target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_51b13c92-0b83-5007-a8e5-5af996cd671d">3 Later on other rituals were composed. They are markedly inferior in form and content to the original four and are clearly not of Crowley’s manufacture.
4 The ritual patterns and sexual practices of the more heavily sexually orientated covens are examined in detail in a later chapter of this book.
5 A detailed examination of these beliefs and techniques is made in the chapter of this book entitled “A Whip for Aradia”.
6 Dealt with in a later chapter of this book.
7 Dealt with in Part Two of this book.
CHAPTER TWO
Pornography, Edward Sellon and Indian Tantricism
In a later chapter I shall show how Richard Payne Knight and Thomas Wright were responsible for the birth of a dilettante interest in the Priapic worship and sexual magic of ancient and mediaeval Europe; but it was that extraordinary personality Edward Sellon—soldier, coach-driver, fencing-master and pornographer—who first created any widespread interest in the sexual practices of Indian Tantricism. I use the phrase “widespread interest” of course, in only a comparative way; a small minority of English and French scholars seem to have had an interest in the sexual aspects of Indian religion as early as the eighteenth century, and Sellon’s real achievement was to extend this interest and to give both the (admittedly tiny) sexually-emancipated minority of the middle-classes and sexually-orientated occultists some awareness of the sexual-religious-magical tradition of left-handed Tantricism. Sellon’s Annotations Upon the Sacred Writings of the Hindus did not appear until 1865, the year before his death, but his life illustrates so well both the oddness of character and the contempt for the generally accepted nineteenth-century social mores that were probably essential for anyone undertaking a serious study of Tantricism at that period, that I think it worth while recounting it in some detail before examining the Annotations.
Sellon was born in 1818 and was “the son of a gentleman of moderate fortune whom I lost when quite a child”.1 Sellon adds that as a consequence of this early bereavement he was “designed from the first for the army” and, when still only sixteen years of age, he went to India where, on October 27th, 1834, he was gazetted as an Ensign in the 4th Madras Native Infantry. Sellon seems to have enjoyed his ten years in India, taking a more than average interest in native social, religious, and sexual life—particularly the latter. He wrote:
“I now commenced a regular course of fucking with native women. The usual charge for the general run of them is two rupees. For five, you may have the handsomest Mohammedan girls, and any of the high-caste women who follow the trade of a courtesan. The ‘fivers’ are a very different set of people from their frail sisterhood in European countries; they do not drink, they are scrupulously cleanly in their persons, they are sumptuously dressed, they wear the most costly jewels in profusion, they are well educated and sing sweetly, accompanying their voices on the viol de gamba, a sort of guitar, they generally decorate their hair with clusters of clematis, or the sweet scented bilwa flowers entwined with pearls or diamonds. They understand in perfection all the arts and wiles of love, are capable of gratifying any tastes, and in face and figure they are unsurpassed by any women in the world.
“They have one custom that seems singular to a European, they not only shave the Mons Veneris, but take a clean sweep underneath it, so you glance at their hard, full and enchanting breasts, handsome beyond compare, and fancy you have got hold of some unfledged girl. The Rajpootanee girls pluck out the hairs as they appear with a pair of tweezers, as the ancient Greek women did, and this I think a very preferable process to the shaving.
“It is impossible to describe the enjoyment I experienced in the arms of these syrens. I have had English, French, German and Polish women of all grades of society since, but never, never did they bear a comparison with those salacious, succulent houris of the far East.”
As well as all these commercial sexual transactions Sellon seems to have devoted a considerable amount of effort to seducing such married and unmarried European women as were available and to writing Herbert Breakspear, a sentimental novel with an Indian setting.2
On the whole Sellon seems to have taken pleasure in almost all his Indian experiences—even his duel with a fellow-Englishman, inevitably, over a woman, does not seem to have caused him undue distress—and it is in every way understandable that, when he came home to England on leave in 1843, he was surprised and annoyed to find that his mother had not only selected a suitable prospective bride for him but had more or less arranged the marriage. He seems to have had a healthy Victorian respect for money, however, and cheered up when he discovered that his mother’s choice was not only good looking but the heiress to a fortune, resigned his commission3 and got married.
The first few months of married life were spent in Paris, and seem to have gone well enough, but on the couple’s return to England early in 1845 Sellon was shocked to discover that his wife had very little capital of her own and, still worse, that his parents-in-law were only prepared to make an allowance of a beggarly £400 a year! Feeling thoroughly cheated Sellon abandoned his wife and returned to live with, and no doubt on, his mother at her home in Bruton Street, London. The separation lasted two years, but Sellon kept himself fully occupied by keeping a mistress at “a little suburban villa” and by seducing his mother’s fourteen year old parlour-maid, “a sweet pretty creature” who had “received a pretty good education, and was not at all like a servant, either in manners or appearance”.
After their reconciliation Sellon and his wife continued to live with his mother but soon began to have violent disagreements. The worst of these, which led to Sellon being confined to bed for a month, was precipitated by the young Mrs. Sellon’s discovery of the affair between her husband and Emma, the previously mentioned “sweet pretty creature”. On this occasion it seems to have been Mrs. Sellon who first took refuge in violence, for she gave her husband, as he himself said, “such a tremendous and violent box on my right ear as nearly to knock me out of my chair”. Sellon goes on to record his reactions:
“I very calmly flung the remainder of my cigar under the grate, and seizing both her wrists with a grasp of iron, forced her into an armchair. ‘Now you little devil,’ said I, ‘you sit down there, and I give you my honour, I will hold you thus, till you abjectly and most humbly beg for mercy, and ask my pardon for the gross insult you have inflicted on me.’
“ ‘Insult! think of the insult you have put upon me, you vile wretch, to demean yourself with a little low bred slut like that!’ and struggling violently, she bit the backs of my hands until they were covered with blood, and kicked my shins till she barked them.
“ ‘I say, my dear,’ said I, ‘did you ever see Shakespeare’s play of Taming the Shrew.’
“No answer.
“ ‘Well, my angel, I’m going to tame you.’ She renewed her bites and kicks, and called me all the miscreants and vile scoundrels under the sun. I continued to hold her in a vice of iron. Thus we continued till six o’clock.
“ ‘If it is your will and pleasure to expose yourself to the servants,’ said I, ‘pray do, I have no sort of objection, but I will just observe that John will come in presently to clear away the luncheon and lay the cloth for dinner.’ A torrent of abuse was the only answer.
“