar ologies. But they seem to have learned sufficient to realize the importance of never displacing the psycho-physiological threshold of sensibility during the sex union, except in a state of absolute self-control. And the acquirement of this self-control appears to have constituted the Second Degree in initiation. But because it puts the begetting or non-begetting of children entirely within the power of the parents, and because it intensifies the delight of wedlock, they probably feared that it would be a dangerous knowledge to place within reach of any but a worthy initiate. Hence it was and still is jealously guarded from the general public. But inasmuch as we of the nineteenth century live in an ear of almost universal education, it would seem as though the time had come when this Second Degree, and also the Third and Final Degree, may be more widely imparted.

The following are the three Degrees treated of in this essay:

1. Sex union forbidden, except for the distinct purpose of creating a child at that particular time.
2. Sex union enjoined in absolute self-control and aspiration to the highest.
3. Community with Deity as the third partner in the marital union.

To those who wish to train themselves in these three Degrees, I would say: Self-control is the keynote. And in order that self-control may be acquired with as few setbacks as possible, I strongly urge that all liquor, tea, coffee, tobacco, opium or other narcotics be dispensed with from the first moment of entrance upon the training until the final acquisition of initiateship in the Third Degree. These things, one and all, displace the psycho-physical threshold of sensibility, each after its own fashion; so, also, does the emotion evoked during the sex ecstasy; and it seems foolish to wantonly increase the ordeal through which one must pass in acquiring the marital self-control of the Second Degree.

Another point which is of the highest importance in the preliminary training of the would-be initiate is, that he or she shall learn to look upon the human form as divine with emotions which never degrade, but which always seek to idealize their object. Whatever the neophyte's opinion as to the wisdom or unwisdom of the nude in art, he must acquire the habit of viewing the human form, wherever and however he lights upon it, with chaste emotions, and without agitation. Until he can do this, he is not worthy to enter upon even the First Degree.

He must also acquire the ability - if he does not already possess it - of hearing sex physiology discussed without undue agitation, and of discussing it himself upon a high plane. In short, he should strive to become master of his emotions, as a necessary preparation for entrance upon the First Degree.

But asceticism should never be an ultimate aim. It is useful only as furnishing a gateway to higher, purer, more refined and more spiritual, as well as more enduring, sense-pleasures.

If we would conquer a fractious horse, do we do so by felling him to the earth? By no means. We control him by the bridle, and by gentleness; or again, we apply whip or spur, being careful to hold a tight rein; and at last we can guide him at our will. To kill him or even to stun him is not to truly master him. And to crush the sex nature out of existence is not to truly master it, either. We can bring our sex powers under our control only by applying similar methods to those which we should adopt with a high-spirited, full-blooded horse. Sex desire is nothing to be ashamed of; it is something to rejoice in, provided it be governed as absolutely as we govern an impetuous horse, allowing it to do nothing but what our higher self wills it to do.

And oh, the joy, the joy of self-control! Only they who have thus conquered can understand!

CHAPTER II
THE INDIVIDUAL & THE UNIVERSE

To appreciate the highest aspect of psychical wedlock, and therefore of the inferior degrees which have the Third Degree as their goal, it is necessary to frame some philosophical conception of the relations existing between the individual and the universe. This conception should be one upon which Christian and non-Christian, Atheist and Theist, can agree.

To seek to measure the infinite by the finite is, of course, absurd; but to deduce from the finite some of the laws of the infinite - i.e., from the known, a partial knowledge of the laws of the unknown of which that known forms a part - is both logical and satisfying.

The following conception will, I think, be found to have at least the merit of simplicity:
Every act of the individual is an ex-pression (something pressed out) from the inner to the outer. The process consists of three stages. Let us say that a man

1. conceives the idea of pushing a ball out of his path;
2. he determines how the ball shall be pushed aside, with hand or foot, gently or powerfully, etc.;
3. at the command of his mentality, his body performs the act of moving the ball.

To produce the desired result, then, two factors concur:

• The conception of moving the ball from his path.
• A definite thinking out of the method, and a transmission of the order to the body.

If the second stage be gone through with clearly within the man's mentality, the result in the third and final stage of the process will be an exact expression of his original conception, "I will push that ball out of my path." But if his method of pushing the ball aside be not planned out properly, so that his mind fails to exercise full control of the bodily muscles, he will find the inertia of the ball successfully oppose him, and he may stub his toe, or let the ball drop on his pet corn before he accomplishes his intention.

Clear-headedness, therefore, is of the greatest possible importance. Our mentality must be kept clear and unclouded, if what we may term "the thinker" within us is to have its orders correctly transmitted to our bodily selves. We may view the mentality which intervenes between the thinker within and the body without as an atmosphere through which rays of light stream from the inward self to the outer body. When the atmosphere is clear and colorless, the rays reach the destination unaltered. When it is colored by prejudice or clouded by ignorance or dislike of anything or anybody, they likewise become colored, or they are distorted, refracted, or almost entirely swallowed up in the mist, so that the few glimmerings which reach our intellect (that side of mentality which blends with the body) can but mislead. Were our inward conceptions conveyed to our intellects through an atmosphere of absolutely unclouded, unprejudiced and loving mentality, our outward lives would be godlike, for the thinker within each of us is godlike, and in truth desires to realize only the highest ideal.

What if we imagine all humanity as laid side by side to match, so as to form one continuous body, one continuous mentality, one continuous inward self? We might represent this blending of humanity as taking place in a circle, thus:
In this imaginary representation of humanity, each human being is a sector of the circle, and at the apexes of the sectors, where each of us is the godlike thinker, the blending must of necessity be perfect, however imperfect the blending and sharply defined the sectors may be on the mental and bodily planes. At the center of this imaginary circle, where our godlike selves join those of our fellow-creatures, we are blended into one godlike spirit which is really the directing spirit of humanity - its Great "Thinker," so to say.

If in this circle we include each living creature, whether plant or animal, we blend upon the "Thinker" plane with the egos or inward selves of all animate nature. And, what with the recent theories of "fatigue in metals," "chemical affinities of atoms," and "sex in minerals," it would perhaps not be unwarranted to include inanimate nature in our representation of the circle and sectors. If the members of the mineral kingdom have no life (as we understand life), at all events they are the result of law, and appear to be the expression of that law, so that it would seem as though they also should be included as sectors in our circle.

This circle, it will be seen, images the universe, not as a kingdom, with the Deity as a king who distributes his favors with the partiality and favoritism of an Oriental monarch; but as a republic, in which each sector, however tiny, has a vote in the General Council which directs the entire universe. In Scripture, indeed, we are told that God not only made man in His own image, but also that he breathed his breath into man in order to make man a living soul. In Scripture we are also told that we are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ; and Jesus himself, in the Sermon on the Mount, exhorts us to be perfect, even as our Heavenly Father is perfect.

So that, from a Christian as well as from a philosophical standpoint, we may consider ourselves as like unto God, and one with Him in spirit. Within ourselves, at the apexes of our sectors, each of us is Creator, for there we are one with Him; there also are we love, wisdom, power, and can create our outward lives as we will - provided that we keep our mentality clear and unclouded for the transmission of the godlike ideal of the spirit into the bodily life.

In the circle, not only is each sector the equal of every other sector before the law; but each of the three planes has its part to play in the perfect whole, and is therefore of equal importance with the other two. It is true that, in the carrying out of a conception,the order is:

1. The conception of the thinker, on what is the plane of the spirit, which is subjective to mentality, although objective to the inward thinker.
2. The molding of the thinker's conception into definite shape in the workshop of mentality, during which process the evoluting conception is objective to mentality, but as yet only subjective to the outward bodily life.
3. The carrying out of that conception on the material plane of the body, at which time it is no longer merely a subjective thought, but an objective act in the world of matter.

This, as I have said, is the order. But we must not forget that great law:
"Reaction is equal to action, and opposite to it in direction." If spirit, through mentality, acts upon body, so, likewise, does body, through mentality, react upon spirit. And, also, the impulse to vibration being set up on the bodily plane, it is transmitted through mentality to spirit, resulting in a reaction from the apex of the sector outward again to the bodily plane.

Let us apply this philosophy to the marital relation. Where the three planes of body, mentality and spirit are in fairly harmonious adjustment, as they are in all normally constituted people who seek to live aright, the bodily sex relation with another sector and the spiritual sexual relation with that sector interact upon one another through mentality, for the good of the two creatures and the happiness of the entire universe. For, remembering that each of us is part of the Great Thinker at the apex of our individual sector, it will be seen that vibrations set up in our bodily life, and transmitted through mentality to our apex of spirit, must affect the universe on all sides.

But only the initiate of the First and Second Degrees in marital union can appreciate and act upon the suggestive and far-reaching conception of the relation of the individual to the universe, and of the universe to the individual.

CHAPTER III
FIRST DEGREE

Sex union forbidden,
except for the express purpose
of creating a child.

In married life of the usual type, children are brought into the world with a strange recklessness. The Bible command, "Be fruitful and multiply," has been twisted into a sanction for immoderate sex union. So far as can be learned, men appear to be here the chief trespassers upon the privileges of the matrimonial state. But if men are the aggressors, their wives are too often accessories before the fact, in that they yield their bodies to marital excess without a murmur, inwardly assuring themselves that they by so doing they are obeying God's behest to be dutiful wives.

I recall a charming woman, whose husband is intelligent, refined and thoroughly devoted to his wife. Both are devout Christians, both abhor drunkenness, and are living lives of purity and aspiration so far as an outsider can see. Yet this happily married wife, when discussing with me certain aspects of the marital relation, remarked, incidentally, "For my part, on going to bed at night I am usually very thankful when my husband doesn't want me, and I can go quietly to sleep."

"When my husband doesn't want me." Why should he ever approach her, unless she wants him? It is not the man, but the woman, who must be the best judge of when union is desirable; and for her to yield to a husband's solicitations when she does not desire union, is a fraud upon him, since he finds only a corpse or a hypocrite in the place of a sincerely loving and tender marital partner. Moreover, it encourages him to think that, no matter what his wife desires, she is quite willing to serve at any time as a convenience for his lust; so that she confirms him in his selfishness, and degrades herself from the position of priestess in a sacred mystery, to become a mere cuspidor.

A cultivated Philadelphia lady, who lost her money and took up the profession of nursing for her livelihood, tells the following:
She was attending a young wife in her first confinement. The patient had been greatly lacerated in delivery. On the second day after delivery, while the nurse was attending to the baby, the husband entered, and requested the nurse to leave the room. "For God's sake, nurse, don't leave me!" exclaimed the sick woman. But a look from the husband caused the nurse to obey him, nevertheless. Shortly after, she heard her patient scream, "Oh, he'll murder me!" Whereupon the nurse rushed in and found the husband in the act of committing a rape upon his wife. The nurse seized his arm, and endeavored to pull him away; but he did not yield until he was ready, when he allowed himself, sullenly, to be led from the room, covered with blood. The wife meanwhile had fainted. When she recovered, she cried, "Oh God, would that my baby girl and I would die! That man promised on our wedding-day to honor, love and protect me; but every night since then he has used my poor body!"

This is doubtless an extreme case; but the wife who allows her husband to approach her whenever he wishes, regardless of her own desires, is the first term in a downward series of which this unfortunate woman is, alas, not the last, as many a physician can testify.

In Pagan lands and among the Jews, there are five days out of every twenty-eight, when the woman is forbidden to the man; and those who violate this taboo period are looked on as lawbreakers. Lore and religion alike memorialize the abhorrence in which the violator of this taboo period is held, everywhere but in Christian lands. If the reader objects that no educated or refined man would fail to respect the five-day taboo period, let him inquire about this of some reputable physician with whom he is intimate, when he will learn how sadly numerous in our midst are the husbands who respect no physical condition and no night of the month. Modern researchers have shown the impressionability of the embryo child during gestation. Napoleon the Great owed his remarkable military genius to the fact that, prior to his birth, his mother accompanied her husband through a military campaign.

If the coming child be so impressionable during the nine months of gestation, it surely behooves every conscientious parent to see to it that no abandonment to passion shall occur during that period to stamp the embryo, even for one moment, with lack of self-control. And, on the other hand, it would seem as though every act of mutual considerateness and every tender caress between husband and wife at that time must bear its part in making their coming child self-controlled, sweet-tempered and affectionate.

But not only should the nine months of gestation be free from the abandonment of sex-passion. So, also, according to some authorities, should the nine months or thereabouts devoted to lactation. The child that is suckling is a drain upon its mother's strength, and it is cruel, at least to the child, even should the mother desire it, to draw further upon her nervous energies at that time, and to probably render the milk feverish, by abandonment to sex passion. Among so inferior a people as the Zulus and Kaffirs, the wife's person is held sacred by the husband, not only during gestation, but also during lactation. It is true that these people have more than one wife. That is their way of dealing with this question. But will it be pretended that a civilized, high-minded white man cannot get along during his wife's pregnancy and lactation without indulgence, and that he must choose among polygamy, association with harlots, or violation of the person of a pregnant or nursing wife? If so, he should be prohibited by law from ever creating a child, since he cannot become a father without afterward committing a crime.

Some sex reformers hold that the creation of a child should not occur oftener than once in three years, inasmuch as a little child is entitled to the mother's personal care during its infancy - a care which is interfered with when the mother is passing through the delicate condition of pregnancy.

At all events it cannot be denied that, were fewer children born in a family, those who are born would be better taken care of than they are at present. A poor man is not able to properly rear and educate a large family. Nor, indeed, can any but the very rich do this. So that, from a financial as well as from a hygienic standpoint, large families are undesirable, as being an undue tax upon their parents, and also as rendering it unlikely that proper care can be bestowed upon each individual child.

But if large families are undesirable, so, also, are the usual preventive checks undesirable, being abnormal, unhealthy, and immoral, whether by withdrawal or other methods. They are immoral, because they place no check upon passion, but allow it full range. They are unhealthy, because the psychic powers of both parties are depleted, without sufficient interchange of magnetism. And being a violation of the natural and healthy relation, they are abnormal.

The only lawful preventive to conception is self-control. The seed should never be sown where no harvest is prepared for or desired.

The wife is the one to decide when the harvest is to be desired. She should be queen of her own person, so absolutely as she was while still a maiden. She should never consent to sex union unless she desires it. Otherwise, she degrades her wifehood into prostitution, for she is then little, if any better than the courtesan who rents her body to a man forgo much money a night.

The coming child should be deliberately, reverently, and prudently planned for. To choose a time when there seems to be least likelihood of conception, is degrading the generative powers for purposes of sensuality. Moreover, the wife is less desirous of union at such times. Nature's appointed love-season is, almost without exception, during the day or days immediately following the monthly taboo period. Those who allow this natural wedding-time to pass, and who unite two weeks later, at the ebb-tide of the woman's passion, should not be surprised if she manifests only indifference or disgust, instead of tender affection.

Another thing:
It must be remembered that the seed should be sown with the honest intention of producing a harvest. When it has been sown, it behooves husband and wife to wait, it may be for weeks or even months, to learn beyond the possibility of a mistake, whether the seed has germinated or not. And of course, when pregnancy is assured, no further seed need be sown.

This is the teaching of the First Degree.

Not until the initiate shall have grasped the teaching in its fullness will he be worthy to enter upon the training for the Second Degree.

CHAPTER IV
SECOND DEGREE

Sex union enjoined
in absolute self-control
and aspiration to the highest.

SECOND DEGREE (Junior)

In sex union there are two functions concerned - love and parentage. Likewise, there are two sets of organs for the performance of these functions.

The organs of parentage are, in the woman, the ovaries and uterus; in the man, the testicles and vesiculae seminalae.

The organs of love are those which make contact during sex union; and through these, when the union is normal and on a high plane, an interchange of magnetism results which is helpful and strengthening to both parties.

To secure a thorough equipoise of the whole being, it is important that the love-function have healthy and normal exercise at frequent intervals. But the function of parentage should be very rarely exercised; and intervals of years may elapse, without detriment to the health and general well-being, provided that the love-function be exercised in moderation and upon a high plane meanwhile.

If the reader asks, incredulously, how, on the man's part, the love-function may be healthfully exercised without the wasteful scattering of seed supposed to be a necessary climax to each marital union, I would refer him to a little book called Zugassent's Discovery, written by Geo. B. Miller, and published by the Boston Arena Publishing Company. I would also refer him to the accounts of the Oneida Community, where for thirty years this possibility was demonstrated. Also to Karezza, by Alice C. Stockham, M.D.

If it be asked how the power of self-control is to be attained, I answer:
By degrees, as one would acquire proficiency in any athletic exercise or any art. One should resolutely decide at the outset that no seed shall be scattered, no matter what the impulse may be at the moment, and should sternly abide by his self-registered vow, to the best of his ability. It is quite likely that one or two failures may result at first; but as the power of self-control is developed, it becomes and more possible for a man to do here just what he wills. And no man who has once acquired this power will ever care to return to the old habit of abandonment to passion; for he will see that he was then a slave, whereas now he is a king. (Again, I would remind the reader that ascetic self-control is Nature's appointment way to increased sense pleasures.)

In India, the philosophy of sex relations reached this high standard centuries ago; and today such power of self-control appears to be a well-nigh universal inheritance among the natives.

This is the first half of the teaching of the Second Degree - the ability to suppress at will the scattering of the seed.

Its effects are not only bodily, but psychic as well; and the husband who has acquired this power can frequently turn a passive, indifferent marital partner into a tender wife.

One reason why many women manifest indifference or disgust in the marital union is, that women are usually slower in coming to the climax than are men. Affection, tender considerateness, gentleness and delicacy on the man's part, accompanied by the exercise of prolonged and absolutely self-controlled union, would transform many a merely tolerated husband into a welcome lover.

But the wife, also, has her part to play, and should look well to the management of her own sex powers. She must learn not to abandon herself to emotion, any more than she would willingly yield to a horse that is trying to run away with her. Let her act with her emotions as she would strive to act with such a horse - control with whip and bridle, and make herself absolute mistress of the creature. But let her also remember that to kill a horse is not to govern it.

When both parties shall have acquired this self-control, they will begin to understand somewhat of the beauty and joy of psychic wedlock.

An objection sometimes raised by men is that, on grounds of health, a bodily secretion needs to be gotten rid of at frequent intervals. That depends. In the case of tears, it is not so. We may go for months and years without suffering in health from not weeping; and yet, if occasion arise, the secretion is formed instantaneously in response to our need. Why should not other secretions which are evoked by occasional emotion be ranked in the same category as tears?

It will of course be understood that the above does not apply to any secretion in the nature of a mucous fluid which is intended by Nature merely for purposes of lubrication. The Second Degree prohibits only that which is ejaculated - i.e., the masculine creative seed.

A more reasonable objection, however, is that, after a secretion is formed, it cannot be returned to the system without detriment to health. But Dr. Brown-Sequard has asserted that repression at the last moment and restoring the seminal secretion to the system prolongs a man's life and adds to his vigor. Dr. Brown-Sequard, however, seems to have made the mistake of supposing that it mattered not by what means either the secretion or the repression of that secretion was induced. Hence his theory about obtaining the "Elixir of Life" at such a moment from guinea-pigs, bulls and other male animals in which the secretion had been artificially induced - a theory which careful scientific experiment duly exploded. His crucial mistake lay in his not grasping the fact that the excitation should occur in a normal manner, that the repression should be voluntary, and not brought about by any means but self-control, and that the strengthening value of the secretion consists in its being returned to the system to which it belongs.

Again, I would remind the reader that the power evolved by the practice of the Second Degree is psychic, as well as physical.

Every ejaculation means a waste in psychic energy - a waste which may be counterbalanced in part by the exchange of magnetism in a tender marital union, but which can never wholly be made up.

SECOND DEGREE (Senior)

I have said that the first half of the Second Degree consists in the ability to the ecstasy entirely, however prolonged the union. And this power should be acquired by the wife, as well as by the husband. The second half consists in going through the final ecstasy in absolute self-control, and with no ejaculation.

This is a step beyond the teaching of even the Oneida Community, and I cannot refer the reader to any books upon the subject. But there are today men who have acquired even this power.

In this stage, also,the woman should go through with a corresponding training in self-control. To use a figure of speech, one may compare the last half of the Second Degree to struggling through a mountain torrent. Again and again, as we strive to breast the dangerous stream, we are swept from our footing and nearly submerged; yet each time we manage to keep our head above water, and at last we emerge triumphantly on the other side, clamber up the steep bank, and go on our way, rejoicing in the consciousness of our strength.

The dangers attending the practice of this Second Degree by the unworthy initiate are serious. It may be made the means of sensual excesses which degrade the moral nature and break down the health. I am inclined to agree, it is true, with other writers on the subject, in maintaining that, to the selfish man and the libertine, the game is not worth the candle. Nevertheless, I should not be doing my duty by the general reader were I to fail to utter a word of warning, and to insist that only in moderation and aspiration to the highest may the Second Degree be safely practiced. Not only this. The Second Degree, without the Third and Final Degree, is not only imperfect, but is certain in time to become demoralizing, inasmuch as it deals chiefly with prolonged sense-pleasure upon the planes of body and mentality alone.

Let us, therefore, now turn to the consideration of the Third and Highest Degree, which is the one in which our spiritual natures find activity.

CHAPTER IV
THIRD DEGREE

Communion with Deity
as the third partner
in marital union.

THIRD DEGREE (Junior)

In the chapter on the Individual and the Universe, a philosophical conception was set forth which represented the Great Thinker at the heart of the universe as consisting of the sum of minds which exist throughout nature. Reaction being equal to action and opposite to it in direction, we showed that although our inward spirit sends impulses outward through mentality into our bodily life, yet it is logical to infer that vibrations set up on the bodily plane will react through mentality upon our spirit; and since that within us which thinks may be considered to be part of the Directing Spirit of the universe, our bodily life, by transmission through our mentality and this Central Thinker, probably acts upon the entire universe.

If this hypothesis be accepted as logical, it would seem to be the duty of each of us so to live that our bodily acts shall result in help and happiness to the rest of the universe. The old-fashioned books tell us that we have within us a safe guide, called Conscience. Modern philosophy, however, has demonstrated that Conscience needs to be enlightened in order to be thoroughly reliable. Of one thing, nevertheless, we may be reasonably certain. If we endeavor to the best of our ability, to keep our mentality free from prejudice, dislike and ignorance, so that the light from our higher, inward self shall stream through mentality uncolored and unrefracted, we shall be quite safe in following the guidance of that mysterious inner something which we term "Conscience."

This, the Atheist would call living in harmony with law, inasmuch as it necessitates clear-headedness as its first requisite. The Theist would call it seeking to know the will of God.

Prayer is one way of clearing our mentality, so that the vibratory impulses may be correctly transmitted from That Which Thinks, outward through our mentality into our bodily life. Prayer is also a means of transmitting through our mentality, to the Great Thinker at the heart of the universe, the results of what we do on the bodily plane, for the betterment of the entire universe.

When, under the powerful influence of sex emotion, the psychological threshold of sensibility is displaced, an especially intimate communication is opened up, whether we wish it or not, between our bodily lives and the Great Thinker. If we aspire to act in union with that Great Thinker at such a moment, the vibrations set up within us by the sex emotion must result not only in our own betterment, but in joy and help to all the world.

This is the first half of the Third Degree - the duty of aspiration during the sex ecstasy to communion with the Great Thinker.

THIRD DEGREE (Senior)

And the second half of this degree is the joy accruing both to the Great Thinker and to ourselves through such communion.

The Hindus have a belief which many people would term a superstition, to the effect that a god can enjoy material pleasures, but only when his worshipper offers him a share.

And so the devout Hindu offers his god a share of his food and drink and even of his debaucheries, believing that he may enjoy himself as he will, if only he gives the god a part. That is, of course, a degradation of what is really a beautiful and inspiring idea - the idea that God can and does enjoy the material world through our enjoyment.

The second of the Third Degree is entered upon when we realize that perhaps it is possible for us individually, after all, to give to the Great Thinker a pleasure which no one else can, and when out of sheer benevolence and good-will, and with no selfish desire to secure our own pleasure, we offer the Great Thinker a share in our delight, asking Him to become the third partner in the marital union. Pantheos, Personal God or Impersonal, Unknowable Force as may be that Great Thinker, nevertheless, if this offering be sincerely and reverently made, there will dawn upon the twain who are one flesh a realizing sense of the personal relation between themselves and the heart of the universe, which is obtainable in no other way. For the time being, they will know what it is to "love God" and to be loved by Him, and will be one with all the universe, in a rapture which is indescribable. And because at that moment the way lies clear and unclouded between their bodily lives and the Great Thinker, the initiates of the Third Degree will realize in all its fullness genuine psychic wedlock - i.e., sex union upon all three planes of body, mentality and spirit, in the exact equation which constitutes the ideal union of husband and wife.

I have tried to set forth with such clearness as seemed admissible in a work intended for the general public the fundamental principles of genuine psychic wedlock - the only sort of union, it seems to me, which men and women ought to seek in the sex relation. Having succeeded at times in living up to this philosophy myself, I speak of its possibilities as one who knows. And so I am sending out this little essay, hoping that others, both husbands and wives, with wider lives than mine, may be helped thereby to attain the ideal happiness of PSYCHIC WEDLOCK.

-- THE END --