“Sex is the sacred song of the soul; sex is the sanctuary of Self…” — Aleister Crowley, On Sexual Freedom
“From the evidence of his drawings, notebooks, and illuminated prophecies, it is clear that Blake maintained a life-long commitment to radical theories of sexuality,” says Marsha Keith Schuchard in The Human Divine. “Blake’s own confidence in his sexual credo was possibly rooted in his early family life, for his father allegedly associated with Swedenborgians, Moravians, and other “irregular” Freemasons. From each of these societies, with their overlapping memberships, young Blake could have imbibed the theosophy of desire that fueled his visionary art and troubled his marriage.”
Schuchard draws connections between Blake’s work and that of his influences to union with the divine via sex. One example is his drawing of “a naked woman whose genitals have been transformed into an altar or chapel, with an erect penis forming a kind of holy statue at the center.” Would you call it sex magick? Sacred sexuality? Or something else entirely?
William Blake and the Sexual Basis of Spiritual Vision
Many thanks to Frater Von Hohenheim for the tip!
