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Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic: The Essential Ida Craddock
Sex, Magick, Aleister Crowley, Orgasms, Erotic Dances, Angelic Beings, Revolutionary Activism, Liberation, Persecution, Defiance, and Suicide. Persecuted by Anthony Comstock and his Society for the Suppression of Vice, this turn-of-the-century heroine was also a spiritualist who learned many secrets of high magick through her claimed wedlock to an angelic being. Born in Philadelphia in 1857, Ida Craddock became involved in occultism around the age of thirty. She attended classes at the Theosophical Society and began studying a tremendous amount of materials on various occult subjects. She taught correspondence courses to women and newly married couples to educate them on the sacred nature of sex, maintaining that her explicit knowledge came from her nightly experiences with an angel named Soph. In 1902, she was arrested under New York's antiobscenity laws and committed suicide to avoid life in an asylum. Now for the first time, scholar Vere Chappell has compiled the most extensive collection of Craddock's work including original essays, diary excerpts, and suicide lettersone to her mother and one to the public.
288 pages, Paperback
First published November 11, 2010
13 people are currently reading
228 people want to read
About the author
Vere Chappell
5 books2 followersb. 1967
Not to be confused with his father Vere C. Chappell
Not to be confused with his father Vere C. Chappell
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 6, 2019
I found this at a bookstore in London that has an eclectic selection of texts and spiritual products. Love me some spiritualism and 'outsider' characters from the 1800s. The author didn't insert herself too much and was generous with the amount of primary text she placed in the book. Incredibly interesting topic and fascinating woman.
May 13, 2025
This was a fascinating book about a fascinating woman. I’d never really heard of Ida Craddock before stumbling upon this book, but I’m really glad that I got to learn about her! Even though she lived in a very different time, I felt that Ida’s life story still felt very relevant in our current climate of book bans and debates over “obscenity.” Outside of the biographical info, you also get to read some of her writings in full, which I thought was really cool (although I did end up skimming some of the longer ones). While far from all of her points resonated with me, I actually felt that a good chunk of her arguments could still be pretty valuable for modern audiences (even if not to be followed exactly). I was really intrigued by Ida’s life and her writings, and I would definitely recommend this to anyone who might enjoy a unique feminist biography!
December 13, 2010
Ida Craddock was a “Freethinker” and an advocate for women’s rights. Miss Craddock turned her attention to the study of religious eroticism, and she developed a deep understanding of the occult. She wrote several tracts on sexuality, and it is those writings that brought her into conflict with the Comstock Law.
I suppose that you can not tell the tale of Ida Craddock without mentioning Anthony Comstock, and “comstockery.” Anthony Comstock managed to push through a law that forbid the transportation of ”obscene, lewd, or lascivious” material. The vague law gave Comstock an amazing amount of power. ”Comstock boasted that he was responsible for 4,000 arrests and fifteen suicides over his career.” How can a man, who claimed to support morality, boast about driving fifteen people to suicide?
At any rate, Ida Craddock was one of those driven to suicide. While some of her writings clearly showed her to be the product of her time, I was impressed with her knowledge of comparative religions. Miss Craddock believed that she was the wife of an angel named Soph.
In a strange moment of synchronicity, I was reading Craddock’s thoughts of angelic visitations, while the History channel covered much of the same thing in a show about ancient astronauts.
In short, I really enjoyed the book. I give it a solid 4 stars out of 5.
I suppose that you can not tell the tale of Ida Craddock without mentioning Anthony Comstock, and “comstockery.” Anthony Comstock managed to push through a law that forbid the transportation of ”obscene, lewd, or lascivious” material. The vague law gave Comstock an amazing amount of power. ”Comstock boasted that he was responsible for 4,000 arrests and fifteen suicides over his career.” How can a man, who claimed to support morality, boast about driving fifteen people to suicide?
At any rate, Ida Craddock was one of those driven to suicide. While some of her writings clearly showed her to be the product of her time, I was impressed with her knowledge of comparative religions. Miss Craddock believed that she was the wife of an angel named Soph.
In a strange moment of synchronicity, I was reading Craddock’s thoughts of angelic visitations, while the History channel covered much of the same thing in a show about ancient astronauts.
In short, I really enjoyed the book. I give it a solid 4 stars out of 5.
March 7, 2011
One of the best things about reviewing books is the exposure I get to the fabulous females in feminist history who would otherwise be consigned to the cobwebby corners of academic obscurity had some enterprising writer not plucked them from the depths and held them up for the delight of feminist history nerds. This was what I experienced with Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic, which is part biography and part collected works of Ida Craddock. The editor and biographer intersperses five (long) chapters of Craddock's own writings with well-written biographical detail explaining Craddock's often puzzling rhetoric.
Read the rest at Elevate Difference.
Read the rest at Elevate Difference.
April 1, 2024
(Note: See my review of "Heaven's Bride" by Schmidt (or e.g., Wikipedia) to learn who Ida Craddock was and her place in American history.)
Ida Craddock was an advocate, at the end of the 19th century of the completely radical theory that woman's bodies are not the property of their parents or husbands. In particular, she completely rejected the position that women were to be available sexually to their husbands unconditionally. Sexual contact was only to occur when the woman freely desired it.
With that however, she also repudiated abortion, masturbation, birth control, or sex for pleasure, even between spouses. She believed that sexual contact without a high spiritual purpose was basically animalistic, and that God (or spiritual equivalent) must be a participant in valid sexual congress. The man was not supposed to release semen unless conception was desired.
I unearthed this book after reading Schmidt's scholarly biography of Craddock. Chappell's book is essential because it contains 5 long essays of Craddock's reprinted in full, whereas only brief excerpts are given in Schmdit.
Her books and essays were not available publicly for decades, until Chappell and others created www.idacraddock.com which contains much of her writing. (The website is still freely available to the public as of this writing.)
Schmidt's book is thorough, scholarly, and sympathetic, and while covering much of the same biographical material, I find Chappell's commentary more compassionate and illuminating. In Schmidt, only brief quotations of her work are given, but you can't really get a good sense of Craddock's unique perspective without reading her unedited.
"Sexual Outlaw" is still in print and available from the publisher (Red Wheel/Weiser), Amazon, and probably elsewhere. I wanted to check it out from a local library, but there was no circulating copy available in my country, fortunately the wonderful state interlibrary loan system provided me a copy from the San Jose Public Library.
At first I was a little disoriented by the fact that two typefaces are used in the book: a modern one for Chappell's commentary, and an older style such as would have been used in the late 19th century, for Craddock's essays. This seemed an odd choice, but I soon realized what a good idea this was. First of all, the old style font is extremely legible. But it also (along with Craddock's of course dated writing style) keeps the reader mindful of the time in which she was writing; before Ulysses, Lady Chattterly's Lover, and Kinsey, when a person could actually be imprisoned for sending a pamphlet about sex education or contraception through the US Mail (research the "Comstock Act" for the appalling details.)
In fact, Craddock was hounded by the notorious Anthony Comstock (with the enthusiastic approval of Craddock's own mother) to the point that she decided to take her own life on the eve of being sentenced to a long prison term. Incredibly, the antiquated Comstock Act is still an active law after 150 years and is being considered as a reason to ban the sending of birth control drugs through the U.S. Mail system.
Ida Craddock was an advocate, at the end of the 19th century of the completely radical theory that woman's bodies are not the property of their parents or husbands. In particular, she completely rejected the position that women were to be available sexually to their husbands unconditionally. Sexual contact was only to occur when the woman freely desired it.
With that however, she also repudiated abortion, masturbation, birth control, or sex for pleasure, even between spouses. She believed that sexual contact without a high spiritual purpose was basically animalistic, and that God (or spiritual equivalent) must be a participant in valid sexual congress. The man was not supposed to release semen unless conception was desired.
I unearthed this book after reading Schmidt's scholarly biography of Craddock. Chappell's book is essential because it contains 5 long essays of Craddock's reprinted in full, whereas only brief excerpts are given in Schmdit.
Her books and essays were not available publicly for decades, until Chappell and others created www.idacraddock.com which contains much of her writing. (The website is still freely available to the public as of this writing.)
Schmidt's book is thorough, scholarly, and sympathetic, and while covering much of the same biographical material, I find Chappell's commentary more compassionate and illuminating. In Schmidt, only brief quotations of her work are given, but you can't really get a good sense of Craddock's unique perspective without reading her unedited.
"Sexual Outlaw" is still in print and available from the publisher (Red Wheel/Weiser), Amazon, and probably elsewhere. I wanted to check it out from a local library, but there was no circulating copy available in my country, fortunately the wonderful state interlibrary loan system provided me a copy from the San Jose Public Library.
At first I was a little disoriented by the fact that two typefaces are used in the book: a modern one for Chappell's commentary, and an older style such as would have been used in the late 19th century, for Craddock's essays. This seemed an odd choice, but I soon realized what a good idea this was. First of all, the old style font is extremely legible. But it also (along with Craddock's of course dated writing style) keeps the reader mindful of the time in which she was writing; before Ulysses, Lady Chattterly's Lover, and Kinsey, when a person could actually be imprisoned for sending a pamphlet about sex education or contraception through the US Mail (research the "Comstock Act" for the appalling details.)
In fact, Craddock was hounded by the notorious Anthony Comstock (with the enthusiastic approval of Craddock's own mother) to the point that she decided to take her own life on the eve of being sentenced to a long prison term. Incredibly, the antiquated Comstock Act is still an active law after 150 years and is being considered as a reason to ban the sending of birth control drugs through the U.S. Mail system.
May 2, 2011
The next selection for the Weiser Book Blub (ala Twitter)! - I'm psyched for his one - shocking, salacious, supernatural nonfiction!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews