Sexuality, Magic and Perversion (9 page)

In Taoist alchemy the eyes are regarded as positive (yang) and the rest of the body as negative (yin). Therefore when the vital force has been raised to the psychic head centre it is by rolling the eyes in a particular manner that the practitioner achieves the “inner copulation” that supposedly leads to the manifestation of spirit. This rolling of the eyes is performed in cycles of sixty—thirty-six times from left to right and then twenty-four times from right to left (in Taoism thirty-six is a yang number and twenty-four is a yin number). Each revolution of the eyes is done slowly, being accompanied by a full inspiration and expiration of the breath.

When spirit has manifested in the head centre it is driven down to the crucible in the lower abdomen (sometimes referred to as “the water centre”) in order to be “fixed” and stabilised. When this has been done the
mercury
(i.e. stabilised spirit) is enveloped by
lead
(vitality) which has previously been purified by being vibrated in a continuous ascent and descent of the psychic channel that links the psychic water centre with the psychic fire centre situated in the heart. The united lead and mercury form what is sometimes referred to as the immortal embryo.

The alchemist now begins to practise “immortal breathing”, often referred to as the self-winding (i.e. automatic) wheel of the law. This is done by accompanying every inspiration of the breath with the stream of force entering the body at the heels and travelling up to the brain and accompanying every expiration of the breath with a visualisation of the same force travelling down from the brain and out through the trunk. This leads to the production in the head centre of a divine food which nurtures the immortal seed situated in the water centre. The alchemical process is completed; all that remains is the quickening of the immortal embryo with spirit—another complex set of exercises enables this to take place—and the alchemist becomes ready to undertake the final stage of the work.

When the immortal seed has been nurtured to maturity—this is indicated
by six signs
¹⁴
—the alchemist is ready to prepare the elixir of immortality. Guarding himself against destroying all that he has previously achieved (such destruction comes if the alchemist indulges in any one of the “seven passions”, the “ten excesses”, or the “nine unsettled breaths”) he gathers together the “four essentials of alchemy”—utensils, money, friends and a suitable place. The utensils are simple enough; a round wooden “bun”, covered in cotton, used to block the anus, and a clothes peg to put upon the nostrils. The money is required for the mundane purpose of purchasing food, the friends (who must also be alchemists) are required to attend to the physical needs of the practitioner and “to pinch his backbone when required”. The ideal place is an ancient Taoist temple on a mountain, far away from either cities or graveyards; “it is advisable to choose an ancient abode where previous masters have realised immortality so that it is free from disturbing demons and the practiser can enjoy spiritual protection from his enlightened predecessors” said Chao Pi Ch’en.

Having reached to his temple the alchemist concentrates on the lower abdominal (water) centre and “shakes the six sense organs” (nose, ears, eyes, tongue, mind and penis). This “arouses the immortal seed” in the testicles and it tries to move out through the penis. This exit, however, has already been shut by the exercises previously performed by the alchemist and the immortal seed now moves towards the anus; here its escape is prevented by the previously mentioned wooden bun. The whole object of the exercise is to cause the immortal seed
to travel up the spine
. When the alchemist feels the seed approaching the coccyx he “opens” the spine by (1) pressing a finger hard on the base of the penis, (2) rolling his eyes, (3) sucking in a deep breath, (4) thrusting his tongue against his palate, and (5) stretching the small of his back.
¹⁵

Simultaneously one of the companion alchemists pinches the base of the backbone and the immortal seed passes through the first “gate of the spine”. The immortal seed then passes up the spine through two other gates (at each of which the five dragons sequence is again practised) to a psychic centre situated at the back of the head.

Immediately the immortal seed has reached the head the practitioner begins an eye-rolling sequence—thirty-six revolutions from left to right and twenty-four revolutions in the opposite direction—all the time gazing at the inner light that now manifests itself. At this stage another danger manifests itself; there is now a risk that the immortal seed will drain out through the nose! The clothes-peg is brought into play, fulfilling the same function for the nostrils that the wooden bun did for the anus. The immortal seed, prevented from escape via the nostrils, now moves down into a psychic cavity situated above the nostrils and (physically) manifests itself in the form of saliva. Under no circumstances must this saliva be spat out. Instead it is passed down the body into the lower abdominal centre. There it remains; the alchemical operation is complete. Immortality has been achieved and the alchemist has only to develop his (immortal) potentialities and to appear in countless “transformation bodies”.
¹⁶

My summary of Chinese alchemical techniques has been brief and, inevitably, inadequate; and whilst all the points of this account of sexual alchemy have ultimately been drawn from Chinese sources it is certain that some aspects of my interpretation would be challenged by Chinese Taoists, such as Charles Luk (Lu K’uan Yu), who are still working within the alchemical tradition. Those of my readers who desire to make a wider and deeper study of this tradition would be well advised to study Charles Luk’s
Chinese Meditation
and
Taoist Yoga
—both published by Rider and Co.

¹
From Dr. V. V. Raman Shastri’s
Doctrine and Culture of the Siddhas in The Cultural Heritage of India
(Vol. II), as quoted by Shashibusan Dasgupta in
Obscure Religious Cults
.

²
And, of course, roughly equivalent to the Kether of the microcosmic Tree of Life in the Qabalistic system taught by Mathers and Aleister Crowley.

³
Significantly, this work deals with the preparation of the “pill of immortality”—the Elixir of Life.

⁴
Dubs describes the Chinese Goddess of the Stove as “a beautiful old woman clad in red garments with her hair done up in a knot on top of her head”; as the divine being in charge of cooking and the preparation of medicines it was natural enough that she should also take charge of alchemy.

⁵
Mountains were popular with Chinese alchemists; one text affirms that transmutation can only be achieved on a
large
mountain—no other mountain will suffice.

⁶
And, of course, still are by some—perhaps more in the west than in the east; for the surprisingly successful contemporary cults of “Zen cooking” and “macrobiotic food” are based on the belief that all foods can be divided into Yin substances and Yang substances.

⁷
Other minerals used were arsenic (!), alum, mica and calcium carbonate.

⁸
It was a popular belief that “a drop of semen equals an ounce of blood”.

⁹
See
Chapter 14
, “Magicians, The Orgasm and the Work of Wilhelm Reich”.

¹⁰
That is to say a breathing so deep that it affects all the muscles of the lower abdomen.

¹¹
This technique has a remarkable similarity to an occidental magical process described by Regardie in his
Art of True Healing
.

¹²
This touching of the palate with the tongue is a component part of several Chinese alchemical processes. One text urges it as a means of increasing the flow of saliva (regarded as “the most precious thing that preserves our physical strength”) which is then retained until the mouth is full and then suddenly swallowed; it then is believed to enter the centre in the lower belly and be trans-formed into generative force—the subtle analogue of semen.

¹³
More or less the same process is recommended for those who are situated some way from their lavatory and are inconvenienced by a need to visit it. I would have thought that even a long walk was less trouble!

¹⁴
They are (1) and (2) the hearing of the dragon’s hum in the right ear and the tiger’s roar in the left ear (it is supposed that the filling of all psychic channels with force leads to a continuous noise, audible to the alchemist alone); (3) a golden light is seen in the head centre; (4) fire is felt blazing in the water centre; (5) the back of the head is felt to vibrate; and (6) the penis retracts in upon itself. The Taoist master Chao Pi Ch’en gave a quick method of deciding whether or not the seed is mature; one sits in a dark room looking at the flame of an oil lamp, rolls one’s eyes nine times from left to right and then shuts them. If one sees a white light surrounded by sparks the seed is mature, if, on the other hand, one sees a dark circle (also surrounded by sparks) maturity has not been attained.

¹⁵
This fivefold sequence is referred to as “the five dragons upholding the holy one”.

¹⁶
It will by now be obvious to the reader familiar with Jungian depth-psychology that the Secret of the Golden Flower, so misunderstood by C. G. Jung and Richard Wilhelm, was a secret of sexual alchemy.

Our contemporary technological western civilisation is the first human society which has not had to be preoccupied with the problems of fertility. For modern storage and transportation techniques have ensured that a crop failure or a cattle pestilence in one area can be swiftly compensated for by an inward movement of food from another area.
¹
In Europe and North America drought, flood and hurricane are no longer inevitably followed by famine, pestilence and death, and it is difficult for an inhabitant of these technologically advanced regions of the Earth to conceive of an environment in which the failure to reproduce of either one’s plants or one’s animals means, quite simply, physical extinction. Nevertheless, this has been the human situation throughout most of history (and all of pre-history), and, to some extent at least, is still the condition under which the majority of the world’s population live today.

It is not, therefore, surprising that both fertility symbolism and rituals designed to promote fertility have played a major part in the magical and religious culture of all agricultural societies. Whilst it is always dangerous to make cultural generalisations it is reasonably true to say that all primitive fertility religions share four common characteristics; they are (a) a conception of the importance of duality and “pairs of opposites” in the process of reproduction, (b) a belief that the nature
of time is cyclical rather than linear, (c) a philosophical picture of nature as being both personal and hierarchic, and (d) a belief in cause and effect.

The first of these shared characteristics—that of the importance of duality—requires little explanation; it must have been at a very early stage of man’s intellectual development that he realised that both male and female elements were necessary for successful human reproduction. Inevitably enough, the idea of fertility as a product of duality was extended, firstly, from humanity to other animate beings and, secondly, from the world of animate beings to the world of inanimate objects. Thus fire was seen as male, water as female, while fire itself was seen as the child of its parents—the two sticks which were rubbed together in order to produce it—and in at least some still-spoken primitive languages the horizontal soft stick against which the upright hard stick is rubbed is referred to as “the woman” while the hard stick itself is known as “the man”. The gods were also seen as male and female; crop fertility was often conceived of as the result of the copulation of the “sky father” with the “earth mother”.
²
As a consequence of this divine duality the later evolution of fertility religions often produced a situation in which it was considered vaguely improper for a man to worship a god or a woman to worship a goddess, for such a worship of a deity of one’s own gender violated the principle of sexual polarity. According to the classical writer Macrobius the essential sexual duality was often maintained by transvestism; thus at the shrine of Aphrodite in Cyprus female worshippers dressed as men, while the priests of Hercules at Coos only sacrificed when clad in female garments. Interestingly enough, in the corrupt ritual magic of the Middle Ages the whole concept of polarity became reversed—the magician had to be of the
same
sex as the force he or she invoked; Maimonides, the mediaeval Jewish philosopher and theologian, described a magical text-book in which it was laid down that when a man invoked Venus he should wear a woman’s vest and that when a woman invoked Mars she should don the arms and armour of a man.