Sexual necromancy - illuminating the black arts

"I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised." -inscription on the tomb of the goddess Isis.

For this entry I will take you deep inside a world of ancient magic and reveal to you one of the darkest of taboos known to mankind.
Fall is upon us, what could be a more fitting subject than the mysterious and dangerous rituals surrounding the dead?

Life and death.
Most of us see those two words as a natural combination.
Others have a more literary take on it.
Going back to ancient Peruvian culture, Homer’s Odyssey, the renaissance demonic summonings. Everything deals with the following four:
1. Life
2. Death.
3. Sex.
4. Power

What would you wish for if you had the ability to control the above 4? All of us have a secret wish, It might be the wish of bringing back a loved one, it might be the secret lust for a beautiful woman that is out of your reach, maybe you want wealth, or power over people that have hurt you. Let yourself drift off into that forbidden fantasy that nobody else knows about, allow your self to fully explore every aspect of it as vividly as you can. Now, come back to reality and feel the frustration of not owning your deepest desire. Feels horrible, doesn't it.
Now, if you had the powers, what would you do? How far would you go?
The question is...would you bring back the dead...would you engage in necromancy?

From the beginning of time we as humans have had these secrets, desires and questions that needs answers. And when no mortal could come to our aid, we have often turned to our dead.
We ask our dead to tell us our future, to reveal secrets, to give us power and knowledge, we ask them to fight for us, to attack enemies or posses others. Several cultures believed that the dead had unlimited knowledge. Some, like the Greek and Romans, believed the knowledge you could access through the dead was limited to that which was within the deceased person's life experience.

In every culture we have funerary rites. We send our dead off to the gods, bringing gifts, amulets and talismans, and sometimes also loved ones (as in the now outlawed Hindu Satī practise, where the wife throws herself on her husband’s funeral pyre.) The Egyptians, and an array of other cultures used their Book of the Dead to help guide their deceased safely in the afterlife. Most cultures believe there is an afterlife, and this being granted, then the dead may hold the key to solving the riddle of eternal life. And if the gods do exist in the after life, wouldn't it seem a waste not to call on the dead and get infinite and eternal knowledge?

Today we call upon so called psychics to help us connect with the dead we can't bear to live without, or to give us the answers we need to find peace in life. But we don't call on our dead to learn knowledge from the gods, we want them to guide us in life. It's a billion dollar industry, talking to the dead during prime time TV, even the police sometimes ask for these psychics for help. Millions of frauds tap into our fear and our sorrow. We want to drag the dead back into our lives asking them to solve what we can't solve ourself. And in doing so, desperately trying to remove some of the paralyzing fear of death. After centuries of evolution, humans still die. And we just can't live with that.

Some cultures takes it even further.
A tale from Egyptian lore is at first glance a romantic and mystical story. Osiris was the king of Egypt and husband to the goddess Isis. Osiris's brother Set was so overcome with jealously due to his brother's power and position, that he lured him into a trap in the shape of a wooden sarcophagus which he threw into the Nile, in order to inherit his power and become king. Isis recovered the sarcophagus and buried him, but Set once again took his body, cut it into 14 pieces and scattered them across all over Egypt. Isis set out to find all the pieces of her husband, but could only recover 13. The missing piece was Osisis penis. Isis knew she had to give birth to a son to stop Set from taking the throne. She molded a phallus out of gold and used powerful magic to bring Osiris back to life, long enough to copulate with him and get pregnant with Horus before Osiris once again died. His souls (in Egyptian religion there are several souls) were in both the land of the dead and the land of the living. Simply put....Isis was having sex with the dead.

It might sound grotesque, but this is actually a metaphor on life, birth and death, or even the harvest it self. Several see similarities with Jesus and The Virgin Mary. (Jesus,the son of a god, gets killed, gets resurrected and brings salvation and eternal life, like Horus did). Some even believe the virgin Mary is actually the goddess Isis, and that Jesus is actually Horus himself. Claiming we are still worshipping Egyptian gods and have been doing so for the last 5000 years. The virgin Mary being the mother of god, and Isis being the goddess of maternity. Some believe the halo on Mary is actually the sun rising behind her, the sun being the creator of all life in Egyptian religion. The same theory goes for Jesus, making him a sun god rather than just the son of god. It's an interesting, but very far stretch, as the similarities tell us more about our needs as humans to create mythology than anything else, not to mention the number of differences and simplifications that prove this theory wrong.

In the Moche civilization in Peru,pottery has been found with images of skeletal figures engaging in coitus with the living. Necrophilia was practiced as a ritual to be able to communicate with the dead, some also engaged in necrophilia in hopes to revive the deceased, much like Isis did. I would go as far as calling these rituals a form of sex magic; the use of sexual energy combined with visualisation. In sex magic, the sexual energy is so potent it can help you transcend to a higher level of spirituality. Some men actually don't ejaculate during sex as they see the male orgasm itself as a waste of energy, whilst the female orgasm is a massive and positive energy that is elevated into cosmos benefiting all of humanity. Aleister Crowley was a great advocate for sexual magick, known for his emphasis on sex as the supreme magical power. He actually used his sperm in his magickal rituals, abstinence was not his cup of tea.
Combining sex magick and necromancy, would make for an intensely potent form of ritual to connect with a deceased loved one. Looking at it from this point of view, it doesn't seem so extreme, does it?

But then we have those that doesn't have a spiritual purpose for their actions. Their practise has one goal, and that is the physical contact with the corpse. They have no desire to reach out to the other side, and converse with the divine gods. I honestly don't think there is a word that can trigger more fear and disgust in us humans than necrophilia. The people with this sexual preference are even more stigmatized than the paedophile.The terms first originated in Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis. (A must have if you don't all ready own a copy) It's a world of total darkness. It's a practise that violates normal limits to an extreme extent. (I am not going to write about homicidal necrophilia/Lust murder as there are a million blogs on that theme, or post pictures of role playing as in all honesty most of the pics look slike something out of a hight school project horror film) If you want a visual approximation, this world is captured in the art film Nekromantik (1987), still banned in numerous countries. In this film there is also a scene very similar to the mytology where Isis forms a phallos for Osiris.

Who are the these people? I have read numerous interviews and cases during the years, and the common factors, are isolation and the fear of rejection. As in one 21 year old woman who had been sexually molested as a child, she describes her self as having "died in spirit", unable to have a sexual relationship with the living she found comfort in the dead. While others attempt to gain self esteem by the expression of power (similar to the expression of power during rape). Contrary to what most of you might think, not all engage in coitus. Holding hands, laying beside the body, washing it and talking to it is very common: The dead can't hurt you. There is a huge community online for the fantasy necrophiliacs and on of the more well known and old web sites, is Vicki's NECROBABES. ( I've tried to get in contact via mail for an interview, but had no luck). She, and her fans, engage in the role playing of playing dead: being manhandled, carried, or put into body bags. She states on her site: I enjoy fantasizing about being killed, this includes handling, and sexual manipulation of my body. It surprises me when guys ask, Why would a woman, like these kinds of fantasies? Why not? Think about it, I'm normally a very independent, controlled person. In my fantasies I am killed. Then I have no more control. My killer can then do what ever he (or she) wants with my body. I don't have to orchestrate, just allow them to indulge themselves. I don't think it's a domination issue, more of a detachment issue." Obviously elements of submission/masochism is involved in her case.

Men and women, young and old, of all ethnicity's and social status, usually with a high IQ, usually heterosexual and more often than not they all share a mental disorder. And according to Franklin S.Klaf, and William Brown who performed a study (Psychiatric Quarterly. XXXII, 1958: Necrophilia) "Inhibited forms of necrophilia and necrophiliac fantasies may occur more commonly then is generally realized." Do you have an ex girl friend or boyfriend who got off to playing dead? Or maybe you do so your self? As long as the fantasy is not put to life, I would say people who day dream about this or act out the role playing with their partner, is engaging in a form of BDSM, as many do. It's no body's business what you do in your own home. For the rest of you who actually act it out, I know it sounds stupid, but do use a condom. And try talking to someone. Not all the living are out to hurt you.

But I would like to say... With what I now have thought you about the powers of sex magick and necromancy, I ask you to be careful.
Maybe your combined supreme sexual energy's will summon someone you really don't want going postal in your bedroom.
I'm just saying.