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Maria de Naglowska (1883–1936)

Autor de Advanced Sex Magic: The Hanging Mystery Initiation

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Nombre canónico
de Naglowska, Maria
Nombre legal
de Naglowska, Maria
Fecha de nacimiento
1883
Fecha de fallecimiento
1936
Género
female
Nacionalidad
Russia
Organizaciones
Brotherhood of the Golden Arrow (founder)

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This slender volume is the third of Donald Traxler's translations of the works of Maria de Naglowska, from her writings as a mystic and proponent of sex magic in Paris circa 1930. Its format is something of an inversion of the previous two volumes. Where those contain doctrinal instruction, with practical intimations in the form of fictional narratives about the initiation of a hypothetical candidate, this one is instead a murky pseudo-memoir, somewhat comparable to novels like Paschal Beverly Randolph's Ravalette: The Rosicrucian's Story or Franz Bardon's Frabato the Magician.

A central feature of the reminiscence of "Xenophanta" (the book's speaker, and the byline of its original serialization under the name Xenia Norval) is her encounter with what certainly appears to be a personified Lucifer character -- this, despite Traxler's continued quotation of Naglowska's injunction not "to imagine Satan ... as living outside of us, for such imagining is proper to idolaters" (xiii). "Xenia's" attraction to this Other put me very much in mind of The Story of Mary MacLane -- and it is not impossible that MacLane's 1901 confessions (titled in MS I Await the Devil's Coming) had been accessible to Naglowska, perhaps even in French translation. (As a translator of P.B. Randolph's work, Naglowska could certainly have read MacLane in the original English, though.)

An enigmatic diagram called the AUM CLOCK is drawn by Xenia under praeternatural inspiration in the course of the story, and it serves as the preoccupation of Naglowska's explanatory preface. Traxler supplies an appendix in which he analyzes the contradictory details regarding this figure, and then proposes an abstruse astrological interpretation of it. His astrological reasoning leads him to identify certain dates as being indicated, but he doesn't even go so far as to propose why any dates would be highlighted in this arcane manner.

Another appendix from Traxler investigates Naglowska's sources. It is gratifying to see him expose the Joachimist bedrock on which her teachings rest, and he is doubtless correct about the influences of Eugene Vintras and Henri Bergson. It was a little disappointing that he omitted the French occult tradition of Sophianic mysticism stemming from the Eglise Gnostique of Jules Doinel, which was even more consequential than Vintras for Jean Bricaud, whom Traxler notes as a possible transmitter of Vintrasian ideas in Naglowska's milieu.

As with Traxler's other Naglowska books, this one is an important contribution to the literature of sex magic as developed in the 20th century.
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paradoxosalpha | Feb 10, 2015 |
This volume, the most extreme of Naglowska's sex-magical oeuvre, was dedicated in its original edition to Pope Pius XI! Although her system is decidedly post-Christian, she places special hope in the Roman Catholic institution for providing a sociocultural basis of her neo-Joachimist "Third Term of the Trinity" -- while still calling the church an "adversary" (91). Nevertheless, the substance of the book is concerned with the operations of the highest grade of Naglowska's Brotherhood of the Golden Arrow, as well as her hidden masters concept, for which she employs the phrase "Magnificent Invisible Knights."

This book also provides some further help in contextualizing Naglowska's work relative to other esoteric groups. For the first time that I've noticed in his editorial treatment of her writings, translator Donald Traxler notes the likelihood of a Vintrasian influence (103n). Naglowska herself glosses her enemies in a concluding passage as including "the Hinduizers, the Theosophists, and Protestants of all nuances" (91).

Advanced Sex Magic complements and completes the teaching begun in Naglowska's The Light of Sex, and it uses a similar mixture of writings to do so: theological essays, narratives purporting to describe initiatory rites, and anonymous reminiscences of initiates.

The cardinal mystical practice adumbrated by this book is that of initiatory asphyxiation, and in hindsight, I am surprised that I failed to anticipate the religious symbolism deployed by Naglowska: Judas as the Hanged Man, whose Cord complements the Cross of Jesus. It is in this context that she mentions, "True remorse is the supreme voluptuousness that comes from terror" (28).
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paradoxosalpha | Dec 1, 2014 |
This volume of Maria Naglowska's writings is principally a translation of La Lumiere du sexe, a book that the Parisian sybil dispensed to entrants into her sex-magical Order of the Golden Arrow. After eight preliminary essays, the final three chapters provide a narrative account of idealized ceremonies beyond the scope of Naglowska's actual resources. In this respect, it is reminiscent of the technical paper "Energized Enthusiasm" by Aleister Crowley. The story is told in the first person, and purports to give an accounting of the initiation of a male aspirant from his own perspective.

Throughout the book, there are many references to the "Satanic," often characterizing the work of Naglowska and her order with the term. Translator and editor Donald Traxler is at extreme pains, footnoting every instance of such terminology, to clarify that Naglowska's sort of identification with the Satanic (understood as the negating power of spirit, and associated with critical reason and sexual control) should not be taken in the sense of vulgar Satanism.

Overall, the teachings contained in the book are of a Neo-Joachimist character (or, better yet, Neo-Gugliemite), and promote an immanentist theological concept. The paired chapters (5 & 6) on "The Heart" and "Sex" are especially apposite for initiates of the Thelemic O.T.O., although Naglowska seems to have somehow avoided noticing (and the notice of) Aleister Crowley. Despite her own attested routine of contemplative Roman Catholic churchgoing, she casts aspersions on the historical influence of Popes, and opposes them to initiated Knights (74), which is doctrinally reminiscent of the work of Julius Evola, with whom she was personally acquainted. (Opinions differ on the extent and intimacy of the acquaintance.)

The book is a short one, but highly valuable for students of modern sex-magical lore. A couple of appendices consist of excerpts from other Naglowska books translated by Traxler.
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paradoxosalpha | Jul 3, 2014 |
In common with most Anglophone occultists, my principal knowledge of Parisian sybil Maria de Naglowska prior to the appearance of Donald Traxler's translations was occasional brief mention as a French translator of some writings by Victorian American sex magician Paschal Beverly Randolph. As it turns out, she occupied a vital node in the esoteric communications of 1930s Paris, maintaining her own small "Brotherhood of the Golden Arrow" while also being actively engaged with Traditionalists, Surrealists, Theosophists, and individual occultists such as William Seabrook. Traxler presents this volume as the fourth of five in his major translation of Naglowska's work, but it was my starting place, and I would recommend it as a worthy point of entry.

The book presents articles from the twenty numbers of Naglowska's periodical La Flèche ("The Arrow"), an "Organ of Magical Action," as she subtitled it. These represent the way in which she chose to express her esoteric ideas to the general public at the time that she was also composing book-length works addressed to formal aspirants and initiates. In addition to expository articles, there are a small number of poetic and narrative pieces, and a final section gives two essays written for La Flèche by Julius Evola. All of this material is quite interesting, and my favorite pieces are probably "The Magic Square," "The Priestesses of the Future," and "Masculine Satanism, Feminine Satanism."

Naglowska's central doctrine of the "Third Term" is a pristine example of twentieth-century occult neo-Joachimism. In Joachim of Fiore and the Myth of the Eternal Evangel in the Nineteenth Century, scholars Reeves and Gould demonstrate in the world of modern letters a revival of the medieval Joachim's trinitarian prophetic theory of history, with proponents such as Yeats and D.H. Lawrence. This phenomenon was so widespread that by the 1930s, when Naglowska was writing, it is hard to know how mediated (and by what thinkers) any specific instance might be, even when it is as clear a reflection as the one found in Naglowska's Third Term. Her Holy Spirit (the Third Term of the Trinity) is emphatically female, and so her teachings also align with the French Neognosticism of Jules Doinel and his successors.

In Evola's Metaphysics of Sex, he pairs Naglowska with Aleister Crowley as examples of sexual mystics in the contemporary world. Seeing the errors in Evola's presentation of Crowley's ideas, I am leery of his reading of Naglowska, although he was certainly on more familiar terms with her. It seems almost unbelievable that Naglowska and Crowley could not at least have known of one another, and yet I've seen no evidence that either took such note. In any case, Naglowska's "Third Term" teaching of the Golden Mass is, I think, a useful way for adherents of Crowley's Gnostic Catholic Church to understand the role of our own Mass: a synthesis that transcends the white and black masses of the previous age.

I learned a number of useful things from this book, and it was entertaining into the bargain. I will read further in Traxler's translations of Naglowska.
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paradoxosalpha | Jan 17, 2014 |

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Miembros
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