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Posts tagged ‘Elizabeth Sharpe’

  1. Lecture notes: Omar Garrison – I

    Back in 2012 I started a series of posts entitled “Lecture Notes” which related – in various ways – to the lecture I did at Treadwells Bookshop that year examining the widespread view that tantra is fundamentally, about sex. More specifically, I wanted to present the idea that this identification is the end-product of particular historical processes and cultural ping-ponging, and chose to do so by looking at three different textual representations of tantra & sexuality – the writing of William Ward at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Richard Burton’s translation of the Kamasutra at the other end of the nineteenth century, and finally Omar Garrison’s Tantra: the yoga of sex which was published in 1964. (there were also two posts on Edward Sellon which was an initial dive into the fuzzy boundaries between anthropology and pornography). But I never actually got around to writing up some of my thoughts on Omar Garrison until now, having become sidetracked into looking into early sexological writing on the subject of “sacred sex” (Marie Stopes and Havelock Ellis) and some futher work on the Kamasutra. Continue reading »

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  2. Elizabeth Sharpe and “The Secrets of the Kaula Circle”

    Elizabeth Sharpe (1888-1941) is one of the “forgotten” writers on India of the early twentieth century. Born in Bangalore in 1888, she seems to have spent most of her life in India, with a brief trip to England in the 1930s. She wrote several books concerning aspects of Indian life, including at least one work on tantra; translated sanskrit texts such as the Siva Sahasranama; and had a passionate interest in the education of women in India. She is best-known for her 1936 novella, The Secrets of the Kaula Circle – a tale of black magic and left-hand tantric “orgies” which featured a recognisably unflattering portrayal of Aleister Crowley. Continue reading »

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